Firefly Aerospace are on a roll. Jason Kim, the newly appointed CEO, has hit the ground running, which seems to be very on-brand. The company that's positioning itself as the leader in end-to-end responsive space services has shown the world how quickly and highly capable it can be with the Victor's Knox mission for the United States Space Force. Now it's announced new funding to conquer other competitive areas of the industry, including commercial missions to the moon. Today is Tuesday, November 12, 2024. I'm Alice Carruth, and this is T-Minus. Firefly raises $175 million in new funding. India's Galaxy closes a $10 million series A race. China launches a satellite for Oman. And our guest today is Heather Bulk, CEO and co-founder of special aerospace services known as SAS. Heather spoke to Maria Valmaszis about the company's new acquisition, so stick around for more details. Happy Tuesday everyone. Maria is in DC this week covering the Beyond Earth Symposium. We're looking forward to sharing the stories she captures at the event, but for now let's dive into today's Intel briefing. And we're kicking off with some good news from Firefly Aerospace. The company has closed an over-subscribed $175 million series D round at a valuation of more than $2 billion. Who says that there's no money in space, eh? Firefly is rapidly developing many different launch capabilities. It's readying for its inaugural Blue Ghost mission to the moon as part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative. The team is also preparing for multiple Alpha launches as part of its contracted missions with Lockheed Martin, L3 Harris, True Anomaly, NASA and NOAA, while co-developing a medium launch vehicle with Northwick Grumman. In parallel, the company is completing final preparations for its first Elytra mission, a configurable spacecraft that provides on-orbit services and a deep space communication network. Firefly plans to allocate the new capital to expand market reach with its Elytra spacecraft — move to full-rate production of its Alpha launch vehicle — and accelerate hardware qualification for new vehicles in development. Indian Space Start-Up Galaxy has closed a series A funding round securing $10 million. The Earth Observation Company is aiming to develop the world's first multi-sensor satellite designed to provide all-weather high-resolution data. Galaxy says it will use the new capital to accelerate the development of its upcoming satellite mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2025. The Chennai-based company also says it's planning to expand internationally with its offerings and is currently exploring potential opportunities. Over to China now, and Beijing-based rocket maker CASS Space, which is owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, conducted the fifth flight of its Connecticut-1 rocket on Monday. The vehicle transported 15 satellites into space, including one built by China for Oman. The mission marked the first time a Chinese commercial company has launched a spacecraft for a foreign nation. The Omani Iris-1 is equipped with AI-enabled tech that can process data and images in orbit. The satellite is tasked with collecting data and images for land mapping, urban construction planning, forestry resources survey and disaster monitoring for the Middle East and nation. And speaking of launches, SpaceX had back-to-back missions takeoff from Florida yesterday. In less than five hours, SpaceX launched a dedicated mission for Korean communications company KSAT Corporations and a separate Starlink mission. The KoreaSat 6A launch saw the 23rd reuse of the Falcon 9 booster B1067, a tied record for the amount of reuses for a rocket booster by SpaceX. NASA has extended its resupply services contract to the International Space Station until 2030. The CRS-2 contracts provide the ISS delivery of cargo, return and disposal of cargo, special tasks and studies, and ground support services for the end-to-end cargo resupply services. NASA stated in the notice of the extension period that having a redundant launch capability is crucial to maintaining the viability of the ISS as a scientific laboratory. No companies other than the three incumbents have been identified, which could provide the services required to continue the resupply missions. Millennium Space has completed two spacecraft for NASA's tandem reconnection and CUSP Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellite Mission known as TRACES. The mission aims to measure the connection between solar wind and magnetic field surrounding the Earth. The team is now integrating the instruments that will study changes in the magnetic and electric field plasma particles and waves once in orbit. Following the integration, the next phase is environmental testing prior to delivering the spacecraft to Vandenberg Space Force Base ahead of launch. Sierra Space has completed a preliminary design review for the missile warning and tracking satellites the company is developing for the Space Development Agency under a prime contract valued at $740 million. The satellites are part of the SDA's proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture Tranche 2 tracking layer. The agency awarded the contract to Sierra Space through an other transaction authority in January 2024 for the design, production, delivery, operations and sustainment of 16 missile warning and tracking satellites, as