T+329: Katalyst Space and the Mission to Boost Swift (with Ghonhee Lee, Founder and CEO)
00:11Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cut Off. I'm Anthony Colangelo, and I've got a guest with me today,Ghani Lee, the founder and CEO of Catalyst, who is coming up on a launch to go up and re-boost the Swift Observatory for NASA.A really exciting mission that sort of came out of nowhere, a very quick timeline to get this thing up and launched after the Swift Observatory was going to be deorbiting sooner than expected.The NASA team's been managing the spacecraft the last couple of weeks to extend its life as long as possible to get this mission up,And right now, as we sit here, they're less than two months away, about two months away,from launching the spacecraft to go up and boost Swift.So lots to talk about, we wouldn't want to talk about the company history, what they've been working on,this mission itself, where they're going from here.
00:56So without further ado, let's dive into the conversation.Ghani, thank you so much for joining me on the show.It's awesome to have you here.Anthony, thanks so much for inviting me.This is a great pleasure to be here.You've got some wild times coming up the next few months.I want to talk about the mission that's about the launch,but I also need to talk about the origin story
01:17because I feel like I've seen your nameover the past several years,but it also kind of feels like you've come out of nowhereand all of a sudden are boosting a NASA telescope.And that's, you know, if you look at the spacemus.com archives,there's not that many stories about Catalyst.So I would love to catch up on where did it startand what is the path been to get to this point?
01:40I love that in our world, the space news archives is our time capsule of what's been going on.Definitely, definitely our reality.Yeah, just sneak preview.We are within 60 days of launching a robotic spacecraft to go out and catch a planetary science observatory and lower orbit.I can't believe we are saying that right now because six years ago when we started the company,this was all maybe just a pipe dream, that one day we would launch a servicing spacecraftthat we'd be able to dock with a Class A vehicle operated by the U.S. government, but yet here we are.You know, the founding story of Cadillist, right, is pretty interesting.
02:25So my name's Gonjee Lee. I'm the founder and CEO at Cadillus Space.And we started this company back in May of 2020 with this idea that, hey, how come satellite servicing and robotics isn't morecommon. And there's this big disconnect between some of the really ambitious missions that werebeing talked about. You'd open up space news every week. And it seemed like there was a new spacestartup in 2019 and 2020. They're like, what's going on here? People are talking about asteroid mining.They're talking about lunar bases. But it seems really obvious that we would take some more,you know, pragmatic stepping stones between now and then. So like, how do we backtrack some of thosemissions and connect the dots to where the industry was at the time. And so for us, we realized there's
03:12this big chicken or egg thing going on, saying nobody wanted to go service spacecraft becausenothing was designed to be serviced and it was really hard to pull these missions off. So we calledourselves Catalyst to break through that chicken or egg cycle. And we wanted to start with reallypragmatic solutions for people who didn't care about robotic spacecraft. I had a great mentor of mine saying,hey, nobody cares about your space robot. They just want to keep doing theirmission. So we're like, okay, how do we frame the utility of these types of vehicles, these typesof missions for people who are doing communications missions or, you know, space observation missions?And here we are today. We've been building it out step at a time. We brought more and more
03:53capabilities in-house, eventually bringing the spacecraft bus in-house, the robotics in-house,as well as all of the applications. And we're flying one mission here this summer with NASA.where we're going to go catch the Swift Space Observatory in June this year,boost it back up before it de-orbit, so it can continue its science mission.And we're flying another mission to geo next year.So our team is pretty fired up about both of these things.You had an acquisition in 2024, a company's name that I've read a ton of times and never said out loud.Is it Atomos?
04:27I don't know.I don't know.What was the proper pronunciation there?Yeah, a lot of different names going on here in the space industry.Atomos, Atomos, right?I think it depends who you are.Got it.So talk to me about that.
