Closing Bell - Manifest Space: Space AI with Slingshot CEO Melanie Strickland 3/10/23

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Morgan speaks with Slingshot Aerospace co-founder & CEO Melanie Strickland and the company’s work in tracking satellites and risk assessment. They discuss generative artificial intelligence, space traffic and diversity efforts in the sector. For more Manifest Space, listen and follow here: https://link.chtbl.com/manifestspace

As a girl, Melanie Strickland was obsessed with the night sky. At 10 years old, she would log the satellites she spotted and write letters to NASA. Today, her startup, Slingshot Aerospace, tracks thousands of objects in orbit and using that data, assesses risk. A risk that will only rise. Whenever I retired from the Air Force in 2017 to start this company, we were tracking about 1,800 active satellites. By 2020, there were almost 4,000. And now we're sitting in 2023 with over 10,000.

By the end of the decade, we're looking at 100,000 active satellites on orbit. And the investment continues to rise even in these economic downturns. So that could even go higher than 100,000. But look, we've got 300 million pieces of debris on orbit. In this episode, Slingshot's CEO and co-founder discusses the VC-backed startup, generative AI, since space is poised to become an early use case, and even diversity efforts, as March represents Women's History Month. I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space.

So I think let's just start a little bit with what Slingshot is and what the solution you're bringing to the space industry is. Yes, certainly. I think it's undeniable the fact that our human race has really become highly dependent on space. And with that high dependency also comes vulnerability, because in fact, the digital infrastructure necessary to hold everything that's going up on orbit in the space revolution hasn't really kept up with that advancement. And so what we do here at Slingshot Aerospace is we are a space sustainability company. We really are here to ensure that our customers who fly in those orbital regimes across defense, commercial, and civil agencies are able to understand where they are in relation to risk on orbit. And that risk comes in several forms today. It comes in the non-physical form from space weather and RF

congestion and those types of things. And it also comes from the physical risk on orbit from the collision risk with debris, as well as active and deactivated satellites. And so the growth of that has made it so that when we activate a customer, they're leveraging us just for safer space operations as well as collision avoidance. So just to put it into context for folks that maybe aren't quite as familiar, when we talk about how crowded space is, whether it's from a debris standpoint or from the congestion of, say, signals, just how crowded are we talking about here? Yeah, great question. So there's actually over 300 million pieces of debris on orbit growing with every launch and certainly growing with every incident on orbit from ASATs that have been launched and shot down satellites. accurate when we say that because things continue to go 17,000 miles an hour around the globe

when an event like that happens. But there's also, you know, whenever I retired from the Air Force in 2017 to start this company, we were tracking about 1,800 active satellites. By 2020, there were almost 4,000. And now we're sitting in 2023 with over 10,000. By the end of the decade, we're looking at 100,000 active satellites on orbit. And the investment continues to rise even in these economic downturns. So that could even go higher than 100,000. But look, we've got 300 million pieces of debris on orbit. And by the end of the decade here, we're looking at 100,000 active satellites. I mean, that's incredible. It's like exponential growth. It's like a hyperbolic chart, I think, if you mapped it all out. But the piece that you said to me that just kind of got my attention before we get into the technology and like what what slingshot actually does and what that means um is just this idea of the stuff you can't see uh that you're mitigating the risk for because just all those satellites alone i would imagine

to the point you just made is makes it very busy in terms of signals and and all the other things that you can't see you're right and. And frankly, that no one can see. You know, there's over a million pieces of debris that are a centimeter and larger, but there's many, many, many more that are less than a centimeter, between a millimeter and a centimeter. And frankly, no one can see that.

