CyberWire Daily - Designing space systems for the AI era. [T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing]

Episode Date: August 9, 2026

As commercial space activity accelerates, satellite manufacturers are rethinking how spacecraft are designed, built, and secured. In this week's episode, host Maria Varmazis sits down with Jason Roberson, an Industry Value Expert for Aerospace & Defense at Dassault Systems, to discuss how AI, automation, and digital engineering are transforming the space industry's product lifecycle. From digital twins and AI-assisted design to the future of in-space maintenance, Jason explores how these technologies are accelerating innovation while reshaping manufacturing. At the same time, the conversation examines the growing cybersecurity challenges that accompany this transformation and why building secure-by-design principles into space systems will be critical. Like what you heard? Be sure to subscribe to our free Signals and Space Briefing⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, our Sunday newsletter covering the intersection of cybersecurity and space. Subscribe at: ⁠https://thecyberwire.com/newsletters/signals-and-space⁠ Is there a topic or person you’d like to hear on our show? You can send your questions and feedback to ⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also fill our our audience survey: ⁠https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NJYCN2P ⁠ T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing is a production of N2K CyberWire. ⁠N2K⁠ is your nexus for discovery and connection for people, technology, and ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how at ⁠n2k.com⁠.

You're listening to the Cyberwire Network, powered by N2K. AI is making fishing attacks faster, more convincing, and harder for people to spot, and traditional security awareness and fishing training weren't designed for this level of attack. Hawkshunt helps security teams prepare employees for the attacks they face every day, with personalized fishing training that adapts to each employee and reduces risky behavior over time. For IT and security leaders looking to strengthen their human layer of defense, without adding more manual work, visit hoxhunt.com slash cyberwire to learn more. That's hoxhunt.com slash cyberwire. You know, it used to be government-led, huge manufacturing.

And recently we did more industrialization and commercial scaling. You know, when we look back at the beginning or even in the 90s, it was, more like 90% was government. Well, we've really flipped that. And now presently, we're going through digitalization. And I think I said this last time that, you know, your new space companies that are starting up, they're born digital. And they really get attention from the major players, you notice in how quickly people

can move in a digital world. Welcome. I'm Maria Vermasas. And you're listening to T-minus space cyber briefing. In this show, we examine the... evolution of cybersecurity in the global and orbital infrastructure that powers, protects, and connects our lives. Hello, and thank you for joining me.

Today's show is an interview with Jason Roberson of DeSalt Systems, where he walks me through how satellite design and manufacturing are evolving while we see record-breaking space launches and activity year after year. And that maintenance bit is especially relevant for our cybersecurity focus, as satellite maintenance is still mostly done remote via software. Yeah, makes sense, right? It's kind of air-gapped up there on orbit. So what does everyone's favorite phrase,

secure by design, actually mean in the space context, where security is often addressed after everything's just about already built? And as we talked about in last week's show, as the space supply chain becomes increasingly international and dependent on cloud connectivity, how will satellite makers navigate all of this, securely. Good questions. Let's ask Jason. Jason, it is so good to see you again. Thank you so much for coming back on T-minus. Yeah, thanks for the invite. It's always a pleasure to see you guys.

It's been a little while since we last chatted. So if you don't mind, reintroducing yourself to the audience, tell me a bit about yourself. Well, thank you for that. Yes. So I've spent 25 years with the Air Force and the space program whenever I finished that in In 2021, I did some consulting for a while and then found my way to DeSso Systems in December of 2021 and have been on an adventure with them since. I totally jumped in with what we bring to many industries on virtual twins and digitalization. And it's just been a great adventure with us. So that continues to march forward.

So for our chat today, I wanted to dive into. I guess the latest on satellite design and maintenance, but picking your brain a little bit as we talk about building and security concerns and making sure that, you know, secure by design is part of that process, especially now that our show is focusing much more on space cyber. I guess I wanted to just pick your brain a little bit on how that all makes sense to you and what your thoughts are on that. So I don't know, not a killer opening question,

but I'm just curious what that sparks for you. Yeah, it's a, well, you know, design. has been a challenge since we first started doing this 60 something years ago and i would say maintenance is still a challenge for you know we don't really have a full in-space maintenance capability it's all remotely done with software now which has a whole cyber aspect to it as that moves forward but but the population growth in space if kid in space is impressive the space Foundation's report that came out for 2025 showed a over 60% increase in the amount of vehicles launched between 24 and 25. So those all had to be manufactured. So we're seeing a huge boom

in the manufacturing. So we'll probably focus. I'm seeing a little more on the design and manufacturing aspect because, you know, the maintenance piece isn't quite mature enough yet. But it wasn't just the U.S. market. They highlighted 120 organizations across 37 countries, and that's just outside of SpaceX. When people think about who's throwing things into space and booming, well, people think of SpaceX. So that's outside of SpaceX. And the drivers are large Leo constellations. There's still the bespoke systems like, you know, James Webb Telescope and Moonlanders. And then there's a lot of smaller batch custom systems that are coming from startups and smaller companies and even large companies building, you know, custom mission sets. But the way we designed has changed and the way we manufactured has changed.

