0524-T-Minus-20250519
Today is May 19th, 2025. I'm Alice Carruth and this is T-minus. T-minus. Twenty seconds to L-O-I, Peter. Open aboard. Five. Sophia Space has raised $3.5 million in a pre-seed funding round. Four. Chinese commercial space company Land Space launched six satellites to Lio. Three million. SpaceX has acquired acoustic technologies for approximately $30.2 million in cash and the assumption of certain liabilities. Two. Palantir USG to provide space commander-controlled data platform solutions in support of the US Department of Defense and joint force missions. One. India's PSLV rocket experiences an anomaly during the third stage of launch. [Music] Today is the first installment of the Space Nexus segment from our partners at the Aerospace Corporation. Parker Wysic will be speaking to JD Dyers from Agile and Amy Hubbell from Aerospace about testing rocket engines before flight. Stay with us for the Nexus after today's intelligence briefing. [Music] Happy Monday, everyone. We're kicking off with news from this weekend's launch in India. The Indian Space Research Organization released a statement on Sunday that stated that it could not complete its 101st mission, the PSLV-C61, due to a technical glitch. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, or PSLV, had a nominal lift-off carrying Earth Observation Satellite EOS-09 from the Satish Daoan Space Center. It was due to release the satellite 17 minutes into the flight, but Isra says it experienced a glitch during the third stage of the launch. Isra, Chairman V Narayan Jain released the statement, quote, "The PSLV is a four-stage vehicle and second stage performance was quite normal. The third stage's motor started perfectly, but during the functioning of the stage, we are seeing an observation and the mission could not be accomplished. After analysis, we shall come back." The third stage of the PSLV is a solid rocket motor that provides the upper stage's high thrust after the atmospheric phase of the launch. Mr Narayan Jain later told reporters that during the third stage there was a fall in chamber pressure in the motor case. The mission was the 63rd flight of the PSLV and the 27th in the PSLV-XL configuration. Before Sunday's launch, the PSLV has suffered only two failures since its first mission in 1993. We hope they figure out the issue soon and return to flight promptly. We're heading over to the US now. The US Space Forces Space Systems Command has selected Palantir USG to provide Space Command and Control data platform solutions in support of the Department of Defense and Joint Force missions. The $217.8 million delivery order was awarded under the Space Data Software Services IDIQ and will be known as the Space C2 Data Platform. The platform uses data to enable military leaders to make decisions more quickly, efficiently and with greater confidence, resulting in real-world mission impacts. It's lame to enable the integration and management of data from various data sources. SpaceX has acquired Acoustis technologies for approximately $30.2 million in cash and the assumption of certain liabilities. Acoustis is an integrated device manufacturer of patented, bolt-acoustic wave high-band RF filters for mobile and other wireless applications. Try saying that fast. The company had filed for Chapter 11 relief in December of last year. Tune Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX, is the official buyer of Acoustis. They say they will continue Acoustis's operations and team infrastructure, ensuring ongoing support for customers worldwide. Going forward, Tune Holdings will deliver next-generation, bulk-acoustic wave high-band RF filters to customers around the world. Chinese commercial space company Landspace launched six satellites to space over the weekend. The ZQ-2EY2 rocket lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone near the G-Quan Satellite Launch Centre. It carried spacecraft mainly developed by commercial company Space T and the Technology Research Institute. The ZQ-2EY2 is a newly adapted methane-powered rocket with an increased payload capacity. Beijing-based Landspace became the world's first company to launch a methane-liquid oxygen rocket in July 2023. Saturday's launch marked the first time Landspace has deployed a propulsion method that involves chilling both liquid oxygen and methane below their boiling points with the intention of boosting thrust. Sophia Space has raised $3.5 million in a pre-seed funding round. The California-based company is working to produce modular, solar-powered, passively-called and AI-optimized compute technology for space applications. The company was founded by former NASA space systems engineer and retired JPL fellow Dr Leon Akeli and incubated at Mandala Space Ventures. Sophia Space is further developing technology that came out of Caltech and NASA JPL research, addressing the rapidly growing need for in-orbit processing, AI acceleration and edge computing across satellites, defence systems and commercial space operations. Sophia Space says the funding will accelerate the company's development and deployment of its Tile platform, enabling low-latency, energy-efficient AI processing in space. [Music] That concludes today's Intel Briefing, and 2K producer Liz Stokes has the other stories that we've included in today's selected reading section of our show notes. Liz? Thanks Alice. Today we have three additional stories for you to read up on. The first is an explainer on the Security and Defence Partnership that has been signed between the EU and UK, which includes some space cooperation. The second is on Rocket Lab's third mission for IQPS. And the final link is the announcement that Starlab Space and Balance Off Dolmix are partnering to address astronaut vision loss. And can you remind us where we can find those links, Liz? In addition to the selected reading section of our show notes, those links can be found on our website, space.n2k.com. Just click on today's episode. Hey T-minus crew, if you'd like daily updates from us directly into 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-minusdaily on Instagram. That's where we post videos and pictures from events, excursions and even some behind the scenes treats. Links are in the show notes and we hope you'll join us there. Today we have the first instalment of the Space Nexus segment from our partners at the Aerospace Corporation. And you're in the Nexus courtesy of the T-minus Space Daily podcast. I'm Parker Wyschik at the Aerospace Corporation. Today we're talking test beds and proving grounds of the propulsion persuasion with J.D. Dias, Director of Test Operations for Agile Space Industries based in Durango, Colorado. And Amy Hubbell, who until very recently led the Propulsion Science Department and our test facilities here at Aerospace. So let's get right to it. J.D., testing capabilities are mission critical, particularly for propulsion. If you can't fly, you die in space. Now, this isn't all Agile does, but it is a core part of your DNA. Can you talk about your testing capabilities and how you've extended that as a service beyond your own enterprise? Yeah, yeah, it's really important. So our old company started testing for people before designing. We have two stands here that are pretty much high vacuum test stands for hypergalls. So we drive a vacuum with a really big nitrogen rocket that we fire the rockets in. And that simulates a high-altitude environment, similar to what they would see in space. And then we could fire the rockets there. We're kind of expanding overall throughput and how many stands we have out here in Durango. We're doing test stands in Oklahoma now as well and expanding on how long we can fire it to kind of target some of the recent failures that you've seen in space that have been pretty prominent and then kind of being able to cycle through as much as we can in both duration and quantity. And this isn't just expansion in a vacuum, but intended there's demand for these capabilities, right? Yeah, yeah. I have a lot of people asking if they can get on our test stand. We're booked out pretty much all the time. I try to break people in as we can. You've even had folks send people your way because their capabilities were maxed and the queue was too long. Yeah, that's kind of what's going on now is a lot of D-PASS programs are eating up a lot of the government facilities. So they're kind of national security assets. And so we're trying to fill the gaps for anybody all the way top of the food chain to brand new startups. Everybody's looking for a place to test. Excellent. So, you know, we can't just stand up these stands overnight. Amy, you oversaw some pretty intense construction here at Aerospace, some impressive expenditure of resources. What actually happens inside these test stands and what goes into ensuring that they're always providing access to a space like environment? Yeah, so I was involved with the construction of what we call EP3, which is our latest electric propulsion test stand. And there's a lot of similarities actually to what JD just described for electric propulsion. You're pumping on typically a noble gas, xenon, krypton, argon. So these are also very large vacuum chambers. And the key design driver is actually pumping speed because you need to basically remove all the propellant that you're sending through the thruster in order to replicate the background of space. In our case, this involved a multi-year campaign of designing custom pumping systems, along with an absolutely massive chamber. The thing is 14 feet diameter, 30 feet long, has some very impressive and complicated, I'll say, accoutrements, add-ons that are tremendously useful to all of the customers that we deal with. And I got a lot like JD said, we are working with folks from all over who want to come and use these facilities. It's unique and provides a really vital service. But it's tough and expensive and timely to set these up. So it's important that they serve a broader purpose in the enterprise, not just for aerospace, but for all of the companies and stakeholders that are involved. So all these folks that are knocking down your door to get into your test chambers, they all have the same exact needs, right? It's carbon copy, this test to this test. I'm understanding that, right, JD? I'm hoping someday in heaven, that's the case. But no, every single one, like you'll set up an entire multi-million dollar setup and then the next guy will show up and they need something just a little bit different. You've got to redo the whole thing. And then there's, you know, they want to test the next day and think that their changes are minor. It's everybody's custom every single time. It's wild. So you're not done once you've developed these stands, then you have to customize. How much demand would you say, Amy, what percentage of the demand for testing requires that customization? Probably 99%. There's always something. We've started developing techniques to try and standardize a bit of our testing approach. But typically when companies are looking to come to some of our facility, they're at a point where they may be looking for something, I'll say, very bespoke or specific. They need that top-tier pumping speed. They need a unique diagnostic. And so it usually almost always ends up being just slightly different or sometimes really different from the testing that we've done before. And that's another value that's provided by these testbeds and proving grounds is the ability to tailor the test campaign to the specific needs of the customer. Do either of y'all have a favorite customization anecdote that you are allowed to share? I have one. One of the requirements that somebody tried to flow to me was to put a super high-speed camera in the plume looking up the throat and just being like, it's a rocket. I can't do that without just destroying it. Like, what about a mirror? I'm like, it will die too. You can throw all kinds of things in the plume and it will die there. So you're saying there's a business case for indestructible video that can actually live in the plume. I think GoPro's got a start on it, but yeah, pretty much. It's pretty wild. Amy, I know that one of the chambers that we have, MudPie, and you have to answer how we came to call it. MudPie is one of your sandboxes, if you will, among our Propulsion Suite. So MudPie is a new facility. It's actually a small facility that we put together in order to kind of be able to rapidly respond to unique test challenges. And the name MudPie came about, we have a theme in our lab. A lot of our chambers are named after types of pie. And this is the chamber that we intended to be our kind of dirty propellants chamber for EPs. This is where we might test multi-mode propulsion or other things that we don't necessarily want to spew on our very expensive, very custom cryo-pumping system that we've gotten in the big chamber. So for this chamber, we had to essentially, I'll say, pull together a custom pumping system on our own in a couple of weeks to support an upcoming test. So that was, it was challenging and it worked surprisingly well. So it's important, you know, we've talked a lot about these huge bespoke chambers too, but it's also really useful. We've found to have a lot of different options to be able to flex to the specific need of a test that we might have. The JD, and noting, Agile has named its test stands after mountains in the vicinity of Durango. You'll have to tell us what the names are going to be in Oklahoma for our audience. Okay. All right. Perfect. So we want to differentiate for listeners who might not know between chemical propulsion or chem prop and electric propulsion or EP, Amy used earlier. Agile kind of specializes in the chemical propulsion that's, you know, for high thrust, short duration propulsion in space, EP, a lower thrust, longer duration burn. Am I right on that or any nuances to add to that? I do kind of use the metaphor that EP is your Toyota Prius and Chem Prop is your F-150. We're starting to see, I'll say, a little more overlap potentially between the two. Fundamentally, chemical propulsion is relying on some kind of chemical reaction to create your thrust and electric propulsion is relying on some kind of, you know, electrostatic electromagnetic force to create your thrust. And usually that involves forming a plasma and using that kind of as your propellant, whereas, you know, Chem Prop is running on a chemical propellant like hydrazine or otherwise. There can be definitely some different challenges in designing a Chem Prop facility versus an electric propulsion facility. But fundamentally, they do share a lot of similarities. You're ultimately just trying to replicate your operating environment for your thruster and you may be trying to make some of the same kind of key measurements like thrust. You might be trying to characterize the plume or observe, you know, the effect of running the thruster on materials that are around it. Any number of things. There is some definite overlap there. So, Agile is trying to make some waves here. Speaking of the overlap, I believe I read the press release that y'all are aiming for a dual mode propulsion combining the EP and Chem Prop capabilities. And y'all use the word audacious. Tell me about that, Jitty. Well, yeah, you'd be kind of combining the technologies and using a decomposed chemical prop, you know, hydrazine to be able to provide the gases that the EP needs. And so rather than having a system that goes up that has, you know, a hydrazine tank for, you know, Delta V maneuvers and then xenon and be able to do something else, you just run on one propellant and then use something to decompose that and then you can do a bi mode or dual mode. So you can run on a monoprop or even by a by prop, which we have an engine that can do both of those or gasifying your hydrazine to be able to supply an EP thruster. So you kind of have, you know, what we're all kind of looking for is a holy grail of like the Prius and the F 150 being able to do both. Well, we might as well probably have that in space before we have that down here with what we're working on, but it's definitely audacious. So if you're audacious thing, you're supporting this kind of movement by the US toward these responsive launch missions. How has your testing capability in house enabled you to be part of the Victus Hayes mission, which is the latest in that series of responsive missions. We've been we've touched a lot of that testing has been a big part of that and being able to develop the thrusters quick, but then also our fueling services. And that is being able to provide fueling services and now we're doing like mobile clean rooms to be part of that mission to kind of, you know, go wherever they need to. And so our testing services are more and validating those processes work and then providing people who are experienced in working with hypergulls and helping kind of guide the design process for like the mobile clean room. The thrusters specifically associated with that and like trying to develop them as well. But the call up on that's going to be, you know, pretty wild on how we end up supporting it. So coming to the end here, want to offer both of our guests an opportunity to make a final point call to action. Amy. So one key thing to remember with testing is that it only ever gets you so far. It can be a key tool to help you cross the TRL Valley of death, but at some point you've got to take the leap. And you've got to just fly the hardware and it's a matter of risk tolerance for our customers and stakeholders. How far they want to take that testing versus when they're ready to kind of take that leap and pull the hardware into space. I think it's a great point. That last leap is kind of the most terrifying part, but you got to test, you know, test is is is a critical. We don't know the next steps. Generally, when we're doing these, you know, design validations or experimenting with stuff, you struggle into something. And, you know, when you do a test, you can figure out what the next step is supposed to be. So I kind of preached our team here of like, you want to be the best at tests so that design knows the next step they're going to make is the right step. Excellent. So for propulsion testing, contact agile contact aerospace. There are other test beds improving grounds that are being collected and and are accessible to the commercial enterprise. The space ISAC is an example of an organization that's consolidating those resources will provide some links in the show notes. Thank you, JD. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, T minus and thank you for listening. And we'll catch you next time in the Nexus. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. Friday, May 16th would have been Dr Nancy Grace Roman's 100th birthday. Nancy was known as the mother of Hubble, not the man, but the space telescope that we all love and cherish, which is why she's also the namesake of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is due to launch in two years. Nancy was a trailblazer. She earned her bachelor's degree in astronomy from Swarthmore College in 1946 and a PhD in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1949. At the Naval Research Lab, she made significant contributions to radio astronomy, including mapping the Milky Way and measuring the distance to the moon using radar. In 1959, Nancy became the first chief of astronomy at NASA and the agency's first female executive. She was instrumental in establishing NASA's space astronomy program. Thanks to Nancy's vision and determination, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, revolutionizing our understanding of the universe. After retiring from NASA, Dr Roman often worked with young students in underserved communities, hoping her story and mentoring could inspire them to join humanity's quest for knowledge in a STEM field. Dr Nancy Grace Roman passed away in 2018, but her legacy continues to inspire generations of scientists and stargazers. On her 100th birthday, we celebrate a trailblazer whose vision opened our eyes to the wonders of the universe. [Music] That's it for Team Miners for May 19th, 2025, brought to you by NTK Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.ntk.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 a rating and review in your 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. N2K 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 N2K.com. N2K's 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 Kilpie is our producer and I'm N2K's senior producer, Alice Carruth. Maria Varmazis will be back on the mic tomorrow. Thanks for listening. [Music] Team Miners. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
