Space infrastructure takes center stage.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is January 27, 2026. I'm Dave Bittner from the Cyberwire Daily Podcast, and no, you did not choose the wrong show in your podcast app. I'm sitting in for Maria Vermazes today, while she and our team are covering Space Week. And this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 20 seconds to LOS T-dris. Open aboard. [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] Five. The Sultanate of Oman is the latest nation to sign the Artemis Accords. Four. MDA Space has signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea's Hanwha Systems Company. Three. Blue Origin plans to spend $71.4 million to expand thruster production in Alabama. Two. NASA has selected intuitive machines as part of 34 global volunteers chosen to track the Artemis II mission. One. Northwood Space has raised $100 million in a Series B funding round and announced a new $50 million US Space Force contract. [MUSIC PLAYING] Later in the show, Maria will be speaking to David Buck, president at BRPH Mission Solutions. BRPH is a sponsor of the Global Space Port Alliance annual summit, which was held today, and shared his insights into the future of space ports. Stick around for more on that after today's headlines. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Tuesday, everyone. Maria, Alice, and Liz are in Orlando this week for Commercial Space Week. I'm covering today's show while Maria jumps on her plane to the conference. You can stop by and say hello to the team at booth 8647 from Wednesday through Friday this week. They're looking forward to seeing you. We're starting off today's intelligence briefing with news that Northwood Space has raised $100 million in a Series B funding round. And the news doesn't stop there. They've also secured a $49.8 million contract with the United States Space Force. The contract covers the upgrade of the satellite control network, which handles a huge variety of consequential space missions for the US government, including tracking and controlling GPS satellites. Northwood calls itself a modern space infrastructure company focused on the ground segment. The new capital from the funding round and contract are major milestones for the company, which is just a few years old and only closed its $30 million Series A less than a year ago. Their former Disney star CEO seems to have hit the jackpot with her company leading the ground infrastructure ecosystem, ready for the proliferation of satellites in Earth orbit. We're on the final countdown till the first manned mission to the moon since 1972. Artemis II is ready and waiting for its dress rehearsals and NASA has selected intuitive machines as part of 34 global volunteers chosen to track the Artemis II mission. The company will support the mission using its space data network and ground station infrastructure. Intuitive machines is among volunteers spanning commercial service providers, members of academia, and individual amateur radio enthusiasts approved by NASA to track the radio waves transmitted by the Orion spacecraft during its 10-day journey to and around the moon. The mission's first launch window opens February 6 with backup dates spanning March and April. Blue Origin has unveiled investment plans to expand operations in Cummings Research Park and Jetplex Industrial Park in Alabama. The company will spend $71.4 million with the aim to establish Alabama as home to its thruster production. Blue Origin says that the city of Huntsville has approved the development agreement that's expected to generate more than 100 new jobs. In turn, the city will provide up to $200,000 in hiring incentives and up to $200,000 to support related infrastructure improvements as the project meets specified targets. Canada's MDA space has signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korean Smart Technology and Aerospace Solutions Company, Hanwha Systems Company. MDA space and Hanwha are planning to explore opportunities to collaborate on the development of Korea's sovereign low-Earth orbit defense constellation called KLEO, leveraging MDA's software-defined digital satellites. We keep saying it, but sovereign space capabilities are so hot right now. South Korea's KLEO constellation is a national initiative designed to strengthen Korea's sovereign defense capabilities and ensure secure, resilient communications and data services for national security operations. And staying in Asia, the Sultanate of Oman is the latest nation to sign the Artemis Accords. A ceremony was held in Muscat, attended by NASA on Monday. Oman is now the 61st nation to commit to responsible space exploration for the benefit of all humanity. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman shared in recorded remarks at the ceremony that Oman's accession to the Artemis Accords sets an important example about the value of responsible behavior and shared pursuit of discovery. Oman joins the U.S. and our other partners on ensuring the peaceful exploration of space for generations to come. We are returning humans to the moon and laying the groundwork for future missions. That wraps up today's intelligence briefing. You'll find links to further reading for all the stories mentioned throughout this episode in the selected reading section of our show notes. As we've mentioned, the T-minus team are attending Commercial Space Week in Orlando this week. If you'd like to speak with the team during the event, we have microphones and do travel. Send us an email at space@n2k.com so we can set something up and thanks. (upbeat music) Our guest today, speaking