Today is January 23, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. T-minus. Twenty seconds to alloy. T-minus. Go for the port. Five. Rocket Lab signs a contract with Germany's Aurora Technologies to launch satellites to monitor wildfires and alert first responders to danger. The Italian Space Agency has selected Talysa Linia Space to contribute to NASA's surface biology and geology thermal infrared Earth Observation mission. U-TelSat and NijComSat to launch satellite services in Nigeria. The UK's Blue Abyss has signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA's Glenn Research Centre to accelerate advancements in commercial space training, research and infrastructure development. NASA's Acting Administrator removes DEIA or Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility programs from the Space Agency. [Music] And my guest today is Giovanni DiAntonio from the Italian Civil Aviation Authority. Giovanni shared some updates with me about the Ptolier spaceport in the Puglia region of Italy. They recently announced a new study with Virgin Galactic to explore suborbital missions in the region, so stick around for more details later in the show. [Music] Happy Thursday everyone. We're kicking off today's Intel Briefing with an update on NASA's leadership change for a second day in the row. Yesterday we let you know that the White House had appointed an interim administrator after Bill Nelson stepped down from his role, and it seems that she is already implementing policies directly from the new occupants at the White House. Janet Petro's first point of order has been to remove the DEIA policy, and that would be the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility programs from the US Space Agency. In an email to NASA employees, Petro wrote this, "We are taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump's executive orders." The email went on to say, "These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination." Petro also pushed NASA employees to report any change in contract description or personnel position descriptions since November 5th, 2024, to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies. Several other US agencies received similarly worded messages from their acting directors on Wednesday. In the meantime, there is also a hiring freeze at NASA, which also affects all federal agencies, until the nominated administrator Jared Isaacman passes the US Congress's vote to assume the role. Moving on to the UK now, and the UK's Blue Abyss has signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA's Glenn Research Center to accelerate advancements in commercial space training, research and infrastructure development. Under the agreement, Blue Abyss and NASA will work together to explore several crucial areas, including developing innovative methods for preparing the next generation of space travelers, studying the effects of extreme gravity conditions on humans, robotics and biological and physical sciences, and planning and mapping advanced facilities like underwater facilities, parabolic flights, and augmented reality training tools. The US Space Agency will lend its technical expertise and insights from decades of space exploration to guide the development of future capabilities and facilities. Blue Abyss will conduct a market study to define infrastructure requirements over the next 10 years, and the results will help shape NASA's understanding of how commercial facilities could support its future missions. Blue Abyss is expected to make Spaceport Cornwall its base for the research. UTELSAT and Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited, also known as NijkomSat, have announced a multi-year, multi-million dollar partnership to deliver low-Earth orbit satellite services in Nigeria. NijkomSat will leverage the OneWeb Leo network to deliver high-speed, low-latency connectivity for the nation. Their services will cater to a wide range of sectors, including government, enterprises, and underserved rural areas. Supporting essential applications like remote communications, mobile connectivity, and offshore operations. The Italian Space Agency has selected Telsiliniya Space to contribute to NASA's surface biology and geology thermal infrared Earth Observation Mission, also known as SBG-TIR. That one does not roll off the tongue. The agreement is a follow-on from a 2023 collaboration packed between ASI and NASA for the SBG-TIR mission. The mission's focus is on gathering radiometric and multispectral measurements of emissions from land and water. The data will aid climate ecological and geological analyses, while supporting applications in food security and water management. NASA's thermal infrared radiometer and ASI's vis-near camera will combine to deliver high-resolution observations of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and these instruments will also monitor critical phenomena such as wildfires, volcanic activity, and water resource dynamics. And, speaking of wildfire monitoring, Rocket Lab has signed a contract for a responsive launch on Electron with German company Aurora Technologies. Aurora Tech is developing a satellite constellation to monitor wildfires and alert first responders to danger. The mission will launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand and will deploy eight satellites within the next four months. The timeline will enable Aurora Tech to meet the season-sensitive requirements of its wildfire detection mission. The company plans to expand their constellation with up to 100 satellites in total by 2028. [Music] And that is it for our Intel briefing for today. You can head to the selected reading section of our show notes to learn more about all of the stories I've mentioned for you throughout the show. And today we have included a call from Space Florida for projects to further develop Florida's spaceport system. Hi, 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@nduk.com, or send us a note through our website so we can connect while building a program to meet your goals. [Music] T-Minus will be in Florida next week for Commercial Space Week. I am looking forward to it immensely. And day one kicks off with the Global Space Port Alliance's annual spaceport summit. And I spoke to Giovanni di Antonio from the Italian Civil Aviation Authority recently. He shared with me some updates about the Cryptalia spaceport in the Puglia region of Italy. [Music] I am Giovanni di Antonio, director of technological innovation at ENEC, the Italian Civil Aviation Authority, which is the equivalent of the FAA in the United States or CAA UK, for example. And of course we are dealing with aviation, but also with the emerging topics of aviation, like commercial space, transportation, higher space operations, drones, and so on and so forth. Well, thank you so much for joining me. And there is so much happening in Italy in aerospace. It's quite amazing to hear all the news, all the announcements, very exciting things happening, not least of which is the spaceport. So tell me a little bit about Cryptalia, about the spaceport specifically. Of course. Nothing of it is to be so… And let me say the journey started a decade ago, in 2014, when ENEC designated the airport. That airport has suitable for aeronautical, industrial activities and research and test activities. That year we also entered into an agreement, a memorandum of cooperation with the FAA-AST, specifically signed with George Neal, that at that time was the associate administrator, to promote the commercial suborbital operations in Italy. And since then, our Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport has asked us to develop the regulatory framework for spaceports and suborbital operations. And