Reduce, reuse and recycle all things space.

Today is July 8th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] >> T-minus. >> 22nd to LOS, T-dris. >> Open aboard. >> Right side open. >> T-minus. >> T-minus. >> T-minus. >> T-minus. >> T-minus. >> Skynopy and Space Locker joining forces for upcoming space as a service mission. >> T-minus. >> The UK kicks off a 20 million pound tender to clean up orbital debris. Maxar secures 205 million US dollars in contracts to boost sovereign space capabilities across the Middle East and Africa. China makes a leap in orbital reusability, testing in space refueling. US space industry leaders rally to save the TRAX program and NASA's science mission budget, as proposed budget cuts loom. [MUSIC] And today's guest is Dr. Dureet Denoville, Executive Director of the Translational Research Institute for Space Health. [MUSIC] >> Thank you for joining me on this Tuesday. Let's get into today's Intel Briefing. We're starting our show today with two urgent calls to action coming from within the space industry in the United States regarding potential massive budget cuts to key US space programs. So yes, the proposed cuts are not used to be clear. They have been known officially since the release of the White House's 2026 budget proposal in early May of this year, but they are not at all final. And yes, for listeners outside of the United States, while these next two items are indeed very US-centric, the outcomes could have massive implications for international geopolitics and space science and industry around the world. And so the news today is that major US space science and industry coalitions are rallying to express their objection to the proposed cuts. Let's take a look at two of those groups. First up is a joint letter sent to the US Senate committee that oversees NOAA regarding the future of the traffic coordination system for space, also known as TRAX. That letter was signed by more than 450 space companies, including SpaceX and Amazon's Project Kuiper. And these signatories are urging US lawmakers not to defund the federal office designed to prevent satellite collisions. The letter comes also just a day after multiple professional aerospace organizations, including the AIA, AIAA, SIA, and the Commercial Space Federation, also expressed their dismay about TRAX's potential fate. As we've recently shared with you, the proposed cuts coming to TRAX are massive. And TRAX, to refresh your memory, is a satellite traffic coordination system developed by NOAA's Office of Space Commerce. Now the White House's proposed 2026 budget would slash the office's funding by 84%, and that would effectively end the TRAX program. Now, given the 12,000 active satellites orbiting the Earth and counting, not to mention the growing space debris problem, TRAX is seen as a much needed air traffic control for space, and it would keep government and commercial missions safe, if not safer. Now the companies that signed this letter to the Senate committee warned that without TRAX, satellite operators could face greater risks and could even push operations overseas. And in an interview with Reuters, Audrey Schaefer, who is the vice president of strategy and policy at Slingshot Aerospace, put it bluntly, "If the United States doesn't bring a system to the table, it forfeits its role in shaping global standards." For now, TRAX remains in pilot testing with a full rollout planned for 2026. But without congressional support, that future is uncertain. So that is the first group regarding budget cuts that we wanted to highlight today. The second group is regarding a proposed 47% cut to NASA's science program, which would cut a third of NASA's science portfolio, including 41 missions already active or in development. It would also cut NASA's workforce by a third, predominantly affecting both Goddard and JPL. In keeping in mind that JPL is already facing significant hardships, a cut of this level would put it potentially at existential risk. Space Science Advocacy Group, the Planetary Society, is calling the proposed cuts to NASA science as a "extinction-level event that would usher in a functional dark age for NASA science." And so, a recent joint letter to the House Appropriations Committee to oppose these cuts has a heck of a headline. It is signed by every living former head of NASA's science programs. The seven former associate administrators of NASA's science mission directorate wrote that such deep cuts would "severally damage a peerless and immensely capable engineering and scientific workforce and put to waste billions of taxpayer investments." The joint letter also highlights how NASA science missions have inspired generations, trained future leaders, and driven technological breakthroughs that ripple across the economy and national security. And the signatories also describe how projects like Hubble, JWST, and Mars rover missions not only expanded human knowledge but also delivered measurable returns through innovation in materials, algorithms, and advanced engineering. Using these programs, they argue, would erase those gains and fracture the pipeline of skilled scientists and engineers. And the letter also frames potential cuts as a strategic error at a time when China is rapidly advancing its own space science efforts, including missions to Neptune, Mars sample returns, and climate monitoring. So, when we take a step back and look at both the proposed cuts to both TRAX and NASA science, the bottom line from all of these joint statements is this. Cutting these programs are not just budget math decisions. They are definitive statements about whether or not the United States wants to stay a global leader in science and innovation, or if it will cede that ground to others. And before we move on to our next story, a point of clarification on timelines here, because this stuff is honestly confusing. These budget cut items are separate