Today is June 10th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. NASA adjusts the odds of asteroid 2024 YR-4 of hitting the moon. Axiom's AX4 commercial mission is postponed. Polyglot malware in orbit, some highlights of cyber threats targeting space systems. Quantum Space Races $40 million for CISLUNAR space operations. And the Defense Bill boosts Space Force funding. [MUSIC] Our guest today is Celia Pellas, COO at Spire Global. Celia joins us to discuss the next generation of space-based business known as Space as a Service. That's later in the show, so please stick around to learn more. [MUSIC] Happy Tuesday. Thanks for joining us for this Intel Briefing. First up, we've got some big news from Capitol Hill. The House appropriators have just unveiled their draft fiscal year 2026 defense bill, giving the Space Force a major lift in far more than what the administration had originally proposed. With a top line of $831.5 billion in discretionary funding, the House bill maintains funding levels from fiscal year 2025, but reshapes the distribution. As you might imagine, this also comes with a strategic shift in priorities. So for the Space Force, specifically, here's a breakdown. The appropriations include $1.3 billion for personnel, $4.8 billion for operations and maintenance, $3.7 billion for procurement, and $19.1 billion for research, development, testing, and evaluation, which is a notable bump from the White House's $15.5 billion RDT and E request. The defense bill also earmarked $2 billion to support 11 national security space launches, $680 million towards two GPS3F satellites, and $1.8 billion for jam-resistant, wide-band military satellite communications. As the bill moves towards markup on June 10th, we will be watching how committee debates shape the final outcome. Things are certain to shift. Quantum space just secured an additional $40 million to accelerate its Ranger spacecraft, pivoting the platform towards national security missions. Originally designed as part of a CIS Lunar network called QuantumNet, Ranger can operate from low Earth orbit to CIS Lunar space with high maneuverability and modular payload capabilities. With this Series A extension, the company is emphasizing military use cases, positioning Ranger as an agile long-duration asset, in this case long-duration, meaning up to 15 years on orbit. Ranger says Quantum Space can host sensors, refuel satellites, and support missions like missile tracking under programs like Golden Dome. The Space ISAC's latest threat intelligence, spotlighted by Kratos, shows a disturbing trend. Attackers are increasingly targeting space assets with advanced malware. One notable development is the emergence of polyglot malware, which can execute across different platforms, including aviation and satellite communication systems. According to the Space ISAC post, these attacks can compromise everything from command and control links to data integrity across satellite constellations. And since these systems are deeply interconnected with terrestrial networks, an exploit in orbit can ripple down to logistics, finance, or national security infrastructures. In parallel, ransomware campaigns aimed at defense contractors hint at another angle, hitting targets lower in the supply chain to access space systems indirectly. And this is a clear signal that legacy security models aren't enough. Ground systems, cloud-based mission control platforms, and satellite firmware need a rethink, says the Space ISAC, starting with a zero-trust approach. We highly recommend reading the whole post from the Space ISAC on the Kratos website in full. Link is in the show notes for you. In case you're wondering what happened to it, Axiom's fourth private astronaut mission to the ISS has been postponed until Wednesday, June 11th. The AX4 mission is setting a historic precedent as India, Poland, and Hungary each send a government sponsored astronaut to the International Space Station for the first time in over 40 years. While it's the second-ever human spaceflight for all three of these countries, it is their first to board the ISS. So fair wins and following skies to the crew tomorrow. NASA has revised the probability that, remember this name, asteroid 2024 YR-4 could collide with the moon in 2032 from 3.8% probability to 4.3% probability and of it hitting the Earth to, thankfully, zero. While not an immediate threat, planning for lunar impact allows space operators to stress test cross-domain communications and refine automated alert and mitigation protocols. So 2032 is, some time away, and again, Earth collision probability remains at zero. Nonetheless, this intel, which was derived from the Webb Space Telescope, by the way, does reinforce the need for integrated space situational awareness and ISS-like command systems, ensuring global digital connectivity networks remain resilient. In the meantime, let's hope that probability remains on our side. [Music] And that is it for today's Intel Briefing. To learn more about all the stories that I've mentioned, as well as a few extras that we've thrown in there for you, make sure to check out our show notes. It's in your podcast app and it's also at space.n2k.com. 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 co-workers. That's because 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. [Music] Today's guest is Celia Pellaz, COO at Spire Global. My name is Celia Pellaz. I'm originally Spanish, but I've been living in Germany for 25 years now. And suddenly enough, I started my career in space. I came from Spain to Germany to do my final year project. I did it at Astrium, which was the satellite company for Airbus. But at the time, I thought, "Hmm, it's a little bit slow." Space was very, very, very slow to build a satellite. It took many years. It was very expensive. And the missions that satellites were having were mostly Earth-Intelligence, or something very, you know, very scientific. So I moved from there to Defence, and I spent 25 years working for Defence. And Airbus, Airbus Defence and Space, eventually carving out the Defence electronics part. And I'm going with a company, or creating a company called Hensault in Germany, doing radars, electronic warfare, and optronics. And I was in the management work of the company until mid of last year. And then I thought it was about time to experience something new. And I, as life is, it was a little bit of my chance that I learned about Spire. And I met Teresa, our CEO. And I was so inspired by her, and by what the company has been able to achieve, you know, within, I think, like 13 years since it was founded, back in 2012, at a garage in San Francisco. And then meeting this great person that said, "Well, but we have already launched nearly 200 satellites." And I said, "Hey, I want to be part of this." So that is how I became the Chief Operating Officer at Spire. And now I lead our business operations, so to say, with our business units, doing space as a service, which I think we're going to be talking about. And then also doing downstream business with the data that we collect from our own constellation in the areas of aviation, weather and climate, and space reconnaissance. And we are very passionate about making life in Earth data with data from space. And we concentrate to really have a better world for all of us and a more secure world for all of us. You have a fascinating career journey. So thank you for sharing that with me also. So yeah, as you mentioned, space as a service. So I guess maybe just to start for our audience, just give me the pitch for what do you