04:42Was that, you know, the tech tree at that point for Catalyst, you were working more on the robotics in first, and that was where you went for some of that spacecraft bus expertise and brought the two things together.What was the structure at the time?Yeah, absolutely.Catalyst was positioned at the very end of the entire chain, the workflow.We were focused on building like products for space domain awareness.sensors, things like that. And we were partnering with other OTV companies, other servicingcompanies to deliver these payloads on orbit. But what we found was it was really challenging to beable to go quickly when you had to manage this huge partner network. And so we were working
05:21with this other company as a potential supplier of OTV capabilities. And we're like, hey, we reallylike this team. They have really great technology. They had built their own satellite busin-house, which is, you know, pretty unique. They had flown it on orbit in 2024. And after a littlewhile working together, like, it just makes sense to combine this. We're like, if we could take theinfrastructure technology that they have and then kind of all the access to government contracts andthings like that on our side and put them together, we could make a super company. And so we decidedto do that. We closed the acquisition about a year ago in March of 2025. And I had never done anacquisition before. I'm an engineer by training. I worked on like guidance navigation and control
06:06algorithms. And so this was very much the case where you're kind of Googling, how do you do anacquisition, right? And, you know, six weeks later, we were able to bring it together, which wasphenomenal. And the thesis was that by combining these different parts, we'd be able to go out andjust like do big missions that neither one of us were capable by ourselves. And I think that provedto be true. Less than six months later, we were put on contract by NASA.to go to the servicing mission, which is just kind of insane in nature.They gave us nine months from contract award to launch, to design, build, and ultimatelylaunch a robotic spacecraft, which, you know, this is the type of stuff that nerds go to
06:47engineering school for because they're like, how do we pull this off?And it's just been incredible to see that journey.All right.Let's dive into that part, too, because that's the aspect where it's like, this came out of nowhere,right?What was the origins of that?Was that something that the NASA team?was putting out there that like, hey, we're in the situation with Swift that we need to come
07:09up with some idea and you guys had the right technology to apply to it. What was the start of thatand the flow to actually becoming the person that's on contract for that? Yeah, it's prettyinteresting. I think that for industry insiders, many of us saw some of this coming in the tea leaves,but definitely it seems like it came out of nowhere. But I think that that kind of connects tothe bigger picture. Before we talk specifically about this mission, there is this like,like there's this general perception that the U.S. is like somehow behind in space,whether it's like lunar development or on orbit servicing or any of these different missionsets.
07:45And I think for us, it's like, why is the perception that that's true when the U.S. hasSpaceX?Like, how could these two things exist, right?And our superpower is the underdog mentality.That is our true superpower is that we always feel like we're behind and we need to workharder to catch up on things.Totally.I think that that's so true.
08:04Right. And I think that, okay, yes, like we are the world's leader in getting to space, right?We have space access there, but it's like, what do we do in space? So I think that that underdog mentality has been very pervasive, especially when it comes to things like on orbit servicing or this idea of rendezvous proximity operations.And that's been like percolating in the minds of like government leaders, both at NASA, but in other parts of the government as well.So the Swift mission came about because two things happened at once.The astrophysics team that does the science mission associated with Swift, I noticed that,hey, the altitude is degrading to a point where this thing might deorbit in the next like 12 months,which is pretty alarming, right?There had been like a lot of solar activity.
08:51There'd been a lot of, you know, orbital decay.And they're like, oh, no, we're going to have to start shutting these things down.And then on the other hand, the technology guys at NASA, STMD, were just like, hey, this is a greatopportunity.We've been investing in some of these on-orbit capabilities for quite some time, but have not reallyhad the great use case to actually prove that it's useful for folks that don't care aboutservicing.And they think that the commercial industry is finally at the point to actually, you know, play a
09:20big part.So the NASA guys went out and said, okay, we have 12 months.who can we partner with that has a spacecraft that's ready to fly, has the robotics, has therendezvous proximity operations, and they did a really quick survey of the market and invited a fewdifferent companies to come out and basically pitch their designs. Like, how would you do this?What would you do about launch? How would you do the robotics piece? And I like to say that duringthis time, we were kind of just a little naive and saying like, yeah, we'll sign up for this.This is going to be great. That's kind of the beauty of like a startup, right? Is, you know,
09:55kind of naive enough to just naive enough to think that you're capable of doing something likethis, but advanced enough to maybe have a real shot. And I think that Venn diagram overlap wasjust right for us that the NASA guys were like, yeah, let's let's give these guys $30 millionand see what happens. And six months later, I mean, I'm calling in from, uh, from Washington, D.C.Our spacecraft is actually at NASA Goddard right now in the giant TVAC chamber. We're going throughand firing the thrusters, moving the robot arms.And I was looking at this picture of it being unloaded from the truck.And I was like, oh, my gosh, six months ago, this thing was a napkin drawing.
10:35And now it's here.It's pretty incredible.I should have come down, man.That's not that far.I should have just, you know what?Let's pause this.I'll see you in about two hours and what comes to the engines.That's awesome.
10:49That's, there's something about the positioning of that.mission overall, though, that is such like the, I don't know, there's such a throwback.That's such an old spacey throwback kind of vibe, right?Like, this is the situation in front of us.We need to be creative and we need to cut out what we can to get there faster because weare dealing with like an actual hard physical end to this opportunity.So has that been clarifying in the development process as well or is it just been stressful?No, it's, you know, this is like an Apollo 13 moment, right?
