CyberWire Daily - A Symposium, a wet dress, a new fund, and it’s only Monday. [T-Minus Space Daily]

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Brace yourselves, it’s Space Symposium week! Wet dress rehearsal for Starship. UK launches the International Bilateral Fund. Orbit Fab gets a series A round. Boeing announces their anti-jam payload for WGS. The FAA wants to balance air travel and space travel. Our interview with Steve Luczynski, Board Chair of the Aerospace Village, on their mission, programs, and upcoming activities at the RSA Conference next week. All this and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence briefing, Signals and Space, and you’ll never miss a beat. T-Minus Guest Our featured guest is Steve Luczynski, Board Chair of the Aerospace Village, on the Aerospace Village nonprofit, their mission, their programs, and their upcoming activities at the RSA Conference next week. You can follow Steve on LinkedIn and Twitter. Selected Reading SpaceX's launch of Starship could remake space exploration | Washington Post  UK Space Agency funding for international space partnerships | GOV.UK.  SpaceX launches seventh Transporter rideshare mission | SpaceNews Exolaunch’s 21 rideshare smallsats deployed during the SpaceX Transporter-7 mission | SatNews HawkEye 360’s nexgen Cluster 7 smallsats are successfully launched | SatNews    TrustPoint Announces Launch of First Commercially-Funded, Purpose-Built PNT Microsatellite | Business Wire  China claims its Space Station has achieved 100% oxygen regeneration in orbit | Interesting Engineering  Boeing Unveils Anti-Jam Payload For Next Space Force Wideband Global SATCOM Satellite | Via Satellite As counterspace weapons ‘proliferate,’ the new cold war for space races forward: studies | Breaking Defense The Moon is the Best Place to Transport Rocket Fuel | Universe Today  US aviation authorities may delay some space launches to avoid air traffic disruption | Reuters  NASA launches stadium-sized balloon from New Zealand | SpaceConnect   Audience Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our wicked fast 4 question survey. It’ll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders in the industry. Here’s a link to our media kit. Contact us at [e-mail] to request more info about sponsoring T-Minus. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your interview pitch to [e-mail] and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal, and our editor will get back to you for scheduling. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © 2023 N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the N2K Space Network. data being sold by data brokers. So I decided to try Delete.me. I have to say, Delete.me is a game changer. Within days of signing up, they started removing my personal information from hundreds of data brokers. I finally have peace of mind knowing my data privacy is protected. Delete.me's team does all the work for you with detailed reports so you know exactly what's been done. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete.me. Now at a special discount for our listeners, today get 20% off your Delete.me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash n2k and use promo code n2k at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindelete me.com slash N2K and enter code N2K at checkout.

That's joindelete me.com slash N2K code N2K. Hello, everyone. Hello everyone converging upon Colorado Springs, Colorado for this year's Space Symposium. The 38th annual Space Symposium kicks off today and it is the biggest international event for all things space across commercial, government and military sectors, with over 10,000 space professionals expected to attend this year. with over 10,000 space professionals expected to attend this year. Major international space agencies and companies will be in attendance, though we imagine there may have been some last-minute detours to a certain southern Texas location for some starship-y Open the floor. Right in front of the camera. My voice is coming in from the other way. Today is April 17th, 2023. I'm Maria Varmasis, and this is T-Minus.

Let's go. Let's go. It's Space Symposium Week, wet dress rehearsal for Starship, the UK launches the International Bilateral Fund, OrbitFab gets a Series A round, and my interview with Steve Luzinski, board chair of the Aerospace Village,

on their mission, programs, and upcoming activities at the RSA conference next week. And lots more today, so stick around. But first, a big welcome to the new T-minus show producer, Alice Caruth. Alice, I'm thrilled to have you join us. Alice, I'm thrilled to have you join us. Okay, as we said at the top of the show, it's Space Symposium Week, and I probably don't even need to tell you this, but it's a very busy week for space professionals.

