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[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is January 8, 2026. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 22nd to LOS, T-dred. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] Five. Schmidt Sciences have announced an initiative to build a space telescope larger than Hubble and fund the construction of three ground-based observatories. Four. The China Manned Space Agency released its annual report detailing the progress of China's space station scientific research and applications. Three. Power Bank and Smart AI's Genesis One satellite is confirmed to be operating an artificial intelligence model directly in orbit. Two. Carmen Space and Defense has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire CMAN, composites, and MSC. One. NASA says it is considering the possibility of an earlier end to crew 11's mission due to a medical situation on board the International Space Station. [MUSIC PLAYING] Lift off. [MUSIC PLAYING] Later in today's show, I will be joined by John Seraphini, the CEO of Hawkeye 360. Hawkeye 360 announced a new acquisition just before the holiday period last year and closed a series E funding round. Want to find out more about all that? Stick around after today's intelligence briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Thursday, everyone. We're kicking off the show with unfortunate news from the International Space Station. Today was scheduled to be the first spacewalk of 2026. Two members of the Expedition 74 crew were due to exit the International Space Station for power upgrade work. But news was released last night that due to a medical condition, that spacewalk is now postponed. Station commander Mike Finke and flight engineer Zena Cardman were the two astronauts named to be conducting the EVA. It's unclear which of the two is dealing with the medical situation as it has been called or what the situation might be. NASA has now gone one step further to raise alarms by releasing a statement which says, we are actively evaluating all options, including the possibility of an earlier end to crew 11's mission. Yes, it is indeed one thing to get sick at your desk job and just take a day off or two to recover. But it is quite another concern when you are 250 miles above the Earth's surface traveling 17,500 miles per hour. NASA went on to say, these are the situations NASA and our partners train for and prepare to execute safely. We will provide further updates within the next 24 hours. So do stay tuned, folks, and keep that astronaut in your thoughts. And our thoughts and best wishes go out to the crew involved. Carman Space and Defense has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire CMAN composites and MSC, who are leaders in specialty maritime defense technologies. CMAN and MSC's core technologies for submarines and related amphibious platforms include sonar, acoustic and signal mitigation solutions, subsea and surface propulsion systems, and missile and amphibious strategic launch products. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, with Carman providing a total consideration of $220 million, consisting of $210 million in cash, and approximately $10 million in Carman common shares. Carman says the acquisition will align with their strategy to deliver advanced systems for next generation propulsion and shielding applications, serving the country's highest priority national security interests from deep sea to deep space. Let's head on over to Canada for our next story. Powerbank and SmartLink AI have updated the progress of their satellite, which launched in early December. The companies say that the satellite has been recorded as operating and producing solar power as it moves around our Earth. The Genesis One satellite launched on December 10, 2025, and is confirmed by SmartLink AI to also be operating an artificial intelligence model directly in orbit. The companies say that this milestone provides an initial proof point for orbit AI's approach to on-orbit computing. Genesis One also represents the first operational element of orbit AI's planned satellite network, serving as an early validation step ahead of future launches and broader expansion. Genesis One is the first operational node of a planned network. SmartLink AI is targeting a second satellite launched in Q1, 2026, with additional launches planned thereafter as the network continues to expand. Powerbank expects to continue as a partner throughout the expansion phases of the Orbital AI project with power banks, solar energy, and thermal control contributions, expected to become increasingly significant as satellite payloads scale to accommodate higher computational loads and more sophisticated AI inference capabilities. We did predict in our end of year roundup that data centers and space were gonna be the next hot thing of 2026, didn't we? Yeah, we did. The China Manned Space Agency released its annual report detailing the progress of China's space station, scientific research, and applications. The report covers China's developments in space science, technologies, and applications, showcasing 33 scientific research and application achievements, selected from a variety of completed in orbit experiments, scientific samples returned to Earth, and what they are calling scientific breakthroughs. Chinese media is reporting that in 2025 alone, 86 new scientific and application projects were added aboard the Tiangong Space Station with 1,179 kilos of scientific materials sent into space and around 105 kilos of space science samples returned to Earth. The data collected from these projects exceeded 150 terabytes, and the report also highlighted that in 2025, more than 230 high level papers were published in scientific journals from the research performed on Tiangong and over 70 patents were granted. That is a good amount of science, my friends. And watch out, Hubble and Webb. There is a new space