Commercial support for SDA.

[MUSIC] The Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition, better known as the Space Port America Cup, is the world's largest student rocket competition. It's been running since 2007 and has been hosted in New Mexico since 2017. Now the competition is beginning to outgrow its space and wants to get student teams to experience more challenging altitudes and engineering problems. They're possibly looking for a new site to host them and with 13 licensed space ports in the United States alone and with more working to get their licensing, it could mean the competition is on the move. Could you host 1,800 students and over 100 rocket launches in your city? Well, stick around to find out more. [MUSIC] Today is November 7th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmasas and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] The US Space Force selects new companies for assistant services for the Space Systems Command. Starship's test flight number six is aiming for a November 18th launch. Viacet, Redwire, SES and more released their financial updates. And T-minus producer Alice Carouse will be speaking to Steve Taylor, the president of the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association, which is the nonprofit behind the intercollegiate rocket engineering competition, the Space Port America Cup. As we mentioned at the top of the show, the cup's looking to expand and is interested in finding a new hosting site. Find out more details in the second half of the show. [MUSIC] Let's dive into Thursday's Intel Briefing, shall we? The US Space Force has selected 12 companies for a potential 10-year, two and a half billion dollar contract to provide advisory and assistance services for Space Systems Command. The multiple award in definite delivery and definite quantity contract is for SSE's Hemisphere Program. And the selected companies, which include KBR, SAIC and Accient, will deliver advisory and assistance services for Space Systems Command, Space Domain Awareness and Combat Power and Battle Management Command, Control and Communication, Program Executive Offices. And according to the announcement, work will be performed in El Segundo, California, and is expected to be completed by November 3rd of 2034. SSE is committing fiscal 2024 research development test and evaluation funds in the amount of $36,000 at the time of the award. And the US Space Force is expanding both in number and in mission areas, as well as the number of commercial space operators included in the commercial integration cell. The combined space operation center commercial integration cell enables operational and technology exchange between operators at the combined space operations center and commercial satellite owner operator partners. And the goal is to enable real time and near real time information flow during daily routine operations and to enable rapid informed response to critical, unplanned space events or other activities in and through space to improve space domain awareness. According to Lieutenant General Doug Scheiss, the five new CIC companies are BlackSky, Kratos, Leal Labs, ISI and Telesat. Hawkeye 360 and XO Analytic are expected to join soon. SpaceX have announced that they're targeting no earlier than November 18th for the next Starship test flight. It'll be less than one month after Starship's fifth flight. Who can forget that epic megasilla moment catching the booster with the chopsticks? SpaceX says the next Starship flight test aims to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online. Objectives include the booster, once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship raptor engine while in space and testing a suite of heat shield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean. According to SpaceX, learnings from this and subsequent flight tests will continue to make the entire Starship system more reliable as they close in on full and rapid reusability. And we have a roundup of financial results from some of the biggest names in the space sector now, starting with Fiasat. They reported Q2 Fiscal Year 2025, yes 2025, results. The satellite giant reported revenue of $1.1 billion in the quarter, which is a decrease of 8% year over year. However, Fiasat reported awards for the quarter at an all-time record of $1.3 billion, which is an increase of 25% year over year. Defense and Advanced Technology segment awards more than doubled, reaching $510 million in Q2 of Fiscal Year 2025. And on to the next company, this would be SES out of Luxembourg, and they shared their year-to-date financial results and third quarter or Q3 updates. The satellite communications provider reported a revenue of 1.4 billion, which is a decrease of 25 million euros for the year-to-date, reporting 900 million euros in renewals and new business contracts. Next company, this one's Redwire now, and they announced the completion of its acquisition of spacecraft development company, Hera Systems, during their third quarter investor call. The acquisition expands Redwire's spacecraft portfolio to support specialized national security missions. The company reported revenues for the third quarter period at a 9.6 year over year increase to $68.6 million. Redwire affirmed that it's forecasting revenues of $310 million for 2024. Next company, this one's Earth Observation Company Black Sky, and they reported revenue of $22.5 million, up 6% from the prior year quarter. They say their imagery and software analytical services revenue grew 13% over the prior year quarter. And their quarter was bolstered by the news of the recent multi-year contract valued up to $290 million with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency to monitor global economic activity and military capability. And Space Tourism Company Virgin Galactic also