Today is December 9th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. Balerion Space Ventures has announced investments in three companies that they say are positioned at the center of a fundamental shift in how America builds, powers, and operates critical infrastructure beyond Earth. Space infrastructure Mantis Space has selected Albuquerque, New Mexico for its headquarters and advanced R&D manufacturing facilities. Neon Space has been awarded a $1.9 million small business innovation research direct to Phase II contract by Spaceworks. The Soyuz MS-27 crew has returned safely to Earth. And the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee has voted to advance the nomination of Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. [Police radio chatter] Our guest today is Dr. Michelle Haley, Director of Global Affairs at Solamedd Solutions. I'll be talking to Dr. Haley about a series of roundtables that they are hosting to discuss bioethics and space medicine for commercial exploration. Stick around to find out more about that after today's Intelligence Briefing. [Music] Happy Tuesday, everybody. Thank you for joining me. Let's dive into it. The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has voted to advance the nomination of Jared Isaacman to lead NASA again. This vote this time brings him one step closer to becoming the NASA Administrator, clearing the way for his full Senate confirmation. Now, again, we can't get too excited. This has happened before, back in April, to be precise. And back then, it was all stalled as the U.S. administration then withdrew Isaacman's nomination. This time, though, it is hoped that with the bipartisan support that Isaacman has, he will get confirmed before the next Artemis flight in the spring. So, what's next? As we mentioned, Isaacman has to pass a Senate vote. The good news is that it is the final vote, and it's believed that it will likely happen in the Senate before the congressmen leave for Christmas. And during his testimony in front of the committee last week, Isaacman promised to bring, quote, "urgency and extreme focus to the mission" by working with the best and the brightest at NASA to lead humanity's efforts to unlock the secrets of the universe and to ensure American leadership across the last great frontier. Staying with NASA News now, the Soyuz MS-27 crew returned to Earth on schedule overnight. NASA astronaut Johnny Kim, along with Roscosmos Kosmonauts Sergey Ryzhakov and Alexei Zubritsky, wrapped up an eight-month science mission aboard the International Space Station. They made a parachute-assisted landing at 10.03 a.m. local time today, Tuesday in Kazakhstan, after departing the space station aboard the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft a few hours earlier. Mee-Won Space has been awarded a $1.9 million dollar "SIVER" or Small Business Innovation Research, direct to Phase II contract by Spaceworks. The contract supports the space development agency's efforts to enhance missile warning and tracking capabilities in the low Earth orbit. Mee-Won will develop a novel variant of its multispectral electro-optical infrared payload for the SDA. Mee-Won says that its solution leverages its proven "quick beam" scanning payload architecture, which was originally designed for global thermal detection, and adapts it for high-sensitivity missile warning and tracking applications with enhanced resilience and cost-effectiveness. The payload will feature advanced infrared sensing capabilities and a dynamic scanning architecture that's all designed to mitigate emerging threats. Space infrastructure Mantis Space has selected Albuquerque, New Mexico for its headquarters and advanced R&D manufacturing facilities. The company, which was founded in Kennesaw, Georgia, is building orbital infrastructure to deliver power directly to on-orbit assets, such as satellites, habitats, and lunar operations. Mantis Space's planned facilities, projects, and staff are estimated to create more than 200 local high-tech high-wage jobs, helping attract additional space companies and highly-scaled talent to the area. The company is currently preparing to fully emerge from stealth early next year, and we do look forward to hearing more about them. Balerion Space Ventures has announced investments in three technology companies that they say are positioned at the center of a fundamental shift in how America builds powers and operates critical infrastructure beyond the Earth's surface. Antares Industries, Samara Aerospace, and Valar Atomics will each receive an undisclosed amount of funding from Balerion to support their expansions. Antares Industries is engineering modular, transportable micro-reactors that are designed for rapid deployment in contested or austere environments. These systems provide resilient autonomous power for defense operations and critical infrastructure. Samara Aerospace is developing high-precision spacecraft platforms with advanced attitude-control technologies that enable unprecedented on-orbit agility. And Valar Atomics is scaling nuclear energy for heavy industrial power and hydrocarbon fuel production. And that is it for today's Intel Briefing. As always, you can find out more about all of the stories that I've mentioned for you in our show notes in