USSF to rapidly expand its assets in space.

Today is March 24, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. The first test flight of ISAR Aerospace's spectrum was scrubbed due to unfavorable winds. ISAR catcher has successfully completed the first-ever demonstration of its space-based power-beaming technology. EXO Launch has signed a Launched Services Agreement with the Canadian Space Agency. Blue Origin's Honey Bee Robotics has been contracted by Firefly Aerospace to provide the lunar rover for their third mission to the moon. The US Space Force says it will launch 100 or more satellites into orbit in 2025. Our guest today is Richard Cooper, Vice President of Strategic Communications and Outreach at the Space Foundation. We're going to be talking about the 40th Space Symposium, which, by the way, we will be attending in just two weeks' time in Colorado Springs. Go stick around to find out more about what you can expect at this year's big event. Happy Monday everybody, and I hope you have a great start to your week. Let's dive into today's Intel briefing, shall we? Last week, Major General Gregory Gagnan from the US Space Force told participants at an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the branch will launch 100 or more satellites into orbit in 2025, nearly doubling the previously known number of USSF spacecraft. The rapid expansion is set to include more SDA satellites, as well as GPS satellites, next-gen OPIR missile warning satellites, wide-band global SATCOM spacecraft, and more. Gagnan told participants at the event that the increase is needed to create resilient networks. The US Space Force is looking to deter kinetic, cyber, and electronic attacks. Gagnan said at the event, "Gating cyber and space superiority over your adversaries is an early objective in ground campaigns, and I think that will play out as we move forward later into the 21st century with additional conflict." Moving on to some partnership news now. Blue Origin's Honey Bee Robotics has been contracted by Firefly Aerospace to provide the lunar rover for the company's recently awarded NASA Task Order to explore the great highs and domes on the moon. Once deployed on the lunar surface by Firefly's Blue Ghost Lander, Honey Bee's rover will carry NASA instruments to investigate the unique composition of the great highs and domes. It'll carry elements of NASA's Lunar Vulcan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer, or the Lunar Vice-Suite. The mission will take place on the moon's near side in 2028 as part of Firefly Aerospace's third planned mission to the moon. Heading on over to Canada now, and ExoLaunch has signed a Launch Services Agreement with the Canadian Space Agency. Through the contract, ExoLaunch will support the deployment of CubeSats as part of the CubeSats Initiative in Canada for STEM, also known as the Cubics Program, which is designed to advance space science and technology while training Canada's future space leaders. The agreement enables the launch of nine 3U CubeSats, developed by Canadian universities, with options for additional missions through mid-2028. These satellites will be deployed via a rideshare mission note earlier than mid-2026, with integration taking place at CSA's facilities in Quebec. Starcatcher has successfully completed the first ever demonstration of its space-based power-beaming technology. The demo was conducted at Everbank Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. Starcatcher says this demo validates the core technology that is aiming to address the growing gap between supply and demand in on-orbit power generation. Starcatcher is working on deploying an in-space energy grid that will eliminate power constraints for satellites. If you want to hear more about that one, go back and check out our deep space from this past Saturday with Starcatcher's CEO and President Andrew Rush. And by the way, congrats to the team involved in the mission! And Germany's ISAR Aerospace is set to make history with the first European vertical orbital launch from Norway. The first test flight of Spectrum was scrubbed earlier today due to unfavorable winds at the Andoja spaceport. But ISAR says the launch vehicle and range remain healthy, and the team is working to determine a new launch window. That concludes today's five top stories. And 2K Senior Producer Alice Caruth has more on the stories that we're also keeping an eye on. Alice? Thanks Maria. The Guardian is reporting that NASA has dropped their pledge to land the first woman and person of color on the moon as part of the Artemis campaign. We're also watching for NASA to launch three rockets from Alaska this week for an Aurora experiment. And if you could, please remind us where we can find those stories. Thanks to further reading on all the stories we mentioned throughout this episode can be found on the selected reading section of our show notes and on the episode page of our website, space.intok.com. Hey T-minus crew, if you would like daily updates from us directly in your LinkedIn feed, be sure to follow the official N2K T-minus page over on LinkedIn. And if you're more interested in the lighter side of what we do here, we are @t-daily on Instagram. That's where we post videos and pictures from events, excursions, and even some behind the scenes treats. The links are in the show notes. Hope you'll join us there. We here at T-minus are going to be at the 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in just two weeks. So if you're going to be there, come by and see how the T-minus podcast sausage is made at the AWS booth number 1036 from Tuesday to Thursday from 9 a.m. onward. Or you can also just send us an email at space.intok.com if you'd like to set up a time to chat with us. And speaking of the Space Symposium, today