announced financial results yesterday. They hemorrhaged $75 million in the last quarter, which is a reduction from the same period last year. Additionally, Virgin Galactic used the investor's call to announce that they have entered into a sales agreement under which it may offer in cell shares of its common stock, having an aggregate offering price of up to $300 million. The company says they intend to use the net proceeds from any sales of its common stock to further accelerate the development and production of its next generation spaceflight fleet. The company says that it's still on track with its Delta-class spaceship line, which is being manufactured in Arizona, and that they remain on track to return to commercial flights in 2026. And that is our roundup of financial news. One last news item for you today. Agile Space Industries has announced that it will be opening a new rocket engine test center in Oklahoma. Agile says the Tulsa Space Test Center, also known as TSTC, will establish Tulsa as a premier location for space engine testing and support the nation's critical need for advanced in-space propulsion testing infrastructure. The TSTC will be located adjacent to the Tulsa International Airport and aims to support NASA, commercial space companies, and the U.S. Department of Defense by providing advanced in-space rocket engine testing capabilities. Congratulations to our friends at Agile and to everybody in Tulsa. And that concludes today's Intel Briefing. You can read more about all the stories mentioned in today's program by heading to the selected reading section of our show notes. 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 love to hear from you. Just send us an email at space@entuk.com or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals. [Music] The Experimental Sounding Rocket Association, also known as ESRA, is the volunteer organization that manages the intercollegiate rocket engineering competition known as the IREC and most recently the Spaceport America Cup. ESRA is looking to expand the competition and add additional categories and may be looking for a new host site. ESRA's president, Steve Taylor, spoke to T-Minus producer, Al's Karoofs, about the competition, starting with the history of the IREC. The competition started in Green River, Utah. Back in 2006. And pretty much with the same sort of altitude targets and the same mix of propulsion. So we like to do solid propulsion. We like to do hybrid propulsion and liquid propulsion as part of our contest. It continued to grow sort of in the early years and grow it did. And then when we got to around 2017, we brought the competition to the Spaceport America. And what happened is we went through this sort of "worn a mouth thing" almost where the competition kept growing and then we started picking up international teams. And since 2017, we've had a great relationship with Spaceport America and brought the competition there. And since then, it's really matured a lot, both from a facility standpoint and also from the event itself. The maturity of the teams coming in has also made this competition want us to go further, basically. So what it really is, is the world's largest intercollegiate rocket engineering competition. That means that there are student teams from across the globe that are competing at this really high level and everybody wants to come and launch at the iREG. And you're obviously looking to grow it going into 2025 and 2026. Can you tell me a little bit about what you're looking to do to transaction into a larger competition or a more competitive competition? Yeah, the competition categories have kind of stayed the same since the beginning of the competition. And what we found is that the engineering teams are looking for more of a challenge now. And how can we challenge them? Well, we can challenge them by going higher, so raising the altitude of some of the categories and then adding categories. So this year, we're adding a two-stage category unto itself. And we're looking to go 30,000 feet and 45,000 feet with that. And then there are teams that are looking for even what's the next thing. And we're looking to do a high altitude demonstration flight to see if teams can push that envelope. And really, you know, like to see them reach their own personal teams' highest altitude that they can and have a site where we're able to raise that bar a bit. One of the really key points I'd love to drive home with this is that the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association, of which you are president this year, is a group of volunteers for people that all work in the space industry in some way, shape or form. Either amateur, rocketry enthusiasts like yourselves or people that are actually working in the industry. And they give up their time to put on this competition every year to come out wherever it is going to be held in 2025 to do this. So you are looking for a spot for 2025. It could possibly be back at Spaceport America, but it could possibly be somewhere else. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what it is you're looking for for 2025 for the IREC? Well, so what we're looking for, you know, is the three aspects of the competition. So the first aspect is the convention day. And where we have all of the students put on the poster sessions, they display their rockets, people and judges and other students look at their work and communicate with the teams and try to understand why they did something the way they did it. Another one of those things that's fascinating to me is the different solutions that engineers will come up with for the same problem. And so that's one of the most rewarding things. So that convention day is where they get to show their work. It's where we've selected some of the technically best submissions to do posters, to do podium sessions, which are presentations to the group where the students will come in and judges and even the public are welcome to participate in this. So there's that information day. Then there's the day where we go out to launch the rockets that the teams have made. After they've gone through a thorough safety inspection, they then bring the rockets that are ready to launch. And we launch and we launch for three days. We launch Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And there's some teams that didn't get their opportunity or for whatever reason to launch. We do it on Saturday as well. And that's just a motion filled experience, both for the students and for us. Why our volunteer staff, why we do this is because we get a charge out of education and seeing the students realize their dreams of being able to launch these rockets. And then the last part of it is then sort of a high energy award ceremony with last year we had bubbles and we had music and lights. But it's the culmination of their year's work with the work, their year's project. And we award first and second place in different categories. And we have technical excellence awards and then an overall winner selected from that group. And when we get the students that come back and volunteer for us, it's had a dramatic impact on their life. It's just an experience of a lifetime that these students get. And we enjoy doing it. I can absolutely say firsthand how much I've enjoyed being part of the Spaceport America Cup when the IREC came to New Mexico back in 2018 and have been there every year since. It really is a rewarding competition to watch and to participate in as a volunteer. Now you're looking for someone who's willing to host this. We're talking about what, 2,000 students and being able to host in a large space that can go to altitudes up to 45,000 feet. That's quite a huge ask. What are the rewards for an organization to be able to host an event like this? The economic impact is significant. We've estimated it to be around $5 million of economic impact for the hosting city and the hosting site. The other, and then it's, it brings in the Chamber of Commerce. We involve the police and the fire and the EMS people. We involve local university because we want to have our university ties. We fill hotels, we fill restaurants. Not just the hosting city, the economic impact is one, but then the STEM education component of this. So we like to work with the local universities and other schools that are around that have a STEM mission that, you know, this is one of the most exciting sort of STEM events that you can have. And it's at a collegiate level. So we want to be able to share that with the community and have the community come out and us support them in any educational mission that they might have. I will say from the Mexico State stance, obviously we've had year on year more and more local teams get involved in this. And it certainly helped with the pipeline for people that want to get into the space industry to be able to show, look, the local colleges are putting teams into this competition and you're able to recruit from that hands-on experience. So I would recommend that thoroughly. Steve, is there anything you wanted to make sure people are aware of before we close out this conversation today about what it is Ezra is looking for? We're looking for a partner. Okay, we need a partner that shares our commitment to building the engineering value of this competition. So we've got a great partner in SDL. They're our payload partner. You know, we've had a great partner in Spaceport America. But we just want to push the competition a little bit further now. And we're looking for someone that has the commitment and the desire to go through down this journey with us and build this set of the next generation of aerospace engineers. For additional information regarding the IREC new site RFP or Ezra in general, please send an email to general.info@ezrarocket.org or visit soundingrocket.org. I'll be right back. Welcome back. If you're not familiar with what a neutron star is, let me give you the cliff notes. It's the remnants of an exploded star that are dense but compact in size. And I do mean dense. These objects can weigh one billion tons. Wow. Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have found a new neutron star that's spinning at a much faster rate than those found before. The 4U 1820-30 neutron star could be one of the fastest spinning objects ever observed in the universe. It spins 716 times per second. And if you're questioning like I am right now, how in the heck do you even begin to find these small fast spinning remnants of a star in the vastness of space? Well that would be where NYSER comes in. Researchers used the NYSER X-ray telescope, its name is NYSER, this is not a comparison, attached to the International Space Station. And NYSER by the way stands for Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer. And NYSER identifies the rapidly spinning object by searching for blast pulses of X-rays, which is a type of radiation that neutron stars release into space. This newly discovered 4U 1820-30 neutron star is only about 7.5 miles across, but it is about 1.4 times the mass of the sun. It's located some 26,000 light years away in the Milky Way Galaxy and it is part of a binary star system, meaning it has a companion white dwarf. Wow. So now you know. Let's hope that fast spinning neutron star gets a better name in the future, huh? That's it for T-minus from November 7th, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. For privilege, the 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 Kilby is our publisher. And I'm your host, Maria Varmasus. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [MUSIC] T-minus. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]