Podcast: Spatial Awareness—Live From The 40th Space Symposium

Editors at the 40th Space Symposium discuss everything from threats to NASA's science missions to the Golden Dome air-defense concept.

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Rough Transcript

Guy Norris:

Hello, and welcome to this edition of Aviation Week's Check 6 Podcast. I'm senior editor, Guy Norris, and with me is our illustrious space team, Cape Canaveral-based senior editor and space editor, Irene Klotz, Garrett Reim, our Seattle-based space and emerging technologies editor, and she is here but not with us at the moment, LA-based military space editor, Vivienne Machi. We're going to catch up with Vivienne just later on in this podcast.

You joined us at the Space Foundation's 40th Space Symposium here in Colorado Springs. And as we've heard already this week from General Whiting, U.S. Space Force commander of the U.S. Space Command, this is widely considered as the best space show in the world. It's certainly a hugely busy show and comes at a pivotal time for the sector amid rising tensions over contested space, uncertainty over aspects of NASA's future under the Trump administration, and of course the continued growth and impact of new space startups on the industry.

Before we talk to Irene and Garrett, I just want to paint a little picture of what it's like here. It's back at The Broadmoor, which is this ritzy hotel, tucked into the shoulders of the Rocky Mountains. There's a very good attendance here, even though we've got budgetary constraints that have prevented some NASA and Air Force and Space Force personnel from coming. It's still a bumper event with around 12,000 registrants, of which about 1,500 are military government attendees. It's also a very diverse crowd and includes 24 international military space heads, not to mention more than 20 U.S. senior military space leaders.

With all that said, Irene, let's start with you. Obviously you've been monitoring this unsettling situation that NASA's going through from here. And I thought maybe you'd like to start with that, including something you reported on earlier this week, that the potential dual-use of Earth science data that maybe it would be one way of surviving the chopping block.

Irene Klotz:

Thanks, Guy. I find that NASA's presence here has been very subdued. There's many people that did not come, and those that are here are taking a very circumspect approach. Actually, while we're recording this podcast, the confirmation hearing for President Trump's nominee to head NASA is going on, and people are very eager for the administrator to be in place at NASA. I would say that that probably overshadows a lot of the news and a lot of the coverage that's been happening here so far as far as the civil space program goes.

To address what you raised about dual-use Earth science missions, I was in a session on the first day and was actually quite surprised to hear the Earth planetary scientists touting how the fleet of satellites that are monitoring Earth's water, air, soil, all kinds of characteristics, how that data is useful for military applications. For example, there was a mention of how from space a small wild [inaudible 00:03:33] resembles a missile launch. And there were many, many other examples of that.

It's really the first time that I've sat in on a civilian science presentation that was talking about how the military applications of it are important. This came as there were reports about NASA preparing to terminate, just as a preparation in case it's executed, any new Earth science missions in the pipeline, as well as missions that are in extended operations.

There's a lot of concern about what's going to happen. Most of the questioning so far this morning about Jared Isaacman had to do with his commitment to the Artemis program and whether the United States would divert from a lunar exploration program to Mars. So, I'd say things are just very much in flux.

Guy Norris:

As usual, as in recent times with space symposiums, the news is being made elsewhere. In fact, in previous years, Irene, I know for example you've been forced to stay at the Cape for various historic launches exactly the same week. Anyway. In the meantime, of course, the other great thing about Space Symposium is the fact that you get to see firsthand a lot of the new technologies being shown on the exhibit floor, for example.

Garrett, I know you've been looking particularly at some of those new developments.

Garrett Reim:

Yeah. It seems like Space Symposium's gone back to its roots a little bit. It's been traditionally a more defense-heavy, military-heavy conference. As the new space startups emerged in the last five-plus years, it shifted, it became more diverse, and there was more, of course during the Biden administration, about Artemis and NASA science. But you see a lot of companies, to Irene's point, shifting back or pitching dual-use [inaudible 00:05:37] technology.

One micro trend I've seen is you have some international companies that have established U.S. headquarters, U.S. subsidiaries, in particular the Japanese companies such as iSpace, Astroscale, or formerly Japanese company, Gete. They've all started as civil commercial space companies and now they're pitching their technology as dual-use for the U.S. military.

Astroscale announced next year they're going to attempt to do two refueling operations in space of a U.S. Space Force satellite. Their rendezvous and proximity operations technology was originally developed in Japan for approaching, grappling, and removing space junk. But the ability to approach something safely in space is also useful for refueling or space domain awareness. They established a U.S. subsidiary a couple years ago in Denver, and they've been pretty explicit about... They wanted to get DoD business and they want to work with NASA. Your ability to be a prime contractor, it's very difficult, if not impossible if you're a foreign company.