We expect to hear plenty of new stories breaking this week from the big event, and if you're there in person, no doubt you've got a busy couple of days. And a special hello to the folks hanging out down in Boca Chica and on South Padre Island. SpaceX's Starship got its much, much awaited FAA launch license late last Friday, and this morning the team got things started for Starship's first integrated flight test. First attempts rarely result in a launch, though, and Starship was not an exception to this. A frozen pressurization valve in the first stage of the Super Heavy rocket today forced a scrub, but this wasn't a waste. The planned flight test became a wet dress rehearsal instead. It'll be at least 48 hours

until another launch attempt can occur, so perhaps Elon Musk's launch date of choice on Thursday might actually happen. I'll let you look up that date on your calendar. The 33 Raptor engines powering the massive Starship Super Heavy use a combination of liquid oxygen and methane as a propellant. While Relativity Space's Terran 1 may have technically snatched the crown of being the first rocket to get to orbit thereabouts using methane, it's not a crowded field just yet. Methane is often called the next generation rocket fuel, but no new technology is without its teething problems, and so far methane has proven to be kind of tricky. So if Starship's flight test, hopefully later this week, is a

success, it won't just be the massive scale of the ship that's a big win, the rocket fuel will be quite a success story too. And we're already getting news out of Space Symposium this week, and that's going to be a theme this week for sure. The UK Space Agency today announced that £20 million will be available for its International Bilateral Fund, or IBF, and that will specifically be to support international relationships in the space sector. IBF funds will support research by international partners in industry, research, and academia in countries that are already strong space partners, like the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan, as well as what the UK is calling, quote, emerging space nations.

In the first year, up to 30 projects could get up to £75,000 in a Phase 1 proposal, and if successful, there could be up to £1.5 million in second-round funding. It sounds somewhat similar to the CBER program in the U.S., and the IBF is open to proposals until June 9th. Gas stations and space just got a funding round. OrbitFab today announced they've raised $28.5 million in Series A funding, led by 8090 Industries, with additional funding from Stride Capital, Industrious Ventures, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Tribe Capital, Good Growth Capital, and Massive Capital Partners. OrbitFab is working on extending the life of satellites on orbit by offering refueling services, and this Series A funding will help them grow as they get ready

to deploy their first on-orbit services, including a mission for the Defense Innovation Unit expected to launch in early 2024. And after a few delays, SpaceX's Transporter 7 rideshare launched over the weekend on Saturday, delivering over 50 spacecraft to a sun-synchronous orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket that lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Most of the craft aboard were microsatellites and nanosatellites, and many were sent to augment existing constellations. Transporter 7 is launch number 23 for 2023 for the SpaceX Falcon 9 series. And little surprise here that SpaceX is still dominating the market for small sat launches. Even with a price increase last year, launch costs on a transporter rideshare for a 200-kilo satellite is still something of a bargain

at $1.3 million. This next story now from China Daily. At a recent conference in Harbin, Chinese officials said that the Chinese space station can now produce 100% of its oxygen supply and recycle 95% of its water resources. Bian Chang, director of the Environmental Control and Life Support Engineering Office under the Astronaut Center of China, said the six regeneration systems that make this oxygen regeneration possible reduce the amount of supplies needed to the Chinese space station from the ground by six tons a year. Recently, Boeing has announced that they've been working on the Protected Tactical SATCOM prototype, or PTSP,

which is an anti-jamming payload that will be integrated aboard the U.S. Space Force Wideband Global SATCOM-11 satellite, scheduled for launch next year, with the PTSP coming online in 2025. scheduled for launch next year, with the PTSP coming online in 2025. According to the story from ViaSatellite, the technology behind the PTSP will automatically counter various GPS jamming techniques from jammer geolocation, real-time adaptive nulling, frequency hopping, and other methods. GPS jamming is no mere nuisance, and it's been an imperative for quite a long time to improve the resilience of position navigating and timing systems that we all rely on, and it's been an imperative for quite a long time to improve the resilience of position navigating and timing systems that we all rely on, and especially the military.

