TASTI news from Taiwan’s space sector.

[MUSIC] Taiwan is famous around the world on several fronts. Geopolitically famous, technologically famous, think semiconductors, and most importantly, in my opinion, colonarily. The night markets and goodness the world has Taiwan to thank for bubble tea. It feels very fitting that Taiwan's yearly space assembly is called Tasty. And that event is going on right now. And there are some delicious news morsels from it that we'll be sharing with you today. Gosh, no, I'm hungry. [MUSIC] >> Today is December 2nd, 2024. I'm Maria Varmasus, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] Launch number five, but also six for the NRO this year. D'youva Space launches AstroView. Tasty Space News from Foxconn. And my guest today is author Joan Marie Galat, and will be discussing space-related educational outreach with nonfiction children's books. [MUSIC] We were off for the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, but are back to our daily Intel Briefings now. It's good to be back. Here's your Monday Intel Briefing, everybody. Let's check in first with launch number five for the US National Reconnaissance Office's Proliferated Architecture. It is the US government's largest ever satellite constellation. The NRO, along with the US Space Force and SpaceX, launched an unknown number of satellites for the NRL-126 mission via a SpaceX Falcon 9 in the wee hours of Saturday, November 30th from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Not surprisingly, for a mission of this kind, there's not a lot that we know about the payloads or their capabilities. All the NRO has said is that, quote, the ongoing pace of deployment continues to diversify NRO's operational satellite constellation. This mission marks the sixth launch for the NRO overall this year, including the five for the proliferated architecture, with more NRO launches expected through this year and through 2028. Looking at news from the space sector in India next, DruvaSpace has launched AstroView, a commercial satellite imagery service that offers real-time, high-resolution geospatial data to support academia, defense, and enterprise users. The service was unveiled today at Geosmart India 2024, and it draws on partnerships with satellite operators like Planet, Maxar, and Capella Space. The new AstroView service provides access to a wide range of data types, including optical, SAR, RF, and hyperspectral imagery, enabling flexible tasking, archived data retrieval, and on-demand collection. And as we mentioned at the top of the show, another space conference is underway, and that one is Tasty 2024, or the Taiwan International Assembly of Space Science, Technology, and Industry, and it's organized by the Taiwan Space Agency, or TASA. Now, Tasty started on November 30th and is ongoing until December 4th, and at the event, Foxconn highlighted its expanding role in Taiwan's space sector by showcasing its advancements in satellite communications, CubeSat technologies, and space-grade components. At Tasty, Foxconn unveiled its new Pearl CubeSat's operational capabilities, which include solar tracking, three-axis stabilization, and solutions for two-way communication challenges like the Doppler effect. The event also spotlighted Foxconn's collaborations with partners like Sharp and RayPRUS on satellite user terminals and Earth observation cameras, along with MediaTek's software-defined radio chips for non-terrestrial networks. Foxconn's participation underscores Taiwan's ambitions to expand its role in the global space industry. And also at Tasty, TASA, or the Taiwan Space Agency, and the Polish Space Agency, or PULSA, signed an MOU to boost collaboration in the space industry, which focused on telecommunications and Earth observation services. Poland views Taiwan's advanced satellite manufacturing and rocket R&D as key opportunities for mutual benefit. By the way, this was also Poland's debut at Tasty, which speaks to the nation's growing interest in expanding beyond Europe's space market. Moving over to China now, and China's Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site achieved its inaugural mission on November 30th, with the successful launch of the Long March 12 carrier rocket. Lifting off at 10.25 p.m. Beijing time, the rocket deployed two experimental satellites into their designated orbits by 10.48 p.m. This was a big milestone for China's first commercial launch facility, which began construction back in July 2022, with investments exceeding more than half a billion dollars. Hainan is strategically located at 20 degrees north latitude, and it's poised to strengthen China's commercial space industry by accommodating a variety of rocket types and reusable launch technologies. Scotland has commenced construction on its third rocket launch site called Spaceport One, located on North West in the Outer Hebrides. Once operational, potentially by 2025, Spaceport One aims to be the UK's sole dedicated commercial suborbital launch site, authorized to conduct up to 10 suborbital rocket launches annually. We're bouncing around the globe today. Now we're going over to New Zealand. And New Zealand-based Xenoastronautics, which makes superconducting magnets for space applications, has secured a seed expansion funding round