Today is June 17th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmausus, and this is T-minus. T-minus. Twenty seconds to L-O-I, team. Go for the floor. Five. Logo Space Services raises $50 million in a series A funding round. Four. Millennium Space Systems delivers space vehicles for NASA's Tracer's mission. Rocket Lab adds two new missions to Electron's 2025 launch manifest. Two. The UK's Defense, Science, and Technology Laboratory has awarded a 5.15 million pound satellite contract for the Orpheus Space Domain Awareness Mission to Astroscale UK. One. First, the major has been selected by StratoLaunch to develop and deliver. 16 upgraded Hadley H-13 engines. Our guest today is Craig Smith, Executive Director at the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority. I spoke to Craig about the recent announcement from the Oklahoma Air and Space Port about their purchase of a Dawn Aerospace Aurora Spaceplane. And more about that later in the show. Happy Tuesday, everybody. Thanks for joining me. Following on from yesterday's story about UPS hypersonic rocket engines, Ursa Major has been selected by StratoLaunch to develop and deliver 16 upgraded Hadley H-13 engines. The contract is worth $32.9 million and is for StratoLaunch's hypersonic test program and builds on a series of successful flight collaborations. Now Ursa Major's Hadley engines have powered multiple successful Talon A missions, including sustained Mach 5+ flight and vehicle recovery. The Hadley H-13 is a mission upgraded variant that increases engine reusability with additional starts. Ursa Major says the engine drives down costs per flight while supporting new test objectives and mission profiles. Dan Jablonski, who is the CEO of Ursa Major, added to the press release of this announcement that this contract directly supports U.S. hypersonic test infrastructure and the broader imperative to accelerate high-speed flight programs that deliver for national security. Now interest in hypersonic launches and missile technology is driven by its potential to transform warfare and provide a significant strategic advantage. We believe we're going to be hearing a lot more about hypersonics throughout the rest of this year and certainly beyond. Let's cross the pond over to the UK now and the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory has awarded a 5.15 million pound satellite contract for the Orpheus Space Domain Awareness mission to Astroscale UK. Astroscale UK will work with the subcontractor Open Cosmos Limited to design and build two near-identical CubeSats that Astroscale UK will operate for the mission. The satellites will fly in low-Earth, sunsynchronous orbit to observe and collect critical data using in situ and remote sensing techniques. The mission is the successor to the Prometheus II and Cersei missions that were lost aboard the Virgin orbit launch in 2023. The Orpheus project is a collaborative effort between UK industry, government and academia as well as international government partners in Canada and the United States. The mission is expected to launch in 2027. And on a personal note, I love the Greek mythology names. Rocket Lab has added two new electron missions to its 2025 launch manifest and is preparing for a launch just four days from now. The first dedicated mission of electron for a confidential commercial customer is named Symphony in the Stars and will take place no earlier than June 20 to deploy a single spacecraft to a 650 km circular Earth orbit. A second dedicated launch on electron to meet those same mission requirements is scheduled for launch before the end of 2025. Millennium Space Systems has delivered two small identical satellites to the launch site for NASA's Tracers mission. Now, Tracers, you know we love an acronym in space, this one stands for Tandem Reconnection and CUSP Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites. Hey, that five times fast. The Tracers mission is scheduled to launch later this year and these spacecraft will fly in tight formation through Earth's northern magnetic CUSP region to study how the sun's magnetic field interacts with Earth's magnetosphere. So why does this matter? Well, understanding magnetic reconnection, a phrase I had never heard until today to be honest with you, it's apparently crucial for predicting space weather events that can disrupt satellites, communications and power grids on Earth. So Tracers represents a strategic investment in space-based monitoring of geomagnetic activity which does have direct implications for national security, commercial satellites and of course global infrastructure resilience. Logos Space Services has raised a $50 million series A round led by the U.S. Innovative Technology Fund, which is accelerating its push to build a resilient autonomous space-based network. The startup aims to deploy AI-enabled software and hardware to support in-space computing and communications across satellites. For the space and security community, this signals a growing demand for decentralized, intelligent infrastructure in orbit, which is critical for both defense and commercial operations. And as we all know, as space becomes a contested and congested domain, Logos' funding round reflects a strategic pivot towards on-orbit edge computing, which would enhance real-time data processing and secure communication for global digital infrastructure. And that is it for today's Intel Briefing. And 2K's senior producer Alice Kruth joins us now with the other stories that we are watching. So what do you have today, Alice? Some extra stories of note in today's selected reading section. Check out NASA's call for commercial space communication solutions to replace the TDRS system. Skylow is expanding into the Asian market for satellite director device services. And Telepacio UK has completed a critical phase in the Align program. All good stuff. Now links to further reading can be found in our show notes. Or on our website, space.intok.com, just click on today's episode title. Hey, T-minus crew, do us a favor if you're just joining us. Be sure to follow T-minus Space Daily in your favorite podcast app. And also, if you could, share the intel with your friends and coworkers. So here's a little challenge for you. By Friday, please show three friends or coworkers this podcast. 