Today is July 17th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] >> T-minus. >> 22nd to LLS, Piedras. >> Open aboard. >> Right side. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Five. >> The ISS National Lab in collaboration with global investors has selected six start-ups to join the inaugural Orbital Edge Accelerator Program. >> Four. >> SpaceX is reportedly developing a new program called Starfall to develop commercial products in space. >> Three. >> Celestial has been selected by Spaceworks for a direct-to-phase two contract and the amount of $1.2 million. >> Two. >> Planet Labs has announced a multi-year contract expansion with the Instituto Geográfico Augustin Kodazi. >> One. >> SES has completed the acquisition of IntelSat. >> Zero zero. [MUSIC] >> And today's guest is Jacob Oakley, Space Lead for the Defcon Aerospace Village. We discussed the intersection of space and cybersecurity, the challenges and opportunities there, and how the two fields can better understand each other for a more secure future in space, so stay with us for more on that after today's headlines. [MUSIC] >> It is Thursday. Thanks for joining me. Let's dive in. We've talked a lot about sovereign capabilities on this show lately and the move away from reliance on the United States products and services, and there's no better example of that lately than with the Europeans. They're working to build up their own capabilities to rival Starlink and Amazon's Project Kuiper, the latter launched more satellites to Leo this week, in fact. U-TelSat has received funding from France and the Brits over the last month, and the other satellite communications powerhouse of Luxembourg's SES has positioned itself to grow quickly. Now, SES has just completed the acquisition of IntelSat. The purchase has created an expanded fleet of 120 satellites across two orbits, and according to a press release from SES, the newly combined company will leverage its skilled teams with deep vertical expertise to deliver integrated multi-orbit, multi-band satellite and connectivity solutions to businesses and governments around the world. The company's assets and networks, once fully integrated, will put SES in a strong competitive position to better serve the evolving needs of its customers, including governments, aviation, maritime and media across the globe. SES remains headquartered in Luxembourg and is publicly listed on the Paris and Luxembourg stock exchanges, while maintaining a significant presence in the United States with its North American main office in McLean, Virginia. The company says it expects to deliver a total net present value of 2.4 billion euros. Planet Labs has announced a multi-year contract expansion with the Instituto Geografico Augustine Codasi, or IGAC, in partnership with geospatial intelligence partner Procalculo. IGAC is the governmental entity in Colombia responsible for generating, managing and disseminating geographic and cartographic data. With this contract, IGAC will continue leveraging Planet's technology for national land management, now incorporating the Planet Insights platform and the AI-powered Change Detection Service for roads and buildings. These tools will enhance analysis and decision-making in urban planning, infrastructure and environmental management. IGAC says it's strengthening its ability to enforce regulations, identify and monitor risks such as floods and landslides, and carry out land management efforts throughout Colombia. Celestial has been selected by Spaceworks for a Direct to Phase II contract to develop a novel, fast-to-manufacture multi-orbital solar array wing concept for small satellites. The $1.2 million award enables Celestial to optimize its low-mass, radiation-hardened, silicon solar cells and solar power modules for fast integration and assembly, develop novel module electrical interconnectors, and build and test a complete solar array wing. The project will culminate in a two-week production sprint to manufacture one kilowatt of solar cells and modules, followed by a two-week solar array assembly and integration run, with the goal of demonstrating that a complete solar array wing can be manufactured in only one month's time. SpaceX is reportedly developing a new program called Starfall to develop commercial products in space. According to a report from Bloomberg, Starfall will be used on Starship to develop products such as pharmaceutical components in space in small, uncrewed capsules. The Starship mega rocket would then deploy the capsules, which would then spend time in orbit before re-entering the atmosphere, where they could then be recovered back on Earth. The program is highly reliant on the operational ability of Starship, which has experienced a string of explosive failures over its last several test flights. Still, the SpaceX program is in the early stages of development, and plans could always change. The International Space Station National Laboratory in collaboration with global investors has selected six startups to join the inaugural Orbital Edge Accelerator Program. The ISS National Labs Orbital Edge Accelerator aims to unlock discoveries that benefit humanity and drive new commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. Calmoris, Magma Space, Melogen Labs, Ulfera, Quantum Cool, and Raptor Dynamics were all chosen through a highly competitive application process. Each organization will receive up to $500,000, along with mentorship and the opportunity to launch an ISS National Lab-sponsored investigation. Congratulations to all! And that concludes today's headlines. And 2K Senior Producer, Alice Carruth joins us now for a look into what other stories we're keeping an eye on. I've only got one more story for you today, Maria. I've added the additional link to the selected reading section of today's show notes. It's an update on Star Labs progress. That's one of the commercial space stations we hope to see in Leo in the coming years. Simply click on the link and find the NASA blog and its latest master. And as a reminder, those links can also be found on our website, space.ntuk.com. And a quick programming note, my friends. I will be away on vacation starting tomorrow, and will be back on the mic on July 29th. In the meantime, you will be in the great care of T-Minus Producer Alice Karuth while I am away. 