from the tax and spending bill that was signed last week known as the Big Beautiful Bill, which did have some provisions for NASA in there, but that money largely focuses on human spaceflight missions, not science missions. Note that discussions and negotiations about the NOAA TRAX program and NASA science budgets are currently ongoing. And of course, we will keep you posted on all developments. Moving on now to other stories. China is pushing the frontier of in-space reusability. According to a news update posted by Ars Technica, reports indicate that Chinese researchers have successfully demonstrated a new type of spacecraft reuse involving orbital refueling and life extension technologies. We should note that unlike booster reusability pioneered by SpaceX, this approach focuses on extending the operational lifespan of satellites and space vehicles by refueling them in orbit. And if this demonstration was successful, it could pave the way for China to reduce their satellite replacement costs, increase mission flexibility, and enable more complex operations such as space-based manufacturing or persistent surveillance. It is definitely a milestone achievement for them to be sure. And I should note that we will have insights on what's happening on orbit from open-source intelligence coming monthly to T-minus in an upcoming segment that we'll be launching very soon, so keep an ear out for more news on that shortly. Up, Maxar has secured $205 million in strategic contracts to expand sovereign space capabilities across the Middle East and Africa. The deals cover Earth observation satellites, ground infrastructure, and advanced geospatial analytics. Maxar says these agreements will help regional governments enhance national security, economic development, and environmental monitoring. For example, the contracts include delivery of satellite systems and training for local operators to build sovereign Earth observation programs. Maxar's president of international, Larry Flynn, highlighted that these programs will enable partners to control their own space assets and data, strengthening resilience against geopolitical risks. Moving over to the UK now, and the United Kingdom is taking concrete steps to clean up space debris. This week, the UK Space Agency launched a 20 million pound tender for a national active debris removal mission, and the goal is to remove two defunct UK-licensed satellites from low Earth orbit by 2026. Companies bidding for the tender will design and execute a demonstration mission, showcasing technologies to capture and de-orbit safely. And finally, let's head on over to France, and two French space startups are teaming up to make space more accessible, connected, and sustainable. SkyNapy and SpaceLocker announced their partnership at France's Assiste du Nou Space this week. SpaceLocker, which is known for its plug-and-play, SpaceUSB port orbital hosting containers, has chosen SkyNapy to provide ground connectivity for its upcoming Out-of-the-Box mission in February 2026, which will be the company's first fully operated satellite. SpaceLocker enables multiple customers to share a single satellite, cutting costs and reducing orbital clutter. And meanwhile, SkyNapy offers what they call an Airbnb for ground stations, simplifying data downlink and spacecraft control through its global high throughput antenna network. And that is it for today's Intel Briefing for you. We've got lots more reading for you in our show notes, which you can always find in your podcast app or on our website, which is space.ntuk.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 please 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 so much for your support. It means a lot to me. For today's chat, we're running the first part of my conversation with Dr. Daripe DeNoviel. She is the Executive Director of the Translational Research Institute for Space Health, and she joined me to tell me more about her work, including experiments with Axiom Space to the International Space Station. I am an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine in the Center for Space Medicine, but I also have an appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Biology. And how I ended up doing space health is one of these funny things that happens to you, and I say this to a lot of young people. You just never know when an opportunity comes up. You've never imagined you would end up where you are, and yet it opens up a world that you are just like so happy in, and it's just a perfect fit, and it is the most amazing field to be in, because for me, I grew up watching Star Trek. It got me thinking about what's out there, and just really being curious about the world. But actually, my first love wasn't so much space, but it was biology, and just the amazing ability of living things to adapt to an environment. So I'm a scuba diver too, and I'll go down and I'll look at this world into there and how the creatures that evolve down there just are perfectly adapted to their environment. And us as human beings, we're adapted to this environment, and animals adapt to their own environment, and then when there's a massive change in the environment, we adapt to that as well. And so to me, spaceflight is so amazing because it's a unique environment. And it has all these stressors on living things, but yet we are so miraculous that we adapt to it. And for example, we lose bone because we don't need bone in space. It's zero G. That makes perfect sense. And so the only problem with losing bone in space is when you come back to Earth and you need it again. If you stayed in space, it would be fine to lose bone, right? When you think about life and its adaptation in the environment, to me, there's no better place to study our own biology and how our body functions. I just think about how miraculous it is that we can live and survive in a hostile environment through engineering and our own ingenuity. I have the distinct honor of leading a NASA-funded consortium of Baylor College of Medicine here in Houston with institutions on the East Coast and West Coast, so MIT and Caltech. So we have scientists that are working on essentially all three coasts, East Coast, West Coast, Gulf Coast. And our job is to partner with NASA and look and see where they are not having the reach into the innovation communities that they need to solve the big challenges of keeping humans healthy, not just in lower orbit, but on a Mars mission, which is a whole different level. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. I love how many of us got inspired by all the different iterations of Star Trek. And this job that comes up so often, I'm a Trekkie too, so I just love that. It just makes me so happy. I think when I talk to people who are not really familiar with space in general and they hear what's going on in the news about going to Mars and such, I often tell them, "Maybe we've got the rocket side of things, more or less maybe figured out, but the human biology side, the human machine, there's so much we still don't know." So I'm always fascinated talking to experts like yourself about the kind of research that we're doing and what we're still learning because the human machine truly is adaptable at it is. There's so many mysteries there. And I love that also your scuba diver because that also, I often hear that about our ocean world and space having many interesting parallels. That's so many cool parallels on what you said. I just love that. So thank you. I got all my neurons firing on that one. The acronym is Trish, right, as if I remember correctly. Tell me a bit about that. Trish stands for Translational Research Institute for Space Health and translational research, it's taking understanding, fundamental understandings and turning it into an operational impactful decision. And actually, I looked at one of your previous podcasts just a couple of days ago, you released a Turning Data into Decision. That's translation. That's translation. That's taking a fundamental piece of information and actually making it actionable. That's our job. I'm working for an operational organization where they actually have to take the insights that we make about the human body and translate it into how to keep people healthy and safe and performing at their best. And that's very tricky. A lot of people haven't been able to do that. You can collect all the data in the world, but if it's not, eventually go to translate into, okay, here's how we take care of this person so that they perform better, or they're able to do what they need to do, or we don't have to scrub the CO2 quite as much, or they can have less protein or more protein, or they should exercise longer. If we don't translate that into real operational decisions, then data's not worth anything. So, to me, the translational piece is critical, and it depends on a couple things. We have been keeping people healthy and low-earth orbit for a really long time. We know how to do it. However, Nasa has done a lot of screening of people before they go. And if you have a major health condition, they're going to limit your exposure, their might even limit you from going to space. And so, the reason we have kept people healthy for so long, one of which is, number one, we've screened out a lot of bad things. The stressors of spaceflight are such that you need to get your body in the best shape as possible. Now, with opening up the lower-thorbit to everybody, which I love that, with AX4, it's the fourth private mission going up, you're going to start to send people who have different medical conditions. And so, how their body responds to space is a little bit different than a NASA astronaut. So, we're learning about how the body adapts in this environment, a body that is maybe a little different than the previous bodies that have gone to space. That's what's so exciting about these AX3 missions is that we get to look at the variety of humans. And to me, in biology, you learn more things at the extremes. When you look at the extremes where people are actually putting their bodies at an extreme situation, that's when you learn a lot more about the physiology. Yeah, because I can see, historically, we wanted to sort of eliminate as many variables as possible on the human side of things. I think most of us are like, yeah, very few of us are perfect NASA specimens. So, how is this going to work? So, you are one of the people working on that. This is how that's going to work. We're going to figure that out. Fascinating problem to be to untangle. Where does one even start with this? Right. The thing that we worry about most, like for example, the AX3 mission is space motion sickness. Even astronauts who have been to space multiple times do get space motion sickness. This is so useful about these short duration crews that are non-NASA astronauts because we do what's called increasing the N. We're looking at more humans, more variety of the Ns. The N is in the sample size. The sample size, that's right. The N, thank you for helping me clarify that. I'm remembering N from my blog. Yeah, exactly. Old statistics back in your biology days. We can look to see how people respond to space motion sickness. So that's actually one of the studies that we're doing on the AX3 and 4 flight along with all the previous private missions that have gone up. We've now collected, gosh, over 40 data sets from 40 individuals who have gone on different private missions in our database. So what we're looking for is can we predict who's going to be sick? Here's why. If you're a NASA astronaut, you can be trained, but you still get sick. The way NASA treats is they give you medication. The problem, I don't know if you've ever taken medication for motion sickness. It makes you groggy. They have to take a fairly high dose to