11:24There is a physics-based driver for both the timeline and providing the constraints of what is possible.And I think this is where engineers thrive, right?I think that over the last 50 years, NASA has sort of struggled with this existential crisis of like, what are we doing?We established this playbook 50 years ago.We're not able to deviate from it.And that makes sense for human spaceflight and things like that.They kind of have to do things a certain way.But overall, I think it's really limited the ability for, you know,
11:54space to kind of like get back to its core, like you said.And I think what's cool about this is building out a program like this means that you kind of haveto change what you think about when it comes to modeling and simulation, verification,validation, like, are you going to go and like stress test every little component?Or are you going to trade that for time where you know for a certain fact that like in 12 months,this thing's not going to be in space anymore, right?So it really changes the calculus.And I think that at every opportunity, I'm not going to say we've cut corners because our team's just been really sharp about making some of these decisions, working collaboratively side by side with NASA.
12:36But we've had to make this choice about what is the risk that we're going to accept and we're going to move forward?And how are we going to actually come up with tests that allow us to have confidence that we're going to have a real shot when we get on orbit?it. This is, it's just like the right level of risk and possibility for engineers to be able to come up with solutions.I mean, just an example of this is we've had a lot of challenges pulling together some of the electrical systems on the spacecraft, you know, typically one of the most complex on any development.This spacecraft has three robot arms on it, right? Massive solar arrays to power the electric propulsion thrusters.and what we've been able to do by owning the entire system.We have the end-to-end control of the systemis sometimes we convert a problem from one domain
13:27into an operational problem saying,yes, we can kind of adjust some of the duty cycles on orbitor we can change the profile of the trajectoryto be able to optimize for better charging,even if the efficiency of our systemslike kind of at the avionics levelaren't at the level that we'd like them to be.And I think that on a typical NASA,
13:47program, you would never accept that kind of tradeoff. You would say, hey, this is the requirement.We're going to design and pause the program until we hit that requirement and we're going tokeep going versus for us, basically there's this like highest level requirement of like,we have to get on orbit and we have to dock safely with the target and we have to push it back up,right? So it's much more. Is the middle one even flexible? Like is there a failure mode or like,I don't know, get out and push? Like, yeah, I mean like, yeah, the funny thing is is whenthis project was coming together early on.We had a bunch of government guys come out, and one of them and said,
14:22well, you know, like, the alternative here is that this thing is going to, like,crash into the ocean.So, I mean, you know, this is going to be better than seawater, right?And so, like, that's kind of been a pervasive thing.A low bar, yeah.Well, and is that, you know, you're talking about how these constraints make their way downinto the team on your side, but have you had exposure on the NASA angle where the teamthat's authorizing this mission and managing it from the NASA perspective also has to manage up
14:49to make it clear to the organization that, no, this is a mission that, you know, we're, becauseof the forcing mechanisms behind this, this is a lost cause if we don't do this anyway,so these things are all right. Has that been a source of strife, or has the whole organizationbeen bought in on the NASA side that this is a mission that is going to be less constrained byconstraints that you might normally put on something like this? Yeah, you know, I think theNASA team has been very creative.Like, they've been awesome to work with at every level.I think that it's pretty interesting.
15:21The facility that our spacecraft is in right now is in the same facility where they'reworking on the Roman space telescope.The actual T-back chamber that we're in right now is the same T-back chamber that theSwift telescope was in during its AIN-T phase.So it's very poetic to be in this facility.And we were just having this conversation yesterday with senior leaders at NASA.The target, NASA has invested $500 million into, you know, developing and operating the Swifttelescope. So it's very valuable. But if you were to try to take that same playbook and apply it
15:56to our mission, it would just never happen, right? Our mission is $30 million and it's thistotally go-fast mindset. And so I think it's important for NASA to have different plays in theirplaybook. I think over the last 50 years, they've really stuck to their guns on a single playbook andtried to use that as like a blunt force instrument across the board. And they've been veryleaning into this innovative approach of we're going to go and build out these things in a,in a cooperative way with the company. But we're kind of going to let like startups do whatstartups do best. All right. You mentioned the money side. So I'm going to see what I can get outyou. 30 million dollar contracts. You said you listened to the show for a while. So you might know
16:45my thoughts on air launch. I'm not the biggest air launch lover. So, number one, let's talk aboutflying on Pegasus. I think this is the last Pegasus vehicle that even exists. Number two,I'm pretty sure it costs more than $30 million. So how's this working out? Yeah, you know,the Pegasus is an interesting choice. I think it kind of adds to the, it's just very consistentwith the philosophy. Our mission patch of this entire mission has a cowboy riding a Pegasus with alasso in his hand to go catch the Swift telescope. And I think that that just like really brings all ofthe pieces together. It's like, what? These guys are going to go build a space robot to go dock with aswift telescope and boost it up. And they're launching on a Pegasus air launch. You know,
17:31like it just like adds to the dimensionality of it. I promise you there was a very practical reasonfor choosing the Pegasus. It wasn't just like, oh, it would be a cool story. For us, it's aboutavailability of the launch.To try to contract a launch within nine months,because NASA actually gave us the responsibility of doing all of the spacecraft side,but also contracting the launch.And so we hit up all of the major launch providers.And there was a couple of challenges.