The FAA says that as space launches continue to ramp up the cadence, they may need to play fair with commercial air travel and share the airspace near launch sites. As the 2023 travel season ramps up here in the United States, there's concern from the FAA that the already very crowded skies over Florida specifically don't need any more disruption, and the launches from the Space Coast might just make things worse. As a result, the FAA says they're considering delaying commercial space launches if they could be potentially too disruptive to commercial air travel, or if they are too close to major holidays or sporting events.

to commercial air travel, or if they are too close to major holidays or sporting events. Launches and launch scrubs mean a lot of planes idling on the tarmac, and that's not good for anybody or the planet. According to a story in Reuters, a memo from four major U.S. carriers said the March 11th Terran 1 launch attempt and subsequent scrub caused 99,000 incremental flight delay minutes, impacting 303,000 customers, resulting in an additional 227,000 gallons of fuel burn for three of the four U.S. carriers, which Reuters estimates was worth about 4.9 million pounds of CO2 emissions. Coming up next, my interview with Steve Luzinski of the Aerospace Village, right after this break. And now, a message from Black Cloak. Did you know the easiest way for cyber criminals to bypass your company's defenses

is by targeting your executives and their families at home? Black Cloak's award-winning digital executive protection platform secures their personal devices, home networks, and connected lives. Because when executives are compromised at home, your company is at risk. In fact, over one-third of new members discover they've already been breached. Protect your executives and their families 24-7, 365 with Black Cloak. Learn more at blackcloak.io. From April 24th to April 27th, the 2023 RSA Security Conference is happening in San Francisco, and it's one of the biggest professional cybersecurity events in the world.

And there will be aerospace experts there, laser-focused on the current state of space system security and what can be done to improve it. To do that, they'll be teaming up with some of the best minds in cybersecurity research at an ongoing event at RSA called the Aerospace Sandbox. Facilitating this cross-functional collaboration is Steve Luzinski, who is the chairman for the board of directors at the Aerospace Village, which is running the Aerospace Sandbox. Here's Steve with more on what the Aerospace Village is doing at RSA to help with the space sector. The very short version of the Aerospace Village,

it's a group of volunteers from all over the world. Lots of folks in Europe and the United States, of course, but also Japan. And we continue to grow. And these folks give their time to support our mission. And the mission is very simple. Build, inspire, promote. The idea is building relationships and growing trust amongst government, industry, and hackers, security researchers who find these problems and want to get them fixed because a lot of them have safety implications. The inspire is

to inspire folks to get into the workforce, whether it's just into cybersecurity or it's cybersecurity in the aviation and space sector. We're happy to bring them in because we know those folks are out there. They want to get in. They don't always know how, and we know we need them in the workforce. Then the final part is promote. It's promoting awareness of what's going on. Why is it okay to trust all of these systems? Why is it safe when we hear these different claims and what's really going on? And anywhere that we can help with that to make sure the public knows, yes, these are trustworthy systems.

There are smart people working on them, and it's okay to continue relying on them as much as we do. Yeah, so let's dig in a little bit on what specifically is happening at the Aerospace Village at RSA this year. So tell us a little bit what we can see there. Yeah, you bet. So this is our fourth year back, and the idea is RSA saw the value of what we do at other conferences in bringing in that technical expertise, not vendor pitches. Nobody's selling a product. I'm sure they're happy to take your money if you really want to buy something. and show them what's being done, not only in our area, but there's industrial control systems, there's car hacking, there's internet of things. All these groups are in the sandbox. And so

we are bringing in our partners. We have Boeing, who's talking about some supply chain security and how they maintain the security of aircraft throughout its lifetime. Pentest Partners has an Airbus simulator, and they use that, that they built that, and they use that to demonstrate some of the work they've done on vulnerabilities and electronic flight bags. Intelligenesis is another partner, and they have a demonstration about industrial control system security using a runway lighting scenario and some gear that they have built. And also we have CTQ. It's a small company. They have built real and virtual a Mars rover demonstration model and a drone demonstration

model. And what they're focusing on is the building cybersecurity when you're doing pure engineering to design something. So that is using a space-based system to demonstrate that. And then we're also very fortunate because we have all these things on both the space and the aviation side. We have two speakers. We have one that's from the FAA talking about the FAA's role in aviation and cybersecurity efforts there. talking about the FAA's role in aviation and cybersecurity efforts there.