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. Yes, you. 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. Today's guest is Craig Smith. And he's the executive director at the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority. And he spoke to me about their recent news from the Oklahoma Air and Space Port about the purchase of a Dawn Aerospace Aurora Spaceplane. Okay, my name is Craig Smith. I'm the executive director of the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority. And we're an agency of the state of Oklahoma, as soon as name would imply, we are charged with attracting and developing the space industry within the state. And we also control and operate the Oklahoma Air and Space Port. That's a single focus that we have that's kind of been the single focus of our agency for probably the last 20 years or 25 years. We were created as a state agency in 1999 by the legislature. And for the most part, the focus has been on the space port. But in recent years, we've expanded our scope of view to include space industry to other parts of the state, knowing full well that in a remote area like Burns Flat and the Space Port in Southwest Oklahoma, not all activity is going to take place there. There's going to be some manufacturing. There's going to be some assembly. There's going to be some testing. And some of that can take place in engineering. And some of that can take place in the larger cities like Tulsa and Oklahoma City or in other sections of the state. So we've kind of broadened our scope to take in the entire state for development of space. But for the last 20-something years, we've been focused on the space port, the physical location, which is Clinton Sherman Airport at the Oklahoma Air and Space Port. And we were one of 14 FAA licensed space ports in the United States. And I believe we were number six. And only 10 states today have one. So it's kind of a remarkable area. I'll say it's a very exclusive club that you all are a part of there. It's very cool. And it's interesting. I caught up with Oklahoma Lieutenant Governor Matt Pinell at Space Symposium. And you all are doing amazing stuff in Oklahoma. I mean, you have an incredible aerospace heritage as it is, but you all are doing a lot of work on getting some fantastic business coming into Oklahoma in the space industry. And just recently, Dawn Aerospace announced that it's joining you all in Oklahoma. Tell me a bit about this because this is really cool news. We're really excited about this announcement. And Lieutenant Governor was instrumental in this. We had some other state legislators who were involved in the initial discussions that we had with Dawn Aerospace. They started at space, oh gosh, it started several years ago. I visited with Yaron Wink and some of their team a number of years ago when I first started about five years ago. But that's kind of heated up in the last probably year and a half, two years. And we visited with them at Spacecom. Visited them with again at Space Symposium last year and had a good visit there. Followed that up with a Farm Bureau air show last summer in London or outside of London. And just had some great conversations with them, talked about their needs, talked about the capabilities that Oklahoma has. They were very excited about the Oklahoma Air and Space Port and Burns Flat. And the remarkable thing when we got our Space Port license 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago, Dr. George Neald, who was the associate administrator for FAA Office of Commercial Space at the time, told us, said, "Craig, this Dawn Aerospace is exactly the type of company we were looking at when we were licensing space ports like yours for horizontal takeoffs and returns." And so this is... Is their space plane company. Yeah. Exactly. It's exactly. We've got this crazy long runway. Ours is probably the fourth largest concrete civilian runway in North America. It's 13,500 feet long, 1,000 foot overruns at each end, and it's 300 feet wide. So it's a really remarkable, large piece of concrete that was a naval air station in World War II, later became an Air Force sack base in the '50s and '60s. And we were able to achieve our Space Port license in 2006, and now we've got a company that's going to be able to utilize that capability and our Space Port license and be able to do it repeatedly with their vehicle. It's a multi-use vehicle, as I'm sure you've learned. And the objective is to get it to the car monline from Oklahoma and do two flights within a day. And that's the capability that this brings and the reusability and that rapid succession of flights will be a game changer for space access in the United States. Yeah, it truly will. And Don is a fascinating company to be watching. So this announcement was very exciting. And as I said, I was not surprised to hear that Oklahoma is where they're ending up, because again, you guys are doing incredible work and bringing fantastic people and organizations to the great resources that you all offer. So I'm curious to you in the context of what is going on in Oklahoma and the wonderful support that space activity specifically has from the leadership in Oklahoma. What does this mean to you? And sort of where do you see the broader context of maybe the future of how things are going? I'm glad you brought up the history of aerospace in Oklahoma. We've got Clyde Cessna, who was from Oklahoma, and did test flights on the Great Salt Plains in the northern part of the state before he moved up to Kansas. The Braniff brothers started an airline in Tulsa. Avgas was invented by Phillips 66, and that's an Oklahoma company that we're very proud of. And Oklahoma, Wiley Post, creating a pressurized flight suit and some great astronauts. And one of the more prominent ones is General