You know, it used to be government-led, huge manufacturing. And recently we did more industrialization and commercial scaling. And oh, and by the way, on those statistics from the Space Foundation, 90% of that was commercial. When we look back at the beginning or even in the 90s, it was more like 90% was government. Well, we've really flipped that. And now presently, we're going through digitalization. And I think I said this last time that, you know, your new space companies that are starting up, they're born digital. So I think they have a huge advantage in the market to move fast.

And they really get attention from the major players, your OEMs, like Northrop's and Lockheets. and even SpaceX noticing how quickly people can move in a digital world. So then, of course, AI is huge. I think last time we spoke, AI was a topic, but it wasn't a forefront topic. It wasn't just at all of our fingertips. So there are capabilities that have existed for design, since CAD was invented, computer-a-drafting was invented,

but now you put the AI layer into that and create a digital thread across your whole product life cycle. So really, you can go from the air quote drawing board to in space operations and the end of mission all in the virtual world and see your whole mission play out before you have to do the huge investment in building kit. We even have virtual reality assisted designing manufacturing. So even once you're in the process of doing that manufacturing and really design it for manufacturing and design it for maintenance. So I think at Commercial Space Week, whenever I went by your booth, I saw the Orbit Fab CEO was talking to you. Yes. And they've got a great, they and others are looking at in-space refueling. But a lot of the current systems in space are configured for that.

They weren't designed for maintenance. They're designed to get software updates. they're not designed to get more fuel or to get, you know, bolt-ons to have more capabilities. So I think we're seeing an evolution in the thinking for sure. Yeah. And so there's so much going on. Yeah. No, Jason, you're absolutely right.

When we last chatted, the idea of AI being part of the process was kind of a, that'll be cool when that happens sort of thing. And I remember a lot of the conversations were like, we're keeping an eye on it. But it's, we're on the cusp of that. happening. And here we are, just a few years later. And the speed at which that has changed is just mind-boggling to me. But I mean, just some of what you were describing, you kind of blew my mind a little bit about the idea of where AI can come in in this process. So tell me more about that. Yeah, well, it's, you know, you have your AI and your design process. You can have what we call

virtual companions at this system. So we have a virtual companion named Leo, who is the engineer, then we have one called ORA, who is the business expert, and you've basically asked them questions or say, hey, I'm trying to design this with Leo and he's like a coworker that will help you design this and even say, oh, I see where you're going this. It's not just a language model. It is a genetic AI. So it looks at what you're doing and anticipates what you do. And we're seeing more of that across the industry. But we have definitely at the core of our capabilities are integrating artificial intelligence. And whenever you bring, you've got your design right and you're bringing it forward to manufacturing.

I mentioned design for manufacturing, design for maintenance. And designing for maintenance is a lot more applicable in the areas that we can touch, you know, like aircraft. And that's applicable to the space industry because you have like dawn aerospace that's looking at, you know, launching things from a drone that goes up. You've got Virgin Galactic who actually goes to space and comes back. And then, you know, crude systems can be maintained. There's maintenance involved there because they go up and come back. So there's an aspect there.

But, you know, we think of the robots in the future. But there's also a term that I just learned, I think, last year called co-bots. So co-bots. Yeah. So they're reshaping the factories. So they're really your companion. They're an extension. You know, I'm being the, you know, 25 plus years ingrained of air operations in me

from a military aspect, I thought, okay, I'm thinking about an autonomous wingman or a, you know, I'm a piloted aircraft, but then with a dozen co-pilots that are autonomous that you control. So in a factory floor, it's very similar. And there's been a boom in a robot demand across manufacturing as well. There's been a increase from the International Federation of Robotics had a report, and they mentioned the growth. significantly increasing that there was the highest demand in recent years. Wow. In 10 years, there were more than doubled in the last 10 years.

And they had 221,000 units installed from 2014 to 2014. And then in 2024, there were 542,000 robot units installed in factories. And what I found very interesting in that because base is a global competitive. area that the Asia and Australia market had about 75% of that. So they were really dominating where they were installing robots and co-bots into the manufacturing process. And all this is, you know, you can have some AI on-premise where we talk about, you know, the cyber aspect of this.