led by GS1, or Global From Day One. Notably, Japan's Global Brain, representing ANA Holdings and Mitsubishi Electric, participated in this round, marking its first investment in Australasia. Xeno's flagship product, the Z01 Superconducting Magnetic Torquer, offers high-precision fuel-free satellite positioning for spacecraft ranging from 50 kilos to space station size. This investment from Global Brain aims to accelerate Xeno's global expansion and deployment of its technology in the Japanese market specifically, growing collaboration between New Zealand and Japan in the space industry. Now bouncing around the globe a little bit more, the UK Space Agency will be happy about this next story. According to financial services firm The Heligan Group, the UK space sector is experiencing significant growth, outpacing the broader UK economy. In the 2020-2021 financial year, the sector's income rose by 5.1% to 17.5 billion pounds, surpassing the global space industry's growth of 1.6%, and contrasting with a 7.6% contraction in the overall UK economy during the same period. This expansion has been accompanied by increased mergers and acquisitions, with transactions escalating from 5 in 2013 to 27 in 2023. The UK space sector now employs nearly 48,800 people. This robust performance is attributed to technological advancements, government support, and a growing number of small and medium-sized enterprises specializing in innovative space technologies. And the European Space Agency's PROBA-3 mission is scheduled for launch in just a few days on December 4th, from India's Satish Devon Space Center. PROBA-3 is comprised of two small satellites designed to fly in precise formation, creating artificial solar eclipses to study the sun's corona. So by positioning one satellite to block the sun's direct light, the other one can observe the faint corona, enabling continuous observation closer to the solar surface than ever before. The mission is also a test of advanced formation-flying technologies. And that's it for today's Intel Briefing. As always, there's more in the show notes for you, or over at space.n2k.com. Hi, T-minus crew! If you would like daily updates from us directly in your LinkedIn feed, be sure to follow the official N2K T-minus page over on LinkedIn. And yep, like a lot of other people, we are also over on Blue Sky as well, at t-minus.bluesky.social. 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 all in the show notes for you. Hope you'll join us on social media. [Music] Today's guest is author Joan Marie Galat. I'll let her take it from here. My name is Joan Marie Galat. I'm an author mostly for children. I started making books when I was about eight or nine years old. But I didn't get paid for my writing until I was 12 years old. I had entered a writing contest. I got an honorable mention, so that means no prize. But my name was in the paper. And an editor of a different newspaper, a weekly, in my community saw that and wrote to me and asked if I'd like to write for the newspaper. So I started writing. I was a paid weekly columnist. And I learned how to come up with ideas. I learned how to research. I learned how to get my mom to check my grammar. And I've been writing ever since. That's amazing. Your writing career started way before most people's I know. That's... I ended up studying biological sciences. I'd always loved the night sky and astronomy. And I have to say, it was the children's books I read. When I was a kid, that affected my interest as an adult. And I was reading books about birds and wildlife and astronomy and outer space. And these are the things I'm interested in today. So the power of children's books is really important to put nonfiction books in kids' hands. Not just because of the interest they'll develop, but because if a person has never seen a nonfiction children's book, or a nonfiction book before adulthood, they're going to struggle to keep up with the ones who have, because the ones who have will know how to sort opinions and claims and misinformation from facts. Yes. It's very, very important. I love that you have both a lot of experience in writing and also you have a scientific background. And I love what you just said about nonfiction, because I think as a mother to a seven-year-old, a lot of what is often given to children, and especially when we think of kid lit or picture books or whatever you want to call it, we think of fairy tales and imaginary stories. But my daughter inhales nonfiction books. She loves to learn facts. The thing about nonfiction is there's often elements of storytelling in there. It's people think about the textbooks that they knew as children or something. And nonfiction today, modern nonfiction is very different, of course. We use a lot of elements to attract and hold a child's attention. My series on astronomy is called Dot to Dot in the Sky. And there's six books in the series. There's a book on stars, stories in the stars, stories of the planets, there's one on the moon, the zodiac constellations, the clouds, because sometimes you can't see the stars. So I threw one in about the weather and the auroras. This series partners Sky Science with the myths, legends and folklore that people, early peoples and ancient cultures first told about the night sky. So a child