Troubles over the horizon for Axiom.

A lot of hopes hang on the work being done by companies that are building towards a post-international space station future. So news today of financial woes at Axiom were not what anyone wanted to hear. According to Forbes, Axiom is experiencing a severe cash crunch, business challenges, and a cold reception to its latest fundraising efforts, which have led to extensive layoffs and pay cuts. The clock is ticking for the ISS Deorbit in 2030, and what comes next is looking a lot less certain. Today is September 19, 2024. I'm Maria Varmausis, and this is T-Minus. Axiom Space faces financial woes. Black sky contracted by HEO for imaging services. SpaceX is considering suing the FAA over proposed penalties. And today's guest is Victoria Sampson. She's the chief director of space security and stability for the Secure World Foundation, and we'll be chatting about what else but space security. Happy Thursday. Though it's not such happy news coming out of Houston-based Axiom Space. Many reports are suggesting that about 100 people have been laid off this year, and many have taken pay cuts to stay with the company, as Axiom wrestles with financial troubles. A Forbes report suggests that Axiom's foray into space suit design and passenger services have cost the company significantly, taking money and resources away from the main business plan to develop the next generation of space stations. Axiom planned on attaching two modules to the ISS in 2024 and 2025, each with workspaces and quarters for four crew, and then adding a research and manufacturing module in 2026. Then it would connect a power and thermal module in 2027, leaving the completed station ready to detach by 2028. But as you may have noticed, the first module hasn't been finished, and Axiom is now saying that it will launch the module to the ISS in late 2026. That is a two-year delay, and that delay means missed revenue that Axiom would have received from the NASA contract had it hit its original milestones. On top of that, the ISS plan to be decommissioned in 2030 is up in the air. Russia has said that it won't support the station past 2028, which could lead to the station being de-orbited sooner. All in all, not an ideal situation for Axiom or its employees. We wish them all the best of luck as they figure out their way out of the crunch that they're reported in. BlackSky has been awarded a data services contract by Australian startup HEO to bring automated low-latency capabilities to non-Earth imaging services for defense, intelligence, and commercial use. Under the agreement, the companies will partner to bring BlackSky's current constellation into HEO's non-Earth imaging sensor network. The contract is now moving into its second phase, with a focus on automating the entire tasking to delivery process following a successful initial proof of concept phase. The contract value was not announced with the notice, but BlackSky did share that it was a seven-figure amount. We reported earlier this week that the Federal Aviation Administration is proposing penalties against SpaceX for reportedly violating its launch license requirements, and it seems that the company's founder is not happy about it. Elon Musk has taken to social media to share that, and a quote, "SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach." The FAA is proposing finding SpaceX $633,009 precisely for alleged violations, which occurred during a Falcon 9 launch and a Falcon Heavy launch both in 2023. The proposed fines in total make up the largest civil penalty ever imposed by the FAA's commercial spaceflight division. This is the latest spat between the FAA and SpaceX, which only last week SpaceX accused the Federal Agency of delaying the next test flight of the Starship rocket, and again, I quote here, "for unreasonable and exasperating reasons." We've been waiting for the news for the last few days on the launch of the mission called "Kineis Killed the Radiot Star" by Rocket Lab. Who else but Rocket Lab would name a mission like that? But it seems that the launch was aborted just moments ahead of liftoff. Rocket Lab's Electron rocket was scheduled to launch five Internet of Things satellites for the French company Kineis from New Zealand. The countdown clock reached zero, and the electron appeared to fire up its first stage engines, but then they immediately shut down, resulting in an abort. No news has been shared yet about when the mission will be rescheduled or, for the reason behind the abort. It's not easy to be an audio-only podcast and then to talk about visuals, but here we go again. L3 Harris Technology's advanced baseline imager onboard NOAA's newest weather satellite captured its first image since launching into space this past June. The new full-disk geocolor image was captured on August 30 of this year, and as images of our home planet go, this is pretty spectacular. The imager's high-resolution technology provides the ability to rapidly and accurately detect and track hazards, including severe thunderstorms, wildfires, and hurricanes. L3 Harris says this first image is a significant milestone prior to reaching full operational status of the spacecraft and its onboard instruments. And if you want to see that spectacular image, as always, the link is in our show notes for you. Some news out of the world satellite business we can perish now. Portugal's Nura space has signed an agreement with CIDUS space to provide space traffic management and launch and early operations support services to CIDUS space's constellation. Nura space will provide CIDUS with tracking and real-time conjunction screening using a global network of ground-based sensors, including optical radar and laser sensors. Nura space will also deliver accurate and timely two-line element data and deliver refined orbit determination to ensure positive satellite identification and