telescope potentially on the horizon. Watch your back too, real man, I'm just saying. Schmidt Sciences have announced an initiative to build a space telescope larger than Hubble and fund the construction of three ground-based observatories. Schmidt Sciences is an organization funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy Schmidt. So, understandably, the four facilities are called the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Observatory System. They will cover optical imaging, spectroscopy, and radio astronomy. They are aiming to have all four facilities operational and do in science by 2029, and some maybe even earlier. And the big kicker, once these facilities are built, they will consider building more. So, yay for commercial companies continuing the good work of space observation during a time that the US Space Agency is facing cuts to its research budget. And many others follow in this example. And that concludes today's top five stories in our Intel briefing for you. But there's always more going on in the space industry. For more on that, N2K Senior Producer Alice Carruth joins us now with a look at all the other stories that we're watching today. Thanks, Maria. We've included one additional link today in the selected reading section of our show notes, along with all the original sources of all the other stories mentioned throughout the episode. Stellent Systems, a manufacturer of radio frequency and microwave amplification products, is set to be acquired by Transdigum Group for $960 million in cash. Those links are also included on our website, space.intuk.com. Hello there, T-minus listeners. Pretty soon, we will be attending Commercial Space Week in Orlando, Florida. And there will be lots of moments from it that we're going to want to share with you that just can't make it into the daily show. But we do post them on Instagram. We are @t-daily if you'd like to see some exclusive videos there, as well as some behind the scenes moments from the show floor. Hope to see you there. [MUSIC PLAYING] Just before the holidays, I had the pleasure of catching up with John Sarafini, the CEO of Hawkeye 360. I'll let John introduce himself and the company. I'm John Sarafini. I'm the founder and CEO of a company named Hawkeye 360. It's about a decade old. We started in 2015 timeframe. We just hit 10 years. The company performs on-orbit commercial signals intelligence. We have a constellation of 30-plus satellites that very uniquely flying clusters of three. So think one satellite out front, the second satellite behind a couple hundred kilometers-- you're talking about 550 or so kilometers in low-earth orbit-- and then a third satellite that oscillates back and forth between the two in a cross-track maneuver. And that satellite architecture allows us to geolocate signals, basically any signal emitting on the face of the Earth or in the air or in space, above a watt and power, generally, between 30 megahertz and 18 gigahertz. We can detect it. We can process it. We can geolocate. We can analyze it. And we can convert that into actionable intelligence for our customers. And our customers are principally governments-- defense, intelligence, national security, some humanitarian and sustainability applications as well. But we're really built from the bottom up to support government users. As for myself, I've been a national security-oriented venture capitalist and small company operator for about 20 years. Previously, I was a US Army infantry officer and a proud graduate of the United States military cap. Well, it's so wonderful to speak with you and meet you, John. Hawkeye 360 is such an incredible company. And you all have just closed some fantastic news, both completing the acquisition of innovative signal analysis and also closing a series E. Congratulations. I'm wondering if you can walk me through both these pieces of news. Yeah, thank you so much. Enormous value created when we close those deals. And they represent-- jeez, in some cases, two years worth of work. We've long been in my ISA. It's a wonderful company that for 30 years has been supporting the US defense customer base in providing the very best processing of certain types of space-based RF data and converting that into intelligence products for the US government. So it's a company with an exquisite set of technologies in processing that we're very excited to be able to acquire. Very infrequently, do you see an acquisition occur that's so perfectly fit between two companies? We have our own commercial constellation of satellites that produces RF data. We have our own commercial platform for processing and analyzing that data. And ISA is truly the best in the world at doing the processing off of certain other types of data that when fused together, it makes our own processing capabilities that much better for our customers, both the US government and now international. We'll be able to better classify different signals, be able to automate the detection of new signal of interest waveforms, and be able to perform geolocation that even better rates than previously was available. So from a strategic fit, this is a home run. Now to finance it, because a great company like ISA is not cheap, we need to go off and raise some capital. Recognizing that we're further along in our development and that the debt markets are available to us, we wanted to kind of split the cost between debt and equity. And so we were able to raise a series E-Round from a phenomenal new investor named Center 15 and a couple of them with a fellow co-lead in Night Dragon who's been a great investor for us for the past five years. And they co-led the series E-Round together along with some other investors. With that, we then paired a significant amount of debt from excellent lenders SVB and Hercules. So those organizations coming together provide the capital in part for us to acquire the company and off we go. Fantastic, well thank you for that