Today is January 16th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmausus and this is T-minus. >> T-minus. >> Twenty seconds to alloy. >> Open aboard. [MUSIC] >> Five. >> NASDAQ gives Memento space until April 15th to comply with its listing rules. >> Four. >> Stokespace raises $260 million in a series sea funding round. >> Three. >> Rocket Factory Augsburg has received a UK launch license. >> Two. >> India completes its SPADX in space docking mission. >> One. >> Blue Origin's new Glenn lifts off to orbit for its inaugural flight. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> And our guest today is Dr. Harold Hess, CEO and co-founder of Enduroloch. Dr. Hess has an incredible story about how he started his company going from his job as a neurosurgeon to finding an application for the space industry. It's really fascinating, so stay with us to find out more. [MUSIC] >> If you stayed up into the wee hours of the night here in the United States last night, then we sure it was a treat to watch the inaugural flight of Blue Origin's new Glenn spacecraft. And wow, cheers to you that you stayed up that late. The NG1 mission accomplished the primary objective of reaching orbit during its first test flight. At 2.03 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, New Glenn's 7 BE-4 engines ignited, lifting the rocket from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The second stage made it to its final orbit following two successful burns of the BE-3U engines. The blue ring pathfinder received data and Blue Origin says it's performing well. Now to the less positive news. Understandably, not everything went as planned and Blue lost the booster during descent. Certainly, it is not the worst thing that can happen during the first flight, but something that Blue Origin needs to work on for future launches. Blue Origin CEO Dave Lamp said, "I'm incredibly proud that New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt. We knew landing our booster, so you're telling me there's a chance." On the first try was an ambitious goal. We'll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Side note, love that booster name. Congrats to all involved. We are expecting big things for New Glenn this year along with the customers that have already secured payload contracts, including NASA, Amazon's Project Kuiper, ASD Space Mobile, and several telecommunications providers. Blue Origin is also working to certify New Glenn with the US Space Force for the National Security Space Launch Program to meet emerging national security objectives. We'll be talking more to their team about that in the coming weeks. And another big congratulations are in order today, and these congrats go to India as they successfully executed their SPATX mission earlier today. ISRO's in-space docking mission saw two spacecraft, Target and Chaser, finally come together in space after two postponements to the docking. PM Modi expressed his pride in the accomplishment sharing on X. Congratulations to our scientists at ISRO and the entire space fraternity for the successful demonstration of space docking of satellites. It is a significant stepping stone for India's ambitious space missions in the years to come. And India joins the United States, Russia and China, who have all successfully demonstrated in-orbit docking. ISRO says the two satellites participating in SPATX will now be controlled as a single object, with power transfer checks made in the next few days. Rocket Factory Augsburg, also known as RFA, has officially received its space flight operator license from the UK Civil Aviation Authority. With the spaceport license and the range control license from Saxaverde Airport, all three critical regulatory licenses required for a test flight in 2025 from Scotland are now granted. So this is our third congratulations of the show. RFA is the first company in Europe to receive such a license for vertical launches of a privately developed orbital rocket. The license is not limited in time and covers a wide range of orbits and trajectory. RFA is now shifting its focus to the final technical preparations for their first test flight. Stoke Space has raised $260 million in a new series C investment round. This investment more than doubles the company's total funding, bringing it to $480 million. Stoke is building the world's first 100% reusable medium lift rocket. The new funding round comes just weeks after the company's successful vertical test firing of its first stage Zenith engine on its new test stand in Moses Lake, Washington. With Zenith, Stoke became one of only two entities globally to successfully develop and test a full-flow stage combustion engine. Stoke says it intends to use the new funding to complete construction at the historic Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, which has been allocated by the United States Space Force for dedicated use by Stoke's Nova Launch Vehicle. The NASDAQ has given Momentus a lifeline to help the space company sort out its financial situation. A hearings panel issued a letter granting Momentus's request to continuous listing on the NASDAQ capital market until April 15 of this year, while the company executes its plan to regain compliance with the requirements of the NASDAQ listing rule that requires it to maintain a minimum bid price of $1 per share for its continued listing on the NASDAQ. Momentus announced a reverse stock split on December 12, 2024, which did pull the stock price under the minimum requirement. Momentus Chief Executive Officer John Rude added to the press release that with our exciting technology and capabilities to meet the growing needs of the space economy, we are optimistic about our ability to raise capital and grow the business, and we here at T-Minus, we wish them the best of luck. And at the time that we are publishing today, SpaceX's Starship is expected to lift off for its seventh test flight. So if it is 5 p.m. Eastern Time when you're listening to this, pause us right now, go and check out that livestream. We will bring you more on that flight, fingers crossed, on tomorrow's show. And this concludes our very busy Intel briefing for today. We've got several additional stories linked for you in our show notes for you to read, including K2 Space appointing John Plum as their new head of strategy, Voyager Space's rebranding, the UK and Ukraine's new community partnership, Sierra Space's latest GPS satellite milestone, and Xplore's hyperspectral satellite launch details. All those links can also be found on our website, space.n2k.com. 