[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is August 7th, 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] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Five. NeoSpace Group has officially launched Saudi Arabia's first national Earth observation data program. Four. RAFT and SAIC have been awarded the US Air Force tactical exploitation of national capabilities Hope 2.0 contract. Three. Two. NASA has selected six companies to produce studies focused on lower cost ways to launch and deliver spacecraft of various sizes and forms to multiple difficult to reach orbits. Two. Intuitive Machines has signed a definitive agreement to acquire kinetics. One. Firefly Aerospace announced the pricing of its up-sized IPO, while MDA Space, Black Sky, and Red Wire reported their Q2 financial updates. [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Our guest today is Frank Chmenti, Director of Mechanical Satellite Solutions at Beyond Gravity. Frank joins our producer Alice Carruth to talk about satellite manufacturing on the Space Coast. Stay with us for more on that after today's Intel Briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] It is Thursday, everybody. Hope you're having a good one. Thanks for joining me. We've got a lot to unpack on today's show. So let's dive in, shall we? We're kicking off with a roundup of space financial updates. First up, Firefly Aerospace, which rang in the bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning as the company announced the pricing of its up-sized initial public offering. Firefly is offering 1,926,000 shares of its common stock at a price of $45 a share. In addition, Firefly has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase an additional nearly 3 million shares of its common stock at the IPO price, less underwriting and discounts and commissions, of course. The shares began trading on Nasdaq Global Market today, August 7th, under the ticker symbol Fly. And the offering is expected to close tomorrow, August 8th, subject to customary closing conditions. And speaking of financials, three big names in space filed second quarter financial updates in the last 24 hours. NDA Space reported revenues of $373.3 million, which is up 54% year over year. Earth Observation Company Black Sky reported revenue for the quarter was down to $22.2 million compared to $24.9 million in the second quarter of 2024. But it's not all bad news, as Black Sky says, their imagery and software analytical services grew to $18 million. And Redwire, which completed the acquisition of Edge Autonomy this quarter, reported revenues of $61.8 million for Q2. And you can dive into all of the line items on the full reports by following the links in our show notes. Staying with Acquisition News, Linerlander Company Intuitive Machines has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kinetics. And Kinetics is an Arizona-based aerospace company with more than 30 years of experience, delivering flight proven deep space navigation, systems engineering, ground software, and constellation mission design for the US government and international customers. Intuitive Machines says the acquisition strengthens the company's position as a vertically integrated provider of N-Systems for the moon, Mars, and beyond. The acquisition is expected to close prior to the end of 2025, subject to customary closing conditions. NASA has selected six companies to produce studies focused on lower cost ways to launch and deliver spacecraft of various sizes and forms to multiple difficult-to-reach orbits. The firm fixed price awards comprised nine studies with a maximum total value of approximately $1.4 million. The awardees are AeroScience and Technology, Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Impulse Space, Rocket Lab, and United Launch Services. Each of the six companies will deliver studies exploring future application of orbital transfer vehicles for NASA missions. NASA will use the findings to inform mission design, planning, and commercial launch acquisition strategies for risk-tolerant payloads. And the studies will be complete by mid-December. RAFT, in partnership with Science Applications International Corporation, better known as SAIC, has been awarded the US Air Force Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities, or 10CAP Hope 2.0 Award. And the award supports the Air Force's continued efforts to accelerate the operationalization of national space-based assets. The 10CAP mission is designed to bridge the long-standing gap between high-level space and intelligence systems and frontline warfighter operations. By leveraging existing national capabilities, including satellite-derived data and Title 50 resources, 10CAP seeks to enhance situational awareness, reduce decision latency, and enable more agile responses to dynamic threat environments. Under the 10CAP Hope 2.0 Award, RAFT will deliver a suite of enabling technologies that enhance the Air Force's ability to operationalize national space-based intelligence. Neospace Group, known as NSG, has officially launched Saudi Arabia's first national Earth observation data platform. And the platform is operated by UP42, a geospatial company recently acquired from Airbus. The platform provides users with access to high-resolution satellite imagery, geospatial analytics, and advanced AI-powered tools from more than 80 global providers. It serves as a centralized hub for strategic sectors, including energy, agriculture, urban planning, mining, and environmental management. NSG says it's built on secure local infrastructure and is aligned with Saudi data regulations. The platform supports the kingdom's Vision 2030 goals by accelerating digital transformation and enhancing national capabilities in space and geospatial technologies. [MUSIC PLAYING] And that concludes today's top five headlines. And this is where I bring in producer Alice Karuthenask. Hey, Alice. What other stories are we watching today? Hey, Maria. We've added four additional links in today's selected reading section. The first one is an update on the return of the SpaceX Crew 10. NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 6.05 PM on Friday, August the 8th. For the undocking of the agency's SpaceX Crew 10 mission from