[MUSIC] Today is May 8th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] Ryan Metal and satellite manufacturer, ICI, who establish a joint venture for satellite production. Sierra Space has completed a successful demonstration of the company's resilient GPS technology for the US Space Force. The Office of Space Commerce's Traffic Coordination System for Space is expanding its Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with SpaceX. IONQ plans to launch a global space-to-space and space-to-ground satellite quantum key distribution network. Interlude announces contracts with the US Department of Energy and Maybell Quantum and unveils the first prototype of their excavator. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Our guest today is Joe Sherman, Principal Aerospace and Defense Sector AI Leader and US Space Program Leader at PWC. PWC recently released their next in space 2025 report and we'll be diving into some of the insights later in the show. [MUSIC] Happy Thursday everybody. There's been a fair bit of skepticism around the company Interloon, which plans to mine Helium-3 on the moon. But whether or not you're sold on the whole premise or the promising energy source, the company has signed on with big customers and has unveiled their full-scale prototype excavator. The US Department of Energy isotope program has agreed to purchase three leaders of Helium-3 from Interloon. Helium-3 is a potential energy source, particularly for nuclear fusion, and has various applications in science and technology. It's a stable isotope of Helium and is extremely scarce on Earth, but abundant on the moon. Interloon plans to harvest it from the moon for the DOE and then deliver it to Earth at approximately today's commercial market price. They say delivery will be no later than April, 2029. And the DOE is not their only customer. Quantum infrastructure company Maybell Quantum has agreed to purchase thousands of leaders of Helium-3 for yearly delivery from 2029 to 2035. The Helium-3 will be used in Maybell's dilution refrigerators, which cool quantum devices to near absolute zero temperatures. Hormin Tillerman Dick, founder and CEO of Maybell Quantum, says in the coming years will go from a few hundred quantum computers worldwide to thousands, then tens of thousands, and they all need to get cold. To get cold, they need dilution refrigeration running on Helium-3. So Interloon has worked with industrial equipment manufacturer Vermeer Corporation on a prototype excavator. The newly unveiled machine is designed to ingest 100 metric tons of lunar regolith per hour and return it to the surface in a continuous motion. Excavation is the first in a four step proprietary system to harvest natural resources from space. The steps are excavate, sort, extract, and separate. No details were shared about when the final excavator will be ready for its first lunar mission. IonQ plans to launch a global space to space and space to ground satellite quantum key distribution network. To facilitate development of this network, IonQ has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Capella Space Corporation. IonQ says the acquisition will expand the company's quantum computing partnerships with United States top secret agencies. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2025, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including their receipt of regulatory approvals. The Office of Space Commerce's traffic coordination system for space, also known as TRAX, is expanding its cooperative research and development agreement with SpaceX. In addition to the original agreement announced in January 2024, this new amendment incorporates launch collision avoidance screenings into ongoing work on advanced screening techniques. Additionally, TRAX is working to onboard SpaceX as a beta user in preparation for the system's production launch in January 2026. Sierra Space has completed the successful demonstration of the company's resilient GPS or RGPS technology for the US Space Force. This was the third milestone in the mission and Sierra Space demonstrated an early integration of the RGPS satellite technology through flat-sat flight software and hardware subsystem testing, in addition to successful communication with ground software. Sierra Space was awarded a quick start RGPS contract by the Space Systems Command in September to produce design concepts for smaller, more cost-effective GPS satellites. This new achievement comes only six months after the start of that program. RyanMetal and satellite manufacturer ICEI are establishing a joint venture for satellite production. The new joint venture will be called RyanMetal/ICEI Space Solutions and will operate as part of a RyanMetal space cluster in Germany. RyanMetal/ICEI Space Solutions plans to manufacture satellites starting with synthetic aperture radar. Production is set to take place at the NUS site, among others, and is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2026. The partnership announcement comes as ICEI expands its global footprint with the launch of a new research and development and manufacturing center in Valencia, Spain. The new center is the company's second largest R&D hub, and ICEI says it will drive innovation in the company's pipeline researching, developing and manufacturing SAR-based and future multi-sensor technologies and solutions for persistent Earth observation. [Music] That concludes today's intelligence briefing. NZUHEI Senior Producer Alice Carruth is joining us now with some additional stories that didn't make today's top five. Alice? Maria, we have two additional links in today's selected reading section for you to go and read up on. The first is an announcement that Dave Gallagher will be taking over as director at JPL, and the other is on a delayed launch of India's first Gaganyan astronaut. Well, that's not a huge surprise, but when can we expect that launch now? They say no sooner than 2027, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets pushed again. Space is hard, don't you know? Anyway, those links, along with links to further reading on all the stories mentioned throughout the show, can always be found on our website, space.intuk.com. Just click on today's episode title. 