who likes literature and reading and stories, but might not pick up a nonfiction book, will see the sidebars and the, you know, the introductory and the other, you know, other parts that talk about the science, but also have that satisfaction of the stories. And then you have a child who actually loves fact based books, but maybe isn't reading literature, which is also, you know, good for different reasons. I'm hoping that kids will cross over and discover that you should pick up all books, not just the ones you think you'll like. It's not a connect the dots on the page book. It's a look up in the sky and connect the dots in the sky. So I show how to jump from one constellation to the other. There's, there's a few tricks to get your starter constellation. And once you find that, you just, you jump from one to the next, and then you discover what people thought. And, you know, knowing those stories connects us to people that we couldn't talk to anymore, right? People from long ago. And it connects us across continents and across borders. So it's really a special thing. I think the night sky should be considered free entertainment. The night sky are your illustrations. But of course, sometimes we have light pollution and we can't see everything we want to see. So I wrote a book on light pollution as well. It's called Dark Matters, Nature's Reaction to Light Pollution. I recently moved to a place with slightly darker skies than where I previously lived, where there was just constant city glow. And that it's, I'm really passionate about protecting dark skies, although I don't have access to them myself very easily. So this is something that feels a little abstract, I think to little ones who, don't really know what a dark sky is because they've never seen it. So I think that's a great book idea. Tell me more about it. Tell me more. Yeah, I'm happy to. Well, I got interested in it because of my love of the stars. And I realized that I wasn't always seeing the full constellation. I was missing a few stars. And I started to learn more about it. And I discovered that as well as being a serious problem for astronomers and scientists who need to understand our universe because we need to know what's out there. When they study distant stars, they are able to learn about what our sun might do. And our sun impacts our life every day with, you know, it causes our weather. And solar flares affect all our technology and things like that. But the more I learned about it, the more I learned that every species of animal is impacted by light at night. And I thought kids are going to care about the animals because that, you know, kids generally love animals. And so the book talks about the night sky, but it also talks about how animals are impacted by it. You know, I wrote this book, I put all my facts together, I sent it off to a publisher and the publisher said, you know, I think you need a narrative. And I said, what do you mean? Do you want me to sneak my facts into a novel? And he said, no, why don't you include stories from your own life about how you got interested in nature and wildlife and the night sky and we'll put that all together. And so it was the funnest thing I did. I think as a writer was to make a list of stories from my own life on a theme and see how I could connect that to the science. And so the book is actually a childhood memoir paired with light pollution. You won't find anything else like that. The book is written for ages eight to 12 or nine to 13, you know, depending on who's reviewing it. But a lot of adults read the book or use the book for outreach. And the idea is that somebody reading these stories would say, oh, I did something like that or I didn't know about that. I didn't know that meant something. I didn't know that mattered. I didn't know that was impacting, you know, the larger world. And people often talk about living in cities and saying, well, I have no wildlife to protect. But in fact, you do because all our light that escapes from our homes is contributing to sky glow and sky glow. You know, if you're driving in, driving on the highway toward a town and you can see the city or the town long before you're there, that glow of light is affecting migrating birds and other species. So there's a lot of reasons for everybody to learn more about this topic and close their blind, shut their lights, only use as much light as is necessary and that kind of thing. I ardently hope that there is greater awareness of just what light pollution does to the broader ecosystem. Because I know those of us who really, really are passionate about it. I've known about it for a long time, but sometimes I wonder if that message is getting out. So I'm so, so glad that you've written about this and that kids can do such amazing things. And especially when we let them know that there's something that they can control and there's something that they can have influence over, like turning off lights. And gosh, doesn't every parent want their kids turn off the darn lights? That's right. Absolutely. That's what parents want. I remember leaving them on. My mom would say, "Are you related to Edison?" And so that was my reminder. That was my reminder to turn off the lights. But it is something, you know, it's a problem with the solution. And