Today is March 20, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. T-minus. Twenty seconds to alloy. T-minus. Open aboard. Five. NASA says it's evaluating what's next for Boeing's Starliner and may require a third uncrewed flight to the ISS. Four. NASA's JPL is collaborating with SkyServe and Deorbit to develop advancements in Earth observation systems. Three. UK-based Space Solar has signed an MOU with space propulsion company MagDrive. Two. The USSF has updated its Data and Artificial Intelligence Strategic Action Plan. One. The European Space Agency released their Strategy 2040 which will guide upcoming activities. Let's go. And our guest today is Ross Ruffing, Business Development Lead at Rising Technologies. We're going to be discussing inflatable structures for space, so stick around for that illuminating chat later in the show. Happy Thursday everybody. Let's dive into today's Intel Briefing, shall we? The European Space Agency's Council has just wrapped two days of meetings at their headquarters in Paris. During the meeting of the Council, they finalized ESA's Strategy 2040, which will guide activities for the upcoming Council at ministerial level in November. The strategy outlines ESA objectives around five key goals, focusing on protecting the planet and boosting Europe's competitiveness and achievements. The ESA Director General has indicated it is a living document which will evolve over the coming years. The Council also announced extensions to agreements with other space agencies. ESA and JAXA have extended their cooperation on the use of synthetic aperture radar satellites in Earth science and applications. This reflects the extension of the operational life of the ALOS II mission, which has contributed to a range of applications including disaster monitoring, since its launch in 2006. The agreement, originally signed in 2020 and extended in 2023, is now extended for a further two years until the 31st of March, 2027. Also under the topic of Earth observation, the Council approved for ESA and JAXA to sign a new 10-year framework agreement for a strategic partnership on climate action later this year. The agreement between ESA and the government of the Federative Republic of Brazil concerning space cooperation for peaceful purposes has been extended for a further 10 years also. There is also a new memorandum of understanding aimed at fostering synergies between the African Union and ESA that was agreed to. Moving over to the U.S. now and the U.S. Space Force has released an updated strategic plan for data and artificial intelligence. The plan outlines a roadmap for how the organization intends to improve its ability to share information across systems in fiscal year 2025. The document states that the United States Space Force recognizes the critical role that data and artificial intelligence will play in maintaining space superiority. USSF says it recognizes the need for digital fluency within the Guardian workforce and based on the latest national guidance, the Space Force needs to emphasize AI literacy to employ these tools to solve operational challenges. The document is a follow-up to the 2024 inaugural action plan which sought to guide the service in adopting modernized data and analytic capabilities underpinned by AI. The latest version looks to build upon the foundational outline and provides details on how Guardians will further integrate their cloud-based data repository. And you can read all about it in full by following the link in our show notes. Let's head over to the U.K. now and U.K. based Space Solar has signed a memorandum of understanding with Space Propulsion Company MagDrive. The companies are working together as part of the U.K.'s Space Propulsion and Infrastructure Innovation Initiative also known as SPI Cubed and SPI Cubed is part of the U.K.'s efforts for sustainable, scalable clean energy from space. The partnership is aiming to overcome the critical challenge of transporting, assembling and maintaining large-scale space-based solar power and other infrastructure in orbit. MagDrive's propulsion systems could be integrated into Space Solar's upcoming demonstration missions, which would provide crucial orbit-raising, assembly and shape control capabilities. And by the way, on a related note, we have Starcatcher's CEO on our deep space program releasing this weekend that will discuss their plans for a space-based power grid. So definitely join us for that conversation this Saturday. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are collaborating with SkyServe and Deorbit to develop advancements in Earth observation systems. The collaboration centers on optimizing and deploying AI models developed under NASA's New Observation Strategies Initiative on Deorbit's ION satellite carrier. The teams will also leverage SkyServe's edge-computing platform for satellites that enables seamless deployment of advanced AI applications in orbit. And the aim of the project is to create a unified network of space-born, terrestrial and airborne sensors. NASA envisions near-real-time monitoring of critical phenomena such as wildfires, floods and urban heat islands, thereby supporting scientific research and disaster response efforts. Achieving these objectives requires harnessing edge computing to integrate and optimize AI models across diverse sensor configurations. No details were shared about when the mission is set to launch. And Boeing just cannot seem to catch a break in the space industry at the moment. Following the return of Starliner astronauts, but Wilmore and Sunny Williams, on a SpaceX capsule, NASA was pushed to answer what's next for the Boeing Starliner. Steve Stitch, chief of NASA's commercial crew program that oversees the Starliner's development, told reporters, "We're looking at some options for Starliner should we need to of flying it on crewed. When we look forward, what we'd like to do is that one flight and then get into a crew rotation flight." So Boeing may have to fly on crewed for a third time to validate its spacecraft for ISS missions, but safety first, as always. [music] And that concludes today's Intel briefing. N2K senior producer Al Scrooge, what additional stories do you want to mention for today's show? Maria, we have three additional links in the selected reading section of our show notes for you today. The first is an update to SSC's support contract for the EU's Copernicus program. Another is an announcement on its inspectives expansion into the US, and the third is a call to commercial space companies to participate in a US Department of State round table at this year's Space Symposium. Well, that is interesting. Where can those links be found? Links to further reading on all the stories mentioned throughout the show can be found in the show notes from your platform that you listen to us on, and