the International Space Station. At the time of recording today, we have a SpaceX launch of the KF02 mission. You can go back and watch that lift off. Air and space forces say that there's a tweak to the Space Force uniform. And finally, Pakistan and China are reportedly looking to build on their tech collaboration, which could include space. Lots to cover there. And as a reminder, you can find those links in the show notes, which are available on our website, space.ntuk.com. Hi, 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. Just send us an email at space@ntuk.com. Or send us a note through our websites so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals. [MUSIC PLAYING] Today's guest is Frank Cimenti, director of Mechanical Satellite Solutions at Beyond Gravity. Frank joins T-minus producer Alice Kuru to talk about satellite manufacturing on the Space Coast. Could you tell us a little bit about Beyond Gravity? How long it's been around for and what it is you guys do? Yeah, well, Beyond Gravity does a lot of things in space. We have-- there's two major divisions. There's launchers and satellites. We've been doing stuff for 50 years. Different names. Ruag was the longest name, and then it became Beyond Gravity. And we do stuff-- really cool big stuff, the fairings, the separation, the dispensers for the launching on the launcher side. Really impressive stuff. We have sites in the Champaign, Sweden, MN in Switzerland, and in Decatur, Alabama, and the US. And then in the satellite side, we do everything from the structures, which is what we do here, solarry drive mechanisms. We do onboard computers, antennas. We do thermal blankets. We do mechanisms, so thruster mechanisms, where it's kind of like the elbows of these arms, if you will, that kind of move the thrusters or the antennas around. We do a lot of different things. And I think it surprises all the different groups. You're like, wow, you do this, you do that. And you can almost build a satellite with everything that we do, and almost the rocket, not the boosters, all that really big, cool stuff. But all the other stuff we do. So it's an exciting place to work at. It really sounds it. And you guys are based in Space Coast, Florida, a very well known area in Titusville. And you mentioned that you are in a very specific division of what Beyond Gravity does. Could you tell us a little bit about what you cover in that area? So we have different business units within satellites. So we work within the mechanical satellite solutions, or MSS. And our vice president is Alexandria Hezla, a great leader, a lot of sites where she wants to take our business unit. And we have two sides within mechanical satellite solutions. We have the structure sides that build the plates or the structure of the satellite. And then we have the mechanism side that do the solar array drive mechanisms, basically the elbow of the solar array so it can move back and forth. And in Titusville, we do the structure side in the high cadence, primarily. So I don't know, it's probably almost 10 years ago, we, Beyond Gravity, started looking into ways to improve the panel manufacturing, to improve the time it takes, to improve the repeatability, the accuracy. And we came up with two different technologies. One was an insert, a special insert. We called it the great one. We work with academia to come up with this part that can be used to automatically place it. And the other was, it's called an automatic potting machine. So it's able to not only machine the panel, but to pick up this insert, fill it with glue, flip it over, and put it in the panel. So before that, Beyond Gravity, and today, all the rest of industry, uses something called a Sherlock where they have to manually take an insert. They have to drill a hole, put the insert in, fill it with a caulking gun, basically. Fill it up with glue, put it in a jig. It takes like 30 minutes. Our technology takes about a minute and a half. So that gives us a huge advantage to be able to reduce cost and lead time of being able to automate that. And this is Beyond Gravity's goal, is to get into that new space world where we have awesome engineers. We can design anything, build anything, but it's that repeatability to improve the operation, if you will, so that we can manufacture high cadence and get our products to our customers so they can get busy building their satellites and launching them up. Automated manufacturing always sounds very sci-fi to me. It's amazing to hear that it's already happening and it's not science fiction anymore. It's very much science reality. And you mentioned you work with Airbus. I know you work with a lot of other customers. Is there any recent projects you guys have been involved in that you'd like to tell us about? Oh, yeah. So we eventually-- we completed the OneWeb constellation, delivered everything, and then transitioned to slightly more complex assemblies that are being used. Some of the primes for SDA for Tronch1 and Tronch2 that is transported on the tracking layer. So similar to the OneWeb, but different, much larger, a little more complex, and very-- it's been a good program so far. I feel like satellite communications is really like the thing right now in space. Everyone's trying to get in there. You mentioned OneWeb. Obviously, we've seen lots of Starlink coming on board and now Kuiper as well. Are you finding anything that you're coming across as you're at the forefront of this part of the industry that is perhaps an issue that needs to be overcome in that area? Time to mark it. I think that for us, beyond gravity, there are a couple of different product lines. We were probably the first in Titusville with our technology to improve the lead time of structure panels, but also within our business unit, we do the solar-ride drive mechanisms. And we came up with a very dedicated line that could quickly turn these around to get, again, to our customer. For the launcher side, we came up with-- we're working with-- for a new customer and have this whole product line just for the dispensers, the fairings. And so they came up with a whole new way to make these things so we can get those products to the market faster. So there's a big focus. It's not just these one-offs