your podcast app, as well as on our website, space.n2k.com. And T-minus crew, in case you didn't know, we do post links to every episode of T-minus Space Daily, along with the major headlines, on our LinkedIn page. Just look for N2K T-minus Space Daily on LinkedIn and then click follow to get our episodes and headlines directly in your feed, every weekday and on Saturday. A lot of us are spending quite a bit of time on LinkedIn nowadays, I know I am. And surely a daily space Intel Briefing from us would be maybe a nice little break from yet another year-end thing piece, right? Right. N2K T-minus Space Daily on LinkedIn. Tap that follow button and thanks. Our guest today is Dr. Michelle Haley, Director of Global Affairs at Solamed Solutions. So, yet with Solamed, they're really guided by the commitment to improve human health and performance through cutting-edge technologies, including personalized medicine, making sure that reducing risk for future explorers, right? And so we have three verticals. So one is consultancy, the second is education, and then the next is operations. So the fact that Solamed is bringing together the larger community of former NASA and space officials that are outside of the agency, it's a way also to create opportunities for innovation. We can do cross-cultural collaboration. And we're actually in the process of launching a seven-part roundtable series for bioethics and space medicine for commercial exploration. And that's really continuing to shape global dialogue, right, which is culturally rich, you know, as it is scientifically advanced. And there's a phrase that I read in your bio, and also I think you've mentioned a few times that I love about cultural intelligence. Oh my gosh, yes. What a great phrase. And I'm wondering about in the context of organizations like Solamed and also when I'm thinking about the many conversations I've had about space given the show that I do, there's a lot of discussion about how space is for, you know, for Earth and how it benefits the people. But, you know, the obvious elephant in the room is that a lot of space is still over-representing certain parts of the world and under-representing a lot more of it. So the idea of cultural intelligence in the realm of space, space exploration is so needed and so fascinating to me because it just feels like we have so far to go on that. Oh, yeah, for sure. I would just love to get your thoughts on maybe making more culturally intelligent space programs or programs that benefit space exploration. I'm sure that's a lot of what you're doing right now. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, and one of the things that it's really about education and exposure, right? And so I, and part of it for me, which I'm excited about is to be able to take some of the things that we're doing and leverage what we're doing at Solamed, right? With the global space medicine partners, ensuring that we have success across diverse operational environments, right? So part of the thing is creating different platforms that kind of speak to different communities, right? So with cultural intelligence is just that being intelligent and being mindful of how other communities operate and what relates to them, right? So being able to put some systems and things together that are going to identify with people from other cultures, right? And then being able to expose them to, you know, to these different things. So that's the thing that I'm really, you know, that I'm really excited about is that, you know, whatever we have in place, it's like, OK, let's look at it and see how we can tweak this culturally to, you know, to Nigeria or to a Kenya or South Africa or, you know, like other parts of the world. And then once we get that, it's like, OK, now that we've tweaked it, let's expose these particular communities and these particular people to, you know, to what we're doing. Exposure is really, you know, a lot of it and giving opportunities. Yeah. Because if people aren't exposed and they don't have the opportunities, then they're not included. Absolutely. Yeah. And I imagine it's also the learning that's done by organizations on perspectives that maybe weren't obvious. For sure. Yeah. Absolutely learning that's going around. And I want to also, you know, just commend Dr. Sarah Lynn Mark, you know, who is the president of Solamid for having this vision. And she loves to bring people together, smart people together, people who have vast experience to really do something that we're passionate about and that we love and being able to collaborate. So I really commend her for creating that space and opportunity. Pardon the pun with the space, right? But creating a space and the opportunity, but also bringing the right people together, you know, to give us the opportunity to make it happen. And for her to be open to say, like, yeah, like, put your ideas, like, let's be creative and, you know, and not kind of putting a ceiling or just putting boundaries, you know, on what it is that we can do. So I'm just really grateful for her to give us the platform and the opportunity to do that. Absolutely. Dr. Haley, could you by any chance give me maybe an example of some of the kinds of things that you're working on right now or just to get into some of what you're