So AI has to, does computation, as I mentioned, your virtual companion, you tell it what you're working on and you go home. the evening, you come back the next day. And I like to say it's almost like Iron Man or Tony Stark with Jarvis design in his different Iron Man suits. We're not quite to that point yet, but that's really where AI can take us. But it requires connectivity to these data centers to do this mass processing. And then you've got to be connected to the cloud.

And so whenever you get into, if you're not on premise and you're not in a closed environment, you do have a cyber aspect that has to be thought about. And we get so excited about these things, sometimes we're just moving forward with these super cool capabilities. You really need a, you know, cyber security-minded person to give it a look and give you that perspective on it as well. Oh, of course. Something to them all over, cybersecurity-minded people, as we go to a quick break. Be right back. We're back now with my interview with Jason Roberson of DeSalt Systems, jumping back in on the topic of how we secure new capabilities in advanced spacecraft.

manufacturing and design. And I just, when you were, sorry, you were talking about co-bots and I just was thinking of R2D2. I don't know if that's. Yeah, for sure. I was just like, oh, are we going to that? Because that's awesome. So, yeah, R2 is one of my favorites. It is awesome.

But, you know, being the Gen X or I am, of course, I think of Mr. Data from Star Trek. Oh, well, yeah. We've got a lot more, a lot more physical capabilities, I guess. It's amazing. That's the future I've always dreamed of. So I'm just, I'm just amped as heck to hear that we're taking stuff. Sorry, that is completely off topic, but I just had to say that. So going back to the cybersecurity aspect, because we were talking about design for maintenance,

for example, and I'm wondering in sort of the paradigms here, secure by design, where that fits in with all this, because I mean, all of these incredibly fast-moving components and And all the greater amounts of automation going on, things are moving much more quickly. And as you mentioned, we've got to secure that. So tell me about where Secure by Design fits in with all this. Well, it has to be one of the challenges that I saw in the defense acquisition process was the secure system was often thought about after it was built. So that was kind of, okay, now let's go back and plug this in now that we've got a system.

So I think this secure by design is and has to be by design, not, okay, we receive it. It's been thrown over the wall to us. We're going to put it in operations, but now we've got to pass security requirements. And then each nation has requirements for, you know, defense work on the cloud. You know, we have ITAR and FedRamp in the U.S. other countries have those. So there are regulations there saying if you're going to operate in this environment, in this cloud environment, you have to meet certain standards for it to be controlled, to be secure. And it can be really challenging for the industry because space is international.

You know, it would be tough to find a wholly designed built and operated system that did not touch at least one partner or ally. And every player is international. You know, even you'll see startups with, you know, we had the Farmboro Air Show last week. You see startups that one of the local startups here on there, well, they moved along a bit, but on the space coast, I saw them, they were at Farmboro. I was like, oh, didn't even know you guys were going to be here, but they're already looking at expanding into international markets. So, yeah.

So, yeah, there are regulatory challenges as well as the ones and zero those challenges. And it really takes, you know, there has been discussion before about you don't have to be just an aerospace engineer or rocket scientist to be in the space market. There's really space law. There's space. There's even psychology aspects in the space market, space industry. So there's a lot in play. So I'm not a cyber expert, but I'm cyber aware, which I think we all have to be in the space industry. industry from the design aspect and then even your virtual companions have to have those parameters

for this is what I need to operate within the digital layer as well. I really appreciate that, Jason. And hearing your expertise in terms of especially the satellite design side of things, I appreciate that you're not a cyber expert on this because I think what a lot of cyber folks really need to understand is that broader landscape of what's going on. and also what different systems are doing. Like, that systematic view is so critical because that helps us understand what better needs defending, frankly.

Well, thanks. I appreciate that. I appreciate you, Jason. And I know we're coming up on time. So if there's anything you want to leave our audience with, it's over to you. Yeah, well, I appreciate that. So I think the future success and leading capabilities in space will be defined by who builds the most hardware, who can just manufacture.

for the most. I think it's going to be who can innovate and collaborate to evolve how we overcome that air quote space is hard challenge. In this AI, I'll call it a AI collaborative phase. We're leveraging knowledge and know-how that we've built over the last 60 years and combining that with the capabilities we get in the virtual world in order to improve what we're doing in the real world. So there's so much potential to bring, to have to have to. it right first time by leveraging the virtual world so that we can increase the acceleration of the space industry. And that's T-Mindis space cyber briefing brought to you by N2K CyberWire.

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