The Fairytale of Near Space Network.

Today is our last Daily Intel briefing for the year. But don't fear, we'll be releasing content over the holidays, but just not as a daily news roundup until January 2nd, 2025. So it's only fitting that we end this year on a high note and start today's briefing with contract news that is valued at billions of dollars. As much jingle bells as they are, check jingle bells. Today is December 23rd, 2024. I'm Maria Varmausis, and this is T-minus. NASA selects multiple companies to expand the agency's near space network. Lichtenstein signs the Artemis Accords. SpaceX launches the bandwagon 2 mission. And we're bringing you one of my chats from earlier in the year with Aaron Miller, executive director of the Space ISAC. We spoke back in spring about some of their new partnerships that were secured in 2024. Find out more about that later in the show. Happy Monday, everybody, and thank you for joining us for this, the last Intel briefing of 2024. NASA has selected multiple companies to expand the agency's near space network's commercial direct-to-earth capabilities services. The near space network will play a large role in NASA's Artemis campaign, providing missions out to 1.2 million miles with communications and navigation services, enabling spacecraft to exchange critical data with mission operators on Earth. The cumulative maximum value of all near space network services contracts is $4.82 billion. Big numbers yes, but this is an IDIQ, or indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract, that will be shared among multiple contractors. And there are some big names amongst those selected, including Intuitive Machines, Kongsberg Satellite Services, SSC Space, and ViASAT. Intuitive Machines will receive two task order awards on its contract for Geo to CIS Lunar Direct to Earth, or DTE Services, and CIS Lunar DTE Services to support NASA's Lunar Exploration Ground segment. Intuitive Machines will provide additional capacity to alleviate demand on the deep space network and to meet the mission requirements for unique, highly elliptical orbits. The company also previously received a task order award for Geo to CIS Lunar Relay Services, and you can read more about the other companies selected and their contracts by following the link in our show notes. And what about NASA's Deep Space Network? The US Space Agency is adding a new antenna to it, bringing the total to 15 to support increased demand for the world's largest and most sensitive radio frequency telecommunications system. Teams at NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California installed a metal reflector framework for Deep Space Station 23, a multi-frequency beam waveguide antenna, and they're aptly calling it a "crowning moment." In operation in 2026, Deep Space Station 23 will receive transmissions from missions such as Perseverance, Psyche, Europa Clipper, Voyager 1, and a growing fleet of future human and robotic spacecraft in deep space. Lichtenstein has become nation number 52 to commit to the Artemis Accords. The European country signed the agreement on Friday during a ceremony hosted by NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. The US says it welcomes Lichtenstein to the Artemis Accords as a valued friend and partner with a steadfast commitment to human rights, democratic values, and good governance. SpaceX's Falcon 9 launched the "Bandwagon II" mission to orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Saturday. On board this mission were 30 payloads for Korea ADD, Arrow Ad and Technology, Exo Launch, Rock Eye 360, Maverick Space Systems, Cytus Space, Tomorrow Companies, TruAnomaly, and Think Orbital. Ride Share integrator Exo Launch deployed 22 customer satellites on the mission, including two new satellites for ICI. ICI says both satellites have established communication and early routine operations are underway. Rocket Lab completed its 16th launch for the year, deploying a satellite for Japanese Earth Observation Constellation Operator, Synspective. The Owl the Way Up mission lifted off from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand on December 22 at 3.17 a.m. local time. The mission deployed a single Strix satellite to orbit from the Electron Launch Vehicle. Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck added to the press release that we look forward to continuing to increase our launch cadence in the new year as we strengthen Electron's position as the leading small rocket globally and also enter the medium launch market with Neutron's debut. And yep, we're looking forward to it too here at T-minus. A Space Sustainability Consortium made up of Deorbit, AstroScale, and ClearSpace has secured 691,000 pounds from the UK government to test a rendezvous and proximity operation or RPO. The funding was secured from the UK Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology for a regulatory sandbox project to test RPO missions, help regulators understand these emerging technologies and their implications, and ultimately inform and enable regulation for such novel space activities. The UK is funding the regulatory sandbox for RPO as they say it will provide an advanced capability that will underpin all future in-orbit servicing, assembly, and manufacturing missions. And NASA completed the first Maximum Afterburner Engine Run Test on its X-59 Quiet Supersonic Research Aircraft earlier this month. The ground test, conducted at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works facility in California, marks a significant milestone as the X-59 team progresses towards flight. The X-59's first flight is expected to occur in 2025. You will be back with a daily Intel briefing in 2025 on January 2nd, to be precise. In the meantime, you'll find daily programs in your podcast feed over the holidays just to keep you updated and informed about the rapidly changing space industry. 