18:03One was the timeline.Two was the price.But more importantly, the target spacecraft was in a kind of low inclination orbit.It's in 20.6 degrees inclination.And so a lot of the small to medium launchers that are trying to launch at a wall up silent, things like that, are there aren't going to be ready by the timeline or they didn't have sufficient like payload capacity to this inclination.So for us, Pegasus was a really good option because it was, you're able to go down to wherever you needed to go.And we got a we got a pretty fortunate situation where they had a Pegasus already built.in a warehouse ready to go that was originally designed for another mission,
18:48but that mission had gotten canceled.And so now we had this at our disposal,and Northrop was willing to partner with us to, you know, make the economics work too.So it really came together altogether.You had to pay them more than their rent for the space that they were keeping the last Pegasus, I guess, was the...Yeah, I think that they wanted to get it off their hands.You guys offered more than the Smithsonian did because they're like,we already got one hanging next to the space shuttle.
19:14That's right.Yeah, the inclination thing is interesting because this is, you know,I'm sure, well, also, we should talk maybe spacecraft size.I mean, if it fits on a Pegasus, then I'm pretty sure the Falcon 9 would have the capabilityto do that plane change.You know, they've taken stuff to even, I think, equatorial orbit out of Cape Canaveral.It costs a lot of performance for the vehicle.But if, you know, then you're buying the entire Falcon 9.
19:39So it does, you know, nobody else wants to ride with you to 20.6 is really, you're, you're pretty lonely down at 20 degrees.Yeah, I think that's right. I think the perception again that like, hey, launch is a solved problem. These rockets are flying all the time. Like that might be true if you're trying to go on like transport or bandwagon or something like that and you're willing to take advantage of the ride chair. And, you know, but for us, it's like, okay, if we launched in a ride chair, we didn't have control over our own fate. And it would take too long for ourselves to do inclination change.And so, yes, like, Falcon 9 dedicated out of the Cape, of course, could do the dog leg and get out to this orbit.But, I mean, you know, it just costs way too much, like, you know, minimum like $65 million for a Falcon 9.Doubling your budget.Yeah.And then it's like, double our budget.And so we're like, gee, what are we going to do?
20:27The reason I ask this, though, is that I don't necessarily, in this case, right, with this particular kind of mission and the position that you guys are in company history, this is the one where if you were like, no, we're looking at this like an investment and a demonstration.of our capability, I'm not doing as rough of math on you guys going, well, they're spending$100 million to fly this mission because if and when you pull it off, that is a huge accomplishmentfor the company and it sets the stage for everything that comes beyond that. Whereas when I look atclips missions, I'm like, well, the point of this is to be economically viable for these landers.So I judge that harsher in terms of like, I hope there's some profit margin there. Whereasthis kind of mission, I see it more as a statement.mission and a really awesome thing to contribute to, but it almost, to me, feels like it's setting
21:15up your future of the company more so than you're hoping to make good money on this particularmission. Yeah, that's right. I mean, our company, we were never motivated by trying to maximizeprofits on these missions, right? Like, that's not why we exist. We're trying to bring this new wayof doing things into existence. Like, we're trying to will it into existence, that we believe thatrobotic servicing should be a thing, that it unlocks all of these other flexible architectures,whether it's for lunar exploration or for national security. It's just pretty obvious to us.And it's been really frustrating, again, that, you know, there's been other programs that have triedthis, but they just never got the economics right. They never got the mission profiles right.