Same thing with iSpace. They just announced a partnership with Redwire to incorporate Redwire's some components into their future APEX lunar landers. APEX is a lunar lander being used on Eclipse program right now, where iSpace is a subprime to Draper Laboratories. But in the future, iSpace might be a prime contractor. They didn't quite commit to that, but they say it's a possibility. And they're also talking about not just lunar landers for NASA or commercial uses, but also military lunar landers to keep an eye on what's going on in the moon. Redwire is pretty eager to participate in that as well with encrypted communications and cameras for space domain awareness.

And the other third company, they're a bit of an exception. Gete started in Japan, moved their entire company, almost all their people to Torrance, California. They specialize in space robotics. And then they recently established the fence subsidiary that's 51% owned by Americans. Because their original investors were Japanese, and so they had to have this to become a prime contractor for the DoD and for NASA. They started out with robotic arms on the space station and robotic arms for lunar landers. And they've been pretty aggressive and expanding into new areas such as building satellites with observation, constellations of satellites, doing satellite servicing, going after DoD business.

So, trend within a trend, pivot back towards the military side, and then you see some of these international companies trying to get a piece of it too.

Guy Norris:

Yeah, it's interesting. One of the first stories I did from the event actually this week was Sierra Space getting its first payload for the Dream Chaser. Not the first payload, but the first one from Honda, Honda America, which again, the Japanese... The U.S. arm of Honda, it's R&T business, so it wants to basically establish a sustainable power source for future lunar missions. And to get there, the first step is to get this fuel cell system, a hydrogen fuel cell system, get it on orbit and test it in microgravity. So, they're going to take it in the Dream Chaser to the ISS, International Space Station, as the first step towards that. It's interesting, this...

And of course, talking lunar landers, I know that... The great thing about this setting here, it's amazing, there's a big lake between the two main sections of the conference hall, and it's great to walk across and get a breath of fresh air. Sitting on one side of it is the Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander on display. I know that it was here last year, and we were joking that it's been to the moon and back since then.

Irene, you were covering that. Have you talked to Firefly so far yet?

Irene Klotz:

Not yet, not yet. I will stop by there. But that was an amazing mission, just textbook. Unfortunately, it was happening in parallel with a second effort by international Intuitive Machines to make a landing, which they got there, but they again had a problem on the touchdown. They were in a polar region, so the sun... They weren't able to recharge, and the mission ended very quickly. But it does illustrate this NASA philosophy of investing in as many startups as they can, and they all will not be successful. But it's the kind of philosophy I think we'll see extending into the future. If Jared Isaacman is confirmed, I think that's something that he will very much pursue since he already pioneered a path to becoming an astronaut that was really not even conceived of, I don't know, four or five years ago when we were here.

I also wanted to mention one other thing that's not happening on site, but very relative to what's going on here, is there's a launch this evening of the first batch of Kuiper satellites for the Amazon broadband LEO constellation. Amazon, of course, has a huge retail operation, and it'll be very interesting to see how this unfolds with SpaceX's Starlink, and again, speaks to the growing capabilities in the commercial sector and the need for the government to quickly readjust if it wants to take advantage of the developments that are happening in the outside world. There was a discussion yesterday about one of the big impediments to this is all of the security firewalling where there's not opportunities to really be transparent about what's available from one program to another. So, in the whole Trump administration remake of government, I think all of this is going to come into play.

Guy Norris:

[inaudible 00:12:18], just before we leave... I guess I was going to mention the fact that they've got this huge exhibition area here, haven't they, of course. One thing I did notice this time was the fact that there's three or four lunar terrain vehicles sitting around. It's not quite like a parking lot, but... Lunar Outpost, which is a Colorado company, it's unveiled its Eagle, I think, their moon rover here.

Have you had a chance to see any of them, Garrett? Have you been down there?

Garrett Reim:

I haven't, no. There's a lot of discussion around not just landing in the moon, but exploring it and exploiting it, that is getting in what minerals can you get out of the moon. I haven't heard that the government is explicitly driving this conversation, but you hear startups may be trying to attract government attention or interest, talking helium-3's on the moon, there could be rare earths. The Trump administration is very interested in rare earths and other minerals back here on Earth, with claims to annex Canada or Greenland or the minerals in Ukraine. [inaudible 00:13:27] startups that are just angling.

But there certainly has been a market for wildcatting on the moon, some real speculative ventures for a while. And it'll be interesting to see where that goes. If this CLPS initiative starts producing landers that can consistently bring payloads to the moon, then you can start sampling the soil and mapping out where the resources are, and maybe even bringing it back to Earth.