And so there will always be that type of risk, which means that we have to design constellations better in order to not fly within those regimes that have more of those smaller particles of debris. So how are you tackling this? Yeah, well, we tackle it from the perspective of our products. The first and foundational piece of our product line is to ensure that we are virtualizing as much of that space domain as we can. And what virtualization means is an active representation of the operational domain where our customers fly from low Earth orbit all the way out to cislunar. In order to do that, you may know that we recently acquired Numerica Space with over

20 sites and over 120 sensors that look up at space and measure where these things are. Now, we can't see less than 10 centimeters, but we can see the preponderance of things that are larger than 10 centimeters. In the future, we'll be able to see much smaller than that, but we provide those measurements to our customers. We also provide them a new and easier way, a decentralized way to deconflict their airspace, so to speak. If there were air up there, I call it space space. But we give them an easy way through our capability called Slingshot Beacon. Slingshot Beacon is a two-sided communication platform, and it really allows the customers to deconflict that airspace through meaningful information from that underlying technology,

both from our sensor collections, as well as taking the collision data messages from the United States government, which have increased to, you know, some of the customers out there receive over 100,000 collision data messages a day because it's based off thresholds that were created in the 80s, where if you are coming within, you know, a very large covariance bubble, you get a warning. So now that we've got lots of capability on orbit, these operators, these owners and operators of satellites receive these warnings at a rate that's not usable. So we make those usable now by creating thresholds that only the customer uses. For example, you know, SpaceX uses different thresholds than OneWeb, than some of the smaller folks use. And so we needed to create a system that allowed those owner operators to maintain safe operating parameters according to their thresholds rather than the government's thresholds. That allowed us to then provide a free service to reduce the number of CDMs that they receive and communicate with one another.

You know, space is a non-jurisdicted domain, and these objects are going 17,000 miles an hour around the earth. And for many, many years until Slingshot Beacon came around, they were using an outdated database of owner operators with phone numbers and emails. And on the other side of that email or phone, there may or may not be someone picking up the phone to answer to de-conflict that airspace. So Slingshot Beacon is that two-sided coordination capability that allows our owner operators around the world to de-conflict that collision risk themselves with their own thresholds built in to that logic underneath the hood. Wow. I'll stop there. I mean, that's great. There's like a lot, there was lots to unpack there.

I know. And I gotta tell you, my face is like, my eyebrows are up. I'm like, what? Like 100,000 alerts a day got my attention. And then just this idea of like still using like phones and emails and with all those alerts. And I mean, it's kind of incredible that there wasn't a solution before Slingshot came along. How are you able to offer that, at least that part of the service, are free?

Yeah, we believe basic space flight safety should be free. And it's really a beachhead for us to offer advanced services to those customers at the time and place of their choosing. And so it's a network effect for us. It is, and it's the right thing to do, right? There are all types of owner operators from academia to the large owner operators that have been flying for years and years and everything in between now that this revolution has picked up due to transparent launch prices and smaller components that are commercial off-the-shelf technologies that go into building

satellites. So we believe that the basic spaceflight safety capabilities should be free. And with that, we honor our customers and they honor us in buying advanced services on top of that. Got it. So it sounds like maybe SpaceX and OneWeb, two very well-known commercial satellite operators, and in the case of SpaceX, a launch provider, are using your service. Who else? Who are some of your other customers? What does that portfolio look like? Yeah, great question. You know, there are some that we can talk about and some that we can't. I can get you a list of those after the interview. But we have small, large, we've got customers in Leo all the way out to Geo. Those customers not only use the technology today, but they also help to inform

the technology as we built it. So we're not a startup that went in with a pre-built capability and said, hey, use this. We actually got a variation of capabilities from the large mega constellations who helped inform their use cases, as well as, you know, those that fly one or two satellites way out at geo that are, you know, billion-dollar assets to those that are startups just like us who are doing some really inspiring things on orbit from Earth observation all the way to gas stations on orbit. Interesting. This may be kind of a zany question, but space insurance, it's always been a very niche

product, but I know it's an industry that's been growing to try and keep up with the demand, especially in the commercial, with the advent of this commercial space era. Does the service that you provide become something that's attractive to the insurers as well? I would imagine like it radiates out a service like this and has sure does. Yeah, I love this question. Because, you know, our other acquisition, Sarah data is a launch and satellite database that has been used for years by the insurance industry, those insurers that provide policies for launching in satellite operators. And I'd say 90% of the insurance market that does that uses Seradata today.