I'm speaking with Richard Cooper, Vice President of Strategic Communications and Outreach at the Space Foundation, which is the organization that runs the Space Symposium. Richard and I spoke about what to expect at this year's event, and he started by telling me more about his role at the Space Foundation. I work at Space Foundation's Vice President for Strategic Communications and Space Awareness. What does that mean? That means I get to work with a lot of great people to tell the story of what's going on in today's global space ecosystem. That's everything from technology advancement and exploration to job creation and technology development. And then there's the even cooler story, the people who are making it happen. The technology is always great, but it's the stories of the people that make these things happen, whether they're leading or part of a civil space agency or part of a military force or they're part of a new enterprise or established company. Everybody's got a space story to tell, and I get to work with some great people to share those stories. Rich, it is a joy when I get to run into you at events, and I will be running into you again pretty soon for our Space Symposium number 4-0. Wow. Well, authority is a big number for anybody, but when you go to do a program like Space Symposium has been doing for, you know, 40 of these, it's something to celebrate. But as much as there is to celebrate in doing all of that, it's even bigger opportunity to look forward. And let's be honest. This is a phrase I never get tired of saying. There has never been a more exciting time in the space community than it is today. And at Space Symposium, you get to see all of that on full display, whether that's the exhibit hall or the presentations and the speakers or any of the networking. There has never been a more exciting time in the global space ecosystem than what it is today. Space Symposium always just, it just feels like such a nexus of all these exciting things. I'm so curious for this huge anniversary, anything extremely special planned or that you can share with us? You know, one of the things that's interesting that we're doing this year, we are taking a brief moment to look back. But this is where, again, you get to start looking forward. And this comes per a lot of the feedback that we receive from Space Symposium attendees. And that is always looking for ways to bring those small emerging companies that are looking to gain entry into the space community and making sure that there's a place for them. We are really happy this year to have something we're calling Supplier Showcase, which is its own dedicated exhibit area where we have 48 emerging companies that are working across the space ecosystem and giving them an opportunity to share who they are, what they're doing, what their impact is. You know, again, these are prospective new partners you bring to the table. In addition to that, we've got the second year we're doing a pitch competition where, again, we've got another seven emerging companies that are going to do their Shark Tank pick, and they're going to talk about who they are and why they are a worthy investment and why they're a game changer. And that's the part that I think that is so exciting when you take a look at Symposium is that there's always a game changing moment. There's always a game changing speaker. There's always a game changing topic. And I spent some time in looking over the history of the Symposium, and what I thought was fascinating was in looking at the very first Symposium and looking at what we're doing today, the same issues are on the table. They have evolved and are so much more complex today and have so many more players than could have been imagined 40 years ago. And so it is as much as a celebration for Space Foundation to have the Symposium and doing 40 of them, it's really a celebration of a larger community and who it's become and who it is becoming. And that is bigger, bolder, more global, greater capacity, far more revolutionary. And again, that's on full display, I think, every day in newspapers and on our phone screens every day. And at Symposium, we get to bring all those people together for in-person as well as digital connectivity and let them all share network, connect, partner, congregate, you name it. And that's always a great experience. Last year was my first time going and I was amazed how many people I ran into in the hallways. We had over-due conversations would happen or when walking around the show floor, seeing the international presence, my goodness, it just was absolutely amazing to see who was there, what they brought with them, what the delegation represented. It really, it brought home the whole space as a global feeling, but also just seeing the reality there was beautiful and inspiring in a whole lot of ways. It's almost as if you could walk around with a space passport and literally go to all of the different international booths and have them stamp that I have been to Australia and Italy, Canada, South Korea, the UK, Japan, all in one afternoon. And literally that is one of those fabulous experiences that you get out of the space symposium experience. And I'm really proud to say we always have a growing international presence this year. We are on pace to probably have the largest international assembly of participants in civil space agencies and military leaders and industry leaders that we've ever had before. And that's really exciting. And again, most people when they look at space history always think about it as sort of, I will say, one-dimensional thought that it was east versus west. Well, yeah, there's still east versus west that may be out there, but this is also north and south, east and west and all points in between. And then it's not just the, it's