Tom Stafford. He flew just about everything and was kind of the godfather of stealth technology from a little town about 30 minutes away from the spaceport. And Oklahoma is designated too as the MRO capital of the world, maintenance repair and overall of aircraft. So we have the largest Department of Defense MRO capability at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City and the largest commercial MRO at American Airlines in Tulsa. So we've got a lot of companies and businesses that have focused on aerospace in the past. And the exciting thing is, is a lot of the stuff that the aerospace companies do and the companies that service them, that transitions pretty easily and pretty nicely over into the space realm. And so some of these companies that have been focused on TEM and aluminum and things that put on airplanes, they can take that technology and put that toward the space economy. And so we're excited about that. And we've got a lot of companies, you know, the chair of our board, we've got a seven member board of directors that's appointed by the governor and then they're all focused on space. And it's really exciting. I've got a great leadership there. My chair of my board operates the company. She's female. She's a member of the Chickasaw Nation. And her company is Frontier Electronic Systems. And they've been doing space related stuff with NASA since the 90s. My board vice chair is a vice president of a company in Tulsa called Nordam. And they are making components for small sats and compressed and composite vehicle frames for aircraft and potentially for skate spacecraft. So it's really exciting. We're going on a positive trajectory as far as what's capable and what's possible in Oklahoma. And one thing we really like to tout to is the former NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, continues to live in Oklahoma and has for most of his life. And so that's a great asset to have on your team as well. When Jim Bridenstine goes to groups, I went to Space Symposium with him a couple of years ago and it was like walking around an NBA game with Michael Jordan. We're running out and taking pictures of it. We had that rock star kind of capability and people just floated and flocked. I mean, it was really exciting. Yeah. I was going to say, not a bad person having your corner. That doesn't hurt at all. That's so great. Well, congratulations to you and really everyone involved in this really great announcement. And it's just been very, very exciting seeing all the incredible, I keep saying it, but it really is the incredible talent that's headed into Oklahoma. And it's just wonderful to see. So Craig, if there's anything else about this announcement or just anything really that you wanted to add to make sure that our audience hears about, I want to give you the podium so to speak if there's anything else on your mind. Hey, I appreciate that, Maria. And thank you very much. And thank you for everybody taking the time to listen this afternoon. We're super excited. Don Aerospace is based in New Zealand and we're excited they're establishing their US footprint in the United States here in Oklahoma, at the Oklahoma Air and Space Board and the capabilities that they're going to bring to repeated low cost access to microgravity from the Space Board is going to be a game changer. You're going to be able to do the experiments and repeatedly bring it back down and make some tweak and then put it right back up shortly thereafter. And the STEM aspect, you know, bringing students out to watch to be able to put small experiments onto this aircraft and be able to see the results in just a few hours or in a few days is pretty exciting. That's going to be a game changer. We expect peripheral businesses to pop up as a result at the Airspace and Air and Space Board and we're really excited about it. This is the first of what I hope to see a number of similar kind of announcements of companies that are starting to take notice of what's capable inside the landlocked states and space sports like ours. We'll be right back. Welcome back. We do often lament the fact that there are stories that we cover that speak for themselves visually. That is, the European Space Agency's first images of an artificial solar eclipse certainly do. ESA's Proba 3 mission shared its first images of the sun's solar corona. Now the missions to satellites fly as a single spacecraft, if you think of it that way, thanks to a suite of onboard positioning technologies. And they have succeeded in creating their first artificial total solar eclipse in orbit. And the resulting images demonstrate the potential of formation flying technologies while delivering invaluable scientific data that will improve our understanding of the sun and its enigmatic atmosphere, so to speak. Now observing the corona is really crucial for revealing solar wind, which is that continuous flow of matter from the sun out into outer space. It is also necessary for understanding the workings of coronal mass ejections, which we often call CMEs, which are explosions of particles that are sent out by the sun almost every day, especially during high activity periods like the solar maximum that we are in right now. Such events can create stunning auroras in the night sky, but they do also pose serious threats to modern technology by disrupting communications, power transmissions, and navigation systems on Earth. So the beautiful, and I really got to tell you, you need to see these images for yourself, the beautiful coronal images from the first rounds of the missions observations do offer a glimpse of the valuable data that we can expect from this eclipse-making project. And as I've said, they are stunning, and you've got to follow the link in our show notes to experience them for yourself. Who said science wasn't beautiful? That's it for T-minus for June 17th, 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 Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Peter Kilpey is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. [MUSIC]