We continue to grow that aspect of the company. And I think as we combine that database into our foundational platform, it'll really allow those insurance providers to see a more in-depth and gain a more in-depth understanding of the risk profile of their clients. Rather than just having a database, that database now is connected to real-time observations of the space operating environment, all the way from weather to debris and active, unactive, and active on unactive satellites. It's really fascinating. So from a market standpoint, everybody's talking about artificial intelligence right now, especially in light of some of the offerings, the earthbound, for now at least, offerings of Microsoft and Alphabet.

You work in artificial intelligence as well. I guess walk me through that. We do. A place where even before, you know, the buzzwords, AI, machine learning, those types of things, predictive analytics don't have constant connection to those assets from an RF perspective, and you don't have continuous observation of those assets as they revolve around the earth or orbit around the earth. And so as the data continues to grow, now we're able to take that data into machine learning and eventually into full-on AI. And so the space industry is in a place now, and I think Slingshot Aerospace is really situated at the core of that because we have so much data. From the Seradata database that holds data all the way back from Sputnik to yesterday's launches,

to the many, many observations, millions of observations a day that our sensor network brings in, we're now able to have the data repository that's actually necessary because these algorithms are so data hungry. Now we can get into true prediction, not just siloed mathematical trajectory predictions. So more to come on that

front. AI, I think, is going to tremendously help, not just from the predictive nature, but also autonomous deconfliction, onboard deconfliction of that risk eventually. It's really fascinating. Would it be correct then to say that Slingshot is really a data company focused on space rather than a space company focused on data? Clever and right. I have my moments. Talk to me a little bit about how this company came to be. Yeah. Okay. Well, it starts all the way back in my childhood. And so I'll be quick with it because I'm old and you don't want a long story here. But I was obsessed with the night sky as a child. I grew up in a tiny little town in West Texas

where there wasn't a whole lot to do and it is still considered a protected dark skies area and so I could see the Milky Way most nights and what that means is I could also see airplanes and satellites. My dad taught me the difference between the two and how to how to understand that and I started logging satellites even as a as a 10 year old little girl in West Texas I marched myself down to the our little library that had three rows probably of books and found addresses to the NASA centers around the United States I wrote letters to them and lo and behold this littleyear-old girl in West Texas started receiving manila envelopes from NASA with schematics and pictures of astronauts and those types of things. And so, you know, I also loved airplanes.

And so I couldn't think of a better place to cultivate those dreams into a career than the United States Air Force. And so I joined the Air Force. I spent 21 years there, both on the enlisted side and the officer side. And I got to do my live stream. I got to fly in the back of a surveillance aircraft for the first eight years while going to school nights and weekends, and then crossed over to become an officer in the United States Air Force Space Command, where I got to not only operate, you know operate highly classified capabilities, but also I was dual-hatted and also worked R&D acquisition, which meant I got to help build the next generation

of satellites. And that's really where I got into space situational awareness in that latter part of my career, the preponderance of my career was spent there. But yeah, I quickly realized that the Air Force instilled leadership in me. I still believe the United States Air Force is one of the best leadership organizations in the world, if you take advantage of it. And I also knew that we had a problem. I got to interface the last four years of my career. I interfaced with industry partners like SpaceX, like other startups and industry partners that were doing amazing things on orbit and from a launch perspective. And I quickly realized if reusable launch vehicles were going to be a reality that, you know, we were already having problems tracking, not tracking, but coordinating and deconflicting space-to-space for 1800 objects that if reusables

were to be successful, that that would exponentially increase the risk. And the government is sometimes slow to build data technologies. And that I felt with those leadership skills, with the technical inclination, my knowledge of the problem that I could build a company to help solve this probably faster than I could staying inside. And so after 21 years in the Air Force, I decided to retire to start Slingshot Aerospace and begin building the team and the technology to solve this. And that is what we're doing today. I couldn't be more proud. But we did start the company in 2017. I've got two co-founders. We started with three of us. And today we've got over 150 people working on this problem. That's amazing. What a great

story. So you're growing quickly. How quickly are you growing? We're growing quickly. This time last year, I just checked the numbers. We were 59 people. Today, we're 151. I'm going to pull that back just a little bit because I do believe that smaller teams go faster. They're more innovative. I don't want to get too big too fast here. I think we'll probably grow to about just under 200 this year. But the smaller the teams, the faster they go and the more innovative they are. And I'm going to circle back on something that you and I have discussed before and how we came in contact with each other, which is the Space Workforce 2030 initiative. That's right. And the