But also another speaker that I think your audience from a space perspective will enjoy if they're out there. He's a researcher from the University of Finland, and his team does a lot of research associated with satellite gear, not just the satellite vehicles themselves, but also the ground control systems, vehicles themselves, but also the ground control systems and specifically some of the emergency beaconing systems that we might take advantage of if we're out lost hiking, there's an aircraft crash, these automatic beacons go off and the things that they're finding again, because they find these vulnerabilities and they want to make sure they get fixed. And he's going to be talking about his experiences. So a wide range of things that hopefully your audience is able to come out and enjoy with us. That sounds fantastic. Yeah, I hope so. That sounds great. What are you seeing in terms of how cybersecurity is being built into the engineering processes? Is this something where

there's greater maturity or is there still sort of a resistance to it or convincing needed? resistance to it or convincing needed? It depends answer, unfortunately. It depends on who you talk to and where. There are opportunities for improvement. Let's put it that way. There's certainly some areas that we see in industry, in government, where things are going really well. There's lots of talk and cooperation, things like that. And of course, there's other areas where things are lagging behind, right? Not everybody has the resources to invest. But when we are out talking to folks and we're received very well in the sense of being able to get the government and industry side who don't always cooperate and want to talk to each other for a variety of reasons to understand, hey, these security researchers, these hackers, whatever stereotypes you have, this is the value that they bring. And so once those conversations get started, we've seen tremendous benefits that the understanding of meeting somebody face-to-face, which, you know,

we had a little bit of a gap there, but as we start to see that come back, the value of that, having the conversations before a crisis so that folks can reach out to one another. And there's a number of efforts. Boeing has a tech council that they invite these security researchers in to talk about issues and what are topics that are current and pertinent to what's going on in this field. We also see that on the government side, there's an aviation cybersecurity initiative. Again, those are two aviation examples, but even CISA, they have a public-private working group for space cybersecurity, as does AIAA, and that is the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. They have an aerospace cybersecurity working group made

up of their members and outsiders, and the village is a part of all of those, because that's where we see the folks interacting and the goodness of having the conversation and being able to propagate that further and get others to understand the goodness of having the conversation and being able to propagate that further and get others to understand the value of bringing cybersecurity into the conversation early. Yeah, that's a great segue into my next question is what would be your advice to a space firm that maybe has little to no understanding of where they need to get started on something like this? So there's plenty of resources in the sense like some of those agencies and groups that I mentioned before that they put out a public notice. They're inviting folks to join their events,

to listen and learn, to come in and present. There's a space ISAC that invites folks in. There's also membership there. But again, they invite in for different discussions and presentations. And then even as simple as events like DEF CON, where DEF CON is a wide variety of things. It's the biggest hacker conference in the world. It happens in the U.S., out in Vegas in August, for folks who may not be familiar. But they have just a tremendous range of things that they do. And then when you have a village like ours, you can focus on aerospace topics.

You can come by, and we're already thinking about this year's DEF CON, but what we've done in the past, we've had AWS brought in a segment of their ground control network, and they had a capture the flag contest. So anybody could walk up, learn how to use their network, and try some games that help them learn what's going on. We had folks from Hackasat who bring in CubeSats and FlatSats who are teaching and demonstrating. So it's a chance to interact with those folks. It's a chance to learn what is going on in the field and to talk to experts who are doing this. So for folks in a startup mode

who are trying to learn more about the cybersecurity aspects or where to go to learn more, who to talk to, that's another great venue. And one thing we were talking about before we got started was sort of debunking real threats versus ones that maybe we hear about in the media that aren't as relevant. Any examples there you want to chat about? Yeah. Any little favorites?