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 if you're more interested in the lighter side of what we do here, we are @t-daily on Instagram. And that's where we post videos and pictures from events, excursions, and even some behind-the-scenes streets. Links are in the show notes for you. Hope you'll join us there. Earlier this year, I spoke with Erin Miller, Executive Director of the Space ISAC, about some of the new partnerships that the organization had formed in 2024. And we hope to bring you an update from Space ISAC in 2025. We started this organization at the request of the White House back in 2019. And we've been having loads of fun since then. It's been about four and a half years that we've been engaging and collectively discussing threat intelligence with the space community. We have over 100 members. And the reason why we stood up the organization is because we saw, and the White House actually saw, that there were silos of information sharing that existed within space critical infrastructure. So across the global space community, we have defense, IC, international, and commercial space companies. And all of them represent the critical infrastructure, the attack surface that is the space industry. And so when they receive attacks against their critical infrastructure, I would say it's about 90 to 94 percent, according to some folks that is commercially owned and operated. So they've really got a big job. And we have a big responsibility at the Space ISAC to ensure that that information is actually shared amongst industry partners and our government partners in order to raise our defenses against the adversary. For people in the industry who may not be a part of it yet, I mean, what is, can you explain a little bit about how it works? What does it actually look like to be part of the Space ISAC? Yeah, our members have access to our different tools that are part of our watch center. And the onboarding process gets them access really as soon as they join. And it's a small membership fee. We are primarily funded by the commercial sector. And we stood it up that way because ISACs have to be stood up really by the private sector. We have universities. We have FFRDCs. However, we're really run by the commercial sector that owns this critical infrastructure. And so when they onboard as a member, they get access to all of the tools and now they're they become part of our watch center. We have a headquarters in Colorado Springs that has a operational watch center and a cyber vulnerability lab adjacent to it and a lot of different collaborative groups. I think we're at over 20 collaborative groups. We also run exercises and we do about four per year. And that puts our members in a position where now they are in the moment of a crisis and they have to manage the different stakeholders. They have to do incident response and they have to deal with the impacts on human life that their systems may be connected to, which can be a very stressful situation. We try not to really stress people out. It's more a practical implementation of the tools and the scenarios that we understand to be reflective of real life situations that have already taken place. And we're putting them through those time and again so that they can realize what their lessons learned and experience those stressors before they actually have to go through the situation. And build those pathways internally to figure out what needs to happen and who needs to be responsible for things. Such a valuable exercise. It's really just incredible. And I was reading, I think a recent one, at least last year, Hera's Revenge. Was that one of them? Can you tell me a bit about that? Yeah, Hera's Revenge was one that we ran a few different times. The most recent one was in August, we had a C-suite level version of Hera's Revenge, where we had the different C-suite representatives from the space industry deal with this situation and they had to really learn what their security operation center and their space operation center were doing to monitor and detect the attacks against their critical infrastructure. And at the same time, deal with the issue of coordinating with all of these different multinational stakeholders, including governments. And in that particular situation, there was an NGO that was an end user. And that non-governmental organization was headquartered in a completely different country than the company that was operating the systems. And so the laws were different and there were people from the medical industry that were the users. And they were transmitting HIPAA data and other sorts of sensitive information across these space systems. So the complexity of the law and the complexity of coordinating all of the different stakeholders was definitely a relevant conversation for the C-suite, especially since in the US, we still do not have a designated sector risk management agency that leads for space systems, critical infrastructure owners, then who you actually call could be really just at your discretion. You know, if you're a space systems owner, operator, owner or operator company, you could call the space ISAC because we have our operational watch center. But knowing which US government agency to call is still an open question at this point in time. And it's fascinating that you also mentioned international laws. That's something I've heard a number of times about just the nature of space and governance being what it is that the legal landscape internationally makes things extraordinarily more complicated when it comes to a potential incident than maybe it does in other situations. Is that correct? Am I reading that correctly? Oh yeah. The laws associated with space managing space systems incidents are different depending on the nation that you're in. And that can open up some complexity depending on the scenario or the mission that you're performing at the time. Most companies, they do take, I would say, these, especially these C-suite executives that we're working with, they had already taken the time to learn the laws that were applicable to their mission. And I would say my impression is that they take the responsibility of cybersecurity for their systems, which includes electronic warfare, includes space weather. They take it very seriously because for a commercial company, this is their business. Those, that infrastructure, it's different than when the government owns the infrastructure where it might be a highly distributed different teams that have the responsibility for the different parts of the space system. And