0581-T-Minus-20250811
[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is August 11, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-Minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-Minus, 22nd to LOS, T-Dress. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] Five. Shift-4 payments and Blue Origin are working together to enable customers to pay for their trips to space in cryptocurrency and stablecoins. Four. EdgeX has closed a 2.3 million euro seed funding round to accelerate commercialization of their next generation Edge AI computer for satellites. Three. Isro announces that it will be launching another American satellite in the coming months. Two. A Jie Long III carrier rocket launched the Gili Constellation Group 04 satellites from the coastal waters off of Shandong, China. One. NASA's SpaceX Crew 10 returns to Earth in a splashdown off the coast of California. [MUSIC PLAYING] And speaking with me today is our guest Patrick O'Neill, Public Affairs and Outreach Lead at the International Space Station US National Laboratory. And Patrick will be bringing us the monthly update on what's going on on the ISS later in the show. So stick around to find out more. [MUSIC PLAYING] It is Monday. I hope you're having a great one. Thanks for joining me today. And welcome home to NASA's SpaceX Crew 10. NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nicole Iers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov returned to Earth on Saturday. Crew 10 were the first crew to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California as part of NASA's commercial crew program. And during their mission, the crew members traveled nearly 62,795,205 miles and completed 2,368 orbits around the Earth, not too shabby. The Crew 10 mission was the first space flight for Iers and Peskov, and the second space flight for McClain and Onishi. The crew contributed hundreds of hours to scientific research, maintenance activities, and technology demonstrations. McClain, Iers, and Onishi completed investigations on plant and microalgae growth, examined how space radiation affects DNA sequences in plants, observed how microgravity changes human eye structure and cells in the body, and more. McClain and Iers also completed a space walk on May 1, relocating a communications antenna, beginning the installation of a mounting bracket for a future International Space Station rollout solar array, and other tasks. Stay with us later in the show to find out what's going on next on the ISS after today's headlines. And while we were watching the re-entry of the astronauts from space, China was sending up more satellites. A GA-long 3-carrier rocket carried the Gili Constellation Group 04 satellites from the coastal waters near Rijiao, Shandong, China. Among the spacecraft on board was a ZoomLion satellite, which claims to be the first of its kind in the global engineering machinery sector. ZoomLion Heavy Industry Science and Tech is a global manufacturer of high-end equipment with core businesses in engineering machinery, mining machinery, and agricultural machinery. The company says their satellite opens new possibilities for global service connectivity from polar regions and deserts to offshore platforms. ZoomLion says it also strengthens the integration of big data, IoT, AI, and satellite comms, supporting a next-generation service ecosystem that's capable of delivering smarter, faster, and greener solutions worldwide. It may be one to watch in our monthly integrity ISR segment in the future. And let's head on over to India now. And following the success of the NISAR mission, ISRO says it will be planning to launch another American satellite in the coming months. ISRO's chairman, V. Narayanan, says they plan to launch a 6,500-kilo communication satellite built by the Americans using an Indian launcher from Indian soil. Narayanan, who is also the secretary of the Department of Space, announced the upcoming launch during a presentation on Sunday. He was also presented with the honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the governor of Maharashtra during the 21st Convocation of SRM Institute of Science and Technology. It is great to see India's success being acknowledged by their international partners. Belgian space company EdgeX has closed a 2.3 million euro seed funding round to accelerate commercialization of their next-generation Edge AI computer for satellites. The company's Sterna computer is a high-performance data processing unit powered by NVIDIA technology. EdgeX says it provides the computational performance and AI acceleration needed to run complex algorithms directly in orbit, which eliminates the traditional bottleneck of sending massive raw data sets to Earth for processing. The startup has also closed a multi-unit deal with a satellite operator worth 1.1 million euros and can already announce plans of an in-orbit demonstration on a SpaceX Falcon 9 mission in February, 2026. And here's a line I really didn't think I'd be saying so soon. You can now buy a space flight with cryptocurrency. Shift4 payments and Blue Origin are working together to enable customers to pay in cryptocurrency and stablecoins for trips to space on New Shepard. And during our monthly editorial meeting, our colleague Dave Bittner asked if crypto ATMs