anymore. It's how do we make-- now we've perfected this thing, this product. It could be a fairing or a structure panel. How do we mass produce it? So we bring down the cost, bring down the schedule so that our customers can, again, get to the market quicker, get the space quicker. And produce tons and tons more satellites into orbit, hopefully, because that's what we're all aiming for at the end of the day. Exactly, yeah. Looking forward, what is it you guys are working on coming up and then what's exciting you particularly in the satellite market right now? So I would say, for me personally, there's this new technology, this wireless energy, where they're taking the satellites, collecting solar power, and somehow mad-- I'll call it the black magic, right, and getting it down to Earth. So I think that's very exciting from a technology point of view. I think, again, I hate to repeat it, going back to how we manufacture things. I think the whole industry is being pushed to drive down costs and schedules are really important. And really, for this industry to thrive, to grow, we need to be able to meet these demands, meet the cost, to get that product up there so that eventually these end customers can provide their services at a reasonable time frame. No longer can we take 10 years to launch a satellite. It has to be within a year, two years, because we have to be quick as technology is racing forward. And there's a lot of competition out there, and we have to stay in front. You're right. There is a lot of competition, which I suppose gets me to ask the question, what is it beyond gravity's pitch? What is it that sets you apart from the other competition out there? I would say what sets us apart is our dedication to improving the process, improving the operation, so that we hear what does the customer need. How do we manufacture it in a time that meets the customer's demand and with a quality at the same time? So you can't just skip over quality just to rush it out the door. You have to still keep that same quality you've always given. And I think that that's something that we've shown, especially in our product line, that we've gone from, hey, we took this new technology, this new machine, a new insert that no one's ever used before, proved that it could withstand the mechanical and thermal stresses of the environment, got it into production. Of course, like any new machine, it had its issues. But because Beyond Gravity has a great team of engineers, great operations team, we're able to get all those issues quickly and turn it around so we were producing panels at the rate that our customer needed. Amazing. If you want the listeners to hear one thing about Beyond Gravity, what is the one thing you want them to come away with? So I would say-- and I find it the most one of our monitoring sayings, I guess, in the company, is we challenge the impossible. We want our people to be curious because we don't want the status quo. And I think that's how you get from that old space to that new space mentality is question why. Why are we doing this? How can we do it better? The passion, guaranteed from every different site, from the operators on the floor to our CO, there's a dedication, there's a passion about being in space and doing this work. And that gives you that energy because when you have those hard times, it's space. We have hard times. How do you get through it? And it's that dedication and passion that we have. And then, again, being a team, be together, how do we get through those hard times? Not only be passionate, but you need team members that are all pushing forward, finding new solutions to get through them. So I think that's what Beyond Gravity brings to the table. [MUSIC PLAYING] We will be right back. Welcome back. And we're finishing off today's news with a celebration. After 25 years at NASA, flying in four different spacecraft, accumulating 464 days in space, astronaut and test pilot Barry, better known as Butch, Wilmore, has retired. And you will definitely know Butch's name from the many times I have said it in the headlines over the last 12 months or so following the Starliner flight and the so-called stuck-in-space saga. Now, again, he was never stuck. But who would let that minor detail get in the way of a great headline? Wilmore is a decorated US Navy captain who has flown numerous tactical aircraft operationally while deploying aboard four aircraft carriers during peacetime and combat operations. He is a graduate of the US Naval Test Pilot School, where he went on to serve as a test pilot before NASA selected him to become an astronaut in 2000. And when asked on Fox News if he had always wanted to be an astronaut, he gave this answer. You know, I guess like any kid, I had the desire. You see all the launches. You know, wow, that's really cool. Like any, you know, probably 99% of the kids out there. But it wasn't something I took steps towards to achieve. But eventually joined the Navy, flew jets, got selected to test pilot program, kind of hit all those wickets that were required at the time to be selected as a space shuttle pilot. And I thought, I'm going to give that a shot. And NASA said, thank you very much, but we don't need you right now. So several applications later, I finally wore them down. So yeah. Well done. I can see that side of you. During his time at NASA, Wilmore completed three missions, launching aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, Roscosmos' Soyuz, and Boeing's Starliner to the International Space Station. And Wilmore returned to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. He conducted five spacewalks, totalling 32 hours total outside of the orbital lab. We do wish Butch the very best of luck in his retirement. And we are sure it's not the last we will hear or see of him in the space industry. [MUSIC PLAYING] And that is T-minus, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. We would 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 the 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 Peltzman and Tre Hester, with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpe as our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. See you next time. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]