safety during separation. Carol Craig, who is the CEO of CIDUS space, says this agreement is a strategic step as the company prepares for the launch of the next LizzieSat satellite, which is expected to launch later this year. Germany's Reflex Aerospace has been selected to host Luxembourg's Odysseus Space's Cyclops, spaced-to-ground laser communication terminal on an upcoming mission. The mission will perform an in-orbit demonstration of the Odysseus satellite laser terminal, which is called the Cyclops DTE, and Reflex's satellite will connect Cyclops DTE to the Odysseus proprietary optical ground station and then enable the transmission of large volumes of Earth observation data to the ground. And outgoing AIAA CEO Dan Dunbacher has been appointed as the new chief innovation and strategy officer at special aerospace services, also known as SAS. According to the SAS press release, Dunbacher will focus on accelerating the company's innovation strategy, integrating diverse capabilities, and leveraging his vast technical expertise to assure the successful delivery of SAS products and services. And Dan, we wish you the best of luck in your new position. And that concludes our Intel briefing for today. Head to the selected reading section of our show notes for links to further reading on all the stories we've mentioned throughout the show. And we've also included an article on India-Australia Space Cooperation ahead of the Quad Leaders Summit. Hey T-Minus Crew, if your business is looking to grow your voice in the industry, expand the reach of your thought leadership, or recruit talent, T-Minus can help. We'd like to hear from you. Just send us an email at space@n2k.com, or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals. Our guest today is Victoria Samson, Chief Director of Space Security and Stability for the Secure World Foundation. And Victoria started by telling me more about her role and the organization. The Secure World Foundation is a nonprofit that focuses on space sustainability. We promote best practices and norms of behavior to make sure that space is accessible to and usable for all over the long term. So my particular portfolio focuses on the security aspects, which a lot of things affect sustainability, but happy to talk more through course of conversation. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, space security is a phrase that I think colloquially has a number of different uses and meanings, and sometimes it's not exactly clear what people are talking about. In the context of this conversation, and you are the expert here, how do we define space security exactly? I mean, that's a really interesting question. And I think it just depends on who you ask. In English, we distinguish between space safety and space security. Space safety are things like space flight safety, inadvertent interruptions to your space capabilities, like space debris and solar flares and stuff like that. Space security implies that there is a deliberate threat intention to somehow interfere with your space assets. And I say that in English because in other languages, specifically romance languages, they don't distinguish between space safety and space security, but we are speaking English, so we shall look at it from the security aspect. So these are things, anything that could somehow deny, disrupt, interfere, somehow get way between your space asset and you. So this is either information coming to or from the satellite, whether they're at the ground control station or as a user. So yet definitely cyber security sounds like it would be wrapped up in that as well when we're talking about space security. Absolutely it is. Very cool. And then another point of clarification for me, the phrase, the term "counter space," what do we mean by that as well? Sure. We use those terminology counter space capabilities because I think a lot of people used to think, "What do we mean by that? What do we mean by that?" And the implication is, whether it's starwarshing lasers or more realistically, the idea of putting a weapon up in space that can point down at Earth or other satellites or things of that nature. The issue is that latter aspect isn't really happening. What we're seeing are these sort of capabilities that are dual purpose. That means that they could be being created for completely innocuous, non-offensive reasons or the same technology could be used in a manner that's meant to be deliberately hostile. And so that's what we see capabilities. And we're talking counter space capabilities. These are things like whether you're going to put a system up in orbit to somehow interfere with another satellite, whether that's to jam it or to take pictures of it or release an object with high velocity to impact it, things like that. Or you have things that are on the... I think as well a lot of people think of when they think of counter space capabilities or space security issues, some sort of interceptor launched from a terrestrial point, whether that's in the air or on the ground or in the ocean, to aim at a target in space. But then you also have things like electrocuted warfare, jamming, spoofing, interfering somehow with communication. You have directed energy weapons, lasers, which can be used to blind or dazzle optical imagery. Could be using some sort of electromagnetic pulse to interfere or somehow destroy a satellite. And then finally, there are things like cyber security, the idea of releasing cyber weapons to somehow interfere or take out space communications. Okay, so that is a fascinating, scary also, but like a fascinating array of different scenarios. And one thing that I've noticed in my discussions with people is I think there is not a lot of understanding of what's a realistic threat. I mean, experts like yourself know, but in the general public, let alone even within sort of the general space world, I'm