they're not managed by one central owner like a company is. A company has their C-suite that really owns the responsibility for security. And if their bottom line is going to be impacted by attacks against their infrastructure, they have to rectify that situation immediately and they have to train their teams and be prepared. So we see the members of the Space ISAC really coming together now in different forums in order to address these issues because it's become such a serious matter. Absolutely. It's very heartening to hear that as well. That's really great. The need is fantastically great and it's wonderful hearing that we have these leaders out there who are driving this. So it's really encouraging. I wanted to switch gears entirely to a space symposium, which already occurred. But I know that Space ISAC had a number of announcements that came out during that event. And I was wondering if you could just walk me through some of them. Absolutely. We had a tremendous space symposium this year. Everyone looks forward to that event. And we did and it's the gift that keeps on giving. We had an announcement about the LeoOwnerOperator Affinity Group kickoff. We invited several different of our industry leaders to speak at that kickoff. We had Capella Space there as well as Viacet assisting us in a co-chair capacity to be able to kickoff. Then we had our US government counterparts that were present from defense and intelligence community having the same discussion about the attacks against LeoOwner operators and the importance of finding ways to share that information in an automated way, the way that we protect our other critical infrastructure outside of space, that is the other 16 critical infrastructures. The other announcement that we made was quite critical for the time. We announced that we're partnering with the French Space Agency. And the reason why this is important is because it's one of many international partnerships that the Space ISAC has right now. We're also working with and have announced partnerships with the UK Space Agency, also with the Israel Space Agency. Previously, I think two years ago, we signed a partnership with the Japanese Aerospace Agency as well as METI. And we're working with the Greeks and the Germans. And these different organizations that are responsible for space within their respective countries are signing up so that they can do bi-directional information sharing with the Space ISAC and create this collective defense model. So with our watch center being operational, it's been operational for about, you know, I would say a year and three months. Then we're able to share the alerts that we generate from the different cells as we track the adversary from ground to space. We can share that information, TLP amber and TLP green, which means it can go to our members, industry members and to industry and partners. So there's a direct benefit of these collaborations coming together and raising our overall security posture. That's fantastic. These collaborations are so great. And again, given the global nature of the space industry, that it's so critical to have all that information being shared. So that's wonderful to hear. Congratulations on all these new partnerships. They're fantastic. Anything else that you want to share with our audience, you know, maybe a call to action for them to join. Anything that you want people to know about the Space ISAC, maybe for people who aren't a part of it yet. Well, I would say if you're not a part of Space ISAC yet, come to our Valley of Space Summit. It's happening on September 25th in Colorado Springs. Who wouldn't want to join us in lovely Colorado Springs? September will be nice. And join the conversation. Even if you're not a member, it is open to the public. It's a very affordable ticket. And we're having these discussions that are important and timely and absolutely essential for us to protect our critical infrastructure and get ahead of the attacks of the adversary. And to be candid, our lives depend on it. So let's do it. We'll be right back. Welcome back. It is quite obviously the holiday season for most of us here on Earth. You'd struggle to travel far without seeing decorations, advertisements, people sharing holiday cheer. But what about those of us off the earth? There are currently 10 folks living in low Earth orbit right now. Three of them are on China's Tiangong Station, and seven of them are on board the International Space Station. And despite finding out this week that the Crew 10 mission is being extended, meaning Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore will have their stay in Leo extended again, the crew on the ISS are upbeat. They're already getting into the holiday spirit, wearing Santa hats and planning their Christmas Day in orbit. NASA says the seven astronauts will spend the holidays opening gifts, sharing a meal, and talking to family. And of course, they're not the first astronauts to spend the holidays in space. Famously, on December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 launched carrying astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, and Bill Anders to the moon. Around one billion people heard the crew read verses from the Bible's Book of Genesis while orbiting the moon. And holidays in space even precede that launch. Jingle Bells became the first song played in space when, on the 16th of December 1965, it was broadcast during NASA's Gemini 6A spaceflight. Then of course, there's the original Christmas story with its guiding celestial body playing key role. So really, space and the holidays go together like peas and carrots, carrots and peas. On behalf of all of the T-minus team, we wish you all, wherever you are in the universe, very happy holidays. That is it for T-minus for December 23, 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 that 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 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 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 Trey 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 Kilpey is our publisher. And I'm your host, Maria Vermazis. Thanks for listening. Happy holidays and happy new year. 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