well as two satellites for missile defence with fire control fidelity. Sierra Space is delaying the second flight of its Ariane 6 rocket to know earlier than February 2025. The Ariane 6 was launched for the first time in July of this year and while the flight was labelled a success by the company, an anomaly during the flight prevented the final firing of the rocket's upper stage engine. Ariane 6 is a program managed and financed by the European Space Agency. Ariane Group is responsible for the development and production together with its industrial partners. As of the first commercial flight, Ariane 6 is being marketed and operated by Ariane Space. The next Ariane 6 flight will see the rocket carry the CSO-3 spy satellite into orbit for the French armed forces. AI company Altair has signed an agreement with the European Space Agency through the ESA Partnership Initiative for Commercialization known as EPIC. Through the agreement, Altair's AI platforms will be made available to all startups, companies, research centres and universities throughout Europe who are collaborating with ESA or developing technologies with ESA's support. Sweden's Huxverna Group has released the Urban Greenspace Report 2024, highlighting a concerning decline in urban green spaces worldwide. The report analyzed satellite data and AI insights from 344 cities across 62 countries, revealing that 75% of these cities have seen a reduction in green spaces. The trend thus continues the same direction as in previous years. The Texas A&M University Systems Board of Regents has approved $200 million for the university system to build the Texas A&M University Space Institute. The four-storey building, which will be constructed on 32 acres at the entrance of NASA's Johnson Space Centre, will include landscapes that mimic the surface of the moon and Mars. The Space Institute is just one project among several recently approved by the university's board, totaling more than half a billion dollars, which includes a $10 million hypersonic wind tunnel. Construction on the Texas A&M University Space Institute is expected to begin in January. That concludes today's briefing. You'll find links to further reading on all the stories mentioned in today's episode in the selected reading section of our show notes. There's also an additional story included today on partnerships for the Belgian Dutch Navy Satellite Program. Hey, T-miners crew, if you're just joining us, be sure to follow T-minerspace daily in your favorite podcast app. And also do us a favor, share the intel with your friends and co-workers. Here's a little challenge for you. By Friday, please show three friends or co-workers this podcast. A growing audience is the most important thing for us and we'd love for your help to be part of the T-miners crew. If you find T-miners useful, please share so that other professionals like you can find the show. Thanks, it really does mean a lot to me. Our guest today is Heather Bulk, CEO and co-founder of Special Aerospace Services known as SAS. Heather spoke to Maria Varmas is about the company's new acquisition. I'll give you a little bit of background on SAS, how we refer to Special Aerospace Services. So we started the SAS in 2007 and I was one of the co-founders. Back in the day, the notion of the business was really supporting this new evolution of what we know today as commercial space. And as we look at SAS today in 2024, we are doing a lot more than just commercial space. And what we're really focused on is engineering, hardware, and now mission critical comes and products for the space industry. So today in 2024, we're excited to tell folks that we have partnered with Godspeed, a private equity firm based out of Georgetown, which has enabled us to go do some incredible things just here in a few short six months. We've had SAS come together as a platform company and a flyer Wilbrook out of Huntsville, Alabama, as well as Crentrump based out of San Maria, California. The most exciting, I will tell you, the recent news is of course the acquisition of Concordia last week in Huntsville. Congratulations, by the way. That is really wonderful news. And it's an exciting time to be at a company that's growing by leaps and bounds and making these exciting acquisitions. I would love to know, sort of as you see your company's sort of overall vision and growth strategy, where these different acquisitions fit in to in aiding that. Yeah, well, and therein lies the magic sauce, the notion of it's one thing to acquire a company, it's another thing to acquire company that's going to really enhance what we're doing. I like to tease the team that our mission is not to take over the world, but really in fact to bring in add-on businesses that will further enhance the work that we're doing. If we look at one specific client, we may have historically done engineering and hardware, providing critical space hardware or hardware for the defense missions. Now we're able to do mission critical communications. And with this recent addition of Concordia, we're now able to further enhance the capability to add on some essential elements for oversight. That particular acquisition is focused on missile defense. And so we're able to do even more for the agency. Yeah, I was going to say, so for your customers, what does it mean for them? They must be really excited by the new capabilities you all are bringing on board. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. In my conversations with folks, since our first transaction back in April, I was a little nervous. We're no longer a small business. And I thought, what are they going to think about this? The exciting part is SAS has had no client attrition in over 17 years. And in this new platform that we have, it was a resounding level of excitement from our clients and our team members, which also is an area that we keep close tabs on, making sure that we retain our exquisite team members. Fantastic. Yeah, so I'm always interested in companies' long-term vision. And again, you all are at a very exciting time right now, especially. So five, 10 years from now, where do you see SAS going with this incredible injection of new products as well? I mean, that's got to be a really exciting vision that you have. Yeah, well, I won't take the two hours to respond to that, which I'd like to do, but I won't. Fair enough. You know, it was exciting before, right? Even last year. It was a very exciting way we were going with SAS. Now with these added capabilities and incredible team members that we have in addition with this backing and support with Godspeed, now, SAS is already a player across the board, not only for supporting what our clients are doing, but also with our own technologies. And so where you're going to see SAS continue to thrive is with the Department of Defense. Very specifically, we look at missile defense. We look at NRO and thinking about this next generation of support for both civil as well as defense really coming up with what I like to say is solving those hard problems both here on earth as well as in space. You're going to see hardware. We already have hardware in space. We will continue to expand those capabilities and not only to protect, but to explore. Absolutely. Yeah, and I really appreciate that answer. Thank you. I want to make sure if there's anything you want to let our audience know about your recent news or just about your company in general that I haven't asked about, I want to give you the open forum. Anything that I miss that we should be talking about? Well, this is something that in my role that I love to talk about, which is culture. And it's one thing to do great things in the space arena. It's another thing to do great things with a great team and a great place to be. And so no pressure, but the key on my shoulders is making sure that this maintains a solid and incredibly innovative platform in which people can come to explore their ideas and take those ideas to fruition and actually see that happen. And we're going to continue to be that company. Making as a small company from a culture standpoint and letting our team members thrive. It's fantastic. I have worked at many a small company and I love that is a very unique place to be. And it really is very special. So I completely, I love that. I get that. If there's anything else that we wanted to make sure that you added in about this news while you're here, I want to make sure I give you that chance. Fantastic. I will add on one piece that is if you live in Alabama, you know that we're building a building right across from Blue Origin and Cummins Research Park. A long time coming. And again, it fits in nicely with where we're going and how SAS is showing up in the industry. This is a 45,000 square foot facility, phase one, where we can go and build this hardware that not only are we helping to create, but as well as manufacture and test. So more to come on that exciting new building. We'll be right back. Welcome back. If you've been listening to the show for a while, then you know that in September I was in Florida to cover the crew nine launch and got stranded due to Hurricane Helene. For the record, it hardly touched the region I was in, but it caused devastation in parts of the state and further north, particularly in North Carolina. NASA and NOAA tracked the hurricane in real time and were able to share weather information and images from space to help us learn more about the movements of the system. Now NASA has shared that its atmospheric waves instrument called OAR spotted a surge of gravity waves 55 miles above Earth's surface during the hurricane. The OAR instrument mounted on the International Space Station detected the flurry of gravity waves in the Mesosphere as they tore their way up from the Earth's surface due to the extreme forces generated by Helene. The space agency says the information gathered helped scientists better understand how terrestrial weather can affect space weather. It's part of the research NASA does to understand how our space environment can disrupt satellites, communication signals and other technology. It's an incredible insight into how Earth's weather can affect the upper atmosphere. The shared views of gravity waves from Hurricane Helene are among the first publicly released images from OAR. We're interested in hearing about what more can be gleaned from this research in the future. That's it for T-minus for November 12th, 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 podcast site 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 mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Kaaf. The Moan Protroller is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I'm Alice Carruth. Thanks for listening. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]