will now be equipped with a convert to space flight option, in addition to the cash choice. Good question. It's also worth noting that, you know, kind of fun fact, Shift4 is the company owned by SpaceX astronaut Jared Isaacman. If you're into digital assets and a fancy trip to the Carmen line, then you can find out more about the new payment system by following the link in our show notes. [MUSIC PLAYING] And speaking of show notes, our producer, Al Scrooge, joins us now to let us know what else has been included in today's selected reading section for you. Alice, what have you got for us? No cryptocurrency for a space flight, I'm afraid. But we have included two additional stories for you. CGTN has provided an update on the recent activities being conducted on China's Tianan-Gon space station. And we're seeing a few announcements out of smallSAT. Most notably, Saffron DSi has been selected to supply electric propulsion systems for AstroForge's asteroid mission. Best of luck to them. Absolutely. Those links can be found on our website, space.ntuk.com. Just click on the episode title. Hi, T-minus crew. If you'd like daily updates from us directly in your LinkedIn feed, be sure to follow the official N2K T-minus page over on LinkedIn. And if you're more interested in the lighter side of what we do here, we are @t-minusdaily on Instagram. And that's where we post videos and pictures from events, excursions, and even sometimes some behind-the-scenes treats. Links are in the show notes for you. Hope you'll join us there. [MUSIC PLAYING] Today we have our monthly update from friend of the show, Patrick O'Neill, who is the Public Affairs and Outreach Lead at the International Space Station US National Laboratory. I was recently out in Las Vegas for the Ascend conference, which was a great opportunity to bring a variety of partners from the space community to talk about what's happening in lower orbit on the space station, what's going to be happening beyond the space station. And it was really interesting because obviously there's a lot going on from a DC perspective. And there was a lot of people that were very focused on making sure that voices are being heard on the critical importance of us to not only have a space station, but also to continue to do great R&D on that. So it was really exciting to see the partner community really stepping up and talking about the great things that are happening and how we can do even better things as we continue to move on through the next few years of the space station and potentially beyond. So since we last talked, crew 11 has set up to the ISS. So that's always exciting. Now we know also who their zero G indicator is. That was kind of a-- Was that the coolest thing ever? Oh my gosh, that was awesome. Love that. But yeah, we have some new astronauts that are on the space station, four new astronauts, two NASA astronauts. And I think we might have touched on this last time too, but I just love the juxtaposition between you have Mike Fink, someone that who has been in the space program for the better part of 30 years and has not been to the space station since 2011, and then you have Zena Cardman. This is her first space flight. So to be able to have both of them up there, being able to support an array of research that's going to be happening over the next couple of months, really excited for what it is that they're going to have the ability to focus on and the value that that can bring to the scientific community and humanity alike. And also, there's a JAXA astronaut and a Ross Cosmos cosmonaut joining. So I just love seeing that international collaboration. And it's a really beautiful thing. I remember hearing when they were, I think, right after the launch, and they started saying their own greetings under different languages. And they were sort of handing off to each other in respective languages. It was so collegial. I'm sure that's standard, but it was just really beautiful to hear. And it's always a nice reminder of what it's all about. That's the beauty of the space station. I mean, again, you have people from all walks of life living and working in space in harmony and being able to be supportive of one another to support research for those that are on the ground. That's why we have it. And so it's great to your point to be able to see them communicate to their people, to get them excited and inspired about what it is that they are about already to embark upon. Absolutely. So we did touch a lot on what I think crew 11 is going to be doing. So we don't need to rehash all of that. But you did mention something cool about your recent trip to Texas, to Austin, Texas, I think it was. Well, I was going to try to go out there, but this actually did fly on crew 11. It was a yeast investigation from star base brewing, if Murray serves. You know, we've done a variety of projects on the space station looking at either plant biology, yeast. And I think that what's unique about this one is obviously there is a company that probably specializes in the development of things that we don't necessarily do on station. But to take a step back, yeast is a very important element for us to be able to explore in space, because it goes beyond just being able to produce things that we might drink. But it goes from everything