[MUSIC] Today is February 5th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmasas, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] >> T-minus, 20 seconds to L-O-N, team. >> Go for the floor. [MUSIC] >> Five. >> French space agency CNES has issued a call for proposals to develop a reusable upper stage for a heavy lift rocket. >> Four. >> ESA is partnering with Finland to establish a super site for Earth observation calibration and validation. >> Three. >> SpaceX launches Maxar's fifth and sixth World View Legion satellites. >> Two. >> AFWORKS has selected a proposal from Momentus to perform an in-space demonstration flight of multispectral sensors for rendezvous and proximity operations. >> One. >> Japan's Skyperfect JSTAT contracts planet labs to build their low earth orbit constellation. [MUSIC] >> And today we're bringing you my chat with Dr. David Smith, who is the CEO at the Mojave Air and Space Port. David shared with me all the exciting opportunities at the California-based launch facility while we were at Space Common, Florida. Just stick around to find out more later in the show. [MUSIC] >> Happy Wednesday, everybody. We're kicking off today's intelligence briefing with a big investment story coming out of Japan. Last week, we announced that Planet Labs had secured new investment from an Asian company to build a new constellation. And today we can confirm that the company is Japan's Skyperfect JSTAT Corporation. Now, Skyperfect JSTAT is expected to invest $230 million into the project and establish a subsidiary in the United States called JSTAT International. The company says the new constellation will strengthen its position in the growing defense and intelligence market and will also allow them to meet diverse market demands. Skyperfect JSTAT says it'll also leverage its advanced data analysis capabilities to develop new markets. This new partnership is expected to promote joint business initiatives with Planet Labs to further develop their space business. The US Air Force Research Labs, AFWORKS organization, has selected a proposal from Momentus to perform an in-space demonstration flight of a new low-cost suite of multispectral sensors for rendezvous and proximity operations, or RPO. Momentus submitted a proposal in 2024 under the AFWORKS challenge and was recently notified that its proposal for a phase two small business innovation research project, or CBER, was selected. Momentus plans to use an RPO system that it's developed using internal R&D funds and use an optical sensor, infrared sensor, and a LiDAR sensor. Momentus says it expects to complete contract negotiations in the coming weeks with the flight demonstration expected in early 2026. Yesterday's record-breaking launch schedule didn't quite meet its promise. Sorry about that. After a Rocket Lab postpone their launch from New Zealand and Russia also delayed their liftoff, that is a bummer. But SpaceX did manage to launch two Maxar satellites into low Earth orbit. So that's good news. Maxar's fifth and sixth World View Legion satellites are performing well after being launched into mid-inclination orbit from Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Maxar now has seven satellites in orbit capable of collecting 30-centimeter class imagery. Once all six World View Legion satellites are fully operational, Maxar says its constellation will be able to collect more than six million square kilometers of Earth imagery per day. Wow. The European Space Agency is partnering with Finland to establish a super-site for Earth observation, calibration, and validation. The site in Finnish Lapland is a joint investment with the aim to benefit ESA by helping to further ensure satellites deliver accurate data over high-latitude environments and Finland by providing Finnish businesses with new opportunities to develop and test environmental sensors and technology. The site is expected to be managed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Pateri Tallis, who is the Director General of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, added to the announcement that the new center will significantly enhance the impact of Finland's space activities internationally and creates growth opportunities for Finnish space activities and industry while improving scientific knowledge. And the French Space Agency CNES has issued a call for proposals to develop a reusable upper stage for a heavy-lift rocket. The project is one of the agency's nine priority innovation vectors for space transportation. In an initial introduction, it states that the development of a reusable upper stage could offer competitive advantages at a time of growing launch capacity demand. The agency says that the ultimate goal is to develop a reusable upper stage for a two-stage rocket that can deliver 20 tons to low Earth orbit, which is a similar payload capacity to the Ariane 6. The initial demonstration will, however, be conducted at a reduced scale with an incremental approach to the system's development. By the way, the deadline to submit proposals for this initial call is February 26th. And that concludes our briefing for today. We always have additional stories for you in our newsletter and our show notes that we think are important, but just didn't make the cut into today's top five. Bringing in our T-minus senior producer, Alice Grewth here. Alice, what have we got today? Hey, Maria. Yes, the first one is an announcement from Rocket Lab on their new