Europe’s push for space tech within the financial sector.

[MUSIC] Today is May 20th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] >> T-minus. >> 20 seconds to L-O-N, team. >> Go for the floor. [MUSIC] >> Saudi Arabia's Sarsat-X has successfully closed a $2.6 million seed funding round. >> Four. >> Safran.ai and ISAI have signed a long-term strategic partnership. >> Three. >> Ursa Space Systems and Arianne are partnering to integrate Arianne's real-time aircraft tracking data into Ursa Space's geospatial platform. >> Two. >> Starfish Space's Otterpup II mission to conduct rendezvous in proximity operations and ultimately attempt docking with another spacecraft in Leo. >> One. >> The Luxembourg Space Agency and the European Investment Bank are partnering to accelerate the use of satellite-based technologies within the financial sector. [MUSIC] >> Our guest today is David Barnhart, CEO and co-founder of Archesis. Dave and I spoke about DARPA's new LASO program that's looking for water on the moon. Stick around for more on that later in the show. [MUSIC] >> We're kicking off today's show with big financial updates out of Europe and no, it's not news of a funding round. The Luxembourg Space Agency and the European Investment Bank are partnering to accelerate the use of satellite-based technologies within the financial sector. This joint initiative titled Space for Finance aims to harness Europe's strength in Earth observation and satellite navigation to enhance sustainability reporting, risk management and impact assessment across industries such as investment banking and insurance. The organizations plan to explore how satellite data can be used to improve financial services, enabling companies to monitor environmental performance, anticipate risks, and compare results across business sites. A key component of the initiative is the R&D pilot program, which will use concrete pilot projects to assess the value of space data for financial decision-making. These efforts will lay the groundwork for a broader call for projects open to industry players. By combining expertise in finance and space, the EIB and LSA aim to drive the next wave of innovation. They want to ensure that Europe remains at the forefront of using space technologies to meet global economic and environmental challenges. Starfish Space's OtterPup 2 mission is set to launch this summer. Starfish says the demonstration mission will conduct rendezvous and proximity operations and ultimately attempt docking with another spacecraft. If successful, this will be the first commercial satellite docking in Leo. Additionally, OtterPup 2 is aiming to give Starfish the opportunity to test key software and hardware technologies in orbit, paving the way for the company's first Otter missions for IntelSat, DUS Space Force, and NASA in 2026. The mission will launch aboard the Transporter 14 ride-share mission with SpaceX. A deorbit Ion spacecraft will serve as the client satellite for the mission. And for those of you that have forgotten or missed the incredible story of the OtterPup's first mission, we've included a link to my chat with Michael Madrid from Starfish Space on their mission back in 2023. ERSA Space Systems and Arianne are partnering to integrate Arianne's real-time aircraft tracking data into ERSA Space's geospatial platform. ERSA Space provides satellite intelligence infrastructure powered by a growing catalog of over 50 million SAR images from the world's largest virtual radar satellite constellation. Arianne has deployed a space-based air traffic surveillance system for automatic dependent surveillance broadcast-equipped aircraft throughout the entire globe. Together, they are aiming to expand ERSA Space's analytic offerings with a global layer of aviation activity that enhances situational awareness for commercial, defense, and humanitarian use cases. Safran.ai and ICI have signed a long-term strategic partnership. The companies plan to leverage their combined expertise to deliver advanced multi-sensor artificial intelligence solutions that enable governments to achieve faster and more accurate decision-making and geospatial intelligence. This collaboration between ICI and Safran builds on the existing partnership with Safran already providing ICI with space-to-ground link solutions for the rapid transmission of high-resolution imagery. And Saudi Arabia's SARSAT-X has successfully closed a $2.6 million seed funding round. SARSAT-Arabia is a space startup that designs and develops small satellites to do Earth observation using synthetic aperture radar, otherwise known as SAR, to provide data for many sectors. SARSAT-X says this funding will accelerate the company's mission to advance SAR technologies and strengthen the kingdom's position in the global space industry. That concludes today's Intel Briefing. Over to N2K Senior Producer Alice Carruth for more on the stories that didn't make the top five today. Alice? Welcome back, Maria. We only have one additional story for you today. Yank Technologies has been selected for a two-year follow-on Sibbaphase II contract from NASA to advance dust-tolerant resonant connectors for lunar and planetary surfaces. You can read more about that by following the link in the selected reading section of our show notes. And as a reminder, those show notes can also be found on our website, space.n2k.com. Just click on the episode title. Hey, T-Minus Crew, if you are just joining us, be sure to follow T-Minus Space Daily in your favorite podcast app. Also, if you could do us a favor, share the Intel with your friends and coworkers. Here's a little challenge for you. By Friday, please show three friends or coworkers this podcast. A growing audience is the most important thing for us, and we would love your help as part of the T-Minus Crew. So if you find T-Minus useful, please share so other professionals like you can find the show. Thank you. It means a lot to me and all of us here at T-Minus. Our guest today is David Barnhart, CEO and co-founder of Arcuses. Dave started by telling me about his background and how he came to start Arcuses. I have been lucky enough to have a bit of an eclectic career over time. Always been fascinated in space since I watched the moon landings many years ago and never looked back. So my background in particular at this point is a combination of U.S. government startups as well as academic endeavors all related to space. The latest activity related to creating is Arcuses. Our specific goal honestly is to develop ports, the same as you think of on the in nautical areas for space. The whole point is that we need to make it as ubiquitous and easy as possible for arrivals and departures, services, goods and cargo, payload development so that we can get off world. Excellent. Well, thank you, Dave, for joining me today. And the topic that we're going to be chatting about today is DARPA's LASSO program, which was really interesting to learn about. And the solicitation for that, I think just went out. This is a really neat program. And I was wondering, can you walk me through this? Can you tell me a little bit about it, what you know? Yeah. Well, we're sort of in the same position as everybody else from a solicitation standpoint, whether we support or not support. I can tell you, having been at DARPA and been a program manager and actually put out programs, this is the methodology by which DARPA and in particular offices will reach out to the industry to begin to uncover and explore completely new ideas and in many cases, highly challenging ideas. There's no question this particular case, LASSO is ambitious, but again, that falls within DARPA's purview and sort of expectation. Just besides reading the solicitation and sort of taking a step back, looking at it, the goal is, I think, twofold. The challenge in particular is to be able to identify where there might be water ice on the surface. In order to do that, you really need to be low. But to be low, that means you have to understand the gravitational constraints around the entire moon. Why is that significant? Because there is no, it's a very amorphous gravitational field that's around it. The expectation is, I think that if I read this solicitation, they wanted to be low, low-meaning sort of kilometer size, and yet some of the differences in the surface are kilometer size. So that brings a rather unique, potential challenge that if you want to stay low and do all the recording and do the sensing in as many places as possible, you also have to make sure you don't hit anything while you're flying low. So that makes it interesting, right? Absolutely. And one of the many end results from a program like this, presumably, would be that we would have a very, very detailed, complete map of the moon after something like this is complete. Is that sound right? Yeah, absolutely. And that's that there is significant value in that, because right now, one of the challenges from a navigational standpoint, as well as staying in an orbit, is that it's very hard to maintain a stable orbit when the gravitational pull around the body changes depending on where you're flying. That's the positive thing about the Earth. The Earth is fairly well stable relative to its gravitational pull, and therefore, you can have reasonably stable orbits that occur, moon, not so much. So that would be wonderful to be able to map that. The Grail mission, honestly, the NASA put up, was meant to do that, but it did it at a higher altitude, right? And that makes it easier to fly, if you will, but it also limits how much sort of detail that you can get. And in this particular case, DARPA wants to combine not only sort of the mapping of the surface as well as the gravitational field, but also, hey, where's that? Where's the ice crystals that we can go for? Yeah. Yeah. What struck me about this is, this is not the kind of mission that I would have thought, oh, that's definitely something DARPA would be interested in. It's just fascinating to hear that DARPA is going, we want capabilities to search for water on the moon. Can you connect the dots for me on that one? Why is this a DARPA mission specifically? Yeah. Well, so, I mean, there's no question that as sort of, as history goes along here, the notion of sort of conflict and competition and congestion begins to grow further and further out from the earth. So, there's no question that the Chinese landing on the moon sort of raised some hackles. Hey, how come those guys are doing it? Right? So, part of DARPA's prospect here, prospect specifically, is to go after things that are super hard from a technical standpoint and that basically to push the boundary of the technologies, which may then be able to come back into whether it's related to the earth, if we're talking about space, or whether it's something that we could support longer term relative to the lunar domain in particular. So, this is not surprising. DARPA had put out a study, I think it was called the Luna 10 study, where they also had a bunch of folks sort of talk about what is the commercialization potential going out to the moon. So, DARPA's domain really is, while there is a D in front of it, that D also can be dual use and dual use is both commercial as well as defense. So, this one's not surprising. It is an incredibly challenging technical mission and of all the sort of government agencies, it does make sense that DARPA might be the one to lead that. That's fascinating. And I guess the question for me is also why now, aside from maybe this is the only time we've actually been capable of even thinking of trying to answer this question, but maybe there's something else I'm missing. No, I think it's a culmination from a historical perspective of not just the technology or one of the push the technology, but also the great interest in sort of taking the next step from either commercialization or utilization, which is the moon. So, there wasn't incentive 10 years to do this, 10 years ago to do this. Now, seems by sort of the right time, if you look at all the other government agencies that are interested, look at the commercial missions that are interested, this feels like it's the right time. I think it's a fascinating mission. I think by DARPA pushing this, it'll open up some technology areas, which honestly multiple companies in the past have actually referenced or talked about. And so now this is one that they're going to hopefully put a mission to. And the hope is that it helps also expand potentially what the commercial sector would do. I mean, this is an area particularly that the commercial sector wouldn't necessarily say, hey, we're going to go map the moon, right? You're going to make any money on mapping the moon? Well, you might if you got to sell it to somebody else, but that means you have to have a huge quantity of customers. So, it really is sort of an infrastructure development process, which makes the most sense because in general, in history, nation states have been the one to sort of push that. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. A shout out today to an article on space.com by Tom Brown about NASA scientists honoring a departed colleague in space weather last year. Something that we didn't know about until today. So thank you, Tom, for writing this one up. Last year, you may remember in late May, a lot of us saw a magnificent aurora in the night skies and places that we often didn't. I enjoyed seeing a gorgeous light display from my front stoop in Metro Boston, which was brilliant despite all the city lights. It was a phenomenal aurora. A once in several decades phenomenon, the first aurora of KP9 strength since 2003, in fact. And one scientist who researched geomagnetic storms is Dr. Jennifer Leah Gannon. At only age 45, she passed away on May 2nd, 2024, just a few weeks before last year's incredible aurora. Dr. Gannon, according to an in-memoriam posted on Space Weather Quarterly Journal, was a leading figure in understanding geomagnetically induced currents and ground-based magnetic field disturbance and had scientific expertise that also included radiation-built electron dynamics and geomagnetic storms. Not long after Dr. Gannon's death, colleagues in Space Weather who work at NASA started to refer to the spectacular May 2024 KP9 aurora as "Storm Gannon." The first time any kind of geomagnetic storm has received a name outside of the 1859 Carrington event. A White House press release also referred to the aurora as "Storm Gannon" as well. Absolutely a fitting tribute to a scientist whose life work and passion was to understand Space Weather and whose life was cut tragically short. [Music] And that's it for T-Minus for May 20th, 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 are mixed by Elliot Peltsman and Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltsman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher, and I'm your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-Minus. 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