certainly not just the government, it's also the industries. It's also the researchers. It's the missions. It is the investments. And that's where again, you, when you're on the exhibit floor, you can turn and look around and you can see that all in display. I see the theme for the conference this year is building partnerships. And you mentioned that a lot of the smaller suppliers are going to have a larger presence, which is fantastic. I'm really looking forward to seeing that as well. For those of us attending or hoping to be attending, any other things we should be looking out for this year, anything that maybe even it's just a prediction from your part of things we might anticipate seeing? Well, again, I think there's probably no other issue that is dominating more of people's professional and personal lives than what the role of AI is. And space and AI, and again, there are a lot of people think this is a new topic. It's not. We have been using, we've called it different things, but data and the analysis of data has been involved from space activity from the beginning. That it is that data that has allowed us to perfect launch vehicles, perfect landings, perfect satellite deployments and operations. Now we have this dramatically revolutionary capacity to consume data and analyze it and have it come back to us in such, in nanoseconds in many ways. That is a capacity builder that is, again, it's probably impossible to measure because it just has no limit. And I think as we've seen with some of the missions that have gone on, certainly the past months, weeks and years, that the pace is picking up launch activity, access needs and demands. And part of that is certainly, a lot of that is certainly driven by consumer demand, but it has also been driven by the capacity for us to be able to turn some things around and get smarter a whole lot faster and stay in the whole swirl of activity rather than taking years and years and years before you can take that next step. Now we're maybe looking at days, weeks or months. The second piece I'll say goes to the most important ingredient that the space community has, and that's its people. We have a workforce challenge in this country. And it is having the talent in STEM disciplines that are going to be able to take the missions of today and build in those missions of today, but expand those missions going forward and then be exponential in what happens next. We have to have people that not only have those skills, but they've got to have talent that knows how to do complex problem solving, working in teams. And when you take a look at the partnerships that are doing activities on the moon or the partnerships that are coming up for commercial space stations, it's not just one company or one group. It is a gathering of companies and industry members. Or for that matter, countries. Working with people is not always the easiest of things, but when you learn how to work together and you can do complex problem solving, I got to tell you, there's nothing you can't do. And it's really exciting to see a new generation of people coming in that are looking for those partners. And we want those people to certainly meet its symposium. We want them to meet year round and connect. But workforce is something that is, it's a front burner issue for everybody. Because if we do not have the workforce to do what we need to do, we're not going anywhere. [MUSIC] We'll be right back. [MUSIC] Welcome back. We do love a little bit of space history trivia to keep you in the know on this show. In yesterday, March 23 was the 60th anniversary of the launch of America's first two-person space flight. The Gemini 3 spacecraft carried astronauts Virgil Gus Grisham and John Young, making Grisham the first person to go to space for a second time. And they carried out the first orbital maneuvers of a crewed spacecraft, which was a critical step towards demonstrating rendezvous and docking. The mission led the way to nine more successful Gemini missions in less than two years to demonstrate the techniques that were required for a moon landing. Another task for the crew involved testing new food and packaging developed for Gemini. As an off-the-menu item, Young had stowed the, oh, you know what's coming, the infamous corned beef on-rise sandwich in his suit pocket before flight. Both he and Grisham took a bite of that sandwich mid-orbit before storing it away, concerned about crumbs from the sandwich floating free in the cabin. I say nothing about what corned beef does to you. Anyway, after completing three orbits in four hours, 52 minutes, and 31 seconds, the Gemini 3 spacecraft was brought down to a safe splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean. Gemini 3 is also the last space flight controlled from Cape Kennedy. Of course, now that function is permanently at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. So happy spaceflight anniversary to the crew and the ground support team. It was another incredible step in our pursuit of human spaceflight. That's it for T-Minus for March 24, 2025, brought to you by NTK CyberWire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.ntuk.com. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share our rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@ntuk.com. We're privileged that NTK CyberWire is part of the daily routine 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. NTK makes it easy for companies to optimize your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your teams while making your teams smarter. Learn how at NTK.com. NTK'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 Eiben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We will see you tomorrow. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. (whooshing) [BLANK_AUDIO]