with Maria Vermazes, is David Buck, president at BRPH Mission Solutions. (upbeat music) So I retired from the military in 2018. I served 40 years in the military, so a good long career. My final job was as a three-star out of Vandenberg. I was the 14th Air Force commander and my dual-headed job was I was commander of Joint Functional Component for Space. Then I transitioned to my civilian career and I was fortunate enough to land a spot with BRPH, which is an architect, engineering and construction company. They're headquartered in Melbourne. Of course, we have offices all over the country. Once again, this year, BRPH is proud to be a platinum sponsor for the GSA Spaceport and Summit. I'll tell you just a little bit about BRPH, but you could go to any spaceport in the United States. I don't care if it's KSC, Cape Canaveral, Wallops. You go to Stenish, you go to Mojave, Vandenberg, PSCA up in Alaska. It'd be hard to find Maria, a piece of launch infrastructure or related infrastructure that didn't have BRPH fingerprints all over. So that's where I landed and that's why I'm working right now. Really happy to be there. Oh, that's so cool. And I imagine just picking your brain about the future of spaceports. You've got a lot of thoughts about that, given your experience. When you talk about the global market vision and it's a 10-year outlook for commercial space and spaceports, most people think about things like rockets and spacecraft and constellation, things that are on orbit or maybe breakthrough technologies. I would argue that while those are very important, what's even more important are the assets that are on the ground. And we're gonna talk about what we can do today to shape the future, to make sure those assets meet our needs. Not building for today, but building for tomorrow because decisions we'll make today will affect our operational agility 10 years in the future. That is so fascinating to me for a couple of different reasons. One, I mean, how often does it come up about capacity at spaceports, how much we need more capacity, but also how much activity is ramping up. And spaceports are at such an interesting intersection of the commercial space industry that is just increasing by leaps and bounds all the time. And yet having to anticipate, as you just mentioned, 10 years plus building out that infrastructure that's gonna be very future-looking, which is an interesting place to be at. So yeah, what does this look like? Yeah, so spaceports, they're no longer just launch sites, they're a strategic infrastructure and they're akin to seaports and airports and data centers and energy hubs, right? It's really the place where national security, commercial, investment, national and international competition, it's where they all intersect, right? What makes this moment unique is that space is going global at the same time as commercial. And what do I mean by that? So what do you mean commercial is going global? So 10 years from now, if you're in a technologically advanced country, you're gonna wanna be space-faring. And you want indigenous launch capability within your country. You don't want to have to reach outside your borders to depend on other countries, other capabilities that you don't have control over. So the same time that we are transitioning to commercial being the 500-pound gorilla in space, we're also transitioning to see where space is becoming more global, even for smaller countries that you would think would not necessarily be that advanced in space. But we're gonna talk a little bit about that on the panel. We're gonna also talk about what's the bottleneck for growth here? When you look at space and you look at space ports, what's the bottleneck for growth? For my, in my opinion, not everyone will share it, but intelligent people can disagree. The bottleneck for growth, it isn't technology. By my way of thinking is things like infrastructure. It's site selection. Where are we gonna build these space ports? More importantly, it's site design. How are we gonna design these space ports to make sure that we are building for the future rather than building for today? It's regulation, Maria, my goodness, regulation is stifling. Everyone's favorite word. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh, right? And then it's capital investment, making sure that we're investing in the right piece of parts. Yeah, and you were mentioning something earlier that I wanted to go back to it 'cause I think it's a really fascinating point when we're talking about sovereign launch and sovereign space ports and maybe locations people would not have anticipated some time ago. And I'm wondering about sort of the paradigm of what many people have in their mind of the mega space port, right? And how that, are we gonna be seeing totally different models of a space port in global locations that are gonna change what we think of as space ports in general? That's part of normalizing space, right? We talk all the time about normalizing space and getting to where space launches just, it's kind of, I don't wanna say that much, I've already seen a hundred launches. And we get comfortable with the fact that we're not, it's like an airport, right? Or you take a seat in airplane takeoff, it's no big deal. We need to get to the place where we are normalizing space. And to do that, we're gonna have to break the mold on what our traditional space ports look like. Do we get to the point, Maria, where we're doing landlocked space ports? Do we, right now we're flying over the broad ocean area because we don't wanna boost or to land on someone's house, right? But, or a rocket