Forging the future in space.

There were a lot of national days of that I missed this week. National Aviation Day was on Monday commemorating Orville Wright's birthday. Tuesday was National Radio Day and it also happened to be the anniversary of the launch of Voyager 2. So I wanted to start as off today with a moment to recognise the achievements of aviation and audio, both of which have led me to my job today as a podcast producer that specializes in aerospace. My career adviser definitely didn't see that in my future. Today is August the 21st 2024. I'm Alice Carruth and this is T-minus. AstroFord raises $40 million in a series A round. Mineric stock tumbles on news of production delays. Axia Monokia partner on the Axe EMU space suit. And our guest today is Alison Reynu. Alison is currently working in the Amazon rainforest installing Starlink for tribes in the region. She shares her fascinating story with Maria Valmarzis to stay with us for the second part of today's show. We're kicking off with the good and the bad of the space industry this Wednesday. When one company soars, another tanks. Let's start on a positive note, shall we? AstroFord has raised $40 million in a series A round. That brings the total raised by the company to date to $55 million. The asteroid mining company launched their first mission in April 2023, which suffered with communication issues. Their second mission called Odin is aiming to go into deep space and is due to launch later this year. And the company used the SEED announcement to share details of their third mission, Vestri. It will feature the company's 200 kilogram production vehicle, which is designed to return to a near Earth asteroid and dock with the body in space. AstroFord says that Vestri's insights and characterization of the target asteroid's composition will allow them to obtain the quality and quantity of valuable elements located on the asteroid. The Vestri spacecraft will be developed completely in-house and is expected to launch on the Intuitive Machine's third mission in 2025. And in complete contrast to AstroFord's success, Minerig is suffering on the stock market. The Germany-based company has slashed its 2024 revenue guidance nearly 70 per cent at the midpoint, citing production delays in its laser communication product. The company also announced the voluntary departure of their CFO. Stefan Bernt von Ballow apparently left the company for personal reasons effective last week. Bernt von Ballow has been with Minerig since 2018 and assumed the role as CFO in 2020. Minerig debuted on the Nasdaq in late 2021 at a market value of about $325 million, but the stock has tumbled since, dropping below $2 a share and trading below a market value of $50 million. Let's hope things pick up for them soon. AXIUM Space has announced a partnership with Nokia to collaborate on next-generation spacesuits. The company's plan to integrate advanced 4G LTE communication capabilities into the AXIUM Extravicular Mobility Unit, known as AXIUMU, that will be used for the Artemis-3 lunar mission. The technology will support HD video, telemetry data and voice transmission over multiple kilometres on the moon. This advancement aims to enable Artemis-3 crew members to capture real-time video and communicate with mission controllers on Earth while they explore the lunar surface. Nokia plans to deploy the first cellular network on the moon as part of the Intuitive Machine's IM2 mission, that's scheduled to be delivered to the launch site in 2024. The company aims to demonstrate that cellular connectivity can facilitate crucial communications during future lunar or Mars missions. And speaking of spacesuits, Australian startup Meta Cosmos has raised $2 million in a pre-seed funding round. The capital has come from a Saudi Arabian Technology Group. Meta Cosmos says this new round of funding will enable them to accelerate the delivery of milestones, advance their space suit technology and launch spin-off applications in multiple industries for new markets. Japan and India have held talks to deepen cooperation in areas of outer space and cyber. In a joint statement issued after the two-plus-two talks involving the foreign and defence ministers of the two countries in New Delhi, it was also decided a 2008 declaration on security cooperation would be updated, possibly by the end of the year. The meeting was held against the backdrop of concern over China's assertedness in the Indo-Pacific region. Japan has also been seeking to reinforce defence capabilities in domains such as space and cyber and working together with like-minded countries in those fields. Over to Scotland now, and startup Space Intelligence have closed a Series A funding round led by UAE-based Azurex Space Ventures. Space Intelligence is aiming to provide high-accuracy nature mapping derived from satellite data. The undisclosed amount of funding will be used to expand Space Intelligence's catalogue of mapping data across the world's forests to support the development and financing of forest carbon projects as well as nature impact monitoring across corporate supply chains. The US Space Agency has selected teams to receive grants for open-source science. NASA awarded $1.4 million to 15 teams developing new technologies that advance and streamline the open sharing of scientific information. The programme called HPOS, which stands for High-Priority Open Source Science, funds projects that aim to increase the accessibility, inclusivity or reproducibility of NASA's Science Mission Directorate Research. Projects include open-source tools, software frameworks, data formats or libraries that will have significant impact on the science community. And SpaceX debuted a new Falcon 9 booster