not sure if people quite understand what is realistically happening. And I'm thinking also of major headlines like, you know, ViASAT, that was a major issue in 2022, but also the whole thing with Russian nukes in space did not help add any clarity to the conversation at all. And people were like, okay, how real is that? What does that exactly mean? Isn't that some people are like, that's been going on for ages. This isn't you, other people. So it's where do we even begin to sort of understand, for those of us who are interested in the industry about space, how do we begin to understand realistically where things are at right now and how do we, and what actually is the signal and what's the noise in the situation? Right. It's hard because a lot of space gets classified very quickly. And so it's hard to have an open, unclassified conversation about what the actual threats are as well. I think oftentimes some of the concept of the threat is maybe increased a little bit depending upon who is doing it, you know, for geopolitical reasons. And this allows me to put in a plug. Yeah, I'm geographically obligated to mention Secure World's Global Counterspace Set Assessment, which is an open source, unclassified analysis of counter space capabilities for 12 countries across five different capabilities that I mentioned earlier. And so if you look at that, we have a lovely thing I call the stoplight chart on our website, SWFound.org/counterspace that looks at these capabilities. And so I think, you know, you can do it different ways. You can say, okay, reversible versus irreversible damage. You know, something that is reversible like jamming or, you know, cyber attack. You do it and it isn't going to permanently destroy or harm the spaces that you're targeting. Those are actually considered to be very usable counter space capabilities and everyone's doing it. Everyone jams. Absolutely everyone jams. Presumably most countries that have cyber capabilities, you know, cyber warfare and other realms, they presumably have them in space if they have space capabilities too. In fact, it's very classified very quickly, so it's kind of hard to distinguish. But as you mentioned, for example, in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, they released simultaneously an attack against Vyasaats ground terminals, a cyber attack. And we thought that was very interesting because first of all, again, usable counter space capability. But also whenever people think about, you know, space security stability, they think about things up in space, you know, obviously, but the ground targets, they're right there. They're easier to get to. And so that was something that we point out. So something like that. What's less likely, maybe low probability, high impact are the things that are irreversible, you know, destructive counter space capabilities. And these would be things like, you know, direct to send anti satellite capability where you have an interceptor launch from terrestrial earth to impact the satellite up in space. No one's ever done that against anyone else's satellite. Four countries have tested this capability against their own United States, Russia, China, and India. But if something like that were to be done, you know, again, against a rival satellite, that could be incredibly eschatory in that it could invoke a response, you know, bringing conflict from space and earth. And then things like, you know, you mentioned Russia nukes for anti satellite. The story was that US intelligence forces believe that Russia is developing some sort of nuclear warhead that would be placed into orbit and used as an anti satellite capability in terms of it would explode and the EMP from the explosion would be used to take out a bunch of satellites at once. That is something that we know will happen in terms of it is has been proven during the early part of the Cold War, both the United States and then sub-Indian tested in nuclear warheads in space. And in fact, there was one that the US did in July 1962, where Starfish Prime, where the warhead was a 1.4 megaton warhead, it took out about a third of the active satellites at that point. Now, granted, this is just a few years after Sputnik, so there weren't that many, but still you can imagine the same age. I was just going to say, what's true. In the same age, you know, if you have a nuclear warhead going off in low earth orbit, which is where most of the satellites that are active now operate, that could be incredibly damaging and again, very eschatory. So it's just one of those things I always hate to say, it depends, but it truly does depend in terms of what the counter space capability is. But again, I will point out, we make this point in our counter space document, our counter space site assessment. Temporary reversible counter space capabilities are being used right now in conflicts, but these are things like again, like jamming and cyber. Reversible destructive counter space capabilities have not been used in conflicts. Yes. Yeah. No, it depends. Yeah. I hate saying that, but I'm smiling, but I'm actually terrified of that happening. And it depends as an honest answer also. So as often when speaking to experts like yourself and scientists and different, that's usually the answer that I get from my question, which is the valid honest answer. Speaking of that report that you're mentioning, the global counter space capabilities assessment. So that came out in April of this year and it's a really, I will make sure we have links to it in our show notes because people should definitely check it out. There's a really interesting abstract at the beginning that sort of makes the case that more public debate about what's going on in the space domain regarding security. I'm being very broad here because I don't want to, I'd rather you explain this to me, but more public debate and discussion is needed