with a specific address act in 2018, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport designated, identified the Cryptalia spaceport, has the first spaceport in Italy for suborbital operations. And since then, we continue to develop the regulation. And in 2002, we set up a specific association, the Cryptalia spaceport association, with the aim to guide and steer the development of the site based on an holistic and coherent vision. And the characteristic of our spaceport is thought for horizontal operations, which means it is a three-kilometer runwaying airport for horizontal and takeoff orbital and suborbital operations, which means basically, in principle, air launching into orbit, re-entry from orbit and suborbital flight. And specifically in this moment, we would like to develop this last sector, the suborbital flight, and our vision for the spaceport is that it may become a reference point, a reference base for suborbital activities, for sure in the European Union, in general in the Mediterranean, but seeing. Absolutely. You answered a whole bunch of my questions in that right there, so thank you. I appreciate that answer very much. Thank you. It gives me a better sense of how the spaceport fits in with the overall ecosystem and how it's going to help develop so much of the already very strong aerospace ecosystem, not just in Italy, but also in the Mediterranean and in Europe in general. So I want to skip ahead a little bit to the agreement that you all signed with Virgin Galactic, which was very interesting to hear about that news. Please tell me more about that. Of course. Aside developing the regulation, aside facilitating the ecosystem and building infrastructure, of course, we need an operator. And since last year, we have been working diligently with Virgin Galactic to, let me say, finalize this agreement to foresee the development of a feasibility study to understand, to identify the conditions under which suborbital operations could be carried out in Italy at the spaceport in our environment, according to our regulation, our technical regulation. So basically this study will be divided into two phases. The first phase will be devoted to the technical feasibility and will be carried out this year. In this first phase, we are going to assess ground and day risk in terms of expected casualties calculation and day risk contour for the management of the airspace. The procedures for the airspace management, specifically tailored to Virgin Galactic operations, procedures that we have been simulating in this week, for example, in Eurocontrol in Paris at Eurocontrol Innovation Hub, because we are trying to simulate some assumptions we would like to validate during the feasibility study directly with Virgin Galactic. Then we are going to assess the needs for ground infrastructures in terms of building, layout, operational procedures, like, for example, the handling and storage of the propellants and so on and so forth. Then the environmental issues, specifically, you can imagine toxicity, emissions and noise, including the problem of the sonic boom, of course, that we expect to have overland, probably. We will see. And finally, let me say also we are going to assess to which extent the new design of the vehicle of Virgin Galactic will be able to comply with our regulations, because one of the main differences we have with the US regulation is that we also have some high-level performance-based requirement for the safety of the occupants, which is something different from the US. It's very, very high-level, but we would like to ensure, let me say, a minimal level of safety for the occupants, and to that end, it will be important to have a minimal assessment of the design of the vehicle. And so we are also going to assess this, one also to understand whether it would be possible to optimize the expected casualties calculation based on more, let's say, more representative failure rates of the vehicle. And because our environment is more complex, that the environment where Virgin Galactic flies in the United States, in the United States there are deserts. We don't have desert, but we have the sea, but nevertheless we are close to dense populated areas. So our big effort will be to try to understand how to mitigate this problem and how to reach the goal to ensure a minimal level of safety for people on ground in this complex environment. And the second phase of the study. After the completion of this phase, we are going to assess how the industry, the Italian industry base, may support and take benefit from these operations in terms of partnership agreements. Yes, there's so much that goes into an agreement like this, so much research to be done, so much to be determined. It is quite a lot of work. I know part of the reason that you and I are speaking today is because of the Global Space Port Alliance. It's sort of what brought us together. Can you tell me a little bit about how you have found working with that alliance and also with other space ports to advance your mission? Yes, this is also linked to our long-term vision, this question, because our long-term vision is from one side to allow daily operations for suborbital operations for space tourism, experimentations, and also training based on the Virgin Galactic operations. But the second piece of the vision we have is the point-to-point transportation. In the future, we would like to make the Global Space Port a node of an intercontinental network of space ports where it could be possible to fly point-to-point suborbitally. And to do so, of course, we should strengthen our relationship with other space ports around the world, specifically and in particular with the space port in the United States. That's why we choose to join the GSA, the Global Space Port Alliance, because this will offer us the possibility to have these relationships with other space ports to exchange experience, first of all, but also in the future to possibly build relationships for allowing the point-to-point transportation. And another important reason why we are very happy to be a member of this organization is also because in Europe, we have also founded a similar group of people, which is named the European Commercial Space Port Forum, where the majority of the institutions are dealing with space port participate in terms of authorities and space agencies. And our participation in both groups could be a good opportunity to threaten the relationship between Europe and the United States in this field. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. Every year on the 4th Thursday of January, NASA observes its day of remembrance. This year, that day is today, January 23rd. The day of remembrance, NASA says, is to honor members of NASA who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery, including the crews of Apollo 1 and Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Participating members of the public, as well as NASA staff, often lay wreaths and place flowers for these fallen crew at memorials around the country, including at Arlington National Cemetery, where many of these brave explorers have memorials and grave markers, and also at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. As humanity continues to push the boundaries of exploration and return to the moon, and one day go to Mars and beyond, we should always take a moment to remember the sacrifices those who gave their lives for space. Peraspera, Ad Astra. [Music] That's it for T-Minus for January 23rd, 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'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 Kilpie is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. [Music] T-Minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