can also be found on the episode page 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] Our guest today is Ross Ruffing, Business Development Lead at Rising Technologies. Rising manufacturers' textiles, including inflatable structures. So I asked Ross to walk us through what kind of inflatables are used in space. [Music] I think one of the big things to think about with inflatables is are you thinking high pressure or low pressure? It depends on the application, of course, to determine whether it's low pressure or high pressure. But a lot of times low pressure is, you know, your 10 psi, like a stand-up paddleboard and lower, something that, you know, you can push on and it presses in a little bit. But then the high pressure inflatables are much more rigid. You know, 40 to 50 psi working pressure. So these structures can easily be taken to 100 psi before they're going to fail. We work on the high pressure, high performing inflatable side of things. So the application that we're most specifically working on in the aerospace world is deceleration. So using large-scale inflatable toroids, you know, the technical term for a doughnut shape, to bring things back from outer space. So currently we're working on a project with NASA to help identify opportunities where that deceleration is beneficial. And we're doing, we're building toroids for them one at a time so that they can test them and eventually flight qualify. This, this program is a follow-on from what was called Lofted, which was the smaller-scale test flight. The Lofted was flight-proven in 2022. And so we're trying to scale this up big time from there. And the whole point of these, these decelerators obviously bring us up back to Earth, but it's part of the Moon to Mars campaign, especially Mars, you know, wanting to drop a lot of stuff down all at once. It might not be used to slow down humans, but definitely a lot of logistical supplies and equipment. They're going to need to bring a lot of stuff down. So that's, that's kind of part of it. And then we're, we're trying to identify opportunities for that, that type of structure in other areas, department of defense. We've also worked on some lunar structures that would be used to, you know, raise solar panels or do something on the lunar surface that would help to reduce mechanical moving parts. Obviously, mechanical moving parts with dust, lunar dust and regolith is a major challenge. So we've worked on some small projects on that front, but hoping to get more involved in lunar, lunar surface technologies as we go forward. I feel like when I, when I ask folks like yourself, sort of like the why, like usually there's sort of like an origin story of like, yeah, this specific problem really like lit me on fire and I really wanted to solve it. What, I guess, what's your superhero origin story for this? Yeah. Well, first of all, you know, I was the first employee at Rising Technologies. So that put me in a really cool place to see the history of the company from very early on. I've been working with the founders, you know, for going on almost a decade now and it's been a really great experience. I walked in there with a crazy idea and found my people. We're, we're tinker type people. We like solving problems and the founders of the company, they, they were working for a small company out in California early in their career. They, they, that company grew eventually got into some inflatable technologies, which is where, you know, it's kind of grown from there, but that, that company got purchased and through acquisitions, my bosses really felt like they weren't innovating. They were just kind of building the same thing all the time and they wanted to take the technologies that they helped to develop these inflatable technologies and really explore the boundaries of what could be done with them. There's a lot of really cool things that in the intersection that you are all sort of at. And it's just like a really, it's so neat, dang it. I totally agree. And to kind of get back to the question you were asking, I think that that's what our bosses really, they love about it too. You know, we do a lot of metalwork and a lot of welding and fabrication in order to build a textile structure, which is always building these crazy big fixtures and all this rigid equipment to build a textile soft structure that can pack down super small. But I think that's really where the magic is for us and what my bosses, you know, they really like that, you know, that interesting capability to be able to pack something down really small, then deploy it out and do real engineering work, lifting, holding and other things. So it's kind of an interesting way they got into it. And they end up finding some good government contracts to support the early stages of the company. And then we've progressed into some bigger contracts with NASA and Army and the Navy since then. Yeah, I recognize it's always a little tricky to talk about, you know, working with the government, but any, I guess any, like tips and tricks might not be the right phrase, but like any thoughts on words of advice. So we've had a lot of luck. First of all, word of mouth, of course, is so helpful. My bosses were very well known in the inflatable world before they started their company. So going into that and submitting applications and proposals for the government, there was a little bit of a known entity at times, which is obviously super helpful as much as you can do that, the better. That's one of the things I always, and you see this a lot with a lot of government contractors, you know, they go through university, maybe get a PhD or a master's, have four or five, 10 years of solid experience within an industry, and then start their own thing and go after an SBIR or something like that. So definitely an element of government contracting that it's good to have a certain amount of experience and cloud going into that. But the thing I'd say that I've learned the most with all that is it's all people. You know, sometimes these government entities can be intimidating and, you know, a lot of people, you start talking about government contracting and people raise their hands like, "Well, I don't know. That sounds like too much work and it's just, there's too many hoops to jump through in this and that." Well, the fact is there's a lot of people in the government that want to help you. They have problems that they need to solve. You're the kind of company that can probably solve them. They want to work with you. So picking up the phone and calling a person is a lot easier to think about than I'm reaching out to the Department of Defense. So I think that's one thing I always try to communicate with folks that are new to government contracting or trying to get into it is, you know, it's people and these people want to help you just