yesterday. The spacecraft delivered 22 starling satellites to LEO on its maiden flight from Florida. And stick with us for Maria's interview with Alison Reynu, who will be talking about how the starlink constellation is improving lives of folks in the most remote locations. That concludes our briefing on this hump day. Check out the links in the selected reading section of our show notes for more information on all the stories mentioned in the show. There's an additional article in there as well on lessons from Amazon and FedEx on informing spacecraft management in orbit. Haiti Miners Crew, if you find this podcast useful and we really do hope you do, please do us a favor and share a five-star rating and a short review in your favorite podcast app. It will help other space professionals like you find the show and join the Tea Miners Crew. Thank you, we really appreciate it. In July, I stumbled across a New York Times article about starlink being installed in the Amazon rainforest. It turns out that Alison Reynu helped the tribes gain access to the internet. Maria Valmarz has spoke to Alison before she ventured back into the Amazon and asked her about the project. Many people may have read this New York Times story. It was titled "Internet's Final Frontier, Remote Amazon Tribes." This story kind of got weird play in the press. I don't think a lot of people read it. I think they just kind of read the headlines and didn't actually really read it carefully about what this was about. But Alison, this is a story that you're very, very much a part of. I don't want to take words out of your mouth. I'd really rather hear it from you about this incredible journey that you were on to bring starlink to indigenous people in the Amazon. Well, where it really started was after I came out of International Space University. I worked for them for a couple of years after that. And then was invited to do a stint in Washington, D.C. And I worked sometime at the FAA Commercial Space Flight Office where we licensed and launched all of our commercial space partners. Learned a lot about that. And then over to NASA headquarters to work in the International Relations Department, where we work with our international partners. NASA does nothing without international relationships. It's always a partnership. And it was an amazing place to be. But what I did notice is we really didn't have the staffing to help some of the emerging nations and some of the people that really needed help. And I guess from there, that's where I spun off into my own private career to help people that didn't really have the means, the knowledge, the connections to accomplish some things they wanted to do concerning space. And not every country wants an astronaut. They just may want some help with satellite or space policy or something like that. So that's what started happening. I think it's because I'm a mother and I've been through some really hard times over sometimes decades at a time being on the bottom. That gave me a lot of compassion for human beings. Maybe that was all part of the plan. And I'd look at it as the bad times is almost a blessing for me. I think it was in January of 2023. I received an email from a stranger, a chief in the Amazon. And it was a one minute video requesting that would I help bring them 20 star links to their tribe. And you know, I thought about it. Of course, that's where Flora came in, my friend Flora. I didn't know her before, but she had seen me speak at the first Indigenous Space Conference a couple months before that. And then saw me on the, I believe on Facebook in front of the SpaceX building, the Starlink building in LA. So she thought, well, maybe this lady can help us because I think they had written about 100 letters or emails asking for help and nobody would. I immediately saw what a blessing that internet could be for people. I asked them why. And the chief said, you know, we don't have education. We don't have a medical health telemedicine. We can't even communicate from, you know, village to village. Or if we have illegal invaders, we can't contact the government, everything we will have to walk, you know, two days sometimes just to deliver a message. And I could see that this could really enhance their lives while they would still maintain their amazing culture. So I thought after 24 hours, I wrote them and said, I'm in. I'm going to find a way. I asked them people that had a lot of money, but then I realized it's really going to end up just being myself and I mobilized my kids, my daughters and a few friends. And we raised the money really fast to purchase the 20 Starlink and had him shipped to Brazil. And then what was, what was amazing was the chief asked me, will you go into the jungle and help me deliver them? I thought, well, what, what a privilege to be invited into their world. So in September of 2023, I went into the jungle. It was quite a journey, difficult, dangerous. I'm an athlete. I mean, I'm not on the athlete now, but I'm a runner and I've run a marathon before. And it was so much more exhausting than I ever expected. And sometimes you didn't think you could take another, you couldn't take another step, but we don't take any food with us or water. We just drink out at the, you know, rivers as we go over them and, and, you know, just wait till we get to the first village, which I don't know for sure. I don't quote me on this, but I think the first village we arrived at was took two days and it was about 35 miles just to get there on foot. You can't take horses or anything like that because the jaguars, you know, will kill the horses. There's a lot of danger with wildlife and snakes and gobras and things like this. So it's all on foot. When I