around what's going on here. Is this that things are getting too hawkish? Are things just too militarily focused? Can you dive into that a little more? Sure. I mean, the reason why we started this counter space assessment six years ago was that we would read news stories and hear news stories about things that other countries are doing, namely, I'm in the US, so this would be China and Russia. And it would be wildly speculative in terms of what they're doing and what it meant to do or it would be like, can't say anything, classified, but if you knew, you'd want to do more. And so we said, okay, well, you can't make good information based on guesses. And so we thought, okay, what if we were to work towards establishing what can you find out from an unclassified open source piece of data? And so that's what we did. We wanted to contextualize the conversation and make it more relevant. So we look at when countries, there are news stories about countries testing capabilities. We say, okay, how does that compare to other countries' capabilities? Is that truly a new thing or is that something that another country has been doing for decades? Does it fit into where their budget and policy and strategies, if that information is open and available, does it fit into what they've been saying? The idea that you can't make good policies without good input. And then in terms of helping the public fully understand this, I think oftentimes, again, it's very complicated, it gets classified, and people just jump to the worst conclusion and sometimes that is relevant. But other times what ends up happening is it creates a situation that is what you were hoping to avoid to begin with. And so our hope is by sharing information about this so we can help encourage informed debate and allow policymakers to make the best decisions for national and international security stability. I think oftentimes when people talk about threats from a national security perspective, the response is, okay, what sort of technologies and military capabilities can we develop in response? And obviously that's one tool in the toolkit. But another tool that I think can be equally as helpful is diplomacy. There are a lot of multilateral discussions happening at the I-Nations and elsewhere looking at how do you determine what is considered responsible behavior in space? How do you identify irresponsible behavior? And how can you get a commonly understood, not necessarily definition, but global perspective on these sort of things so you can identify when people are acting outside of what's considered responsible behavior and how can you get the patterns of life established? So I think that's one way in which that can be very helpful in handling this. And another way are just unilateral declarations. For example, in April 2022, the United States announced it was committing nothing conduct destructive anti-salate missile tests, largely because of the debris that's created from those issues, from those tests. And November 2021, Russia conducted one of these tests and it created over 1,600 pieces of trackable debris of which I want to say, there's maybe 300 still around. So it's dropping, but still it's still a threat to other operators. It's a threat to allies of Russia. One of the things that really shocked me is when they did the test is that they had cosmonauts on the space station and they're going to be just as threatened as the astronauts. So yeah, so I think diplomatic efforts can be helpful. And this Commitment Act to Conduct Destructive Anti-Salate Missile Test at the United States announced two years ago has since been joined by 36 other countries. And so that's another way in which countries can try and make a more stable, predictable space environment. It does not have to be develop a weapon, get a treaty forward. There is a whole spectrum of responses in between those two. We'll be right back. Welcome back. From our long overdue accolades desk, news that yesterday five congressional gold medals were awarded to the women known as the Hidden Figures, honoring their long, uncredited and under-reported work in the early space race. And if you have watched the film called Hidden Figures, you may remember three women in that film, but the book actually mentions four and the awards yesterday went to five. So here are the names of the women who are honored with congressional gold medals yesterday. Katherine Johnson in recognition of her service to the United States as a mathematician. Dr. Christine Darden for her service to the United States as an aeronautical engineer. Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson in recognition of their service to the United States during the space race. And the fifth congressional gold medal was in recognition of the many, many unnamed women who served as computers, mathematicians and engineers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and NASA between the 1930s and the 1970s. Of the four named women, only Dr. Darden is still living. And personally, I hate that it took the United States so long to openly recognize the incredible work that these women did, though as I'm sure is so often the case, these were incredibly intelligent hardworking women who were not looking for the limelight still recognition where it is absolutely do even if it is so late in coming. All of us who love space, not just in America, but around the world, we truly owe these women a great debt of gratitude. . And that's it for T-minus for September 19th, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We're privileged that N2K and podcasts like T-minus are part of the daily routine of many 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. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karpf. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I'm your host, Maria Vermazus. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]