21:55So you exactly right. It's a statement mission. Now, you know, we're not just like rolling in cash,and so we can't just like underwrite things because we think it would be cool. We were alreadyplanning on a demonstration mission that we were going to launch, like, internally funded,but it was going to be way smaller in scale. So you're right. The vehicle has to fit on a Pegasus.So this vehicle weighs around 400 kilograms. Our normal, like, flagship product that we'regoing to fly day in and day out is called Nexus. That spacecraft weighs around 800 kilograms fullyloaded. So we basically sized it down. This is for a dedicated single customer, whereas our vehiclein the future would service multiple customers. But,
22:35Ultimately, it's all the same architectures, same robotics, same RPO sensors, same kind of spacecraft avionics, all of those things.And so we see it as if we can prove that this is possible on this timeline, then in the future, we're totally changing the game.$30 million, nine months, right?Now, if we can do that in 12 months in the future, I think that would be a little bit more breathing room.But I think it's also great for NASA and I think it's great for the industry at large to say, hey, these are the types of missions that we're willing to undertake now.What does this mean for things like the Hubble Telescope or any of the other major planetary science observatories?I think it's game on for everyone at that point to actually go out and do this.Yeah, you're cheating off in my outline that I definitely didn't send you, but it feels like you're cheating because the next thing I was going to ask was,
23:22sure seems like there's a guy running NASA right now who tried one time to do this to the Hubble, and here you are doing the Swift Telescope.So are those conversations that are more than you went out for lunch?with somebody and they were like, oh, it'd be cool if this, if we kept going and did another one ofthese? Or do you think that there could be a legitimate effort on that front coming in the nearfuture? I think for sure that's where it's going, right? I mean, where Swift came out of,I think that there's like that quote of like, don't mistake like some of this like one-timebrilliance for like some grand strategy. Sometimes these things just happen. I think the Swift thingkind of just happened. It was like the right time, right mode, like, you know, right energy, right people
24:02and the right jobs and like NASA took a big swing on making this happen. But I don't think it was inlike their 10 year roadmap that they were like, oh yeah, in 2026, we're going to have a roboticservicing mission for like a senior observatory. I think it was the right time. And I think that'sgoing to happen with Hubble. I think that like if you've seen like the democratization of the technology,like what we've seen in the other areas for proliferated Leo and CubeSats and things like that,there's no reason why robotic servicing shouldn't see beyond that same.where we would just like inject it into all the different mission sets.And I think, you know, again, from a space nerd perspective, like from the kind of poetic
24:40connection there, servicing Hubble with a robotic vehicle after all the human, you know,shuttle servicing missions would be just phenomenal.I think it's a great demonstration that like, like, yes, this era is here now.It's kind of like when SpaceX landed the rocket, we're like, wow, like that era is here now.I think that's going to be the case with Hubble.It's funny tooBecause if it's I thinkJared Isaacman's mentality
25:04If he was anyone else in this worldHe would have been like man that I wanted to do it thoughAnd in this case I feel like he would be likeNo this is freaking awesomeIt's a robotic mission going to do the thingThat I was hoping would happen anywaySo you know it's the right moment for sureTo pull this off and have the right person in charge
25:17It says yeah we should keep going on thatIt's yeah I mean you can't write better timing than thatTo be honestYeah that's rightI think it's like the future connectivity comesthat's going to be a huge piece as well.You know,you had talked about the difference between Jared being in his role at NASA
25:36versus like when he was like outside of NASA and kind of some of the paradox of what's going on.I think that that's kind of similar, right?Like, I mean,his leadership with what they're doing at NASA like is pretty exciting.But I think that like because of, you know,it's kind of like we're just like ripping the rug out from what NASA had been doing before across the board.that can be kind of like a force for a lot of change.Some of it good, some of it bad.
26:02In this case, this is the type of thing that I think is just really important for the industry.All right, let's dive into some of the more technical side here to round us out.You know, you mentioned some of these other efforts that have happened in the industry.And I wanted to pick your brain about why you think these other efforts haven't taken offin the way that we might have expected, right?Because, you know, when the company is founded 2020, I think a mission extension vehiclehad flown at that point, but there hasn't been that many more. And they've been talking upthe emission robotic vehicle. Haven't flown that yet. There was the DARPA program, RSGS. I think I visited
26:38the Restore L program down there at Goddard. You know, I forget when that was. I have to look it up.It might have been 2019. So there was so much activity right around when the company was founded,but it hasn't flourished in the way that we might have predicted. Do you have any, you know,is everything a special case, or do you think there was some overarching reason that it hasn't taken onas much as you would have hoped.You know, I think that, like, robotic servicing has not really been a technical problem for a long time.We've proven this going back to, like, the Orbital Express mission.We've proven this with even just, like, what's been going on around the International Space Station
27:13and the space shuttle for decades and decades.We've had the technical capability.But I think that in order to justify this being a routine occurrence, it's like you've got to makethe economics work and you've got to make the use case work where it's actually, like, really valuable.And I think that we've had too many science experiments.We've had these science experiments after science experiment after science experimentwhere it's like, hey, this is a $500 million science experiment to like, you know,take this robot arm up or this is a $500 million science experiment to do docking.