arrived, the leaders from different villages were there to receive their starlings. And it was a incredible celebration for three days. And I got to know everyone. And one of the things I always said as I told stories about this on media and conferences was I was amazed at the morality of these people. You know, I had this image that they were going to, you know, be, you know, wild and crazy a little bit. And they were so moral and kind, generous, didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't cuss or anything like this. They were just good quality parents. And I'm really sad that actually this article kind of got twisted that direction because they're completely on the other end of that. Yeah. So the chief that, that emailed you that said I want internet. I was sort of spoiled myself. I read when the article that he, you know, I think people have an idea of what indigenous life is like. And I certainly, I was completely misinformed. I was thinking, oh, they're totally isolated. They have no outside contact, which is clearly not true. He knew what the internet was. He worked part-time at Coca-Cola as a graphic designer. So it's not like he had no idea what modern life was like. He knew exactly what the amazing amenities of modern life would be. So I mean, can you tell me about him? His name was an okay. Is that how you say his name? Yes. His name is Inaki Marubo. And he was born in the forest to indigenous parents. And they had a feeling about him when he was born, that he might become a leader one day. So they took a chance and took him into the city when he was eight years old, which is about a two day walk and found a way to get him educated. And then he went on and graduated from university and did work for Coca-Cola for several years. And then he felt that yearning and that nudge to go back and take everything he learned and go back to his people and into the forest to help improve lives. So he has a really good handle on both foot, a foot in both worlds and the positives and negatives of internet. So he's an excellent leader to do this. I was also mentioning like I had a lot of misconceptions and I'm sure I still have a bunch. You mentioned a few that you had some ideas of what it would be like when you went there. I imagine when you actually went, as you said, the people were very moral and morally upstanding. What about their daily life? Like what are the villages like? What amenities do they already have or what were they looking for? They don't have any amenities at all. I was just one of them. We were washing our clothes in the river and drinking from the river and bathing in the river. It's a very simple life. The closest city that I walked from is about a good two day walk. So they do have laundry detergent and soap and they have guns to go hunting and things like that. But they mostly have maintained this amazing culture. The women, whatever they hunt today is what we eat. I'm a farm girl so I was a little more tolerant, I guess, of strange diets. We've had monkey soup and wild boar and turtles and turtle eggs and fish and just whatever they become. It's the women take it and butcher it and cook it over an open fire. It's everything you imagined that the Amazon would be with the grass huts and people living in them. They're quietly going about their duties every single day. Wow. Okay. That's amazing. Starlink, very different from all that. The villagers, how are they using the internet? How are they interfacing with it? So as far as what I witnessed and what I heard that was happening right off the bat was many of these people had best friends for 20 or 30 years if they hadn't seen or talked to you because the distance was just an obstacle to get to each other. Some of the first things that were happening were face times and tears and happiness to finally meet some of their best friends from many, many years ago. Another thing I noticed was like, for instance, the chief has a home in the city and then it's a two-day journey to get to his village. His wife, when he was gone working into the jungle, never knew if he was safe or not. They were so happy to be able to connect and say, "Hey, I'm fine. How are the kids doing? I'm safe and I'll be back on this day." Before it was just a wait and guessing game. So those are a couple of things I witnessed. Now they're setting up school. They wanted to at least educate first through fourth grade and I know that the school is being built as we speak. There also have been a lot of phone calls concerning health issues. Women were having babies with no help and no assistance for problems they were having or people get snake bites. Human beings have health issues and they just haven't had any assistance. So this has been such an amazing thing to see the beginnings of it. The Internet can do just absolutely incredible things for so many people. So that's one of the missions that I know when we talk about Internet access for all, not just for those of us in places where we're lucky enough to have fiber but satellite-enabled Internet really, is truly transformational in places where we never would have thought such things would be possible. It's just incredible to see. This particular product, Starlink, I'm not working for Starlink, but I got the witness firsthand how this works. And we would go into a village and chop down trees, and build a platform, and we had to raise it up way high. I'm hammering with nails, the men are sawing trees, and then we hoist that huge tall host way up in the sky with this satellite dish, small satellite dish. You log in on your phone and you watch this thing start to span and calibrate and look for the little satellites that way up in the space somewhere. And suddenly it