Irene Klotz:

I was just going to mention that one of the things that has struck me so far at Symposium is that while the primes are here, Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, much of the emphasis and the marketing and the advertising are companies like Vast Space startup that's planning a commercial LEO station, and they don't even have NASA funding for their initial program. They're a side possibility to the three efforts that have received original NASA study funding.

Guy Norris:

Don't Vast have their mock-up here as well of their...

Irene Klotz:

So, you see this shifting. Not only is there a much bigger presence of the military space community, which is how this, of course, conference started, that's why it's in Colorado Springs, but the emphasis now on the startups and their commercial services.

Guy Norris:

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Irene and Garrett. Now let's catch up with Vivienne who we managed to track down on the sidelines here at the show.

We mentioned that Vivienne was not actually with us a few minutes ago for the podcast recording, but I've caught up with her finally here at the Space Symposium. Vivienne, what's your key takeaways so far from the show?

Vivienne Machi:

Thanks, Guy. I would say from the first two full days of Space Symposium, my biggest observation has just been the increased discussion around international partnerships with the Space Force and its allies and partners around the world. This has been a key topic of discussion for the U.S. military and the Space Force. Every year, every time they speak about it, they do emphasize that that's important, but this year we're really seeing some of the fruits of that discussion come to life: discussions about recent operations, bilateral operations, discussions among allies about increasing their investments in the space domain.

I think this is the first year that you're really hearing some of the proof-is-in-the-pudding discussion around international partnerships.

Guy Norris:

Right, yeah. Earlier on, in fact, there was some mention, wasn't there, of the cooperation with the French during an exercise in space. That literally kicked off the Space Symposium, didn't it?

Vivienne Machi:

Yes, exactly. That was a big announcement in general. Stephen Whiting, who's the commander of U.S. Space Command, he did that in his Tuesday keynote, talking about the first ever U.S. and France bilateral rendezvous and proximity operation in the environment of a strategic competitor spacecraft. Didn't give a whole lot more detail on what that actually meant, but even the fact that they said that that happened, even the fact that it happened at all is quite notable.

General Chance Saltzman, the chief of space operations recently did a roundtable with reporters here. That's why I couldn't join my esteemed colleagues earlier. And he really foot-stomped that joint activities like that are so important, and it's really bringing it from international partnerships on paper to true operations. That's what they're looking for.

Guy Norris:

All right then. Another one which is making headlines, I think at a good timing here at the Space Symposium, is the U.S. has moved towards this Golden Dome system, which is still in its nascent phases in some senses. But in other ways it's been going on behind the scenes already, hasn't it, for some time, certainly in terms of production of the prototypes, satellite sensors that have been already put into orbit, for example, and of course relying a lot on interceptor systems that had already been fielded [inaudible 00:17:57] parts.

You and I have both actually had a chance to get a bit of an update on that. What's your take on what's going on?

Vivienne Machi:

A bit of an update is definitely what we would say here. I think across the Space Force, it's certainly on everybody's mind. Everybody across the service is trying to figure out their role in Golden Dome, but the details are still being articulated. I would say that most of the program managers here are still hesitant to stick their neck out and give more details before the true architecture is released.

Guy Norris:

Right. And then of course from the industry perspective, I just sat in with a briefing from L3Harris, and they're basically chomping at the bit to get on with production and production contracts. I think there's a disparity in a way between the DoD's willingness to set down the marker, and industry saying, "We're raring to go already.". But I think by the sound of it, one of the questions was asked about, "When could this actually... Will it be this year?". And they said, "It could be much sooner than that when we finally get these production contracts, because the Trump administration is moving very, very quickly on this.".

Vivienne Machi:

Yes. And I would say the last observation I'd make so far at the Space Symposium is just the increased and very vocal acknowledgement of war fighting in space, that it is a contested domain. Again, the service has danced around this concept for years, but now you're really hearing senior leadership foot-stomp that we need more resources, we need to invest in weapons and space. And to your point, that gives industry, such as those who are interested in participating in Golden Dome, more of a signal that if they are ready to invest in some of the capabilities for Golden Dome and other things, the Space Force is ready to support it and move those programs very quickly.

Guy Norris:

Great. Thank you, Vivienne, for the update. Great stuff.

Vivienne Machi:

Thanks, Guy.

Guy Norris:

Unfortunately, we're out of time. But for now, that's a wrap for this week's Check 6. A special thanks to our podcast editor, Corey Hitt. And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to Check 6 so you never miss an episode. If you found today's discussion to be helpful, consider leaving a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts, better yet, share this episode with a friend or colleague.

Thank you for your time and have a great week.