Yeah, I don't know if I need to go into specific examples, but I think typical an incident happens. Everybody reacts. The first news reports say one thing, and a lot of times that's not actually what's going on. And so that's why we made sure to highlight that as part of our mission. There's so much goodness out there, goodness as far as smart people who do know what's going on most of the time because they're there firsthand or others who have the expertise to understand while there may not be a lot of information, this is the more likely cause behind things. So when you start bringing them together with media and cybersecurity smart

reporters who want to learn more and present the story correctly, you give them a venue to talk to one another. That as a connector is what the village does. So we can help bring those smart voices together to make sure the right information gets out there. The right information as in getting to the level of detail so it's easy to understand for the general public because most of the time the folks we're talking to are absolutely not in-depth technical experts. So let's make it something easier for them to understand. Let's make sure, is this really cybersecurity? Think back to the FAA NOTAMs issue that happened not too long ago. That was a mistake. That was not

a hack and some massive movie scenario of things to worry about. That was just bad process. Or other events where I don't know the details of Viasat, but there's a lot going on there in the background between what happened on the satellite and what happened in the ground control network. And the reporting that's coming out appears to be good, solid background and details and Viasat, how they're talking about it. We haven't been a part of that, so I'm not trying to claim any of that, but just seeing that happening,

the willingness to talk about those things is very encouraging. Yeah, indeed. And certainly since the Viasat incident last year, I've incidentally been hearing a lot more interest in this. So I hope that you'll see that interest reflected in attendance at RSA and DEF CON this year. And I look forward to

following up with you on how both events go and what happens this year, what's new. Yeah, you bet. Happy to talk anytime. And if anybody has questions, to get in touch and be able to reach out and learn more. Steve, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for speaking with me today. You can find out more about the Aerospace Sandbox at RSA and the Aerospace Village at aerospacevillage.org. We'll be right back after this quick break. We'll be right back after this quick break. increase in ransomware attacks, and a $75 million record payout in 2024, these traditional security tools expand your attack surface with public-facing IPs that are exploited by bad actors more easily than ever with AI tools.

It's time to rethink your security. Zscaler Zero Trust Plus AI stops attackers by hiding your attack surface, making apps and IPs invisible, eliminating lateral movement, connecting users only to specific apps, not the entire network, continuously verifying every request based on identity and context, simplifying security management with AI-powered automation, and detecting threats using AI to analyze over 500 billion daily transactions. Hackers can't attack what they can't see. Protect your organization with Zscaler Zero Trust and AI. Learn more at zscaler.com security.

Hello again. We've got a balloon story for you today. Now, don't roll your eyes. It's nothing nefarious or mysterious. This one's all science. NASA this week launched a pumpkin-shaped super pressure balloon from Wanaka Airport in New Zealand. This balloon is football stadium-sized, and I assume we mean U.S. football and not a football pitch, and will hit an altitude of 110,000 feet. Its 100-day mission? To test the balloon's super pressure technology and to seek out new large galaxy clusters with a new

telescope on board provided by Princeton University. The balloon is fully enclosed, which adds to its longevity. Oh yeah, this is new balloon technology. NASA's Scientific Balloon Program chief, Debbie Fairbrother, said this, The superpressure balloon technology is a real game-changer for conducting cutting-edge science at the edge of space at a fraction of the cost of flying into space. And that's it for T-Minus for April 17th, 2023. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks,

your source for strategic workforce intelligence. For additional links and resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. Elliot Peltzman composed our theme song, mixing by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester. Alice Carruth is our producer. Our executive producer is Brandon Karff. And I'm Maria Varmazes. See you tomorrow. T-Minus. solutions that are not only ambitious, but also practical and adaptable. That's where Domo's AI and data products platform comes in. With Domo, you can channel AI and data into innovative uses that deliver measurable impact. Secure AI agents connect, prepare, and automate your data workflows, helping you gain insights, receive alerts, and act with ease through guided apps tailored to your role. Data is hard. Domo is easy. Learn more at ai.domo.com.

That's ai.domo.com.