from bioneutrients to energy. I mean, it just really spans the gamut. And if we're trying to eventually get to places like the moon and Mars, we need to learn how to grow and to cultivate and to take advantage of things that we leverage here on the ground so that that way we can live as nominal of a life as we can when we're on these extreme environments that otherwise, we're not familiar with trying to grow anything around. So I look at those types of investigations. Yes, there's a fun novelty associated with it if it's from a brewery. And people can deduce what they will from there. But there is major scientific implications for this type of research. And I'll give another example where over the years, we flew multiple projects from Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser, where they were looking at barley. And they wanted to see how barley would react in extreme environments. And it wasn't just so that they could bring that into their product line. But barley was, I believe, is the fifth largest cereal crop in the world. And there's so many applications for it across the agricultural community. So how can we take these types of R&D to low earth orbit and put it in that stressful environment and see if maybe there's ways that it could be extrapolated across a myriad of disciplines for the agricultural community? So again, sometimes there's fun names that are associated with them. And yeah, they might have some grandiose visions. But that doesn't mean that there's not fundamental or cool knowledge that could be gained. They could be applicable for a lot of different audiences. Absolutely. And I guess I may have touched on this last time and stopped me if I did. But I'm very curious about how the beer sausage was made. I mean, it may be in this case, and in a lot of these, it's just they responded to a solicitation. But I'm just imagining if I was walking into Starbase Brewing, I'd be going, you guys got to do what? How did that happen? So like, yeah, how did that happen? So to your point, there's a variety of ways in which you can leverage the space station. One of them is through just general solicitations. We have them. NASA has them. They are across a lot of different scientific disciplines. But other ways now that you can leverage the space station, we've talked in length about the private astronaut missions. You can go straight to those entities. But then we also have multiple companies that own and operate their own facilities on the space station. We call those ISS National Lab commercial service providers. And so if you go straight to them and say, hey, I don't see any solicitations that are kind of focused on what I'm looking to do. But you have facilities on station that I think could support this type of research. Could we maybe collaborate? And if they have a viable project that needs space, that they're working with a partner that has a facility on station that could support that research, then we can try to get that into the manifest. Now, obviously, there's got to be scientific merit behind it. It can't just be a marketing thing. But again, as I mentioned, yeast is something that we need to better understand. So again, that's a pretty cool relationship. And so that's what they did. They went straight to a commercial service provider. And they said, this is what we would like to do. Can we make this happen? And the answer was, well, by golly? Yeah, I think we can. And so they worked in tandem that flew with Crew 11. It's going to be up there for a while. And it's going to come back down in a couple of months. And so we'll see what it is that they've been able to learn from that. But again, that's one of the ways in which you can leverage station now. And that's the beauty of how we've evolved this platform over all these years, too, is there's not one cookie cutter way to make it happen. That is really cool. I love hearing those stories because it is-- there is that novelty factor, as you mentioned. But as I told you before, I love to bake. So yeast importance is not lost on me at all. And certainly, I think people might want a fresh loaf of bread on one day or beyond or on another planet. And that actually really would matter for a lot of people, like the smell of it for comfort. When we bring cargo supply emissions to the space station, what are some of the things we always try to bring with it? Fresh food, whether that's veggies or bread or something like that, because it gives a sense of home and it allows for them to kind of feel like, oh gosh, OK. It reminds them, maybe in some ways, what it is that we're doing a lot of this for in the first place. It's to benefit where that food just came from or give us the opportunity to grow food in distant places so that we can have that sense of home again. Yeah. It's a humanity thing. And all of this matters, especially when you're talking about being away from Earth for months, years, potentially. We have to think about this stuff. It's actually really cool when you get down to it. I'm with you 100%. Yeah. And nerd now a little bit. It's good. So yeah, I mean, you just wrapped up quite a bit of travel. I'm wondering what's up next for you. Hopefully things maybe you're quieting down a bit, but I'm sure not too quiet, right? Things are quieting down from a travel