talking about, just maybe something more concrete. Right. I mentioned that we're we're doing this seven part round table series, right, with the bioethics. So that's kind of the like right now really what's what's kind of on the docket, right. And so it's the series about the bioethics and space medicine for commercial exploration, right. And our goal is to continue to shape kind of a global dialogue that's more culturally rich and scientifically advanced. So that would be an example of something that we're like currently actively, you know, really doing. And so part of it too is it's like once you start getting the conversations and the dialogues going, you get so much rich information, you know, out of that. And so from that, we can utilize that information to kind of navigate what we're going to do with next steps. And it'll help us to know what is needed, right. What we can do more of what we can change, what is expected, what is needed. That's amazing. And I would imagine it's it's both aside from, you know, it makes logical sense. It also improves long term outcomes. For sure. Like effectiveness, right. When, you know, that's what I would imagine anyway. Absolutely for sure. And so we're, you know, we're really excited about it. We're still, you know, doing a pulling a lot of information together and that kind of thing. But I'm excited to see kind of what comes out of, you know, having these dialogues and, you know, this conversation as it relates to, you know, these particular this particular initiative. So, I mean, there are a number of other things that we're working on for sure. And one of which is, you know, like I was talking about building the relationships. So we're also reaching out and building relationships within the space community, people who have been a part of that, but also, you know, in the educational space, because, you know, that's kind of my, my sweet, sweet spot. And so everyone has their own arena that and network that they're plugged into. So it's really continuing to build those relationships and let people know what we're doing and to see how we can bring people into what we're doing and, you know, get them excited and on board as we are. Right. And so, you know, that's the other piece of it too. That's wonderful. Well, Dr. Haley, it's been really wonderful learning a bit about you and what you're working on and what you've been working on. And I want to make sure I give you the last word. If there's anything you want to leave our audience with anything at all, you have the floor. Well, Maria, listen, thank you so much. The only thing that I would really just kind of leave with folks is that, you know, we're all human. We all live on the planet. We need to be able to work together and to just kind of have a mindset of the collective. Right. We've gotten into a place where, you know, people are very siloed. People are very, you know, inwardly focused. Right. But if we like, get out of our boxes and, you know, look around and just, you know, have that humanity, you know, for others and work together so that we can have kind of a better world, have a better experience. And, you know, it's a beautiful thing because when I've traveled all over these, the places that I've traveled, it's like the bottom line is the city. The bottom line is the same. People want loves. They want to be respected. They want to feel apart. Right. And so if we can just be able to, in our own world, like within ourself, individually, within our own communities and then just kind of reaching outside, I think then that will just make the world better, you know, for us as a collective. [Music] We will be right back. Welcome back. Blue Origins New Shepherd Mission Number 37 has announced its six-member crew, and there is a remarkable first coming up that we absolutely have to highlight. NS37 crew member Mikaela or Michi Benthouse, who is an aerospace and mechatronics engineer at ESA, also uses a wheelchair. And when she and the rest of the crew lift off to go above the Carmen line on December 18th from Van Horn, Texas, she will be the first person who uses a wheelchair to go to space. Benthouse has been using a wheelchair since 2018 when a mountain biking accident resulted in a spinal cord injury. But despite that, she kept on with her astronaut training, flying on a zero-G research flight in 2022, as well as participating in an analog astronaut research mission. Undoubtedly, her flight, as a milestone for space accessibility, will hopefully spur more conversation and action about opening up access to space for more people. Of that, she said this, "This feels like an important step since space travel for people with disabilities is still in its very early days. I might be the first, but have no intention of being the last." And to that, we heartily say, "Here, here, and bravo." [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. If you like the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. These also felt the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. We are 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 in 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 Elliott Peltzman and Tre Hester with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpie is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