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@intuk.com, or send us a note through our website, so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals. Today's guest is Joe Sherman, principal aerospace and defense sector AI leader, and US space program leader at PWC. I caught up with Joe at the Space Symposium after PWC released their Next in Space 2025 report. My name is Joe Sherman. I'm a partner here at PWC. I lead our AI services for the airspace and defense sector of the firm. I'm a co-leader of our space program. So our recent white paper, our recent research that we just published, is the Next in Space white paper. And that was to cover both the economic impact as well as trends in space that we're seeing. And our specific points of view and where we see a lot of value. We don't have a public sector business, so we only focus on the commercial market. And we have a very strong point of view with where space is headed from a commercialization perspective. And some of the work that I've done personally in this space and that we're doing in this space is assisting with AI integration. And I know that's the buzzword and, you know, generated AI is just everywhere, right? Right, but for good reason. I mean, the applications in the space industry are massive and game changing. And I mean, it is buzz, but it's also valid. But if you think about where this needs to go, we don't have the the frequency of launches that we need to get the capacity of workloads and payloads that we need to into space. And that's usually because of long cycles to get to launch. Engineering of aircraft, spacecraft, satellites, individual components takes years in some cases. And some of the projects that I've been on in this sector, specifically, I walk in and I notice that, yeah, brilliant engineers, aerospace engineers are some of the most brilliant people I've ever worked with. But they're still kind of processing technology in a manual way. And so these processes are taking so long and you have aircraft, spacecraft and satellite on ground for three months, six months, or even years in length. And so we're not getting to the point where we can really commercialize space just yet. It's still heavily kind of running control or domain by government or military. And so that's where we want to be. We want to be in that position where we're helping the smaller company become ready to be acquired or go IPO or public for their organization to offer their services in the space marketplace. We want to be there for the larger companies to be able to streamline aerospace engineering processes, program management to get to a point where there's actually a space global marketplace. Given all that you all, where you all are in the market and who you are working with and what you are seeing, you had mentioned that you all have like a strong point of view on what's going on in commercial space. That I would love to hear about that, especially from the report that you all mentioned, the next in space, because I mean, everybody's got their crystal ball about what we think is coming. But it's always very interesting to hear the the perspectives that that different organizations bring to bear. So one area that I'm always very interested in, I know is a huge hot topic in our industry is workforce, workforce development. Any any insights on that that you all can share? Yeah, well, in that topic, first of all, is a great point, excellent topic. So in that specific point of view or in that specific category, I was mentioning streamlining, aerospace engineering and program management. But that that's just like one or two pieces of the pie. Right. It's the overall back office. It's the streamlining of overall operations. You know, period. My point of view is a lot of these organizations because of regulation have not been able to adopt generated AI capabilities or any type of, you know, adjacent automation type service because you have itar controls, you know, export control, itar regulations, export controls. Even individuals working on these projects all have to be U.S. person, right? And so for the past like five, six years where cloud and AI and then generate of AI services have been released, I'm watching all my buddies and my colleagues like have all this, you know, fun with all the technology, with all their commercial, you know, non space and airspace defense clients really building on some really cool use cases and really helping the workforce be more enabled, right? And part of that is creating an agentic AI approach where you have individual operation teams or a specific line of business units and individuals that are paired up with like a Gen AI co-pilot or some sort of capability that enhances their ability to move faster and be more educated and get to an answer faster, right? We want to do the same thing in the space sector. And these regulations, hopefully, that are being released or removed or at least lowered is going to lower the barrier to entry. And you've seen that this is the biggest year of AI in space personally because last year, you know, there was a vendor, Microsoft came out with the only solution for artificial intelligence in a government cloud environment. And that happened in June of last year. And so a lot of customers flocked to that because it was the first and only solution. Now, multiple vendors have that capability. And as of January 28th, and I've held multiple AI roundtables around these events and launches, I held one back in late January and chat GPT government was announced or their version of Skinny GPT, if you will, is a containerized version of chat GPT enterprise that can be enabled for government and aerospace and defense clients. These are the things that have to continue to occur to help the workforce and enable the workforce to drive, you know, bigger, stronger, faster. But outside of AI overall, if you think about the community, the economy, you know, overall, these new commercial contracts are going to drive more jobs, more opportunities in local communities and go beyond the typical stream of defense industrial base to the typical, you know, controlled aerospace and defense contractors. Yeah, I mean, it's been really fascinating sort of being a fly on the wall for a lot of conversations about the adjacent industries that space is looking at where the synergies make a lot of sense, energy has come up a lot. I mean, it makes so much sense there. Yeah. And it's just been the opportunities there are massive. And it's just been encouraging hearing the redoubled efforts that people are making on that. And that the specific categories of business that are popping up, I mean, they're they range from like far fetched ideas, but they're real, you know, really happening like the reflectors, you know, on a highway system. There's millions of those right that are created. And one of my colleagues and friends came up with this concept. There's going to be a space reflector business out there as we build the highway in space and all these types of companies that are out there. And me personally, this is a real thing. It's called space trucking. You know, I'm really personally interested in space trucking just