Today is January 30th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. T-minus. Twenty seconds to L-O-N, T-minus. Go for Launch. Five. L-3 Harris Technologies has filed their fourth quarter financial reports and full year 2024 results. International partners have approved the crew for Axiom Space's fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. The first of the two Airbus-built Spainsat satellites, Spainsat NG-1, successfully launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. ESA and the European Commission agreed a partner on European Quantum Communication Infrastructure. Telesolinias Space lands a 862 million euro contract to develop Europe's first lunar cargo vehicle. Later in the show, our guest is Chris Spagnalletti, Chief Product Officer at ESA Major. Find out more about their engines in development after today's headlines. Today is the final day of Commercial Space Week in Florida. We've all really enjoyed meeting so many of our listeners and guests. I want to make sure we take a special moment to thank Colonel Hatcher, Vice Commander at Space Launch Delta 30 for stopping by our booth and sharing that he used the show to help him get up to speed on what's going on in space during his transition from the Army to the US Space Force and to Ignacio for sharing that he wakes up to our show every morning in Barcelona. And the many others here that we've encountered here in Florida, y'all are absolutely amazing. Thank you for your kindness and for your generosity and say hi. This has been an incredible, humbling experience. Moving on to our headlines now, the European Space Agency has signed a contract with Telus Alenius Space worth €862 million to lead a European consortium of aerospace industries in building ESA's first lunar lander. The Argonaut Lunar Descent Element spacecraft will aim to be launched on regular missions to the moon and could be used to deliver infrastructure, scientific instruments, rovers, technology demonstrators, as well as vital resources for astronauts on the lunar surface, such as food, water and air. The core team for the development of the lunar descent element is comprised of Telus Alenius Space in Italy, Telus Alenius Space in the United Kingdom, Telus Alenius Space in France, and not Telus Alenius Space and OHB. The Argonaut Lunar Descent Element is scheduled to be delivered in 2030 to be used for its first operational mission, Argonet, expected to be launched in 2031. The European Space Agency and the European Commission have finalized their partnership on the European Quantum Communication Infrastructure, also known as EuroQCI. EuroQCI is an advanced network that aims to protect everything, from personal data to Europe's critical infrastructure, using proven principles of quantum physics. It aims to enhance the security of critical government data by using quantum key distribution, which is a technology that uses the principles of quantum physics to detect any attempt at interception. The program is also being advanced through ESA's Security and Cryptographic mission, also known as SAGA, which will demonstrate and validate space-based quantum technologies on orbit. ESA is also supporting the development of Eagle One, which is the first satellite for this space-based quantum key distribution system, and it is scheduled for launch in 2026. The first of the two Airbus-built Spainsat satellites, the Spainsat NG-1, successfully launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. The spacecraft, operated by Hisdesat for the Spanish Armed Services, will enter into service in geostationary orbit from the second half of 2025, following initial testing and commissioning. And on a personal note, I got to witness that launch last night in Florida, and it was my very first rocket launch. It was absolutely amazing, and I was honestly stunned into silence. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Oh, there it is! Oh, there it is! Holy cow! Oh, whoa! Oh my God! That's incredible. Moving on from that, the US Space Agency and international partners have approved the crew for Axiom Space's fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. The mission will launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than Spring 2025. Foreign NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space, Peggy Whitson, will command the mission, while ISRO astronaut Shubhant Shukla will serve as pilot. The two mission specialists joining are ISSA astronauts from Poland and Hungary. And it is that time of year again. We're starting to receive fourth quarter financial reports from across the space industry. L3Harris has filed their statements, which you can read in full by following the link in our show notes. The aerospace technology company reported a revenue increase of 3% in the last part of the financial year. They say the increases were driven in part by increased volume for advanced electronics for space and munitions programs. Overall, 2024 revenue increased 10% due in part to the inclusion of a full year of results for the company's Aerojet rocket-dine segment. And that concludes our intelligence briefing for today. You'll find three additional articles in the selected reading section of our show notes. One's on SpaceRCO's accelerator program, another on MaxR and SiriusXM's latest satellite coming online, and there's a third one from CIDA Space who have received FCC approval for space-to-space data for their LizzieSat. 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@entuk.com or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals. It is our last day recording interviews here at Commercial Space Week in Florida, and we're looking forward to sharing them with you all over the next couple of weeks. My guest today is Chris Bagnelletti, Chief Product Officer at Ursa Major. Hey, it's T-minus Space Daily coming to you from Commercial Space Week, and joining me today, my very special guest from Ursa Major. Why don't you introduce yourself to the audience, please? Yes. Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm going to be here on the time to listen to what Ursa has to do. My name is Chris Bagnelletti. I'm the Chief Product Officer for Ursa Major Technologies. We're up in Berth, Colorado, about an hour north of Denver. Excellent. Tell me a bit about your background because you've got a really fascinating career story. Yes. I've been about 30 years in aerospace on the general aviation side. I spent a lot of time developing flight-critical systems for military commercial aircraft. I've worn a lot of hats at senior levels. I've been in sales. I'm going from engineering to sales is frightening. I've worked in sales operations. Most recently, I'd run a business. I ran a cargo aerospace business in North Carolina. Then I came to Ursa about three years ago and found myself absolutely aligned and excited about what we're doing for the Defense Industrial Base and hitting a lot of different sectors. Thanks for having me. Honestly, I'm happy to have you. I said this to you before, but we're big fans of Ursa Major here on the show. We've had the pleasure of speaking to many folks from Ursa before. All of us just really admire what you all do and what you're building and how you're doing it. Good stuff happening. You all are busy. Booked and blessed as I've been saying. Yes, we are. Tell me a bit about what you've been up to lately. Yes. Just to take a step back on Ursa in general. Ursa was founded to create the next generation of propulsion system technology. Then looking at our recent successes with hypersonic engine and solid rocket motor technology, we decided to turn our attention to in-space propulsion. The reason that we did this is that we want America and our allies to have reliable, affordable, higher performing access to space. When people think about access to space, they normally think, "Oh, that's launch." Big rocket engines, launch companies. Actually providing access to space, we need to think about that our economy and our security relies heavily on the space-based assets. Those space-based assets are known to have this importance for the United States and our adversaries are putting those at risk. To mitigate the risk, we as a country, we're taking a distributed architecture approach. You have proliferated assets in space to mitigate. For that to work, those assets have to be replaceable, highly maneuverable, but most important they have to be available. This leads to the problem statement. Where we see the problem statement is that the current satellite industrial base has been optimized for highly complicated devices that take years to develop and years to deploy. Painful supply chain lead times and brittle supply chains overall are standard operating procedure. What this does, this causes large delays, cost overruns that could break business models. Most importantly, we can't make our mission objective. What are we doing about it? At ERSA, we are focused on not only providing high efficiency propulsion systems, we have developed an advanced design for manufacturing and integrated supply chain set of tools for key parts and processes. What this means is that when the satellite bus providers want to have high-performing propulsion, they want something different because not every bus is the same. They want something changed, we've developed processes and tools that allow those designs to be updated but to be qualified to meet reliability standards. That period of time is not going to take months and years and millions of dollars because that's what precious people. We're talking about weeks and months. And that design philosophy and our heritage of unparalleled engine testing, we are going to give American our allies unfettered access to space. Just recently, President Trump announced an executive order about the Iron Dome. That has a lot of huge implications for our industry. I imagine you all, the antenna perked up. I'm so curious to get your thoughts on what that means for you. Yes, we are very interested to see where this is going to go because at Ursa, we have a lot of very specific technologies and skill sets that would complement what the executive order laid out, specifically hypersonic propulsion technology to provide that kinetic offset that the United States is looking for in protecting our country. There's actually a pretty big hole in gap in what the United States can currently do. And Ursa Major is filling that gap. We have some very unique technologies, storeable rocket engine technologies that are at TRL6 right now. And with the help of these government agencies, we are working towards closing that loop and getting that technology into usable assets for the country. Same thing on the solid rocket motor side. We have partnerships with the Navy and with other government institutions to advance some of the same concepts I was talking to you about before. On the solid rocket motor side, we have developed a similar approach. Basically, the current business model for solid rockets is you stand up tooling for a certain rocket motor of a certain size. And if you change it, it takes millions of dollars and multiple years to stand up one next to it that has a variation. So, for an agile capability, especially when the United States is working out the requirements for what this defense shield looks like, we're going to be able to fill the need and be flexible. So you don't have to wait multiple year after year to get different configurations as we work out the details. So we're going to keep a close eye on it. And we're going to see how the requirements pan out and we're going to be ready to support. That's fantastic. I'm given what you all build and where you all are in the industry. I'm always curious to get your thoughts and perspective on the state of the supply chain right now, which is always, I know it's a perennial topic. Spicy. Spicy topic. We're doing spicy takes today. Spicy Wednesday. Oh, I can't say that either because we're going to. We're doing spicy takes today. It's like I do this for a living. And yet, yeah, so yeah, I'm always curious to get people's perspectives on supply chain. So your thoughts. Yeah. The supply chain is, is a couple of different lanes to think about. Like it depends on what your perspective is. If you are a satellite bus manufacturer, then your supply chain for propulsion are propulsion component suppliers. And it just, at the call of the subsystem level, what we see is that we have a, there's this huge deficit between supply and demand. And there are so many satellite buses that are needed for this proliferated architecture. It's just not enough, there's not enough providers. So what's happened is that you have a lot of very intelligent driven folks that say, Hey, I'm going to fill that gap. And so they go ahead and stand up a facility, a company, and they feel the pressures to move fast. But what happens is that we've seen a pattern where because the pressure is to move fast and a lot of these individuals maybe don't have the time to do the, like the detailed, the devils and the details of this stuff in terms of reliability, you know, you know, maintaining all of the design requirements that the product doesn't, doesn't do its intended purpose. So what you have is you have a lot of startup satellite companies using startup subsystem companies and then you have risk square. So when they go and launch, anybody on the, anybody within that family of subsystems that fails, nobody gets to see if their stuff works. So we have this issue ourselves where we are being very selective, you know, as we enter into in space propulsion, we're being really careful to make sure that we partner with satellite bus providers that are paying attention to the details. And so we take that very seriously. So I think that as this industry matures, I think a lot of those companies will, will learn from their mistakes and get better. So I think that will help the supply chain at the subsystem level. If you keep going down the chain in terms like raw material, Yeah, that's another, yeah, yeah. The basic raw, domestic supply, domestic supply. You know, the, the business that I had before North Carolina, what going through the COVID the challenges posed by COVID, those issues in having the complete supply chain disrupted took years, years. Of course. Yeah, that's not a quick thing to fix now. No, it's not. And then what happened is, is that I believe you kind of have this nexus where those companies are really coming back, back out of that curve. Yeah. The demands are increasing, but then you have this additional demand in getting this proliferated set of assets up into space. Yeah. So you have a compounded problem. And I think, I think it will, I think we'll be able to catch up, but I think we're still two, three years away. Fantastic. Any, any, any parting thoughts of floor is yours. Anything you want to close out with today? Boy. I know everyone hates that question, right? It's like, yeah. I really think, you know, just to hammer home, maybe a couple of the other issues that we talked about or comments. I really think that we, we're laser focused. You know, it's very easy to get distracted when there's so much opportunity. We have learned, you know, ours is almost coming on 10 years and we have learned to have tight focus on the things that matter to the defense industrial base and the country as a whole. And that really has been kind of a galvanizing point for us. So in space propulsion, solid rocket motor technology, hypersonics, filling that kind of blank space where we're behind from some other countries and, you know, launch engine technology. That's really our focus. So we are excited about what's ahead of us. And then, yeah, we, we, we, we, we, we have to redo that one. No, no, no, nothing like that. If you want to, you can, but I think that was fantastic. Honestly. No, it's, it's always really cool to hear what you all are making. Every time there's a new announcement out from Ursa, it's honestly, it's like we're all cheering for you. So, no, thanks. You really appreciate it. And we've got a great culture of a can do attitude in Colorado. So thanks for having me. You really appreciate it. Thank you. That's my job to thank you. You've been great. You have the harder job. I just get to listen. You have the hard job. So thank you so much for speaking with me today. And I always learn a lot. So thanks so much. It's been great. Great. We'll be right back. Welcome back. It is the moment geologists and deep space enthusiasts like myself have been waiting for the first update on what has been found in the samples gathered from asteroid Bennu and that jar that just wouldn't open NASA's Osiris Rex, which stands for wait for it. Origins, spectral interpretation, resource identification and security, regular Explorer spacecraft. Say that five times fast, collected dust and rock from the asteroid returning to Earth in 2023. The samples from that mission have revealed molecules that on our planet are key to life as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as a broth for these compounds to interact and combine. We should say that the findings do not show evidence for life itself. However, they do suggest that the conditions necessary for the emergence of life were widespread across the early solar system. And that increases the odds that life could have formed on other planets and moons. The research papers have been published in the journal's Nature and Nature Astronomy, so if you're interested in delving into them, go on over. We're excited to hear what more can be found from these sample missions, and we're looking at you, Mars. What is it for T-minus for January 30th, 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 Kilpe is our publisher. And I'm your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. [Music] T-minus. God. It's amazing. It's not... It's dimmer than the stars in the sky now. And yet that filled up the whole sky when it went... Here it goes. Hearing the silence from everyone else, like the stun silence, was my favorite. [Music] I've been thinking about the sun. Touched on the ring, and I look at you fine. A lot of men like the guy at my home. Oh no, no, no. I'm a rocket man. Rocket man. [Music] [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