27:42And I think that like the commercial SATCOM industry, a lot of people have looked at life extensionas a potential market for robotic servicing.And like, yes, like that's definitely there.But if you're just focused on that, it's really hard to make a,business case work because it's just like, A, those companies, like, they're kind of struggling,right? And so they're looking for like, you know, cheaper and faster solutions. And B, it'sjust there's not that many of those satellites to sustain this broad market. So when you can startbringing together the right recipes of like, how do I connect that stuff with like satellites that
28:16are going to go service like commercial birds like you talked about the MEP? How do I connect thatwith what's happening in national security space as well as like what NASA is interested in with eitherbuilding like infrastructure on orbit. And if you can string together a playbook where one vehicle or,you know, maybe a few dozen vehicles are just kind of zipping around doing all of these things,kind of like as a day in the life, then like the economics actually just like fall below thatcurve where it's actually, you know, feasible. And then I think the cost side of it is is reallyimportant as well. We have to have like basically done a bottom up work of we're going to take kindof modern spacecraft development technique using like industrial or automotive grade components,
28:57you know, small sat components and just building in a lot of redundancy at the system levelto pull these missions off. That actually, I think the combination of those two things is what'sallowing this to happen. So how does the technical outlook work out here for this spacecraft?Also, what am I calling this particular spacecraft that's going up? Does it have a name of its own?Yeah, that's right. So the spacecraft is called Link.because, you know, our flagship is called Nexus.Link is like one step on the Nexus.But, you know, I think some people have kind of taken on the Zelda connotation as well,
29:29right?Which is pretty cool.I mean, it's definitely the thing that comes to my head.So, yeah.All right.So talk to me about the actual technical bits there of attachment mechanism to Swift.Any other considerations that, you know, when you do attach, you need to, you're providing a thrust vector.So is there some sort of orientation aspect to it once it is attached.
29:51as well.Yeah, absolutely.So the spacecraft I said is 400 kilograms.That's fully loaded with propulsion and everything set to go.We have three robot arms on board.And if I can just paint a picture for you,these are not the types of robot arms that you would see in a car factory.These aren't the big ones with like the shoulder joint and the elbow joint and the wrist
30:13joint.These are much more like a truss.They're super lightweight.Imagine a triangle that you can independently articulate.any of the legs of the triangle.That's what our robot arm looks like.And at the tip of that triangle at the vertex,we have a mechanical gripper that has three degrees of freedom
30:30that can grasp onto a surface.We traditionally designed these grippersto grab onto the launch adapter ring of a target satellite.A geosatcom bird is what we were envisioning.But it turns out the Swift telescopedoesn't actually have a launch adapter ring.It just has some different like structure.flanges that, you know, we kind of saw in the engineering designs of like, hey, these
30:55looks sturdy. And we're actually grasping on kind of the back end of the bus structure on threedifferent locations with this gripper. We have a couple of different backup locations as well.But what's tricky about this is there's basically no pictures, close out pictures of the Swifttelescope of the back end of the spacecraft. Everyone took pictures of the instrument and it likefully assembled. But no one really looked at the back end of it where we're actually grabbingon. So we're actually going to have to do some real time. Did you tell that to the Roman team that arejust like you're missing your boat, man. You might want to stop and go take some photos real quick.They're shipping it out. Put some stickers on, some fiducials for us to be able to zero in. Yeah, so we've
31:37had to solve this like computer vision problem just as much as we've had to solve some of therobotics things. And so we're actually going to do a couple of different like inspections and flybysand things like that to get a real good characterization on what this thing actually looks like. Youknow, we don't exactly know where the MLI is going to be versus like, you know, where the metal is going to be.So we're going to inspect some of that. And then once we have a good picture, we'll be able to grasp on with, you know, all three of those robot arms like I was talking about.And when we do that, it forms a very rigid pyramid, kind of three points of contact, statically determined system.And from there, our electric propulsion thrusters are on gimbals. So we have two degrees of freedom of gimbal control on each of those thrusters. So we'll be able to.do the mass property alignment like you talked about will be responsible for controlling the entire
32:26stack. And so it's kind of just playing dead. The target's going to be doing an inertial holdthat's going to zero out the gains and just kind of play dead so we can grab onto it. And thenwe'll be able to fly the vehicle from there. All right. So the, there's so many directions I wantto go with this. You know, this is also different in that, you know, you're saying it's playing deadwhen you're actually working with it, but it is, they have a stable spacecraft, whereas in the futureyou might have spacecraft that are spinning or, you know, some other sort of motion that you can'tcorrect for. So is there anything with this mission that would feed into non-cooperative dockingsin the future, or is this kind of like, no, we're just really focused in on the particular
33:14structure of Swift and we're to get through that and then figure out what we do from there?Yeah, I think that this is very repeatable. You know, you're talking about,about potentially deorbiting, derelict satellites, you know, they might have a rate of tumble aboutone, maybe two axes, that becomes a pretty hard problem. We think that the hardware configurationof this spacecraft is like totally good to go for tumbling objects. We think that that's always justgoing to be algorithmic updates that we'll have to do because we basically have two modes of ourpropulsion on board. We have the primary EP thrusters that give us really high efficiency, but theseare basically like one Newton, you know, all set and done. I'm not very powerful, but we have the
33:54ability to do more impulsive RCS thrusters that are much more like low efficiency, high impulse.Using that spec in this case gives us the ability to have nice controlled approaches andobservations because we have a cooperative target. But in the future, like you mentioned, if we havelike, you know, an upper stage or some, you know, Leo satellite that needs to be deorbited,we plan to use the same grippers, the same spacecraft architecture to do that.And we actually have a couple of different government partners that we're working with that are veryinterested in that approach.I think that's important because you don't want to purpose design one spacecraft for one mission set.