fantastic context. And I'm wondering, just going back to the acquisition of ISA before we'll get into sort of the funding side of things, both are fascinating threads. I'd love if you could help me understand the importance of understanding complex RF activity. This seems to dovetail really well with the acquisition of ISA and also what Hawkeye 360 has been doing. The environment is ever noisier and you all are very well known for helping people understand and cut through that noise. So can you help me understand that a bit? Yeah, so let me think of basically two value chains. On the commercial side, you've got the paradigm of Hawkeye putting satellites into space. We own 30 plus satellites in space that generate an enormous amount of RF data. It's all commercial, it's all privately owned by Hawkeye. And then below that in the value chain is Hawkeye doing all of that processing and analyzing the data, converting it into actionable intelligence products. And we have a suite of different offerings from raw IQ data all the way to finish intelligence products for certain domains that we offer to customers. That's one value chain. On the second, think about the US government paradigm where the US government spends a significant amount of money with traditional defense industrial based entities like Northrop Blockheed, Raytheon Bowen, et cetera, to build certain types of sensors. Those sensors generate data and that data gets analyzed and processed by companies. The very best of those companies in our mindset is this company ISA. So you have a paradigm now of where Hawkeye dominates the commercial value chain, not just collection but processing, and now has a really important position within the US government chain for signals intelligence where we're now doing the processing work for certain US government customers. I think that collectively matching those two together enables us to really unlock a lot of value for our customers. And I'm wondering about that processing, what the two year, five year, the look ahead for that looks like, in terms of capabilities, because again, the potential there is huge. And I imagine you all are busy planning on that too. - Yeah, so one of the reasons for the acquisition, Maria, was this is shovel ready. The technologies can be integrated together. They're very nicely overlapping and we can start generating incremental value for our customers, both the US government and international right off the bat. I mean, there's a little bit of time of technical development work that's gotta be invested, but we've done a lot of work to analyze the value of their processing and how well it fits with our RF data to feel extremely confident that this is gonna be a one plus one equals a lot more than two outcome for the company. So great acquisition for both ISA and for Hawkeye and hopefully as well for our customers. - Thank you for that. And I'd love to switch a little bit to sort of the investment side of things. Was very interested and I know Night Dragon's been a big supporter of Hawkeye 360 for quite some time. If you could tell me about a little bit about the investors that were part of this round, including Night Dragon, I'd love to hear about that. - Sure, well, I can't ask for a better set of investors than we have in the series E round. Night Dragon led our series C round. This is Dave DeWalt and Ken Gonzalez and they've been fantastic members of our cap table and in both cases have been a wonderful provider of corporate governance on our board. I've been blessed to have Night Dragon on our cap table and I wish for all of my defense tech peer companies for them to have investors as great as Night Dragon. So that's thing one. Thing two is I'm exceptionally pleased to welcome center 15 to our cap table. Ian Weiner is the lead here at center 15. He's been investing in fantastic defense technology companies for many years, extremely thoughtful and very well known on Wall Street given his background there and the breadth of his limited partners is very significant and will be very helpful to Hawkeye as we grow further. So exceptionally pleased to have Ian involved with Hawkeye as well as the co-lead at center 15. So those two together plus our fantastic LPs who have been investing in Hawkeye since the beginning, such as Shield Capital and others, we're very fortunate to have them participating so meaningfully in the series E round. - And I'm curious, something that was mentioned in the release about the series E was about how the acquisition actually I should mention with ISA, the big differentiator here seems to be on improving signal processing. As you've mentioned several times, as opposed to just increasing satellite capacity, can you talk a bit about that differentiation because it is an interesting angle and we often hear more about just like more satellite capacity and this seems to be about also getting a lot smarter, right? - Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, ultimately they're not mutually exclusive. We need to build lots of collection capacity and lots of new sensors in space as well as other domains, right? Like, you know, we want to dominate from geo all the way down the ground. We want to be the best in the world at collecting lots of different types of RF data and fusing it all together and doing the processing and the analysis. And so that will include over time, I would believe sensors terrestrially, sensors errorly, sensors in space and being able to operate those at cost effective means. I mean, we don't want to invest a significant amount of capital for stuff that's not unique and not cost efficient. So we're very thoughtful about the sensors that we build and we have a robust plan for building out our architecture over the next couple of years. But that's definitively on its own pathway and that architecture has been well known for us for a while and we're asking against our playbook to do that. At the same time, there's two sides