I learned a tough lesson on Friday. Don't listen to my husband when it comes to rocket re-entry info. We live in southern New Mexico about 25 miles from White Sands missile range. In 2019 we watched the live stream of the re-entry of the Starliner Uncrude capsule and listened for the sonic booms from our home, but couldn't see the capsule as it landed at White Sands Space Harbour. So with last week's news that the capsule was returning again to my backyard, I asked, "Will we see it again?" Hubby said, "No." So I didn't even try to see it. I definitely heard the booms, but imagine my disappointment when my space friends shared their pictures and videos. Oh yes, it could be seen from Las Cruces and I missed it. And worse, I told astronaut Nicole Starr who was in town visiting that she couldn't see it either. I spent all weekend hiding my shame. Sorry, Nicole. Come back again next time for it. Today is September the 9th, 2024. I'm Alice Carruth and this is T-minus. NASA closes the Starliner mission. New Glenn launched pushback till November. Eight commercial companies selected for NASA's small-sat services. And our guests today are Johnny Powell and Kathy Harper from the International Space Hall of Fame Foundation. They'll be talking to Maria about their support of the New Mexico Space History Museum and Space Education and Outreach in the second part of today's show. [Music] Happy Monday, everyone. So yes, as alluded at the top of the show, Boeing's Starliner capsule returned to Earth on Friday night. The re-entry concluded a three-month turbulent flight test at the International Space Station. We all know that it didn't quite meet the main objective of a two-week crewed mission, but the re-entry seemed to be flawless and NASA is now reviewing the data to determine if it met all the objectives of a crewed flight test. NASA's commercial crew program requires a spacecraft to fly a crewed test flight to prove the system is ready for regular flights to and most importantly from the orbiting lab. The flight test was marred by helium leaks, thruster issues and strange sounds, and ultimately NASA made the decision to prioritize safety and return the Starliner without its crew. Boeing and NASA are both calling the mission a success. Ken Boasox, Associate Administrator of the Space Operations Mission Director at NASA's headquarters, shared the statement that, quote, "Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about the Starliner in the most extreme environment possible." NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station. Starliner will now ship, well, figuratively because there's no access to the ocean from this state, to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for inspection and processing. NASA has delayed the launch of the Escapade mission to Mars until at least spring of 2025. The Mars-bound spacecraft would due to be launched on Blue Origin's New Glenn next month. Escapade, which stands for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamic Explorers, is managed by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California Berkeley with key partners at Rocket Lab, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Advanced Space LLC and Blue Origin. The decision to stand down from a launch attempt in mid-October was driven by a deadline to begin loading hypergolic propellant to two small Escapade spacecraft. NASA stated that the decision was made to avoid significant cost, schedule and technical challenges associated with potentially removing fuel from the spacecraft in the event of a launch delay, which could be caused by a number of factors. So basically, NASA is concerned that New Glenn won't be ready on time, which only escalates the rumors about delays with Blue Origin's new rocket. The company missed a key target of hot-firing the rockets up a stage by the end of August. Blue Origin released a statement saying that "We're supportive of NASA's decision to target the Escapade mission for no earlier than Spring 2025 and look forward to the flight." Blue Origin will now pivot to launching a prototype of its Blue Ring Transfer Vehicle on the debut launch of the New Glenn, targeting a November launch date. And NASA has selected eight companies for a new award to help acquire Earth observation data and provide related services for the agency. The Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program on Ramp 1 multiple award contract is a firm, fixed-price, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity multiple award contract with a maximum value of $476 million, comatively amongst all of the selected contractors. BlackSky Geospatial Solutions, ISI USA, Canada's MDA Geospatial Service, Pixel Space Technologies, Planet Labs Federal, Satelogic Federal, Teledyne Brown Engineering and the Tomorrow Companies have been named as recipients. They will be responsible for acquiring observation data from commercial sources that support NASA's Earth science research and application activities that help improve life on the planet. SPIER Global has been awarded a $3.8 million contract from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to provide radiooculation data for a one-year period. The award is part of an indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract with a $59 million ceiling for NOAA's commercial weather data programs radiooculation data by two. SPIER's contract