34:32That's where we've gotten into trouble as an industry before.You want one spacecraft.Ideally, you want one spacecraft design that works across many different applications.But what's even better than that is not only one design, but one instantiation of that can goand do many different operations,that's when you start to get the, like,it's kind of like the reusability aspectof launch vehicles applied to this mission set.
34:56So what is that forward roadmap after, you know,this is more of a traditional life extension,deorbit maneuver kind of situation or orbital reboost.But beyond that, you know, you talked about out in the past,the company was working on pieces of hardwarethat would actually be attached to spacecraft.Is that still on the future roadmap?Or has that changed as you've gotten,
35:13you know, more physical hardware in your lifeand less computer?No, it's really coalesced together. I think this is like a galvanizing moment for us. Our flagship product, Nexus, that's the next fully fledged space vehicle we're building. That has this big payload bay. We can carry 200 kilograms of modular payload. And I want to like make a, take this moment to differentiate against like an OTV. OTV is like, yeah, I'll FedEx truck you to anywhere you need to go. For us, this is where we'll just carry these modules for ourselves. These are things like, sentencing.sensor pods that you can attach onto satellites after they're already in space, refueling likeJerry cans, right? Interceptors for space control, space defense. And every time we launch, we can carryfour to six of these modules. And that means that we have kind of the star link that goes insideof the Falcon 9 built in every time we go. And I think that's going to kind of create the reason to beon orbit. So yes, you use the high delta V and the maneuverability of the platform. You use the
36:16robotic arms to do life extension deorbites like you talked about, but you can also kind of carrythese payloads that extend the usability. And I think what's really cool about these architecturesis that in this case, we're launching into Leo. Our next mission, we're launching into GTO. We'vealready announced that. But I envision just using the Delta V to do Leo to do Leo to be able to doservicing in Leo, to be able to do servicing in geo, and then go out to the moon, be able to do workaround the moon, and then come back, right? You just have this like persistent fleet that's just alwayszipping around. And I think that's pretty, it's both cool from like an architecture perspective,but it's also really valuable economically to have that fleet up there.
36:56How about your own spacecraft? Is that, you know, you're obviously are going to have a hugeamount of delta V with electric propulsion on board and the fact that, you know, you're, you didn'tlaunch with a lot of the payload that you're going to be working on, uh, on, on boost missions orde-orbit missions. So there is some overage there when you're just flying solo. Um, but are there,Are you thinking about anything like refilling those really advanced spacecraft with somethingdumber to use a course word?Or is this like, no, at that point, this spacecraft will have served its purpose, will havemade the money we need to on it.
37:30And also our tech had just gotten that much better in the time between when it launchedit now, that will just deorbit it and go on to the next version.Yeah, again, like all our spacecraft are refuelable.They've got 10 kilometers per second of Delta V and five years life in geo.This first mission we're doing with NASA is a little smaller.It's got lower Delta V because it has to fit into the Pegasus.But again, it's just like we can constantly refuel these assets.We can constantly be like replenishing them with like new modules, new gear.
38:01And, you know, I think that what like we've done is we've cracked the nut on like,how do you create a business model that actually works and leverages the technology for its benefitrather than trying to like shoehorn the technology on like existing business?models. And I think that what that allows us to do is put more and more and more of these onorbit. And each time they go up, we can carry refueling pods and like, you know, hey, refuelourselves, refuel target satellites, can to extend the benefit of this. And the beauty of all of it iswe get to own and operate the spacecraft. And so we get to control this fleet. And by nature ofdoing that, we're breaking that chicken or egg. So the fleet's already there. Now we can start talking
38:40about assembling large structures and platforms on orbit, you know, whether the use cases for RF power,or some of these, you know, like exploration stations and things like that,I think that robotic servicing is actually going to be a key piece of that.All right. Well, you have a spacecraft to get to. I don't want to keep you. But can you give us abrief on what we're expecting schedule-wise? So you mentioned June is still the target launch date.Do you have more specific date from that? And then how quickly do you approach Swift? Do you dock?What's the overall mission timeline?Yeah, absolutely. So again, NASA ordered this contract to us in September.