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 would love to hear from you. Send us an email at space@ntuk.com or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals. [Music] Securing our assets in space is a pressing subject now more than ever. And I spoke to space cybersecurity expert Jacob Oakley about that intersection of space and cybersecurity, the challenges and opportunities there, and how these two fields can better understand each other for a more secure future. I'm the company called SIGS-Gen, where I'm the technical director for the company and help with our strategic initiatives at the con intersection of space and cyber. I've been doing largely off-methode security for about 20 years now. I started out in Marine Corps of Singles Intelligence and then transitioned into the commercial world where I was doing red TV and contesting that sort of thing. Most recently for the past five or six years supporting the aerospace community and their partners. I am a high-joct quality faculty at Emory Rital University where I write and teach space tower courses for their master's programs. I'm a steering committee member of the IEEE Space Systems, our Secure Standard Working Group, and I serve as the space lead for the aerospace village. Awesome. Jacob, you are the guy I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time. I'm just curious about the intersection of space and cyber. Having come from the cyber world and now moving into the space world, I've seen sort of a weird resistance to cyber security. The question that comes up to me is why? It's so important. What's the deal? Walk me through this. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I guess we'll start with maybe the most important one first. The aerospace community is largely made up of engineers, all different kinds of engineers like RF engineers, electrical engineers, aerospace engineers, so on and so forth. The thing about engineers is even if it's different disciplines, I still have a really good idea of that person's technical capabilities, what kind of education they went through, and their ability to apply their craft in terms of mathematics and engineering pedigree. Cyber, that's not so much the case. Cyber has kind of been this term that has been used to whitewash much of what we used to maybe consider the IT industry and the security industry and some other things. I think you could really look at the forming of cybercom, being to blame for that. If you look back at Google search history of how popular a term is, cyber and cybersecurity didn't really become a search term until about 2010, which is when all of that happened. So you have the government allocating a ton of funds to cyber initiatives because we've realized this is a problem. You have a bunch of government organizations who haven't been able to get funding for things like IT infrastructure or help desk support, compliance. And so they go, "Oh, if I just change this to a cyber analyst instead of a compliance analyst, suddenly I can access this funding." And so you have the government customer base does that, and then you have the vendor based respond with, "Oh, I'll gladly sell you some buckets of cyber or let me slap a cyber sticker on this IT facility." And so what that leads to is engineer to engineer, but for different disciplines, they kind of have an understanding of what that person is and what their experience is. But if you introduce yourself, "Hey, I'm a cybersecurity professional," well, they have no idea what they are. You're a red team, or are you a help desk person? You do like routing infrastructure, and you do cloud stuff, right? And so there's kind of an inherent mistrust there. The engineers kind of look at it like, "Well, I don't even know what your minimum standard or low bar is to become a cybersecurity professional, so I'm going to be resistant to the things you're going to tell me." And I think you add that to the fact that I've kind of noticed two things as I've worked with aerospace. You know, usually as a hacker, I'm the most risk averse person in a conversation, right? If I'm talking with a CEO, I'm trying to tell them to worry more about the problems they have and that they need to fix them. Well, tell an aerospace person they need to worry more about their system getting hacked. They're like, "Hey, buddy, I just hope this thing wakes up in space," right? Like, "I'm worried about it getting hacked." It might be the 30th most scary thing on my list. And then the other is that usually as a hacker, right, as a bread team or a contest or something like that, like, I'm usually the most technical person in the conversation. If I'm talking to a CISO or a CEO, right, like, I'm giving technical facts about my profession to convince them to make some change. When you run into, you know, an electrical engineer, for instance, right, they're going to go, "Hey, man, I know how the computer actually works. So if you're going to give me advice on how to make this thing more secure, I'm going to ask you seven times if you're sure or make you prove it to me." Also because of that other talk about it. There's also, within the space cyber world, there's maybe not a well-understood sort of common ground of key events that have happened or even sort of a common knowledge set that everyone who is in the space cyber world should have to speak maybe the same language or at least understand key events. What do you think about that idea? I think we could answer that two different ways, right? The common ground aspect suffers from some of the stuff we've already discussed, right? Maybe exacerbated by the fact that, like, engineering is sort of like a finite game. There's rules and there's a timeline and I know who the other people are playing are. Like, an engineer is handed a task like, "Hey, go build this engine that can go this fast with this much fuel and x, y, z and solve for that and you've done a successful job in engineering," right? Cybersecurity is more like an infinite game. You're just trying to keep playing. You want to keep your organization running despite the cyber threats you face. The adversaries can come and go. They don't have any rules. There's no timelines, right? And so the cybersecurity professional has to approach their problems that way and the engineering side of the house approaches their problem with a very finite mindset. And what you have a lot in organizations is, "Well, I've got an electrical engineer who knows how to program, so I'm just going to have that person do my cyber something." Well, they're going to approach the cyber problem with a finite mindset. And when you do that, when you try to apply finite solutions to an infinite problem, you have like what happens to the US and Vietnam and Afghanistan, right? The adversary is just trying to keep playing and eventually we give up trying to win and we leave. Right? So, but from a commonality of like, "What is like the technical position we should share together to approach these problems?" I think that gets really conflated because of how like the aerospace industry is really, really good at dealing with risk, right? And redundancies and those are things they've done with for a very long time. And they try to sort of fit the cyber, you know, square peg in that round hole. So what's the path forward? I just wonder how this is quite a bridge to gap or gap to