like any customer service or any business at all. It depends on the person across the table on that given day. Of course, there's going to be some, you know, employees in any business that aren't necessarily going to be super helpful to you, but then there's some that are extremely helpful. And that's where I think it's really good to find good groups within the government to partner with because it is a partnership. You're going to be working on projects over the course of multiple years. It helps to get along with the people that you're collaborating with. The final piece that I'll say, I was kind of joke with my boss that it's a big part of my job is problem discovery. Like, yes, I'm trying to find customers and I'm trying to identify projects and things, but a lot of it comes back to where the problems, who has them, who has money to pay for them. So that's where I try to navigate in my world on the business development side of things. You know, what are the problems that our technology is best suited to solve? You know, start outlining who the people are within that problem set, and then who are the stakeholders that really have the money to pay for that problem. And that's served us well in terms of the government side. I'm curious when you're talking to other people who are, you know, they have their own small businesses, they're, you know, different areas of research or work. Are any other advice you tend to give them? Because you have a lot of experience here. So I'm just, I'm like, I know I just want to pick your brain. You can sometimes think of space as this monolithic place and this, you know, one specific industry, but there's so much crossover. Obviously, if you're talking about the space industry, you have launch vehicles, propulsion, you know, return and capture, orbiting technologies, technologies pushing to the moon, lunar surface operations. There is such a broad range of things going on and to bring it back down to earth for a second. A lot of those same problems and technologies that are being developed also have applications here terrestrially. So one thing I would definitely encourage, you know, young companies that are trying to get into these different markets is don't, don't forget about the terrestrial applications in favor of only the lunar surface. Because like I said, first of all, those technologies get into the lunar surface and commercializing that, building a sustainable business around that might take a couple years. Versus if you find a good commercial market here on earth, you're able to build your product, develop some things and then work towards that aerospace application. That could be, that could be an alternative path that might be worthwhile. The final thing I'll say is working for other people, you know, I think that there's an entrepreneurial mindset across the aerospace industry, you know, even like within NASA, you know, a lot of the government employees, they think very much like entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs, you know, the way they tackle a project and own it. And I think that entrepreneurship is not the only way, you know, you could work with NASA, you can work for, you know, a small company like ours and there's dozens of them. You know, I think one of the things that's cool about the government contracting and the space industry in general is there's dozens, thousands of small contractors all over the country that are doing really interesting things and you never hear about them because they're small companies, they may not have a huge marketing budget, they might be doing stuff they can't talk about. Yeah, off in the case. There's a lot of interesting things going on and for anybody that's interested in that world, there's a ton of great projects you could get involved. As I mentioned earlier, I was the first employee at Rising Technologies. Back then we did nothing for aerospace. We worked our way into that. And just to say that, you know, the entrepreneurial route I'm a huge supporter of and would definitely encourage anybody to go down. But there's a lot of considerations on that and of course if you have family and kids and all of the, there's more, even more considerations. But just to say that they're not mutually exclusive, if you really want to start a space company and you want to, you know, innovate something really cool, working for someone else for four or five years can be the best way to get to that point. As if you're just trying it right out of the gate. And of course the university link between all this is an interesting side of it too, where you might be able to have some support during graduate school or something like that that can help support you moving forward in that industry. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. It is not a stretch to say that we know more about the moon's surface than we do about Earth's ocean floor. But NASA is actually working to change that. A NASA supported team recently published one of the most detailed maps yet of the ocean floor using data from the SWAT satellite. And SWAT has a bunch of meanings out there, but in this case SWAT stands for surface water and ocean typography, not anything else you might be guessing. And it is a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency CNES. It actually had us scratching our heads to ask how information from satellites could be more accurate than data gathered from sonar instruments. And although the latter is generally very accurate to date, those instruments have only mapped out about 25% of the ocean floor. That is where satellites can assist to gather more information. The SWAT satellite measures the height of water on nearly all of Earth's surface, including the ocean, lakes, reservoirs, and rivers. Researchers are using the differences in height to create kind of a topographic map of the surface of fresh and sea water. This data can then be used for tasks such as assessing changes in sea ice or tracking how floods progress down a river. Researchers have now gone a step further and used this information and the knowledge that observable geologic features like sea mounts and abyssal hills have more mass than their surroundings and put it all together in order to map what's underneath. SWAT covers about 90% of the globe every 21 days. And through repeated observations, the satellite is sensitive enough to pick up minute differences with centimeter level accuracy in sea surface height caused by the features below. It is amazing what we can now learn about our home planet from satellite observations. [Music] That's it for T-Minus for March 20, 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. N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Tre Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-Minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