will begin on September 18th and run till September 18th, 2025. Earth observation company ISI has signed a contract for the Greek National Satellite Space Project, AXIS 1.2, for the Greek Space Agency and Greek Ministry of Digital Governance, together with the European Space Agency. AXIS 1.2 covers the Greek Synthetic Aperture Radar or SAR space segment and includes both radar imagery and the development of a Greek observation system with two ISI SAR satellites and their launches. In addition to sovereign satellites, Greece will also have access to ISI's existing SAR satellite constellation. No details were shared about the contract value or the expected delivery or launch dates. Over to Israel now and Earth observation company ImageSat International has been awarded a $54.5 million contract to provide space-based intelligence analytics services for an unnamed international defence customer. The contract will run for a period of three years. The company's EROS-NG constellation and its newest Global Eye constellation will serve as part of the data sources in this programme, leveraging their differentiated collection capabilities. Israeli satellite communications company Satix Fire released its consolidated financial results as of and for the six months ending on June 30th, 2024. The company reported total revenues of $6.1 million, an increase of 7% compared to $5.7 million for the first half of 2023. Satix Fire also reported a 96% increase in gross profit and improved their operating loss by 17% compared to the same time last year. Singapore startup Earth Eye Space has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding. Earth Eye Space's founder and CEO told Space News that the company is the uber eats of Earth observation data. While uber eats can deliver food from multiple restaurants, Earth Eye Space can combine any of the 475+ satellites across all the sensor modalities. Earth Eye Space plans to use the new capital to expand into Africa and the Middle East next, followed by the USA in 2025. Over to India now and Skyroot Aerospace has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nive Space Private Limited to launch their constellation of Earth observation satellites. The planned constellation will comprise 40 satellites and provide high resolution imagery for strategic interests. That concludes today's Intel Briefing. You'll find links to further info on all the stories mentioned in our show notes and stick around for Maria's chat with Kathy and Johnny from the International Space Hall of Fame Foundation. Hi T-miners crew, if you'd like daily updates from us directly in your LinkedIn feed, be sure to follow the official N2K T-minus page over on LinkedIn. And if you're more interested in the lighter side of what we do here, we are @t-minusdaily on Instagram. That's where we post videos and pictures from events, excursions and even some behind-the-scenes treats. Links are in the show notes. Hope you'll join us there. Before I moved to New Mexico 11 years ago, I had no idea about the incredible space heritage we have here in the state. I remember the first time I visited the New Mexico Space History Museum and was floored by the amount of testing that's happened here since the 1930s, so it's great that our guests today are working to preserve that history. Johnny Powell and Kathy Harper work for the International Space Hall of Fame Foundation and are great advocates for this state. They spoke to our host Maria Valmarzis about the foundation and the work that they did to promote the space heritage of New Mexico. I'm Johnny Powell and I'm the president of the International Space Hall of Fame Foundation. The foundation was actually founded in 1973 by a group of folks in our local chamber of commerce that got together. These included John Stapp, who you've probably heard of, from the fastest man on earth, Art Steinhoff. When von Braun took the paper clip "Scientists at Hustle," Mr. Steinhoff stayed behind and continued all the programs out here at White Sands. He was the elite scientist for all that after von Braun left. Folks like that, Mishrie H, which was then mayor of Almagordo, a wing commander out at Holland, they all got together in 1973 and created the idea of a space hall of fame kind of modeled after the musical thing. They came up with this idea, involved one of our local senators at the time, Aubrey Dunn. He went back to Santa Fe, pinched the idea to the then governor. Within 48 hours, the idea of setting up what became the New Mexico Museum of Space History was all on the drawing board. When it was first opened, it was the International Space Hall of Fame. We were the International Space Hall of Fame Foundation. 