contract with Japan-based Earth Imaging Company IQPS for future electron missions. The second is on Five Eyes' launch guidance to improve edge device security. And you can hear more on that story in our sister podcast, The Cyberwire Daily, with Dave Bittner. Yes, Dave delves into more details on that, and we'll add a link to the show in the episode notes. The third story is an award announcement for SpaceGal, Emily Callandrelli, and the fourth is a new leadership appointment at True Anomaly. And where can our listeners find all these stories? Those links and further reading on all stories mentioned can always be found in our show notes and on our website, space.n2k.com, and just click on this episode title. Hey, T-minus crew, if you find this podcast useful, please do us a favor and share a five-star rating and a short review in your favorite podcast app. It'll help other space professionals like you to find the show and join the T-minus crew. Thank you so much, everybody. We really appreciate it. Last week at SpaceCom in Florida, I spoke to Dr. David Smith, the CEO of Mojave Air and Spaceport. Now, David has recently taken on the leadership role at that facility, and he gave me an update on what appealed to him about the role. This very, very rare opportunity presented itself to go up to Mojave Air and Spaceport. And I was just so humbled to be considered in any way for something that dynamic. And quickly, I found myself in an environment that wanted to move fast, wants to be creative, wants to be dynamic, and embraces our motto, which is permission granted. Let's figure out how to get to yes and not only do it, let's do it now. That's an exciting place to be at. Right. Let's push the throttles up and go for it. Love that. So my background is mostly fixed wing. I ran a few things through my career. One was I ran the Air Force's access to space operations out of Edwards, a program and an office rooted in the old X-15 program. We even had X-15 old engineers on the program. One of note is Johnny Armstrong, who recently passed. But he was a young lieutenant who worked X-15, cutting his teeth as an Air Force engineer. Also was involved early in the B-52s with the very first hypersonic programs we were involved in. And now I'm seeing these things come full circle and it's the life I'm living at Mojave and I just love it. I can hear it with you describing it, like that joy that's coming through. And I'm so curious what your day to day is like at Mojave. Now I'm sure everything's very different day to day. So my job is in military terms, which I live in. I fly shooter cover for smart people. And the work they do is remarkable. A great example of it is a firm doing work at Mojave called Boom. It's a great name. Broke the speed of sound in their aircraft that's a demonstrator for the next supersonic airliner. So Boom went supersonic three times. Now here's what's really kind of cool. I've been at Mojave now seven months. Four months into my arriving at Mojave, I went out and watched Boom's first flight. We've gone first flight to supersonic in that snippet of time. Wow. Just recently, StratoLaunch launched their hypersonic vehicle Talon out of Mojave. Yeah, yep. Hypersonic system, fully recoverable, landed back at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Yep, yep. And we're excited to be a small part of the team that sets conditions for their success. Yeah, it's just been really fascinating to watch their progression and. It is. So a cool thing about Strato from my personal and selfish perspective, I thought the B-52 was a pretty big airplane. Yeah, there. And you compare it to rock. Yeah, the rock is. And it's worth nothing. Yeah, I remember reading about it going, it's how big? I've never seen it in person, but my goodness. It's very impressive. I bet. It's very impressive. I'm an awestruck when I watch it roll down the runway. You know, I had eight motors, they have six. So it's the only thing that we had more of in a B-52 than rock. It's bigger, it carries more stuff. It's an amazing system and an amazing system because again, that free enterprise side, American innovation, American ingenuity, put all that together and figured it out. And Mojave is the place for that. And it's always. Even I coming out, I have not been in the space industry scene for many years. It's a little bit. But even I, just like a general geek of all trades, even I knew Mojave is like, that was the place where you go to do things like what we've been talking about. Like it's just, it's got that incredible reputation for that is the place for that kind of innovation. And it's just, we all know it and love it for that. But it is. And it's a key part. Out in that part of California, the locals call that area the Antelope Valley. I don't like that verveage. It's the aerospace valley. There you go. If you want to look at where aerospace grew and exploded and multiplied and became dynamic, it's Southern California. It's a time where Boeing and Douglas sat down at the same table during the Second World War and shared their plans with each other, corporate things that would never happen today. Because we could lose that fight. And we had to work together and get this done and bring our boys and girls home safe and sound from that thing called the Second World War. And then the industry that grew there, the manufacturing that grew there, the roots of Edwards Air Force Base and the Flight Test Center, the production capability at