kids can make a difference. And I actually have a book called "Make Your Mark, Make a Difference, a Kids Guide to Standing Up for People, Animals and the Planet." And in that book, I specifically talk about a wide range of topics. But of course, I have a whole chapter in there on space issues and including light pollution. You are at a NASA social with my producer, Alice Garuse. That's how we met you. And you are at something very inspiring. So I would love to hear about your experience at the launch and also how what you might take with you from that in your work as you move forward. I was very thrilled to be part of the NASA social for the crew nine launched to the International Space Station. I mean, it was just so exciting to be there in person, watching a rocket with humans on board takeoff. And one of the special moments for me was seeing the astronauts say goodbye to their families. They came out of the building where they were in quarantine. And there was a great crowd around. We were not allowed to take pictures. And so we were really in the moment. And it just meant so much to me to be there. And then later to see the rocket with them on board taking off. It's powerful. And having behind the scenes tours and being able to speak to subject experts who had stories from different launches and different events over the years, it was incredible. And so that will definitely inform my work. I've written a lot of nonfiction, but I do have one novel. And it's fairly recent. It's called More Number Rat Race to Space. And it's about a lab rat who wants to prove that his species should be part of a future mission to Mars. So he finds his way up to the International Space Station. And he's very modern. He has a YouTube channel and he's planning to take video evidence of his experiments on the astronauts. So I want to write a sequel to this book. And going to the NASA social definitely gave me a chance to ask questions of people that may appear later in my next work. Oh, that's so cool. I love that. What better way to get research for your work than to do what you just did? That's so neat. I'm thrilled that you had that chance. That's so great. Joan, thank you so much for speaking to me today. And I have a lot of books I need to check out for my library now. So thank you so much for giving me amazing stories. Also share with my daughter because your work sounds 100% like something I would want to read to her and also that she would want to read even without mom's influence. So that's always the best. Oh, it's been my pleasure. And if anyone wants to learn more about my books, they can visit my website. It's joangalott.com. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. Today, Beppi Colombo, a joint mission between ESA and JAXA, performed its fifth flyby of Mercury, skimming 37,360 kilometers above the planet's surface. And while the spacecraft has flown closer before, this flyby is a significant scientific first. It's the maiden use of the Mertis Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer, designed to analyze Mercury's surface in mid-infrared wavelengths. So why are we skating past the first rock from the Sun so many times? The measurements from Beppi Colombo will help scientists figure out what the minerals are on Mercury's surface, clinging us into the planet's composition and its fiery past as the closest world to the Sun. And this most recent flyby wasn't just about trying out the Mertis instrument. Several other instruments were activated to study Mercury's magnetic field, surface radiation, and even its interaction with the solar wind, providing a broader look at the small but enigmatic planet. And all of these flybys are critical practice runs for Beppi Colombo's main mission, which begins in 2026, when the spacecraft enters Mercury's orbit. And if you thought there wasn't much to learn about Mercury, think again. There is plenty of mystery in one small package, and certainly this mission's namesake thought so, as the mission is named after Giuseppe Beppi Colombo. And he's an engineer who studied Mercury and figured out that it rotates on its own axis three times in every two orbits of the Sun. That's kind of odd. Certainly he's a worthy namesake for this mission. And as we learn more about Mercury, we can extrapolate a great deal about planetary evolution in extreme environments, like being right next to a star. How's that for extreme? With its searing heat and low gravity, Mercury challenges our understanding of how planets form and survive. The insights that Beppi Colombo will gather could, fingers crossed, will reshape our view of the inner solar system. See, this little planet has so much more to offer than just being in retrograde a few times here. That's it for T-minus for December 2nd, 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, be sure to share a rating and short review in your favorite podcast app. Also, please fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. We are 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 teams smarter. Learn how at n2k.com. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Tri Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmasas. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. 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