1976, the museum came about. With that, that created the building. We've just celebrated our 50 years. The museum coming up in two years will celebrate its 50th anniversary. The foundation has been around ever since supporting the museum and its activities. One of the biggest things that we did all throughout the years in conjunction with the museum is support the summer space camp program. For many years, it was a very, very big program. Through the 2010s, it started waning a little bit. Then COVID really just put a nexus on it. We're doing everything we can to see what we can do to reboot that program under modern agreements, modern teaching philosophies, and all of that. Is that the Starbase program? Is that the name of it or is that something else? Well, actually two different programs. Starbase program is the Department of Defense program. The foundation is involved in that. As a matter of fact, we just received a draft of the contract yesterday. We're moving forward with that program. What that does is it takes all of the regional fifth graders from all the schools out the Harlem Air Force Base for five days of STEM instruction. That's a 30-week program throughout the year. All the programming in the Starbase is accredited. So when kids come to that, it actually counts towards their academic credit. It's not just an elective class. We have an opportunity with what we're learning from Starbase. Under the right circumstances, maybe even be able to somewhat conjoin the programs, which that will be very, very challenging, one being a federal program, the other being a state program. Then you've got the foundation in the middle of all that. We're a nonprofit. We're 501(c)(3). So under philanthropy, under education, under charitable causes, we may be able to not conjoin them, get them to shake hands, so to speak. But we can learn from both of those areas and be a middle resource for taking the best of both of those and creating the best possible program on each side. A summer camp program for the museum and an ongoing space camp program for Harlem Air Force Base. So we will be admitting Starbase following. These are very important initiatives and I can tell how passionate you are about the incredible work that your foundation does and also how important education is because truly, I mean, we need to be educating all the upcoming generations about the incredible heritage of our space program, but also the importance of it moving forward and that there is a role for the future leaders in the space program. I wanted to make sure, Kathy, I want to make sure I get your voice in here too. I wanted to get a sense for folks who have never seen the Hall of Fame, so to speak, because it's a really cool experience. Can you describe it to me for someone who's never been? What they would see, what they would experience? I'm Kathy Harper. I'm the operations manager for the International Space Hall of Fame Foundation. I've spent about almost 20 years working there. So I know where all the backdoors are. It's a big place too, yeah. It is a very big place. As Johnny mentioned, it's an iconic building with a glass facade on the side of the mountain and you can see it for 60 or 70 miles. When the museum opened, there was a huge parade up the main street that goes to the museum. We had six or seven states from around us participating in that and celebrating the opening of the museum. Today, when you go up there, of course, there's been a lot of work to modernize it. The campus looks very clean. Once you go inside the building, you step inside the elevators that look like the cockpit of the space shuttle and push the button to go up. I'm hoping they'll push it. They'll put a button in there that says space, because I'd really love that. That would be great. Yeah. And so as you go through the museum, it gives you a feeling of how it all started all the way back from to Archaeoastronomy and the astronomers that created the telescope that talks about that. It talks about the missions at Holloman and White Sands during the late 1940s and how all of that came about. And of course, we do pay tribute to Robert Goddard, who did so many of his experiments in the Roswell area. There are several simulators. You can try your hand at landing the shuttle. You can land a lunar module. You can do all sorts of cool things and try on astronaut suits. So there's just a lot of knowledge in there. And it is a small museum in the grand scheme of things like the Smithsonian. Oh goodness. I mean, we're comparing to that. We're just minuscule here in Alamogordo. There are things that people will find as they come to the museum is a lot of things that you wouldn't see at a much larger facility. One of the largest artifacts is the Little Jo2 rocket, which sits outside the museum in the rocket garden. And that's what was used to test the astronaut safety issues in case there was an issue aboard the Apollo modules. And it was tested right here at White Sands, the largest rocket ever launched from New Mexico. So there's a lot of that. There's a lot of local history that talks about the high speed test track and various things that have happened to make this area, the Tulareosa basin, the birthplace of America's Space and Rocketry program. Yeah. Yeah. When I visited with my family, it was a decade ago, admittedly, but I was with my husband and my parents and my brother. We all went together before I became a parent myself. And we, I mean, we spent a whole lot of time at the museum. I remember going through just learning so much. I didn't know much about the area before I went. I'm from Massachusetts, so we're from, we're Goddard left. And I just, it was just incredible as someone who's always been a big, big lover of the American Space Program and America's Space Heritage. There was so much I didn't know. And when I visited the museum and I saw everything there, I remember my whole family all just went, wow, there's so much that we didn't realize and didn't appreciate. And especially how much really is localized to the area where the museum is at, so much in the White