bridge rather. How do we get, how do we go? I think you can look at it in two ways, right? One is like what are the solutions we provide to help solve that problem? And the other is like, how do we start addressing the cultural issue? I think the cultural issue really has to come first because you have to get people to listen or you'll allow them to implement cybersecurity somewhere. The best path forward there honestly is you have to treat cybersecurity as one of the engineering disciplines required in making a spacecraft, right? And so when a program stands up to begin design and then develop a space system, oftentimes the end is when they do a cyber compliance check where they do a third party assessment and they look at you're good or you're not. But really having, you know, there's weekly meetings when you're building a space program, if not more often where you have the RF engineer and the mechanical engineer and aerospace engineer, they're all present, they're all discussing that what state the space vehicle is in its design or development, right? And what's changed and how that's going to affect everybody else. Having cybersecurity representation in those meetings allows for cyber requirements to be just like thermal requirements of the space vehicle and it'll get developed along the way accordingly. Because like what usually happens is, you know, two years into this thing, they've already ordered their software defined radios and then the cyber person's like, hey, those use a OS that's vulnerable and not like, well, it takes me 12 months to reorder that part and listen along to Windows. So we're just going to put it up there. If you get the cyber person there, when you were making the decisions about the software defined radios, well, they could ask you what are you looking at and go look at the operating systems that come with them and then you kind of head that off a much really on in the design development process. So culturally, I think it's really getting the aerospace community to appreciate cybersecurity as just one of the other engineering things that now has to go into building and operating spacecraft. From the solutions perspective, it's also an uphill battle because there is a huge obsession with flight heritage, right? Like you have a radio that's 10 times faster, better, cheaper, and they'd gladly pay 100 times the price for something that's already flown before. And so when you think about what that means for the vendor base, it's like, well, our vendor's going to go out on a limb and space rate their cybersecurity solution, hoping somebody's going to buy it. Right? Like I think that might have to get flipped on its head a little bit where the aerospace community reaches out a little bit to the cyber side and says, how do we prove out some of this stuff so it can be more widely accepted? I can't help but wonder about specialized knowledge and the broad swath of cybersecurity professionals that we have out there. I would imagine working with space systems is a very specialized skill set that how does one even acquire that knowledge, especially if you're already maybe starting out in your career and you go, I want to work in space. What do we point people to? Yeah, it's tough. The investment and skill set is going to be higher for space and you have a much smaller subset of customers to go sell that service to. So the value proposition of getting the cybersecurity side to invest in developing those skills is really not going to be there. Find me the cyber person that doesn't like Star Wars or Star Trek or something else. So there's, there's, there's, there's interest there really. Yeah. I mean, for instance, people that want to do this, I think it's very difficult. The other question I get asked is, what would you rather take? Would you rather take like an electrical engineer who's working on aerospace programs and teach him how to be a hacker or teach a hacker, right? And it's, well, if you're forcing me to have that function, I'm going to take the aerospace person because that's the harder skills to go get, right? If you, if you have a person from the aerospace community who's an engineer, but who's willing to think outside the box and with that into the mindset and is curious like a hacker, like that's probably not that anyone would be more qualified than the other, but that's going to take less of an investment to turn them into a cyber professional than the converse. We'll be right back. Welcome back. I live pretty close to Lexington, Massachusetts, which is the place where the US Revolutionary War began 250 years ago with what's been called the shot heard around the world. Well, 50 years ago, great rivals met not in battle, but in orbit with the handshake scene around the world. It was the height of the US USSR Cold War and on July 15th, 1975, an American Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Soyuz capsule did a rendezvous and docked together, a technical feat in and of itself really. And when the American astronauts knocked on the hatch of the Soviet capsule, the cosmonaut on the other side responded, "Who's there?" A sense of humor is required on orbit truly. And when the hatch opened on this very first joint flight in space, the crews met and they shook hands. The Apollo Soyuz mission showed the world that even bitter rivals could cooperate in space and that first ever international crew docking paved the way for decades of collaboration, including the International Space Station that we have today. Fast forward 50 years now, thanks to that spirit of cooperation from the remarkable Apollo Soyuz mission, we've got a lot of cool missions in space and space science is one of them, including unlocking secrets from the very beginning of planetary life. Researchers recently using both the Webb telescope and Europe's ALMA array have just spotted rocky planet formation happening in real time. Around a baby star called Hopps 315 1300 light years away, scientists found mineral-rich dust grains clumping together. And when mineral-rich dust grains love each other very much, sometimes a baby planet can happen. We're seeing the first building blocks of a rocky world like our own here and it is the earliest stage of planet formation that we have ever seen. So from an orbital handshake in 1975 to watching baby planets come into our universe, international cooperation in space continues to open up brand new worlds for us all. Long may it continue. And that's T-minus 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 this rapidly changing space industry of ours. 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 next is 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 are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Tre Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I'm your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [MUSIC]