perspective, but that does not mean that things are slowing down from a space station program perspective. So as we alluded to, we have the crew of 11 astronauts. They are now up there. They have got their space legs about them, which now means it's time for us to send them a whole bunch of research. And so we have the SpaceX's 33rd Commercial Resupply Services mission that's going to be launching to the space station in mid to late August time frame. I'm not looking forward to the launch time, because it's going to be right in the middle of the night. So there will not be a lot of sleep, but there will be a lot of science that's going to be flying up with that. And so I think we touched on some of it with the crew of 11 astronauts last time around. But again, it's going to be a lot of biomedical research. We're going to have some edge computing and technology demonstrations that are going to be flying. We're going to have some student projects that are going to be flying up. So it's about not only inspiring the next generation, but also inspiring the workforce of tomorrow and letting them know about the opportunities that will one day be available to them as researchers and maybe-- who knows-- astronauts one day too. But there's a lot of great science on this mission. Again, in-space production continues to be a very, very strong driver force. How can we use the space environment to create or manufacture things that could be brought to patients or consumers back on Earth? We have a lot of that science that's flying up. We have some 3D tissue samples that are going to be going up to see, again, how do they evolve in space? Can we grow them more effectively? Can we eventually grow organs or tissues in space that could be applicable for patients on Earth? I mean, it's always exciting to talk about some of the science. It's going to be going up there because every single time we're just-- we're anying things further. And it's not just-- there's the importance of the fundamental research. But the fundamental research happens so that we can start to apply it more and more and more. And so that's why I say that-- I mean, I look at the next five years of station, maybe beyond, the research that's going to be going up is truly the best of the best because it builds on the foundation of all of the great work that's happened over the last 25 years. And so now is the time for us to really maximize the remaining years that we have on station so that we can create novel innovations, but also further business models and allow for us to have that successful segue to those commercial destinations in lower dormitory. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Today, we are taking a moment to remember Captain James, better known as Jim Lovell, one of NASA's most seasoned explorers and beloved figures in space history. Lovell passed away on Thursday, August 7th, at the age of 97 in Lake Forest, Illinois. From his early feats on Gemini missions to orbiting the moon aboard Apollo 8, Lovell was part of the pioneering era of human spaceflight. But it was his calm leadership aboard Apollo 13 that truly defined his legacy. When an oxygen tank exploded en route to the moon, Lovell guided his crew back to Earth through a daring and improvised mission that NASA dubbed a successful failure. His famous line, "Houston, we've had a problem," etched him into public lore. And Tom Hanks' portrayal of him in the film Apollo 13, where that line was tweaked to "Houston, we have a problem," introduced his cool-headed heroism to new generations. And Tom Hanks paid a heartfelt tribute to the incredible man that he portrayed on screen, saying, "There are people who dare, who dream, "who lead others to places we would not go on our own. "On this night of a full moon, "he passes on to the heavens, to the cosmos, to the stars. "Godspeed to you on this next voyage, Gem Lovell." Lovell's legacy endures as a reminder that even in the face of peril, human ingenuity, courage, and calm can chart a path home. And in his memory, his family shared this statement. "We are saddened to announce the passing "of our beloved father, "USN Captain James A. Gem Lovell, "a Navy pilot and officer, astronaut, leader, "and space explorer. "We are enormously proud of his amazing life "and career accomplishments, "highlighted by his legendary leadership "in pioneering human spaceflight. "But to all of us, he was dad, granddad, "and the leader of our family. "Most importantly, he was our hero. "We will miss his unshakable optimism, "his sense of humor, "and the way he made each of us feel "we could do the impossible. "He was truly one of a kind." Bear wins and following sees to the one and only Gem Lovell. (upbeat music) 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 the rapidly changing space industry. We're conducting our annual audience survey to learn more about our listeners. We're collecting your insights until the end of this month. But check out the link in the show notes and fill out the survey. 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 stand formed. 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 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 Eiben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. - T-Minus. (fire crackling) (fire crackling) [BLANK_AUDIO]