because I'm you know, big trouble little China fan for with a current ride. I'm imagining Kurt Russell driving a, you know, space space to 18 wheeler. But no, but that's a real thing. Like you got CIS lunar, you've got between planet, you've got space station, you know, items that they're going to be quartered around, right? Yeah, space logistics. It's for real. Absolutely. And it's going to open up new opportunities in the commercial market that are non military, non defense contractor. And so it's really kind of awesome to really see the proliferation of these opportunities vastly becoming available. And I I'm going to shorthand you a little bit as like an AI guy. I'm sorry if that's that's reducted. They call me Joe, by the way. I know way. It's really sad. Oh my God, do they have a little green figure? My daughter actually created a G.I. Joe cartoon image with me holding a laptop on the moon. It's pretty pathetic. I don't know why I love that. I'm sorry. It's okay. AI Joe, no, no, as someone with expertise in AI and and and as you're looking around and and just seeing for lack of better term, the the future that is now the capabilities that I think even just a few years ago, which were just sort of purely aspirational, that now with AI are becoming very, very real. And I'm thinking of autonomy and autonomous navigation and that kind of thing, especially where it's just breakneck. I mean, I'm just I would love to just get your thoughts on where that is going, maybe timelines that you think might be realistic for that kind of thing and its development. Yes, you're just happening now. I think it's been happening. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Actually, starting back in 2019, I was on a special team working with the Pentagon and other military agencies on remote sensing. Yeah. And so we were building computer vision models to look at these individual sensors and cameras and images, etc. to break down the data and build knowledge, AI based knowledge graphs to kind of piece everything together. That was happening six years ago. Yeah. So it's not manual. Right. Yeah. So nowadays, you know, I've got clients right now in space transport as an example that are thinking of not thinking about they're doing it right now that are building data centers in orbit because there's specific and special applications of agricultural, pharmaceutical, you're kind of cross industry capabilities that they want to run working up specific, specific workloads in a data center, on a satellite, in a space station or on a specific location like Mars or the moon. These things are happening right this second. And if you tie that back to the commercialization of space and where we fit into like we have clients that are agricultural, you know, dominant clients, right? Or we have relationships with the large pharmaceuticals. And so these individual companies are buying and renting space, not no pun intended, but renting space in a data center in space and gathering the results and transmitting data, not just to earth, but long term between, you know, orbital devices. Yeah, like computing at the edge, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, it's just a sorry for sounding great, Pauliana about it. But it's just it's just amazing to me that it's happening. The things that we thought were possible as kids are now actually actually happening. It's just always blows my mind. Since the topic that brings us together is next in space, I just want to just is there anything that maybe you want to make sure that you flag is this is something to keep an eye on? Yeah, I would say we have a pretty strong point of view in the launch area where if you can't beat them, join them, right? And there's there's some very vertically integrated, self-sustaining launch providers that are out there. And it's very difficult to compete with that, even at a cost structure because they're so vertically integrated, they have everything, you know, the materials, the staff, the launch facilities, etc. You know, I would say that more commercial organizations should subscribe to and partner more with those types of organizations so that they can launch more frequently instead of spending an additional five, 10, 15 years of building their own facilities. Let's get things to stay. Let's get payloads and workloads to space, right? And I also think that if we increase that network capacity and kind of rely on what's already vertically integrated and cost efficient, then we will get to a faster commercialization effort in the space community and economy. We will be right back. Welcome back. Two short items for you for today's final story. One's to take back seas from NASA about the Viper Lunar Rover, the nearly completed rover that maybe wasn't going to be a NASA thing anymore and going to this commercial sector instead is maybe now going to be a NASA thing again. The US Space Agency put out a terse update that they're canceling its partnership proposal solicitation and instead, and I quote, opting to explore alternative approaches to deliver its Viper Rover to the moon. OK, well, let's cut NASA break, I suppose it is a turbulent time over there right now. Interesting development, though. Second item up for you is also moon related, but this one is from China. The nation has made the world's first daytime laser ranging measurement from the Earth to the moon. The Chinese Academy of Sciences bounced an infrared laser off of a retroreflector on the Tiandu Lunar Orbiter. Now, lunar retroreflectors help us locate on the moon missions with precision and get precise measurements of the distance between the Earth and the moon because while it is a great distance, it does vary quite a bit. And those variances matter. Those retroreflectors, by the way, are also a great way to prove those lunar landing and spiercy theories very wrong. Humanity has been to the moon and let's bounce a laser off a thing we put there just to show you. But the moon is far away and that bounced laser ping, or I guess it's really the pong, is pretty weak on its way back. And normally we try to do this kind of maneuver at night when solar interference is minimized. But this was a world's first as it was done during the day. So to heck with the sun's interference. So nicely done and congratulations to China on this very neat accomplishment. That's it for T-minus from 8th 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 Senior Producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Tre Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpie is our publisher and I'm your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. I'll see you tomorrow. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. [BLANK_AUDIO]