overcome the space motion sickness, which means they're not going to be at their peak performance to do a critical activity. Why are we worried about this? If we're going back to the moon and an astronaut is experiencing the change in the gravitational forces with the misalignment in their sensory system and feeling nauseous, for example, and they have to perform. They can't just sit around and hope that they feel better. Wait for it to feel better. Right. Or they're having to medicate themselves to a point where they're not able to perform at their peak because they're groggy. That's a problem for operations. So me, as an operationally focused researcher, what we did with the Axiom crew, for example, we're testing different ways to predict. The reason that prediction is important, number one, we can then set up the schedule. Okay, if we know you're going to be sick, but this guy's going to be okay. This is the guy that's going to do the robotic operation or the landing. And this is the guy, even though he's the pilot, he's likely to get sick. So we are going to give him a day or two before his stuff starts to kick in. So that's the operational relevance. Another experiment that we're doing that is really quite interesting, even for Earth applications, is there's a condition called space flight associated neural ocular syndrome, sans per short. What happens is if you spend time in zero gravity, you have a fluid shift that occurs. Just fluids get redistributed. Right now, you're feeling all the forces and with gravity, everything gets pulled down towards your leg. You go into space, everything just gets redistributed. And what we're finding is that the majority of astronauts start to have almost an edema in the head. And what we've seen is that it affects the back of the eye, and we think that there's actually an increase in the pressure on the brain called intracranial pressure. We know on Earth, if patients have increased intracranial pressure, pressure on the brain, that can actually lead to some severe problems. We think that over a long period of time, if you have increased pressure on the brain and increased pressure on the eyes, we know that that can lead to loss of peripheral vision. We do see changes in vision in astronauts, which can be corrected with glasses. So now we've been studying this in astronauts. They've been up there for four months, six months, up to a year. They are developing this syndrome, but nobody's been up there longer than 14 months was the longest. So when we're thinking about a mission to Mars, a long stay in space, we do worry about what are the long-term effects. So with these short flights, we're actually looking at the changes in the eyes in these private individuals, the AXI emissions going into space. And we're seeing how the short exposure to space is actually changing the physiology and the anatomy to start to really tease out the early phases of adaptation to this different system. As I get to see the early phases, and I'm looking for what we call biomarkers, so signatures of a condition that may be developing over time in an astronaut, but I'm only seeing it much later. What's interesting about the opportunity with all these people going to space, let's look at the blood flow in all these people. And let's see what's different between somebody who does develop that condition versus somebody who doesn't. And the more people we have to study, the better we're going to get at getting those early indicators. That's fascinating. So yes, definitely increasing that sample size, that makes a lot of sense. And that is just part one of my chat with Dr. Doreet Donoviel. There's a lot more to this conversation that we didn't want you to miss, so we will be running the second part next week. Keep an ear out for that. We'll be right back. Welcome back. For our final story, I'm leaning a bit hard into my science fiction nerd side here today to implore you to read a comic book about space debris. Yes, please run, do not walk to your local bookstore, and please place a preorder for the outstanding science fiction comic book called Planetes. It's written like the word planets, but with an E added before the S, planetes. The original comic book by Makoto Yukimura was published in Japan between 1999 and 2004 and won all sorts of awards for excellence in science fiction. And it is being re-released in English translation in a deluxe two-book edition this year through Dark Horse Comics. My pitch for the story about Planetes is it takes place in 2075, a near future world of blue-collar workers collecting space junk. Commercial space travel is real in this world, and so is the risk of space junk causing deadly collisions. And the characters in the story are a real ramshackle bunch from all over the world, all of whom have their own dreams of space exploration, but it all collides with their day jobs, the really unglamorous work of cleaning up humanity's orbital mess. The comic book is beautifully drawn and was meticulously researched, and it is frankly kind of a prophetic read nowadays. Private commercial space missions, point-to-point commercial space travel, geopolitical tensions playing out in space, land grabs for Helium-3, Kessler syndrome. These were not terms often heard around Y2K, and yet these are core components of this story. I cannot recommend Planetes highly enough for the science fiction enjoyer in your life. Highly highly recommend. And that's T-Mine is brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. We'd love to know what you think of this 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 a 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, the technology, and the 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 Heltzman and Tre Hester with original music by Elliot Heltzman. 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. T-minus. [Loud thunder] [Loud thunder] [BLANK_AUDIO]