of this coin. There's the RF data and that best in class is our RF raw data that we collect with these sensors and that's what we can do with it. Like how do you convert that into something that's understood and valuable to customers? I mean, RF data is not understandable by a typical human unless you analyze it through the certain processing tools that we have available to us. It's not like an image where you can take a picture from space and look at, you're like, okay, there's 15 cars in that parking lot. I understand that intuitively. If I deliver to you raw IQ data from space, you're looking at a bunch of weird stuff. It's not until you actually do the processing and the analysis that you can start to extract intelligence about what might be occurring, which is always related to human activity, right? Because a lake doesn't naturally emit RF. A bear doesn't key a mic. It comes when you see RF activity, you know it's from a human or some set of humans or some set of vehicles or other apparatus that's tied to human activity. And if you look at long enough, as you know, you start to understand human activities and you can start to extract information about or assess information about intentions, which is really the holy grail here is when you've developed an exquisite set of sensors and you compare that to really great processing capabilities. The faster you can get access to that data and the faster the revisit rate and then be the very best at geolocating those emitters and converting that into actionable intelligence, that's the basis of extremely high quality, competitive, long-term, going concern for signals intelligence, which is our goal. And you've mentioned in our conversation, a lot of things that I think would be considered force multipliers and I'm curious what other things you're considering or thinking about for the future that are force multipliers like that? Sure, sure. So a couple of items, I mean, obviously getting the revisit rate down is an important metric. So the more satellites you have overhead, depending upon what orbits they're in, the faster you can be over any given spot on Earth, so that you can increase the tactical relevance of that data. Secondly, how quickly can you get the data down to the ground? You can address that through data, the ground station densifications, you can address that through onboard processing, you can address that through cross links and being able to use mesh relay networks to move that data down to the warfare of the intelligence analysts that much faster. Those are two key levers that we're constantly pushing on. If you were to unpack our long-term vision for our architecture, you see we're constantly looking to optimize the revisit rate and we're constantly looking for ways in which to get that data down to the ground faster. So that's on the space-based part of the sensor part, 'cause we're already looking at other sensory types, but at the same time, the ability to process that data and convert it into the actionable intelligence using our official intelligence, AI machine learning, that's extremely valuable to us. And that comes to the third lever, which is the amazing people that I get a chance to work with. And we have today now 400 individuals working within Hawkeye and ISA together combined. These are some of the world's experts in signals intelligence who live in, who just live to access our ref data and convert it into process it. And so we've been able to pull together 400 of these exceptional thoughtful individuals. And we look forward to working with all of them into the future. (upbeat music) We'll be right back. Welcome back. Some cold water today on the idea that the Jovian moon Europa could maybe have some life under its icy shell. This fascinating moon, a little smaller than our own, is considered one of our best bets for finding life elsewhere in our solar system. So much so that in 2024, NASA launched a Europa Clipper mission to investigate those chances. And there is a new study published this week in the journal Nature Communications that took a closer look at Europa's ocean bottom, where life might actually be on this moon. And the study modeled the tectonic and volcanic activity there. According to the study, they believe that Europa's sea floor is super solid and probably doesn't have any major landforms, ridges or troughs, any kind of nook or cranny or fault line where any kind of underwater volcanic activity might occur. And a super solid sea floor might sound like a good thing, but for the potential formation of life, unfortunately it is not. Why? Well, planetary scientist Paul Byrne of Washington University in St. Louis, who is the lead author of this study, explains it this way. And he says this, "On Earth, tectonic activity such as fracturing and faulting exposes fresh rock to the environment where chemical reactions, principally involving water, generate chemicals such as methane that microbial life can use." In other words, our more fragile and active sea floor created more opportunities for the right chemical reactions to occur and eventually for microbial life to sustain itself and flourish. But according to this study, it seems like Europa is too far from Jupiter for the planet's gravitational pull to deform crack, nook and cranny if I, Europa's ocean floor. Well, we'll find out much more about Europa and potentially validate this study pretty soon in any case as the NASA Europa Clipper mission is currently en route to that moon and is expected to arrive for its series of flybys in 2031. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) And that is 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 our show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey and 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 are mixed by Elliott Peltzman and Tre Hester with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpey is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - T minus.
