0506-T-Minus-20250423
Today is April 23, 2025. Happy St George's Day. I'm Alice Carruth and this is T-minus. Mission space and star catcher are partnering to advance real-time space-worth monitoring and orbital power solutions. Reflex Aerospace and Umbra are collaborating on synthetic aperture radar solutions for Europe. ESA's Earth Explorer biomass satellite has been secured on top of the Vega-C rocket ahead of liftoff on April 29. Northwood Space has raised $30 million in a Series A funding round to support a global ground network. The US Space Development Agency has awarded $55 million to SAIC for Tranche 3 programme and integration. [Music] Happy hump day everybody. I hope you're having a great week. You have me on the mic until Friday. One of our Mars' will be back from vacation next week. Let's dive into today's intelligence briefing, shall we? The US Space Development Agency has awarded Science Applications International Corp, better known as SAIC, just shy of $55 million for the Tranche 3 programme integration effort of the proliferated warfighter space architecture known as PWSA. SDA released the solicitation late last year seeking industry proposals to provide systems engineering and integration activities supporting the T3 programme. This contract provides for system engineering and integration support activities enabling the delivery of the Tranche 3 space vehicles for transport, tracking and custody layers and within the PWSA ground segment. The latter T3 custody layer is an envisioned future layer of the PWSA that would add the capability of continuous custody of target tracks. The SDA envisions the T3 programme to provide sustained capability with advances over that developed with Tranche 2. The work on this contract will be performed in Washington DC and is expected to be completed by April 30, 2030. Northwood Space has raised $30 million in an oversubscribed series A funding round. Bridget Mendler, CEO and co-founder of Northwood, shared on LinkedIn that the company is building a global ground network engineered to scale as fast as the missions it supports. She says they have their sites set on building the largest shared networking throughput and link capacity. Northwood is planning to outfit their sites with the ability to scale up to 100 GB/s backhaul and are aiming to deploy multi-link sites covering six continents by the end of 2026. The European Space Agency's Earth Explorer biomass satellite is scheduled to launch on a Vegas-y rocket from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana next week on April 29. The biomass satellite has arrived at the launch pad and is now secured atop the Vegas-y launch vehicle. Biomass is the first satellite to carry a P-band synthetic aperture radar capable of penetrating the forest canopy to measure the biomass and height of forests across the globe and across different forest types. The satellite will spend at least five years making detailed observations and witnessing at least eight growth cycles in the world's forests. ESA says data from the mission will improve current assessments and future projections of the global carbon cycle. It's hoped that observations from this new mission will also lead to better insights into the rates of habitat loss and as a result, the effect this may have on biodiversity in the forest environment. The satellite is fully configured for launch and will remain protected until liftoff as part of the flight VV26. Reflex Aerospace and Umbra are collaborating on providing synthetic aperture radar or SAR solutions to Europe. As part of the agreement, Umbra will customize and build its SAR solutions for integration by Reflex into a dedicated satellite bus hosting the payload. Umbra says it will work with Reflex's team to design and customize a solution to meet mission requirements for the customer base. The companies plan to work together in Germany to ensure an independent and stable European focus supply chain. The move to prioritize national sovereignty in supply chain is a theme we're seeing more of in recent months. Hmm, I wonder why. Mission Space and StarCatcher are partnering to advance real-time space weather monitoring and orbital power solutions. This collaboration combines Mission Space's space weather forecasting technologies with StarCatcher's orbital power grid designed to enhance satellite performance by eliminating power constraints. Under this agreement, Mission Space will provide real-time space weather data and predictive models to support the StarCatcher network, which in turn will deliver additional power to Mission Space's satellites under a newly signed power purchase agreement. Best of luck to the both of them. This concludes our intelligence briefing for today. NTUK producer Liz Stokes has more on the stories that didn't make today's headlines. Liz? We have three additional links in today's show notes for you to read up on. The first two are on China. They're planning on launching the Shenzhou 20 mission tomorrow and their lunar chief is accusing the US of interfering in joint space programs. And we've also included Boeing's first quarter financial results. Thanks Liz. How can we find those links? You can always find links to further reading on all of the stories mentioned throughout the show on our website, space.ntuk.com. Just click on the episode title. Hey T-miners 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 will help other space professionals like you find the show and join the T-miners crew. Thank you. We really appreciate it. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. Have you ever looked up at the night sky and felt like the universe was smiling back at you? Well, it turns out it soon will be. A rare planetary alignment will be forming a cosmic smiley face in the sky in the early hours of April the 25th. Jupiter and Venus are acting as the eyes while a crescent moon curves just right to give us a cheeky little grin. It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder if the cosmos has a sense of humor or maybe it's just trying to give us a boost to morale. It's the type of conjunction that only happens once every few decades when the planets and the moon line up just right from our perspective on Earth. Venus is expected to be the higher of the two eyes while Saturn will be the lower. These alignments are like cosmic Easter eggs, rare, delightful and totally worth sharing on your socials if you catch a glimpse. So what does the smiley face mean scientifically? Not much beyond some core orbital mechanics, but emotionally it's a whole vibe. I hope I'm down with the kids using that correctly. In a world full of breaking news and busy schedules, the universe will be taking a second to say, "Hey, smile!" And maybe that's the reminder we all need. Look up, be present and every now and then let the sky surprise you. That's it for T-miners for April 23, 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 really 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 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. 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. He took help as our publisher. And I'm N2K's senior producer, Alice Carruth. Thanks for listening. T-miners. T-miners. T-miners. [BLANK_AUDIO]
