Today is July 1st, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 22nd to LOS, T-dred. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Five. Momentus to provide hosted payload services for orbit fabs on orbit demonstration of a space domain awareness payload. Four. Side of space is collaborating with Virago Technologies to validate and integrate next generation radiation-hardened microcontroller technology. Three. Telesolinias space has been selected by CNES to develop a very high throughput laser communications demonstrator. Two. Leo Labs has been selected for a $4 million tactical funding increase opportunity by the US Space Force's Space Works. One. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will be eliminating funding for tracks. [MUSIC PLAYING] Let's go. [MUSIC PLAYING] Our guest today is Kirk Conert, managing partner at AE Industrial Partners and chairman of the board at Firefly Space. Kirk shares his thoughts with me on current markets and national security space. So stick around to hear more on that later in the show. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thanks for joining me on this Tuesday. Let's get into it. If you're based in the United States or just following US mainstream news, then you would probably be hard pushed to avoid stories about the budget right now. And we're sorry, but even we are leading with it today, though this is specific to one area that falls under NOAA. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its budget estimates for fiscal year 2026, and the whole agency is taking a hit. And we are most interested in the TRAX system, which is found on page 300 of the budget document. And TRAX, for those who aren't keeping up with the one-gajillion acronyms in space, stands for the Traffic Coordination System for Space and it's run by NOAA's Office of Space Commerce. This year's budget request will eliminate funding for additional work on TRAX. Yes, $0. TRAX was being developed as a US Public Space Situational Awareness, or SSA capability, to integrate government and commercial data and capabilities to provide alerts of potential in-space collisions to satellite operators. And according to the budget, Space Policy Directive 3, or SPD3, stated a goal to, quote, "provide US government supported basic SSA data and basic STM or space traffic management services to the public." SPD3 went on to state this, "The United States should continue to make available basic SSA data and basic STM services, including conjunction and reentry notifications, free of direct user fees while supporting new opportunities for US commercial and nonprofit SSA data and STM services." The US administration says that the intent of SPD3 has been satisfied by supporting private industry to provide SSA services, including through offerings of both a free basic service as well as fee-based concierge services to civil operators. So we're hoping that commercial companies will keep us updated on space situational awareness. The Department of Commerce says it'll continue to monitor the use of SSA services by civil operators to determine whether additional policies are warranted to ensure that space remains a safe domain to operate. Now, Richard Dalbello, who is the former director of NOAA's Office of Space Commerce, has voiced his concerns about the move on social media. And he warned this, "The US has a vital interest in shaping the emerging norms of orbital conduct. Abandoning tracks now would mute our voice at the very moment when international standards are being written." And we're sure that this won't be the last that we hear concerns over funding space systems in the coming days and weeks ahead. We will keep you posted. Moving on now, and Leo Labs has been selected for a $4 million tactical funding increase opportunity by the US Space Forces, Space Works. The Air Force Research Laboratory is projected to contribute up to $2 million, which is matched with $2 million in private capital for a total $4 million TACFI effort. The funding will support Leo Labs' development and deployment of a software upgrade for its scout class radar. And the scout class is a new containerized, S-band direct radiating array that detects and tracks foreign launches. Leo Labs says it'll also create a software development plan to upgrade the radar to perform track-while scan for highly maneuvering objects, such as missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles. This TACFI follows Leo Labs' recent $60 million strategic funding increase award by Space Works to deploy a seeker class ultra high frequency DRA radar in the Indo-Pacific region by 2027. Telesolinias Space has been selected by the French space agency CNES to develop a very high throughput laser communications demonstrator. The demonstrator is called Solis, which stands for Service Optique de Liaison Spatial Securisé, or Secure Optical Spacelink Service for those who don't speak French. And it aims to demonstrate the technical and economic viability of an optical communications service relying on geostationary satellites. Solis will use technologies developed through the government backed optical communications project known as Co-op and led by CNES and a group of 17 SMEs and large primes and draws on the outcomes of demonstrations delivered for the Vertigo project funded by the European Commission. The payload will be flown on the Elas SAT-5 geostationary communications satellite while the pilot ground station will be set up at the operator's teleport in Cyprus. CIDA Space is collaborating with Virago Technologies to validate and integrate next generation radiation hardened microcontroller or MCU technology. And according to the press release, CIDA Space has previously utilized Virago MCU's but will now play a pivotal role in the early validation and system level integration of Virago's future high performance radiation hardened microcontroller to be announced later this year. This partnership is designed to accelerate development and deployment cycles for CIDAS's next generation platforms while providing Virago with real world performance feedback to refine and optimize the technology. The two companies will advance the microcontroller through joint design reviews, software and hardware integration and in-system validation with the goal of transitioning to production ready deployment by 2026. And there's more news from Momentus. Yesterday we were announcing their new contracts for in-space power demonstrations and today they've announced a new on-orbit space domain awareness demonstration. Momentus has signed a contract with OrbitFab to provide hosted payload services for the on-orbit demonstration of their space domain awareness payload called PodRacer in the rapidly