Recently, Major Kate Rubins became the first Army Reserve officer to receive the Basic Aviation Badge with Astronaut Device and Space Badge. Just tack it on as another accomplishment for her. As a microbiologist and NASA astronaut who also serves in the Army Reserve, I thought I would use this show as a good excuse to get the chance to meet her and hear her story, and that's just what I did. My first question, what do you consider your official job?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With space equipment staying up there longer and longer, where's a good place to stop for gas? Well one company is looking to solve that problem. Orion Space Solutions an Arcfield company, has been awarded a recent contract from the U.S. Space Force to support the Tetra 6 mission. The mission looks to take the next step in on-orbit refueling. Orion's Tetra-6 SmallSat prototype spacecraft is already under development and is expected to launch in 2027. I got more info on the project from the company's President and GM Chad Fish.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The company MetTel has completed agreements making it an Authorized Starlink Reseller for both government and commercial enterprises. Starlink as most of you know is a service provided by SpaceX that mostly provides internet in hard to reach places, such as space. MetTel is now able to provide SD-WAN broadband services via Starlink technology. To find out what some of the potential use cases are for this capability, I talked with Don Parente, VP for Public Sector at MetTel, along with Ed Fox, who is the company's Chief Technology Officer and who you'll hear from first.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With so much equipment in geostationary orbit conducting monitoring and measuring operations, that means a lot of data for those who have to analyze the findings. Naturally this can take a lot of time and manpower, so what could help with that? You guessed it, this is another area where AI could potentially make things easier. One of the companies looking to help the Space Force out in particular with this is EdgeRunner AI. They recently announced their offline AI Battle Buddy to support the US Space Force Space Systems Command, by answering important questions that Guardians need to make decisions. To learn more about this new tool, I got the chance to speak with the company's CEO Tyler Saltsman.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new challenge looks to digitally recreate the planning of each module of the International Space Station. It's being put on by the organization Students for the Exploration and Development of Space or SEDS. "The Ambitious Machine Challenge" will be a year long contest where participants will compete in an array of categories while simultaneously collaborating to document the build of one of humanity's greatest engineering feats. To learn more about it and the SEDS organization overall, I spoke to Theodore Courtois, he's Chair its Board of Directors.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Starting today with NASA where two proposals for missions to observe X-ray and far-infrared wavelengths of light from space were selected by the agency for additional review. Each proposal will be studied for a year and then a concept will be selected in 2026, to hopefully launch in 2032. The resulting mission will become the first in a new class of NASA astrophysics missions within the agency’s longstanding Explorers Program. To find out more about these proposals, I got the chance to speak with Mark Clampin. He's the director of NASA's astrophysics division.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Modernizing space programs while maintaining operations is one of the most challenging things, and rings true for the U.S. Space Force. It's key though to keeping up with near peer competitors in the space front. Joining us earlier to discuss this issue, Dan Laubach, Senior Director of Programs for the technology consulting firm Raft.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Spacecraft Cybersecurity Act was recently introduced in the House this past summer. The legislation would require NASA to secure a cybersecurity protection plan from manufacturers applying to use federal dollars to build NASA spacecrafts. The introduction comes after thousands of cyberattacks from malicious actors, including China and Russia, have been launched against NASA, threatening the safety of Americans, including our astronauts. So what can and needs to be done to make sure cyber protections are considered during the manufacturing stage? To find out, I spoke to Shane Fry, CTO of the software security firm RunSafe Security.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Space Nuclear Systems are being utilized more and more these days. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that adding the word nuclear to anything mean safety needs to be of the utmost importance. To help with that, the government enacted the National Security Presidential Memorandum or NSPM, 20 a few years ago. To learn how the process works, I had the pleasure of listening to remarks from John Fulton, who is a manager at Sandia National Labs. He spoke at the recent Space Nuclear Policy Summit, hosted by the Association of Commercial Space Professionals.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The firm Aerospacelab, Inc. recently opened up a brand new satellite manufacturing facility in Torrance, California. The company plans on being to put out, on average, two satellites per week on a single shift schedule. Increased satellite production is now becoming the standard now in the space hardware industry. I wanted to learn more about that and how it got so easy to make your own satellites. I got the chance to talk about it with Tina Ghatore, CEO of Aerospacelab North America.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices