[MUSIC] >> Today is June 5th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] >> T-minus, 20 seconds to L-O-N, T-minus. >> Open aboard. [MUSIC] >> ispace’s resilience lunar probe is due to touch down on the moon's surface. >> Four. >> Voyager Technologies has closed a $200 million syndicated credit facility led by J.P. Morgan. >> Three. >> Planet Labs published their financial results for the period ended April 30th, 2025. >> Two. >> The Commercial Space Federation has formed a new space supply chain council. >> One. >> Russia plans to integrate its gigachat artificial intelligence model into IT systems on the International Space Station. >> Two. [MUSIC] >> And our guest today is Dr. Andy Aldrin, CEO and President of the Aldrin Family Foundation. Andy gave us an update on the foundation's latest funding, so stick around to find out what they're planning to do with it later in the show.
Happy Thursday, everybody. Let's dive into today's Intel briefing. The head of Roscosmos has shared that Russia plans to integrate its homegrown gigachat artificial intelligence model into IT systems on the International Space Station. Gigachat was developed by Russia's largest bank, Sparebank, and is one of Russia's two large language models, or LLMs. Roscosmos says it will be used to assist the crew with processing satellite imagery, increasing the maximum resolution from one meter per pixel to just half a meter per pixel. Sparebank is focusing on developing AI agents, which are goal-directed, generative AI systems designed to process information, make decisions, and take actions without direct, constant human input. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakhanov said that the next mission to the ISS this autumn will deliver everything needed for the model to function. And we should note this will not be the first LLM onboard the orbiting lab. News Allen deployed a generative AI LLM on the ISS in collaboration with NASA and using a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Spaceborne Computer 2 just last year. For sure, it's just the start of the battle for AI superiority in space. The Commercial Space Federation has formed a new space supply chain council. It'll be known as S2C2, and the new initiative will bring together manufacturers, logistics providers, and innovators to strengthen the commercial space supply chain. CSF, or the Commercial Space Federation, says the S2C2 will work to define industry sector priorities, recommend policy positions, and provide updates on specific topics that impact the organization's members. S2C2 joins CSF's six existing industry councils that cover topics including launch and reentry, commercial low-earth orbit, space exploration, space ports and infrastructure, remote sensing and analytics, and space situational awareness. The S2C2 is actively seeking representative member organizations, and more details can be found by following the link in our show notes. Planet Labs published their financial results for the period ended April 30, 2025. First quarter revenue for the Earth Observation Company increased 10% year over year to a record $66.3 million. Their impressive balance sheet grew to approximately $226.1 million of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments as of the end of the quarter. Planet Labs continues to secure and expand contracts with international customers and is offering new products that expand their space-based intelligence insights, including a new aircraft detection analytic feed and new hyperspectral data from the Tenager One and Pelican Two satellites. Voyager Technologies has closed a $200 million syndicated credit facility led by JP Morgan, and if you're not versed in what a credit facility is, fear not, you are definitely not alone. We searched and found this great definition. A credit facility is a flexible financing arrangement, like a line of credit, that allows a borrower to access funds up to a pre-approved limit rather than a traditional lump sum loan. Now Voyager says net proceeds will allow them to continue to scale defense, national security and space solutions businesses in support of customer demand, effectiveness of the commitments and availability of funds under the syndicated credit facility are subject to the terms of the credit agreement. And at the time of publishing today, we're going to be glued to our screens to watch the iSpace Resilience Lunar Landing. So we have this little window of time between when I record the show around midday and then when it goes to air later in the day. And of course, the landing is time to be perfectly in that little window, so the timing's a smidge awkward. So by the time you are hearing my voice, the landing will have occurred already or not. So in light of this very awkward timing, let's cover all our bases. Pick the one that applies since you future listener presumably know how it all goes. If it all goes to plan and I certainly hope that it does, then hooray, congratulations iSpace. And if it doesn't then well, space is hard and better luck next time. But still not exactly an easy feat getting spacecraft to the moon in the grand scheme of things now is it? All in all, amazing achievements for mission two all around. Regardless of what happens, we will go into depth about what did or didn't or should have or shouldn't have happened in tomorrow's show, of course. In the meantime, did you see iSpace's version of Earthrise? It is gorgeous. On May 27th, Resilience looked back at us from LunarOrbit taking in a whole new view of Earthrise from the moon. It is almost too high a definition to look real, but it sure is. We'll be bringing you more on the iSpace Lunar Landing on tomorrow's show. And honestly, I cannot wait for that. You know who else cannot wait for the lunar landing? Well, it's N2K Senior Producer Alice Carruth who joins us now. Hey there Maria. I'm absolutely buzzing about the Resilience mission and bravo to the team around the media coverage leading up to it. Now I have a few other stories that I'm also buzzing about today. We've included links to them in our show notes along with the original sources for all the other stories you've mentioned. The first is that Etta Space has managed to store large amounts of cryogenic gases for 18 months on the ground with no losses and now plans to take its expertise to space to establish a cryogenic propellant depot in Leo. Pretty impressive. And the other story is about the Roman Space Telescope which has just passed some major shake tests on its core components. That is all very neat. Thank you Alice and a reminder that all of those links and more can be found on our website space.n2k.com. 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@n2k.com or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals. [Music] Our guest today is Dr. Andy Aldrin. Andy is an aerospace industry legend with Stinsett Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and ULA, and he is currently the executive director for space programs at Embry Riddle Worldwide. And if his name rings a bell, yes, he is also the son of legendary moonwalker Buzz Aldrin. Andy joined me to discuss the Aldrin Family Foundation's work. My name is Andy Aldrin. I am the president of the Aldrin Family Foundation. I am also the executive director of space programs for Embry Riddle University worldwide. Thank you so much for joining me, Andy. I really do appreciate it. And I know that the Aldrin Family Foundation has done a number of amazing things over its existence, and you also are celebrating a big award that you all just won from the state of Texas. I'm getting ahead of myself. I would love if you could tell me a bit about the Aldrin Family Foundation just to start. Yeah, so the foundation started, I guess it's almost 10 years ago now. Well, it is 10 years ago in 2015. And it was sort of born out of my dad's passion for getting the excitement of space out to kids that didn't really get involved in space very much. So he would go out and visit kids in underserved schools, and it was really cool. He would go out there, he'd say something inspirational, and the kids would get really happy about it. And then we actually came across at a visit that he had at National Geographic, the National Geographic Society there, this huge map of Africa. And at the time, my dad was really passionate about Mars, and he said, "We need one of these for Mars." And so I got in touch with a friend, Jim Green, who was running the planetary division at NASA, and we came up with a very colorful rendition of Mars that actually depicted the altitude. And so then, and at the time I was working full-time, I think it was, I think actually I was working at 2015, I actually would have just moved to Florida Tech, I think. Maybe this started a little bit earlier than 2015. Anyway, so I was working full-time, but I kind of, we came across this, and so dad would go out to schools and they'd unroll the map, and kids would jump up and down on the map, and they'd leave the map there, and then that was kind of it. And so I got involved with the foundation, and we started building a curriculum for this. First we worked with NASA, and then we worked with Purdue University. And so we came up with some really interesting curriculum, and over time we focused more and more on just really taking the excitement of space and bringing it into the classroom in ways that teachers can use it. And so we developed a detailed curriculum looking at the moon and Mars. And so then more recently, we've come up with what we call the SQ program, which is Student Satellites in Space. And it's, this is really incredible because what we're doing now is not only bringing the excitement of space into the classroom, but literally letting students participate in building a spacecraft, which is just kind of incredibly cool. And so it's a two-year program, maybe three years in some cases, but the idea is we use the excitement of a satellite to teach them about some kind of challenging technical subjects. They learn how to do coding, they learn how to do software, they learn a little bit about space science and the whole thing. And it's really a fascinating program. And so two years out, the students will come out having worked in a really complex organizational environment and having built a spacecraft. And in the case of the program, we're going to be starting in Texas. We're actually going to fly spacecraft. And so that's just incredibly cool if you think about it. What a resume that a kid's going to come out with, having worked in a complex organization, developed the soft skills, developed technically building a satellite and no offense to our good friends at Lego, but that's a whole lot better than sort of smashing robots into each other. Along the way, they'll also get certifications, industry and state certifications, and we'll be offering the opportunity for them to also take courses at a university, every little university to take to actually do dual enrollment. And so really, really exciting program. We've operated this now in Las Vegas at Durango High School, and we've gone through our first year. At the end of the first year, you fly a balloon with a payload on it, sort of mini satellite. And then at the end of the second year, you actually build a real satellite and then we we fly it as we get opportunities with for Texas. We have, we already have launch opportunities lined up with Nano racks and Voyager space anyway. So it's really, really exciting. And we're just super excited to get this out. I can tell by your enthusiasm and I can tell, I mean, given your expertise and your incredible career, this has got to be very rewarding for you personally, given, I mean, the countless students and people that you must have mentored, you must be able to see sort of the greater path here from getting kids into the stem pipeline into the career that would follow. Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, it's, it's really about starting to get kids curious and realizing what they can do. And you know, when my dad went to the moon, there was two people once the moon, my Collins will flow around and everybody else watched a few hundred thousand people actually worked on it, but everyone else was watching. And today, it's just so exciting because you can actually participate in building a satellite. And so I think kids today are the luckiest kids ever. Space is more exciting than it's ever been. And so this is just to be part of this whole thing is incredibly cool. Yeah, I can, I can absolutely imagine. And specifically to talk about the, the grant from the Texas space commission, the kids are actually going to be launching the ability to, okay, that's, that's So way it'll work is we spread the program out into maybe as many as 20 or 30 schools. And then they'll all have the opportunity to build essentially a mockup of a satellite and engineering model of the satellite. And then they'll compete to actually see who gets the launch opportunity. And so we're going to be spreading. It's not just a single class that's going to be doing this. They're going to be hundreds of kids that are going to be participating in it. And then every year we will launch a satellite up, it'll go to the space station and then actually be ejected out of the space station. So it's not, you know, we're trying to gain to scale it as much as we possibly can. Yeah, I was going to say, I know this award just came in and I feel a little greedy asking, you know, the longterm vision because this is quite a thing to be accomplishing on its own. But I imagine this is maybe a springboard for something else after. Well, the longer term vision is to get these programs into every state and have, you know, as a regular opportunity, kids in any school, particularly underserved kids in schools, will have the opportunity to participate in a space program. We probably can't afford to get every school launching a satellite. Maybe we can put them all on a starship or something like that. I don't know. But the idea is to spread as much space around a little bit of space in every classroom. That would be incredible. What a beautiful vision that is. Is there anything you want people to know about, maybe how they can find out more about their school or any call to action that you want to let people know about about your foundation or about this specific effort? They're certainly welcome to visit our website, which is aldrinfoundation.org. We are just, you know, right now, I feel sort of like the dog that caught the car. So we're trying to chew on the hubcap and figure out what exactly how our program plan is going to work out. So I think what the key is going to be to stay tuned. And I think we're going to have lots of really exciting information there. And yeah, stay tuned. All right. We will absolutely do that. Anything else you want to add or mention before we close out today? I'm just sort of giving you a blank slate. Anything at all you wanted to close out on. So yeah, I guess the other thing I wanted to mention is my other day job as executive director of space programs at Embry Riddle where we're sort of taking it up a while. This is a graduate education, but we have we have over a thousand students now in that program in the space of three years. And so there's tremendous interest in getting getting involved in space and getting jobs in space. So space is a place where you can all work. And I think it's there's not there are other programs similar to what we're doing at Embry Riddle, but I'd certainly invite them to take a look at what we're doing at Embry Riddle, because it's it's a fabulous program. And I get excited when I see kids getting great job. Not kids. Most of these people are sort of young adults, maybe so not so young adults in some cases, but they're out there and they're getting great jobs and they can participate in space at really the most exciting time ever. . We'll be right back. Welcome back. Canada has lost a trailblazer. Mark Garno, the nation's first astronaut and a respected public servant, passed away yesterday, June 4th at the age of 76 after a brief illness. Garno's journey to the stars began with a degree in engineering physics from the Royal Military College of Canada, followed by a PhD in electrical engineering from Imperial College, London. He served as a Royal Canadian Navy officer before being selected in 1983 as one of Canada's first astronauts. On October 5th, 1984, he made history avoid the Space Shuttle Challenger, becoming the first Canadian in space. He flew two more missions, STS 77 in 1996 and STS 97 in 2000, spending a total of over 29 days in orbit. Garno later led the Canadian Space Agency from 2001 to 2005 and then transitioned into politics. He served as a Liberal Member of Parliament from 2008 to 2023, holding key roles including Minister of Transport and Minister of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Throughout his life, Garno remained a passionate advocate for science, exploration, and environmental stewardship. Reflecting on his space flights, he once said, "When you see that thin atmosphere and realize we're filling it with greenhouse gases and pollutants, you realize, what are we doing?" So, today, let's honor this amazing earthling and Canadian about thinking about our home planet and doing our own little bit to keep it going long after we depart. That's it for T-Minus for June 5th, 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 Peltzman and Tre Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. 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. T-Minus. T-Minus. [BIRDS CHIRPING] [BIRDS CHIRPING] [BLANK_AUDIO]