attachable fluid transfer interface also known as RAFTI. PodRacer's mission is funded by the US Air Force Research Laboratory and will conduct a flight demonstration of infrared imaging sensors, image processing technology and a control module to enhance space domain awareness aboard the Vigoride 7 orbital service vehicle. The mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than February 2026 board a SpaceX transporter ride share mission. That wraps up our top five stories for today but there's always more going on across the space industry. N2K senior producer Alice Cruz joins us now with some of the other stories that we think you should be reading about today. What have you got Alice? - Oh, you know, just four additional stories for today, Maria. There's a lot going on right now. Rocket Lab has completed the critical design review of the space development agencies T2TL beta constellation. ESA is eagerly awaiting the NTG S1 and Sentinel for launch this evening. We'll be bringing you more on that on tomorrow's show if it stays on schedule. Teledyne Space in the UK is working with Japan on a climate change mission and China's Tianwan-2 has shared images of the Earth and Moon. - Just a few extra stories there. Please remind us on where we can find out more about them. - We include links to the original sources of all the stories mentioned throughout the show in the selected reading section of our show notes. Those links can also be found on the episode page on our website, just head to space.n2k.com and click on today's 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, please do us a favor and share the intel with your friends and coworkers. Here's a little challenge for you by Friday. Please show three friends or family members 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. If you find T-minus useful, please share so other professionals like you can find the show. Thank you so much. It means a lot to me and all of us here at T-minus. (upbeat music) Our guest today is Kirk Conert, managing partner at AE Industrial Partners and chairman of the board at Firefly Space. Kirk started by telling me what he does for AE. - I lead the national security investment team that tends to be focused on anything national security which includes space. And that's a big part of our portfolio and a big part of what I do on a day-to-day basis. I'm also the chairman of Firefly Aerospace. I sit on the boards of York Space Systems, Red Wire Space, Big Bear AI, to name a few. I've been doing this for my entire career. I've been at AE for the last 11 years and it's the last decade's been trying to find the best companies that back in this sort of new defense tech space tech frontier. - Kirk, I can't think of anyone better to just sort of pick the brain of in terms of what's going on in national security space right now and just what your thoughts are on the landscape as it is and maybe how it's changed. 'Cause it certainly has in the past few years. - Yeah, it's been amazing to see the change in opportunity and just the quality people come into the market, the quality of founders. I mean, look, take a step back. We first said, "Hey, we're gonna invest in space." People said, "You guys are crazy." Like, "What are you doing?" (laughing) We were sitting around the table, we're like, "Yeah, we think this whole revolution "is about to happen. "We need to be investing in this sector." So we really built a thesis around there's a new gold rush happening within space. Let's find an investable theme behind that. As a private equity firm, we're a little more risk-tall at the most private equity firms. Space being an example of that, but we still have to convince our investors that these are enduring and resilient businesses. It's been crazy to see the change and the opportunities and obviously the national security, I think it's unique, space is unique, right? And that it's a new domain, right? It's a new contested domain. And there's not, in relatively speaking, not a lot of dollars going into space. So the space force and other organizations within the US government that buy space assets have had to get creative around how they use commercial companies and those technologies to help complete their mission. So that's provided a big opportunity for companies that we've invested in to fireflies, a great example of that with landing on the moon. I'm so curious, given the world that you are in, sort of your attitude about risk and like risk tolerance, given, again, space is capital intensive, risky, a lot of folks who are trying to start up a business are often complaining about how hard it is to get people to invest in them because of that risk. I'm just, your thoughts on that. What's your philosophy there? - There is truth of space is hard, right? It is a tough industry, it's unforgiving, but I think where we've gotten comfortable is that when you back the best people and your vision and mission is aligned, you can get through any hard challenge, right? It's hard, but it's also a really rewarding industry, right? We are mission critical to some of the hardest national security problems. We try to convince people, and it's easier now, space is a critical infrastructure for how we live our everyday lives, right? And if we don't have that access, then your life as you know it changes dramatically. We are focused on finding people who want to be in this industry and want to drive the mission. And how we think about risk and our tolerance. Like we want to take both bets. We're taking both bets because we believe we know what it takes and we know where the best place is to invest capital and we will have better insights than maybe our other competitors in investing. We could take seemingly more bolder bets, but we believe our models are better, right? We believe that these seemingly big risks are warranted based on the upside. And I think that's a differentiation that we have. - I'm so curious given what you're out there seeing, what you're interested in. Like what's got you really jazzed right now with what's happening in the space markets? 