The Space Hour

NASA is launching a new mission that will revolutionize how we “talk” with future missions in space, including at the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration is tasked with using lasers to communicate in space. It was supposed to actually launch earlier this month from Kennedy Space Center in Florida Sunday morning, however it has been scrubbed for repairs. It will be getting up there soon though. To learn more about it, I talked with Miriam Wennersten, NASA LCRD Ground Segment Manager.

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It has been a pretty busy month for NASA, two major projects just got off the ground, literally. The first you may have heard of since it will help us learn how to change the course of any dangerous asteroids heading our way. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART launched in late November, but has quite a ways to go to reach the one it's looking to make contact with. To learn more about the program, I spoke with Harrison Agrusa, who is a member of the DART Investigation Team and Dynamics Working Group.

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We've talked a lot about emerging aerospace companies on this show, so we thought it was time to speak with one of them. York Space builds satellites to their customers likings and are in the process of expanding their headquarters in Denver, Colorado. To learn more about the company and get a little background on their work, I spoke to the companies executive chairman Charles Beames.

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With more and more critical infrastructure relying on space technology, security of that tech becomes a major concern. For that to work, government agencies and major industry partners will need to work together. Enter the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or Space ISAC. These kinds of offices help maintain a health relationship between the public and private sector. To learn more, I spoke with Erin Miller, who is executive director of Space ISAC.

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The growth in the space industry hasn't been limited to the big companies everyone's heard of. Small businesses have also seen a growth in their bottom lines. A lot of the credit for that goes to people like Glenn Delgado. He's the head of NASA's Office of Small Business Programs. Delgado was recently recognized by the US Women's Chamber of Commerce for his commitment to supporting women owned small businesses. Since he will be retiring soon, I wanted to make sure we had the chance to speak with him about his career and what he's seen in the industry.

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The amount of wildfires and major weather disasters is only increasing stretching first responders and those trying to help very thin. A new program involving space technology though looks to help disaster response team get a better sense of just how much of an area has been effected. Andre Coleman is senior data scientist the pacific northwest national laboratory. I spoke with him recently to learn more about the Rapid Analytics for Disaster Response, or RADR system.

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The Air Force Research Laboratory is calling on universities to propose space missions with defense and educational purposes attached to it. It's AFRL's 11th year doing this from it's university nanosatellite program. To find out more about the challenge and program itself, I got the chance to speak to Jesse Olsen who is the manager of the university nanosatellite program and the Air Force Research Lab's Space vehicle directorate.

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We began today with a bit of more nuanced conversation about the commercial space industry. The main question, have we reached a point where the government needs to play a bigger role in regulating who space companies work with? On the one hand everyone of course wants these businesses to have plenty of room to fix some of the most complex problems, but what if that comes at a cost to U.S. space superiority. My next guest tried to tackle that debate. Brent Ziarnick is Assistant Professor of Space Power and the Air Force's command and staff college.

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We began today with a bit of more nuanced conversation about the commercial space industry. The main question, have we reached a point where the government needs to play a bigger role in regulating who space companies work with? On the one hand everyone of course wants these businesses to have plenty of room to fix some of the most complex problems, but what if that comes at a cost to U.S. space superiority. My next guest tried to tackle that debate. Brent Ziarnick is Assistant Professor of Space Power and the Air Force's command and staff college.

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If you remember one of our first episodes which focused on a new partnership between NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration in an effort to streamline commercial space launches. Well the FAA now has another partnership aimed at making it easier on companies trying to conduct launches. It has entered a memorandum of understanding with the Space Force to recognize areas where both agencies have similar public safety standards, saving commercial space companies a ton of time. To learn more, I spoke with Brig. General Douglas Schiess, who is the director of space and cyber operations at Space Force Operations Command. We also welcomed back Wayne Montieith who is the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation at FAA.

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