places like Plant 42 that I used to run. And taking that all the way up north to China Lake where the Navy does many, much of its weapons research. Yep. An operational flight test. And smack dab in the middle of that under the 2508 restricted complex is the Mojave Air and Space Park. So I have the ability to test rocket boaters and fly really big airplanes with hypersonic things under the wing. I have access to one of the largest chunks of restricted airspace in the world. I have a low density area where the possibilities of any collateral damage to a civilian entity is extremely remote. And I have access to the Sea Test ranges and the Bell X1 supersonic corridor. So it's right there. It's in our backyard. I don't often get to speak to people who have, where it feels like a lot of different things in their life have sort of led to where they are. It feels like that when I speak to you though. Just so many things just sort of added up and it's like you are really in the perfect place at the right time. So I feel that and I feel and trust me I'm not going to proselytize. I don't do that. But I lead my life believing that there's something out there that sometimes works in mysterious ways. And I think as people sometimes we don't listen. I mean I say that a lot in these interviews but these conversations it's like this couldn't have happened not that long ago. I mean we really are at the right time right now. Well look at what's going on. I mean on the fixed wing side. We're looking at supersonic airliners again. The X-59 down in Palmdale is being tested by Lockheed Martin and NASA. A silent boom airplane so I can go supersonic and not make a big shockwave. That would be nice. You know interesting. We've got companies now looking at a blended wing body solution to completely redesign what we think an airliner or a large airplane looks like and make the whole body the lifting force of that aircraft and redistribute people out through the wings instead of up and down a tube in the middle. And oh by the way in doing that we cut fuel consumption by maybe 50 percent. Huge. Huge. Amazing. And we have hypersonics erupting for many of the right reasons but maybe at the wrong time. We've been doing this yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. That's been a common theme of the yeah. Right. Now it's a national security imperative that we must do. Absolutely. And being part of that is awesome. The growth in the education around aerospace. The growth in rocket technologies. The fact that people aren't just recovering boosters. The recovering boosters over land and stand up capacities with chopsticks. I know. Come on. I know. No. It's just stunning. We're doing what? Yeah. And to be a part of that in a very small way at this little place called Mojave is very exciting for me and hopefully I'll hold my team well because they are the people who do the work. . We'll be right back. Welcome back. I am quite attached to the giant gorgeous hole in the ground that is the Grand Canyon. In fact, I got engaged there. It took water millions and millions of years of hard work to make that kind of drama and yeah, we do appreciate it. But what if there was a way you could just skip all the hard work and go right to the results? Well, the moon has the answer there. There are two canyons on the moon that are actually similar in size to our rather grand one, the Valus Schrodinger and Valus Plunk. And no indeed. Water erosion over millions of years was not how they were made. Instead, the latest analysis from David Crane with the USRA Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston in Nature Communications Journal says that most likely both canyons were formed in a mere 10 minutes give or take when space rocks slammed into the lunar surface. Some kind of impactor rocks slammed into the moon nearly four billion years ago, creating what we now call the Schrodinger impact basin, sending huge debris clouds of rock up into well, the lunar atmosphere, so to speak. And as those massive rock clouds rained, well, rock, down onto the lunar surface, Crane says you can think of two especially strong sheets of rock ranges carving away at the moon's surface, creating those ray-like canyons that extend out from the impact crater. The big picture question here you might be asking, why are we studying this aside from the obvious cool factor? Well, when the Artemis missions start exploring the lunar surface, especially at the lunar south pole, we want to have our explorers have the easiest time possible to extract samples from the moon itself and not from the rocks that slammed into it in order so we can test hypotheses on how the moon and the Earth Moon system came to be. The way these canyons formed from that rock rain says the study, it looks especially likely that future explorers will be able to get right to the moon herself from those crater sites as hoped. Great. [Music] And that's it for T-minus for February 5th, 2025, 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. You can email us at space@n2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes. Your feedback ensures that we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. N2K's strategic workforce intelligence optimizes the value of your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your team while making your team smarter. N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We will see you tomorrow. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