fact that you are looking to hire above and beyond and outside of sort of the more traditional aerospace roles and where women and folks from other diverse backgrounds are concerned as well. How is that process going? It's going well. You know, we've got to get the pipeline built and that that's going to take years to get a better, a more not better, but a more diverse pipeline, which is a better pipeline. And we're starting all the way at kindergarten through some of these initiatives, K through 12, postgraduate school and on into, you know, workforce. And so it's going, I will say, as you grow, the percentage of underrepresented groups and diversity in a company is really hard to maintain. We're suffering with that today. And so that's why we believe it's so important to start earlier and to make sure that those underrepresented groups know that that space is open it's open for

dreamers i'm a dreamer i wasn't a mathematician i wasn't even very good at math growing up but i had a passion and now i run a space company or a data company so it's going our our talent workforce i think is best in industry from an underrepresented perspective. Even our chief scientist is a female Latina and best in industry and regarded as so with multiple awards. So we're getting there. It is a problem in the space industry. We're probably further behind than most tech sectors, sitting at about 13% women. But I will say that there are plenty of women doing amazing things in the space industry, breaking glass and setting role models across the industry today from the Artemis program even being named after a Greek goddess to all of the women who helped make this Artemis mission this past year a success and so NASA has

always had you know a great reputation for bringing in diverse candidates and and women all the way from back in the the beginning days of the Apollo program. So you're seeing, if you can see it, you can be it. And so we're trying to also bring those folks in so that as we go to K through 12 and beyond that they can see Slingshot and be part of organizations like ours that are truly solving some of the humanity's biggest biggest problems and you're hiring it sounds like you don't want to grow too fat you know too far too fast but you are hiring are you hiring a lot of these tech workers there that are getting laid off at some of the big tech companies well

some but yeah some I I don't know exactly if they're getting laid off the ones that we're hiring. I do know that we have an extremely high standard to get in the door here at Slingshot, and it starts with the person and their passion for space and respect and trust and attitude and all of those things come before even uh we start digging into the skill of the the individual uh because we we just believe in in creating a culture we put our people first uh that's followed by um our trust with our customers and then i believe if you've got trust inside with your people, you're able to empower them, right? You're able to say, here's the mission, here's your North Star, go, and they will get the traction and they will bring the revenue in. And so oftentimes it's not about where they came from, but what they bring and how they're gonna level us up and do they meet our high standards. So long-term vision for Slingshot,

where do you see this company five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now? And I guess even more broadly, how that speaks into where you see this space economy going? Yeah, well, with the space economy, I mean, we're looking at a $10 trillion space economy by 2030 with, you know, already $62 billion in 2022 from the US government invested in space. And thousands of satellites launched last year, $26 billion in satellite manufacturing by 2030 with, again, a $10 trillion market by 2030. And so where do we see ourselves fitting into that? Every day we gain more customers and we're

giving them the ability to ensure that their systems are optimized and not affected by the risks that they fly through. I think space is one of the riskiest environments, if not the riskiest environment. It's very complex, but we're giving them the dynamic virtual environment and decision intelligence technology to truly accelerate space sustainability for the world, but also for their companies. These companies really want to be part of a space sustainability movement to create a safer orbital domain. And really, we believe that we're key to that. So five years down the road, we hope that we have created the the world's best digital infrastructure capable of accelerating space sustainability and connecting the world.

Space is a portal of knowledge. It's a portal of progress. It is at risk. There's something called the Kessler syndrome that if we have a debris on debris event could knock out our LEO capabilities. then things that we take for granted today may not be there, may not be available for us in the future. And so we want to prevent Kessler syndrome five years down the road. To answer your question, we will have accelerated space sustainability with our digital infrastructure. We will have created a safer orbital domain and in doing so a safer world, a more connected world. That does it for this episode of Manifest Space. Make sure you never miss a launch by searching Manifest Space wherever you get your podcasts. For more on the space race, be sure to watch Squawk on the Street on CNBC. I'm Morgan Brennan. Thank you.