to blow up and there's thousands and thousands of pieces of debris. So how do we get to that next step where we don't just have three or four national space ports, but maybe we have 25 space ports throughout in the United States? And what does that look like? And it'd really be fascinating to unpack that, especially from a regulatory perspective. Yeah, how do we get there? That, and that's just talking only about the United States. One of, again, also there's the, every other country in the world is trying to do this also. How does that, how does that work? I just, I'm very glad that you're the type of person has to think about it and not me 'cause I honestly just get a little overwhelmed. It's an interesting dilemma. It's an exciting challenge, but I really think we need to get to the point where we're talking about these things instead of putting our head in the sand and pretend like they don't exist. Yeah, that's, we have to think about these things. That's for sure. So when you think of ahead, the next 10 years, are there industries you see becoming space adjacent that might really shift the space port paradigms that you think people should be keeping an eye on? Yeah, the bits penalty, Maria, when you do space launch or launching an asset into space is weight. How do we, how do we get rid of the weight? And so if we can launch satellites without fuel on board and not have that weight penalty as we're breaking the gravity well, but we can refuel those satellites on orbit, that's a game changer. There's things like that. How does IA play into all of this? And what about energy? You know, what are the opportunities? What are the constraints that we're not thinking about when we're talking about designing these space ports of the future? So much there to get after. We can't do, I don't know how long the panel is, but we don't have enough time. I'll tell you the while. David, this was a very fascinating preview of what's to come and I look forward to hearing more about it, but I wanted to make sure I give you an opportunity to have any wrap up thoughts. If there's anything you wanna leave the audience with before we close out, Flora is yours. You know, so many topics here. What are the biggest changes in the commercial market that's gonna upset our Apple cart here? What role should government play? What are the right metrics for success? Right now we say we had 123 launches. Well, is that the right metric or should the metric be? Well, but what capabilities do we have on orbit? You know, arguably the new space economy was unlocked when we combined vertical integration of the space ports. Is that the model going forward? Or is that trend continue or should it continue? Should it not continue? How does this whole ecosystem of space ports work together? I don't have enough time, right? I've got so much I'd like to talk about in so little time. I was like, these are all really good questions. Yes, what are the answers to that? I mean, the metrics for success question alone. Oh, that is such a good one. Well, you hear it all the time. We say we have 23 launches, more than any other country in the world. Okay, is that the right, maybe it is the right metric. I would argue that the metric is, what kind of capes are we really getting on orbit? You know, I don't know. I like that. That's a fascinating idea. Oh, we need to do like a rapid fire around table where I just want you to just have those takes. 'Cause that is a really fascinating point. Certainly, I mean, as a, you know, Falcon 9's going hither and yon, but what are we getting actually onto orbit? So, ooh, these are really great questions. Thank you. - We'll be right back. Welcome back. Our last story for today is really cool. And I mean, literally cool. Imagine seeing the atmosphere in 3D like never before. Europe just unveiled the first ever meteorological infrared sounder flying on its new Meteosat third generation sounder one satellite. This isn't your ordinary weather gadget. This thing scans the atmosphere in 3D every 30 minutes across nearly 2,000 infrared wavelengths, giving us detailed snapshots of temperature, moisture, and even pollutants at different heights. It's not easy to talk about images on an audio only podcast, but picture this. Reds and blues swirling across the globe showing hot deserts, cool cloud tops, and every twist and turn of our air captured from space. It's like a super fancy thermal selfie of Earth. But why is this a big deal? Because with 3D data like this, meteorologists can spot subtle changes in the atmosphere before clouds even form. That means better now casting, deeper climate insights, and faster warnings for severe weather. It's like giving weather forecasters a new set of superhero eyes. And there's more. The satellite isn't just about storms by tracking pollutants throughout the day with kilometer scale resolution. It's a huge boost for air quality monitoring, especially in cities. So if you're ever looking for a reason to encourage others to get excited about the space industry, just remind them that satellites like this are watching over us, turning data into lifesaving forecasts. You may even encourage a new space fan. [MUSIC PLAYING] 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 our show, please share a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Please also fill out the survey and the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Tre Hester with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I'm Dave Bittner, filling in for Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here tomorrow. 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