Sands area, it's just in, and New, New Mexico in general, just, it's truly incredible. I just, I just have to say, it does a wonderful job of explaining that. And really, I came away with a deep appreciation of all of that. Well, I think that most, most people in the world think of Florida or maybe Huntsville as where the space program started, because that's where the focus has been since the 60s, when the program was moved from here to Huntsville. And so because of that focus on those two areas, most people just kind of forgot that, that it really started here. And not only did it start here, but it continues here. In fact, Bowen Starliner is coming down at White Sands Test Facility. That's right. Yes. Right. That's right. Yeah. The last time it came down, right, you could see the parachute. You couldn't see the craft because it's a distance from Alamogordo itself. I mean, it's, it's deceiving how far it is across the desert to where that happens. But we did get to see the parachute and I'm sure there'll be a lot of publicity about it. But yes, that sort of thing continues on today. There's a lot of testing that goes on at the missile range at White Sands Test Facility. And it's, and of course, we're not very far from Spaceport America, which is also very exciting. So we've got a lot going on in New Mexico and, and Johnny and I are going to singlehandedly try to get the word out to the rest of the world to come see us. Maria, you mentioned something that's kind of interesting that I'll segue into. Become a member of the Foundation. It supports the museum. So not only do you support the museum, so when you're in town, you do get the benefits of attending the museum. But we also reach out where you can get up to a Smithsonian component where you get part of the Smithsonian Affiliation benefits. But all members enjoy the ASTC benefits, American Scientific Technology Center benefit, over 350 other institutions across the United States reciprocate their admission. And so whatever their benefits are to their members there, they reciprocate the benefits there. And we do the same in life. So get, even though you buy a membership here, you can go to, probably go to a local museum right there and enjoy membership there and still support the New Mexico Museum of Space History and the International Space Foundation. I did not realize that. Well, that's music I could use. That's great. I am my odd prone. I will see your membership come in just as soon as you register. So spaceholifame.org. Well, you're on spaceholifame.org. Don't forget to click the button that says register for the Trinity Site Motor Coach Tour. We do that every October. It's a great fundraiser for the Foundation. It's an all day activity. We take our six buses to Trinity Site. Oh, wow. 300 feet. I was going to say, since Oppenheimer, y'all must be extremely busy. I can only imagine. Oh, yes, absolutely. It drove interest to an incredible level. We put historians on each bus to talk about the history of the area, the history of the bum-rum and all of that. And we just have a great time. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. Rock samples have really shown us a lot more about our solar system than previously known. That's why we're big advocates for the Mars sample return program. Imagine what we could actually learn from studying Mars soil. Most recently, lunar regolith or moon soil has shown us that volcanic activity on the lunar surface was occurring in recent years. Okay, not so recent. Studies of lunar rock samples from China's Chong Yi five mission have revealed evidence that volcanic activity on the moon occurred as recently as 120 million years ago. Until now, scientists thought that lunar volcanism ended around two billion years ago. The new findings were derived from the analysis of over 3,000 glass beads found in lunar soil, which contain volcanic signatures. These beads showed chemical compositions and textures consistent with volcanic origin, surprising researchers, and suggesting that the moon's volcanic activity persisted far longer than earlier models indicated. The analysis has also prompted scientists to reconsider the thermal evolution of the moon. It suggests that certain regions of the moon's interior may have retained enough radioactive heat to sustain volcanic activity into relatively recent geological time scales. This discovery not only changes our understanding of the moon's geological history, but could also have implications for other rocky bodies in our solar system, indicating that they might also remain geologically active longer than previously assumed. See, science is all about actually doing experiments and not just hypotheses without testing. That's it for T-minus for September 9th, 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. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. We're privileged that N2K Cyberwire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies, N2K makes it easy for companies to optimize your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your teams while making your team smarter. Learn how at n2k.com. T-minus' associate producer is Liz Stoates. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ivern. Our executive director is Brandon Carp. Simone Protrello is our president, Peter Kielpie is our publisher and I'm Alice Carruth. Thanks for listening. [Music] T-minus. [BLANK_AUDIO]