'Cause there's pretty much every day, like somebody's coming out of stealth, something really cool is happening. Like what's got you really like, oh yeah, that's where I'm going. - Well, we invested a life cycle, which really the growth to later stage, right? So we're seeing all these great companies that were funded a few years ago when a pretty tough financing market, they were able to, they were sort of the, they had to be really special, right? They had a really special founder, really special vision. And now we're seeing those companies start to raise series B, series C rounds. And that's a point where we get invest in those companies. And they tend to be in areas that are focused on national security, right? Where they are solving unique problems for the US government. They tend to have some relevance to the golden dome. And that's like the hot thing in the press. - It makes sense though. You know what I mean, it makes sense. I mean, it's just logical honestly. Yeah, yeah. And space is gonna have a huge role in that ecosystem. I think a lot of that is a little bit of existing programs that are going to be used for that system. And then there's gonna be some new technologies that are gonna be utilized. And there's a lot of companies that were sort of, again, founded a few years ago that are now positioned to win big pieces of that pie. And I think that's where we can step in and provide that capital needed to go scale up for that opportunity. That's what we think we're our special sources. Like, hey, you got part of market fit. You've got this great customer. But do you really know how to scale? Can you deliver dozens of systems a month to the customer? A lot of these companies don't know how to do that, right? And it's different than like the traditional Silicon Valley venture backed companies where they're used to building software. And that's really easy to scale software development. - Yeah, sure is. - Scaling hardware development. - Yeah. - Completely different thing. And it's a different skill set. A lot of these founders don't have, that's where we've been able to find a lot of success. And then the new new stuff, I'm really excited about like these new crop of companies come up a lot of like, you're seeing companies talk about how do we utilize the power from the sun for unique applications and power on a terrestrial. I think that those are some really, I think really interesting ideas. And it's good to see like mainstream venture capitalists kind of get really excited about space companies. I think that's different than what we've seen in the last five years. I think that's really, that trend has changed where it's space and the defense are kind of some of the best ideas from, you know, from some of these venture capitalists. So I think, yeah, really excited about what's happening in the market. - You mentioned, I think one of your portfolio companies is Big Bear.ai, they're a fascinating company. That made me think a little bit about, you know, AI being the thing that everyone's going, okay, but what's real and what's not. And now Big Bear is doing something really cool. So like what, how do you discern? I mean, they're doing something really legit and really important. - Yeah, no, it's, I think we start with like, are these people that are in this company, are they real domain experts? Right? Cause I think we're not going to compete against open AI, Google, and Thropic. Like, that's just not, they're models, or they're going to be way ahead of anything that we could ever achieve. So it's really about how do you apply that great technology and powerful technology to the actual domain problems. And that happens from people who have decades of experience within that domain and that problem set. And they say, okay, I see, I can hear the technologist tell me about what AI can do for me. And then I can apply it to that mission. And that's where we see the opportunity. It's really about those people who can then kind of translate that to an actual solution to a problem. And there's some great use cases out there. You know, it's accelerating. Cause that's kind of like, I would say like next five years, maybe the next like two years, you're going to see some really interesting emerging companies come out of this. Like, yeah, how do we, these applications, how do we build the killer apps based on these, these LLMs that can truly drive solutions for these problems within space. And I, some of our companies are doing that. Like Big Bear is doing some of that. Redwire Space is also doing that on the, on some of the space situational awareness in space. - Yeah, oh yeah. - Where I work aside. Where again, the ability to use these powerful AI tools to solve problems that, you know, we've been trying to figure out for a long time. That'll happen. - Kirk, I've been really enjoying this. I've learned a lot from you. So thank you. If there's anything that you wanted to mention as sort of a closeout for the audience, it's open for you. - Yeah. No, like I appreciate you having me on. I mean, I love talking about national security. I love talking about space. I think the time is now for private capital to invest in this sector. I think it's a once in a generation opportunity. It's a couple trillion dollar market in 10 years. And there's a tremendous growth opportunity. And I'm betting my career on it. And I think it's a tremendous mission. (upbeat music) - We'll be right back. (air whooshing) Welcome back. Starting this summer, anywhere in the world, when you hear that Netflix to-do-m sound, you should also think NASA. Soon, not exactly precisely when, but NASA says soon, you'll be able to stream NASA plus programming directly on the world's biggest streaming platform. Yep, that would be Netflix. And that means rocket launches, spacewalks, Earthviews from the ISS, and mission coverage will just be a tap, mouse click, or TV click or press away for Netflix's 700 million global users. This news is part of NASA's ongoing push to reach audiences wherever they are, whether that's a launch pad in Florida or a phone in your hand, literally anywhere. And don't fret if you already have the NASA plus app, and I count myself as one of those people, it's not going anywhere. It'll still be free and ad-free. So yes, the next time you're scrolling past true crime documentaries and cooking shows or maybe catching up on Squid Game or whatnot, maybe a rocket launch or a Mars rover roving past might also catch your eye. And maybe when the kiddos are looking for a Cocoa Mellon, they'll opt for a spacewalk instead. Who knows what this move could inspire? (upbeat music) And that's it for T-Minus, brought to you by M2K Cyberwire. We'd love to know what you think of our podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like our show, please share our rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. We're proud that N2K 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 helps space and cybersecurity professionals grow, learn and stay informed. As the nexus for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, technology and ideas, shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how at N2K.com. N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Tre Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. (upbeat music) - T-minus. (upbeat music) (water splashing) [BLANK_AUDIO]