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. 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. [Music] Today's guest is Dr. Harold Hess, CEO and co-founder of EnduroLock. Harold has an incredible story about how he started his company, which he started off sharing with me. [Music] My background is actually I'm a neurosurgeon by training. And so I invented the spinal implant. FDA required that it survive 5 million cycles of compression and 5 million of torque without loosening. So I had to come up with a lock. I realized, however, that this locking technology, and this was months later, could have many industrial applications. So I kept the IP separate, licensed it back to the spine company at a one-time nominal rate, and then put the IP into this company and started this company. And then over a number of years, developed the technology and also developed numerous other technologies after hiring a team of engineers. Wow. So the company's name is EnduroLock. And it is a really fascinating story, how you got to where you are today. This is not your typical space story. And I love that because that this is exactly the kind of innovation that I think the space sector is really looking for. And you all are a shining example of that. Can you tell me a bit more about EnduroLock and what you all are developing? I mean, at its core, we are fasteners and connectors. Now, what that means is on the one hand, we have actual fasteners, meaning mechanically locking high vibration resistant bolts or nuts that are reversible and reusable with a standard hex socket. The unique thing about them is that they remain locked even with loss of preload or clamping force. So that ladder attribute actually makes them ideal for a space environment where you can have cyclical thermal extremes that cause both elongation or both contraction. And that causes loss of preload and most joints will therefore fall apart. And for that reason, most fasteners going into space are safety wired, which is very labor intensive. Mechanic typically safety wires 10 to 15 fasteners per hour. What we have done is to make it simplified so that you just have to apply a socket to put it on or take it off. And in that same hour, we could put in over 300 fasteners. So dramatic time savings and therefore cost savings. Then another technology we developed is the only self aligning nut plate. But think of it like the female end of the assembly. And with current nut plates, the nut element cannot tip. So if the bolt is coming in a little bit from an angle, it'll cross through it. With ours, you can be 20 to 30 degrees off angle and it will engage and then it tends to self align during typing. Again, it can result in a dramatic time savings for aircraft maintenance and assembly. If you think leading edge of the wing, trailing edge of the wing, you're going to have curve structures with whole mismatch. You might have 100 bolts to apply, get up to number 60 cross thread. Now you're going to take the whole panel off and start over. But it also has a lot of applications for space when we start looking at robotic assembly. With current technology, the bolt might not come in perfectly in line with the nut element. So if it's off a few degrees with current technology or cross thread, with our nut plates, however, it will engage. And therefore it allows for robotic assembly in space. We're also working on a satellite docking connector. We developed a nut plate that allows for non parallel surfaces to be clamped up and have full bearing surface. In other words, full strength. We developed the first mechanically locking nut plate. Every nut plate relies on friction of the threads. This nut plate actually has teeth that engage teeth so that it mechanically locks. So it would be for extreme vibration environments such as hypersonic applications as well as reentry vehicles. And then most recently we also applied the technology to a mechanically locking high vibration resistant electrical connector. That's easily reversible and reusable and is tool-less. As well as we have a project going on right now for a mechanically locking high vibration resistant fluid connector. So a number of different technologies that we have developed or are working on currently. My goodness. Yeah, those are a lot of fascinating technologies. And I'm wondering, especially in the realm of space application, when did it become apparent to you that many of the things that you were developing would be useful in a space context? We've been very successful with obtaining SBIRs contracts. Since 21, we've gotten five phase ones, five phase twos, and we currently have a TACFI. One of those was to miniaturize the fastener down to a number four, which is three millimeters in diameter. And we were awarded that with our T-Pok being under AFRLRB. So in other words, the space vehicle directorate of AFRL. And that's where we started getting more interest for developing these technologies specifically for space use. And then in a phase two, we developed a prototype for an end effector for robotic assembly of structures in space using our fasteners and nut plates. And we currently have a TACFI under Delta 45 Space Force as well as AFRLRB, where we are developing a magazine to store the fasteners prior to actual deployment in space. And again, our fasteners are reversible and reusable so the magazine can also function to store the fasteners after removal if you're going to repurpose the structure in space. Wow. So there's a fascinating sort of alignment where your company and Spacecom had sort of a right