all mean by space as a service? Well, with a space as a service, they say, you know, whatever, and you as a business model that you want to have, maybe you are trying to collect data in order to have better crops for agriculture. Or we are trying to see if you can, you know, have some sort of chemicals that are going to develop in a different way in the space than on Earth. Or you are an IoT internet of things company and want to have a network that covers the whole world. So you need space for that. And of course, you can say, well, I'm going to build my own satellites now, and I'm going to launch them. I'm going to have ground stations operate them. All that just actually not to do that as your business, but just to try to create to get data from space that is then going to help you implement your business model. So what we are saying, hey, you can have a business model that includes data from space, but we are here to do that for you. We are going to build your satellites. We are going to build a sensor or a payload for you if you need to. Or we can get your payload into our satellites. We're going to launch it. We're going to operate it for you. And you're going to just get what you wanted, data from space. You can directly access the data yourself. You get an IPI to your own sensor. And then you just do your business model in a way which you haven't invested anything in infrastructure or no time and no risk because we know what we're doing. We have been launching satellites to space for many years and operating them. So we create something that reduces the risk and the time to market for other companies. I would say this is space also service for you. It's a conversation about how the space industry reaches beyond the usual suspects and gets into talking to businesses that maybe didn't think space was accessible to them or wanted to try and integrate space insights. But again, up until rather recently as business timelines go, this became a you needed to become also a space company. And it is remarkable to me that services like what you all are offering opens up the playing field for companies that maybe never thought that this was a possibility for them, that they could use space insights. And I'm very curious about maybe the kinds of verticals that you all are reaching with space as a service. I can give you an example. For example, we work with a company called Autoratec which is dedicated to collecting data from space in order to be able to monitor and mitigate wildfires. So from one side, Autoratec wants to have their own service for the different governments or different clients to do this for them. For that, they have contracted us to build a constellation. The good thing as well is that they can leverage the rest of our infrastructure. They don't need to pay for the whole satellite. Maybe it's a rideshare. Maybe they can profit from the fact that we have over 30 ground stations already around the world. And then they get their access to their sensor, to their data, and they then build this service for governments or for... In the other hand, we're also working for them, for the Canadian Space Agency to build a system that we are giving them. The Canadian Space Agency wants to operate that system. So we are building it for them. We are planning them in their operation, and then we are going to give it over. And for that, we prime the contract towards the Canadian Space Agency and Autoratec is our subcontractor. So in other cases, we also use satellite constellations to collect data for security applications. So this can be a radio frequency geolocation, where for example, for an intelligence or for a military entity, you want to see who is trying to jam GNSS signals that then are going, for example, to make navigation of aircraft difficult because you don't really know where the aircraft is or you are getting wrong data because they have been either jammed or spoofed. Also, we can collect any other signal. In case of aviation, we are also looking at building a constellation. Here we have a contract with the European Space Agency, in which we want to do aircraft tracking for air traffic control applications without having to rely on ADSB data. Because ADSB data, again, relies on GNSS data, and this is jammed and we have problems. So we are creating a constellation proving that you can do this with multilateration. And then you don't need to rely on data that can be jammed or spoofed. So I think there are so many, many, many, many applications. And I think this is the fun part also of Space Services, that whatever you have in mind, whatever it is that you want to do, if you want a ride here, if you want your own satellite, if you want your constellation, we can do it for you. That sounds like it really does scale in both directions really nicely. For if someone just says, listen, I just need access to some data, I don't need the full thing, versus I need an entire constellation and I need to own it. I'm curious where you are going to maybe be taking space as a service in the long-term future. I mean, certainly right now you all are very busy. So I'm not saying like, you know, this is not enough. I mean, you're very busy with this already. I'm curious what you see maybe as the long-term path. Yeah, I see. I mean, we have been doing Space Services a lot for commercial applications. So we have been doing a lot of Internet of Things or topics like wildfire monitoring, or Earth intelligence and so on. And we started a couple of years ago to look more at the security applications, as mentioned, and radio frequency geolocation, or in seeing what we can do in order to, luckily in this situation that we are currently in the world with so many conflicts around, of being able to offer more to our military and intelligence agencies to keep us all very secure. So I think that is where we are driving the business and respect that we are going to grow quite a lot of that area. We will be right back. Welcome back. And lastly, while we wait for the Axiom formation to lift off to the International Space Station, I thought we should take a look at what's going on on the other space station. You know, the one we don't talk about nearly as often as we'd like. And that would be the Tiangong Space Station. Plenty of science is happening over there too, of course. The Shenzhou-20 crew, which is currently on rotation at board Tiangong since late April, just completed a number of experiments aboard. According to the China Man's Space Agency, the Shenzhou-20 crew are getting poked and prodded quite a bit up there. Collecting and processing blood samples to see how their skeletal and nervous systems are responding to being up in Leo. And the crew are also testing their fine motor control skills. Are they not so fine now that they've been in microgravity for a few weeks? The crew has also been studying how they move in microgravity. The kinematic characteristics of astronauts in orbit, if you want to use the official language. The Tiangong is a lot newer than the ISS, keep in mind, so they do have more options and space to make things more ergonomic and easy to navigate for the astronauts in less, well, series of tubes-y. Being the new guy on the orbital block certainly has its advantages. [Music] That's it for T-Minus for June 10th, 2025, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We are 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 Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpie is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-Minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