logs on after two or three minutes and then you look down on your phone and it says "WiFi, Starlink." And it's just, it's almost miraculous. It's not, but it is. And suddenly there you are watching a soccer game or going on Facebook in the middle of the wild, wild Amazon jungle. So it's a fascinating and great opportunity to see things that really, I feel like a lot of people haven't had a chance to see and they're beautiful people. But we have these images. We don't know if they're like, we imagine them as like savage cavemen or something because we don't know. Now when the images have never really gotten out to the public and you know consistently and really they're just like you and me. They want the best for their kids. They want to be healthy, live long lives, be happy. People are people. Ultimately, no matter where we are, people are people. And it's a tautology, but it's true. And I'm honestly really happy that they can have access to such amazing things now. There are more and more tribes requesting help. And again, you know, I have to find a way to buy them, which is usually myself. And then this particular tribe is really, really isolated. And I have a video of them requesting internet. Of course, they can't speak English, but I have a chief can translate from me. And he said, these people want you to come. So again, we're going. Since we're talking to an audience who are involved in the space industry, is there anything that you want them to know about, I guess, the impact that, you know, these kinds of space-enabled technologies are making? Like anything specifically that folks in the space industry should just keep in mind? That's a great question because I was born when John F. Kennedy was still president. So I have witnessed the space age in the beginning stages. I saw Apollo program as a young girl developed. I watched when I was in third grade, a man land, it was a stand on the moon on a black and white television. I saw space bring us out of the stone age in the United States and began to inspire the next generation of children to become engineers and mathematicians and scientists. And so I have always been fascinated. And I feel privileged to have seen it from the beginning stages and what it's done for us as a country and for it, you know, as it trickles down into even families. And I think having been friends with some of the astronauts and even the moving walkers, when you brush shoulders with someone that's done the impossible, they always acknowledge that it took 400,000 contractors and people working at NASA to land the first man on the moon. That's, they always realize it's just teamwork. And I love the space family because they're very aware it takes all of us. You know, I'm not an engineer. I'm an international relations person. There's some people that are good at video. There's some people like you that are good at telling the story and spreading this great news. So it's a very inclusive, diversified family. And when I was at NASA, the thing I was so impressed with is they didn't care if you were black, white, male, female, young, old, what your culture was, your religion, nothing else they cared about was we have to get this impossible job done and we're going to have to stick together and put aside our differences or somebody's going to die or we're going to waste a lot of government money. So this is what's so beautiful about the space family is it's a very cohesive group of people. We'll be right back. Welcome back. A lot of universities across the US started back at school this week. It's a joyous time for many starting a new college career, moving into sophomore or junior years with a little more knowledge and experience under your belt. And then there's the seniors. They're in their final stretch of education before heading off into the big wide world of full-time employment. The seniors at the University of Missouri School of Journalism are being set up to head into full-time employment in the best way possible. The school has set up its own marketing, advertising and public relations company called Mojo Ad aimed at translating the language of our peers in concrete and professional ways, bridging the gap between the advertisers and the American youth. What's all this got to do with space? I hear you say, well, NASA has hired Mojo Ad to create a strategic campaign for the Artemis program during this full semester aimed at the youth and young adult market. So NASA gets that it needs to invest in marketing and youth. And why not combine the two with a student led ad agency? We're looking forward to seeing the campaign roll out to inspire the next generation and get excited by space. It'll be anything but basic. I say, let them cook. I don't know about you, but it's giving me life. I imagine this will hit different. We're expecting bus and ads, no cap with clouds. It better be on fire. And if you understood anything I just said in the last few sentences, then we are a very different generations. I Y K Y K. That's it for T minus for August the 21st, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us at space@n2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes. Your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. N2K Strategic Workforce Intelligence optimizes the value of your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your team while making your team smarter. This episode's associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iban. Our executive editor is Brandon Kaff. The main portrayal is our president. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. And I'm Alice Carruth. Maria Valmarzis will be back next week. Thanks for listening. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]