time, right place situation. Can you tell me a little bit about that, about how I've been using the word alignment a lot. It sort of feels like it makes sense we're talking about fasteners, but tell me a little bit about that. Yeah. So a few years ago, we were informed about Spacecom and at the time it was a much smaller show and they had a special area for startups. So you had a reduced cost and a little bit smaller booth. And I remember representatives of various primes over to the startup section so that they could see what startups are trying to do. We being one of them, if I recall correctly, was also around that time. I remember it was 2018 that we won a NASA competition so that we were able to promote that as well. So tell me a bit about maybe how the last few years have gone for you all and maybe a look ahead at what's coming next for you. Because I imagine you were, do you still consider yourselves a startup or are you beyond that point? I guess in a sense we're a startup, but we're early stage would be another way of looking at it. As far as where we want to go, I mean obviously we have a lot of products that could be used for aircraft. And we are going to be on a new helicopter platform when it comes out. We're waiting for a commercial aerospace aircraft platform to come out. We've had interest from the primes for use of our products. But I think a big focus of our company is going to be on space. If you look at robotic assembly of structures in space, right now there's not a whole lot being done. But if you look five to ten years from now, I think it's going to be a huge field to be able to assemble structures in space robotically. And when I say robotically, yes, we have the technology for being able to do that. What we would like to do is a next step is adapt our system to an intelligent vision-based system so we can make the entire process autonomous. So that you can send basically a robotic vehicle out in space somewhere and have it assemble structures without any human intervention in preparation for humans arriving at a future point. If you look at not only at the moon, but you look at Mars, I mean I think that's where this is going to really become essential. And if you look at fasteners currently, we are the only fastener or have the only fastener that is ideal for a space environment and can be inserted robotically in space. Most things going into space, they're all safety wire. You cannot safety wire in space, a robot can't do it. So we have a unique position, I believe, for our company. The other focus is we're developing a satellite docking connector. And I know there are a few companies out there that have or are developing satellite docking connectors. But I think ours is unique in the sense that it offers a mechanical linkage, sufficient for in-space transport, data and power connections, and refueling all in one connector. So not only can we eventually refuel a satellite, but we can also upgrade the satellite. If you have a satellite that incorporates our technology on orbit, then we could incorporate the other half of our connector on an ESPO or ESPO Grande class, incorporate new sensors, new electronics, fly it up there. Not only do you refuel the existing satellite, but you refresh the satellite at a much reduced cost than sending a whole, you know, another large satellite up into space. Yeah, and what's so fascinating about what you're talking to me about is that this is the technology that when we talk about the future tech and also, as you said, the next five to ten years of ISAM and the like, this is the kind of technology that really will enable a lot of that. And I don't think it gets its time in the sun that it should. It's so cool to hear about these innovations and also what your company is doing. And again, your origin story is really fascinating too. So it's just really very, very interesting. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, you know, and the other thing too is not only are you talking with ISAM as far as servicing of satellites, but you can get to the point where you can build satellites on orbit or build space vehicles on orbit using our, you know, faster technology as well as our connector technology. We'll be right back. Welcome back. The Waruwaru Agricultural Fields of Peru, the water reservoirs of the Tunis Medina, the Vuj historic water systems of India, historic lighthouses of Maine. What do they all have in common with the moon? They're all extremely photogenic. Yes, they all have made the 2025 World Monuments Watch, which is a bi-annual advocacy program that lists historic places facing major challenges, including climate change, tourism, conflict and natural disaster. So wait, the moon? Yes, indeed. As we have covered here on T minus a number of times, there is currently no agreed upon international protection for all the incredible history literally just sitting there on the moon. There's nothing stopping someone, not going to name names, but someone from running over Neil Armstrong's first footsteps on the moon, or someone just up and removing the US flag that he and Buzz Aldrin deployed during the Apollo 11 mission. To say nothing of all of the other Apollo air landing sites, the landers, the commemorative plaques, the art, all sitting there on the regolith. The World Monuments Fund hopes that by adding the moon to their list, they'll help add to the ongoing conversation and urgency to create international norms where everyone can agree that these sites are all important to all of humanity and they should be left alone for posterity. And it's also time for the World Monuments Fund to change its name, by the way, as they've announced 25 new sites on the World Monuments Watch. Yeesh. And we're going to fave this out. That's going to be the awful World Monuments Fund because it's all going to be on the Moon. [MUSIC PLAYING] That's it for T-Minus for January 16th, 2025, 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 Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. 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