39:17of 2025. And the target was like June 1, June 30 launch window. We're planning on going on thesecond half of that window, probably that last week of June. We're actually launching out of Quadulene.So the way that this is going to work is we're going to integrate the space vehicle at Wallof S Island in Virginia onto the Pegasus, install it onto the L-1011 platform. Then they're going to fly it outto Quadulene. It's going to take like three days to fly it out to Quadulene. It's going to land on theisland. We're going to be able to do some final checkouts out on the island. And then we're going toget ready for range operations and launching out of quadulene. So that'll probably happen that lastweek of June. And then once on orbit, we'll spend about three to four weeks doing the commissioning,
40:00as well as the initial rendezvous to the Swift space vehicle. Now put us within about 10,000 meters.And then we'll have about three to seven days to go from 10,000 meters in. And again, we're doingsome of that kind of inspection and some of the checkouts of the target during this time.And then doing the hard capture operation takes less than a day for us.So pretty exciting.We'll have a lot.We have many different comms pathways, many different cameras and sensors on board.So we're hoping to get some pretty cool footage out of this operation as well.
40:33And once connected, we'll be able to burn continuously with our thrusters for four to six weeks torestore the altitude from around 320 kilometers, which is where we expect it to be.by the time we get to it, up to ideally 500 kilometers plus,which will add maybe 10 years of science operations to the telescope.I was going to ask about that orbit that you're expecting,that there's been news over the last week or two,the NASA team reorienting the spacecraft to minimize drag in the intervening timeso that they can extend the life.
41:04What is this sort of like, you know,when the plane's going to take off to go launch this thing,you know, how soon up to the launch of that plane do you have a finalorbit determination pass, or is it kind of like roughly in range enough that we're justfocused on the particular orbital plane and inclination and then altitudes and stuff we'll figureout later? Yeah, it's a little bit of both. Obviously, we care. The NASA team has been doingan awesome job. Like, they've been doing this hunker down mode where they point the spacecraftinto the wind to basically make it a more advantageous drag profile. That's bought us, like,
41:37you know, one, two months of time. And that's been really critical for us to be able to do additionaltesting to be able to do additional iterations. And so we decided to take advantage of that extra timecollectively with NASA. Originally, we're saying, hey, we'll launch on June 1 because we're worriedabout that target being too low. Below 300 kilometers in altitude, there's just too much drag.Our spacecraft with a mated stack has this huge cross section. We can't, you know, we don't havethat high of a chance of success. We want to get to it above 300 kilometers. I think that going onthe launch date we're talking about that last week in June gets us there around 320.kilometers should be pretty perfect for what we're looking at. And then, yeah, we'll have updates
42:18regarding the TLEs and things like that from the Space Force up to like the day before launch.Awesome. Well, this is awesome. I'm really excited to watch this mission. It sounds like maybe you'llcome back afterwards. We can talk about how it all went and what's coming up for you guys at thatpoint. But good luck with everything. Thanks so much again for joining me. Yeah, Anthony, this isawesome. Thanks for having me on the show. And you should definitely come out and take a look at the spacecraftbefore itbefore it goes to space.Yeah, let's
42:45talk about that.Quadulene's too far,but I could probablyfind you somewhere in the U.S.Yeah, it would be a long ride.Unless they wanted to let me flyin the L-10-11.I'll totally go fly on that.
42:56Northrop, hit me up.Yeah, you can press the button.I've wheeled that into existence.That would be awesome.So we'll see.Well, thanks again, Gunhee.Cool.Thank you.
43:06Thanks again to Ganhee for coming on the show.Awesome conversation.Really excited to follow alongwith that mission.I think it will be one of the more interesting things to come in the next couple of months.So let's keep our eyes on that, and we'll have them back afterwards to see how everything went.But for now, thank you all so much for listening to Main Ninja Cut Off.Thanks for your support, as always, making this show possible to say 100% listener-supported show.
43:28It has been that way for 10 years now.I thank you so much.What is that noise in my background?Oh, I got some fun toys.You'll see them in the background of Off Nominal.That's a loud one.But anyway, it's been this way for over 10 years now.We're into the 11th year of main engine cutoff,
43:44and I could not do that without all of you supporting the show,including the 32 executive producers who made this episode possible.Thanks to Donald, Ryan, Joe Kim, Better Everyday Studios, Stealth Julian, David,Theo and Violet, Lee, Miles O'Brien, Will & Lars, from Agile,Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, the Astrogator's at SEE,Frank, Steve, Russell, Matt, Joel, Chris, Natasha Saccoe, Pat,Jan, Warren, Fred, Eunice, Josh from Impulse,and four anonymous executive producers.
44:11Thank you all so much for the support, as always.And if you want to join the crew,head over to main engine cutoff.com slash support.Join up. You get access to Miko Headlines.You get to support the show.You get more of me in your life,if that's the kind of thing you like.And that's it.
44:26For now, thanks all.If you got questions,hit me up, Anthony at Maintonagioncutoff.com.And otherwise, I'll talk to you soon.
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