Your Space Journey

Over the next few episodes, we're embarking on a new space journey; a short series highlighting various countries and their efforts for the future of space exploration. In upcoming episodes we'll be featuring interviews with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), the Canadian Space Agency, and more. Be sure to subscribe today (it's free!) so you don't miss a single episode!

The Rocket & Satellite Company, Pakistan's first private space company
In this episode we interview Sami Ullah Khan, the CEO of The Rocket & Satellite Company, Pakistan’s first private space company. The Rocket & Satellite Company will offer solutions for two major space issues: space debris and in-orbit satellite servicing.

About The Rocket & Satellite Company
THE ROCKET & SATELLITE COMPANY (SMC-PRIVATE) LIMITED is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission Government of Pakistan and is Pakistan’s 1st Private Space Company.The company will cover and offer the low-cost solutions to three main areas:

1.    Space Launching System
2.    Satellite Manufacturing
3.    Ground Segment

In the long-term, The company will offer the solution for the two major Space issues:

1.    Space Debris.
The Solution will reduce the risk of Satellite and Spacecraft's in-Space collision due to Space debris
The Solution will save the millions $ of Space based companies. The focus is to provide the low cost Space technology and to provide the solution for the major issue which is the Space debris by combined use of artificial intelligence (AI) and Space tech.

2.    In-Orbits Satellite Servicing to increase the multi-million Satellite's life.
The company will address the in-orbit servicing to increase the Satellite life in Space. The company is providing platform for Scientists, engineers, professionals and students to offer their skills and sever the Space industries and provide the best solutions for the betterment of humanity.

For more information, visit http://TheRocket-SatelliteCompany.com
Social media: 
https://twitter.com/paksami
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paksami

Special thanks to Esteban Arcila for sharing his space journey in this episode!

We interview Bob Balaram, Chief Engineer of the Mars Helicopter INGENUITY project at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in this episode to discuss this first-ever helicopter designed to fly on Mars. The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, is a technology demonstration to test powered flight on another world for the first time. It hitched a ride on the NASA Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021 and is now taking its first flights.

About Bob Balaram, Chief Engineer, JPL
Bob Balaram is Chief Engineer; a Principal Member of Staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Computer & Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1985 where his doctoral thesis addressed the control of highly non-linear systems. He has been at JPL ever since and works in the area of Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL), Modeling & Simulation, Telerobotics Technology, and Mobility Concept Development.

Currently Bob is researching precision landing methods for Mars as well as advanced simulation techniques for planetary EDL. He led the team that developed a high-fidelity EDL simulator that recently received a NASA Group Achievement Award and has been adopted for use by the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory mission. He is also the co-developer of a simulator used for planetary rover simulation. Bob has led design teams for developing Mars aerobot (aerial robot) perception systems, a deep-diving Venus balloon gondola concept, and balloon-carried imaging sondes for deployment at Venus. He was also a co-developer of the Rocky-7 rover platform   a prototype and precursor to the new generation of rovers such as those on the MER mission.

His work in rovers spans machine vision for rover hazard detection, improved methods for rover position determination, rover system re-configuration, and software system architectures for rover development. Previously Bob was the lead engineer for machine intelligence on the JPL Telerobot Testbed where he led a team responsible for coordinating multiple robotic manipulators and vision-based sensing to achieve automation of servicing operations such as module change-out and assembly. He subsequently worked on the Remote Surface Inspection for the Space Station in the area of real-time, vision-based flaw detection of damage caused to the Space Station over its lifetime in orbit.

For more information on the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/

For information on the Mars 2020 mission: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

Thanks to Aaron Fishbein (http://aaronfishbein.com/) for sharing his space journey in this episode!

In this episode we first briefly recap the successful launch of SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavor, with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. Then we dive into our conversation with Dave Eicher to talk all about Galaxies! 

Dave Eicher is one of the most widely recognized astronomy enthusiasts in the world. He has been with Astronomy magazine for 34 years, beginning as an assistant editor and working through associate, senior, and managing positions. He has been the magazine’s chief editor since 2002. Dave joins us today to discuss his latest book, Galaxies: Inside the Universe’s Star Cities. 

About Dave Eicher
A native of Oxford, Ohio, Dave grew up around Miami University, where his father was a professor of organic chemistry. Rather than turning to chemistry, however, Dave was attracted to the stars as a 14-year-old when he spotted Saturn through a small telescope at a star party. Comet West really turned him on to observing, and Dave soon went far beyond to explore clusters, nebulae, and galaxies from his dark backyard — he soon was hooked on viewing deep-sky objects. 

In 1977, Dave founded and began editing the magazine Deep Sky Monthly. Five years later, the publication moved with Dave to Milwaukee, turned quarterly, and was renamed Deep Sky, which was issued regularly until 1992. In addition to his book writing, Dave has written or edited hundreds of articles on all facets of astronomy, science and hobby. In 1990, the International Astronomical Union named a minor planet, 3617 Eicher, for Dave in recognition of his service to astronomy. 

Dave become president of the Astronomy Foundation, the telescope industry and astronomy outreach group, in 2011.

Dave has appeared on CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News Channel, National Public Radio, and other media outlets to promote the science and hobby of astronomy. He has written planetarium shows for Adler Planetarium in Chicago and film scripts for NASA. 

In his free time, Dave has studied Civil War history; he has written eight books on the subject, including The Longest Night (Simon & Schuster), Dixie Betrayed (Little Brown), The Civil War in Books (University of Illinois Press), and Civil War High Commands (written with his father, John, Stanford University Press).

Dave is also enthusiastically interested in minerals and meteorites and has a collection of more than 1,500 specimens representing Earth and a smattering of asteroids in this branch of planetary science. 

An accomplished rock and blues drummer, Dave enjoys jamming with his colleagues at Kalmbach Publishing Co., and the focus is on blues and blues-rock, centering on the styles of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, the Allman Brothers, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and others. Dave is also a big fan of the Green Bay Packers, and during the football season, you will often find him in Lambeau Field.

He lives in Waukesha Township, Wisconsin, near Big Bend, with his wife, Lynda, and son, Chris

For more information about David, visit https://www.davideicher.com 
To check out Astronomy Magazine, visit Astronomy.com  
Galaxies: Inside the Universe’s Star Cities: https://myscienceshop.com/product/book/81404

Thanks to Jeremy Miller (https://www.jeremyrossmiller.com/) for sharing his space journey in this episode!

For the first time since 2011, astronauts are set to once again launch from U.S. soil aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon. The Demo-2 mission is set to launch from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 4:33 pm EDT Wednesday, May 27, 2020 (with a backup launch date of May 30th). Veteran astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be on this mission to the International Space Station.

In this episode we present our Zoom meeting with NASA Social Alumni Danielle Spinola, Jason Fields, Jordan Eichenblatt, Jeremy Miller and Chuck Fields, where we discussed this historic mission, shared concerns, expressed excitement and the amazing journey of America's human spaceflight program. 

NASA Launch America: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/dm2/
Commercial Crew Program: http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

About our panelists:
• Jason Fields https://www.fmofm.com/
• Danielle Spinola of Tupelo Honey Teas https://www.tupelohoneyteas.com/
• Jeremy Miller https://www.jeremyrossmiller.com/
• Jordan Eichenblatt of Hifive Creative  https://www.hifivecreative.com/ and Cholo Dogs https://www.cholodogs.com/

Eli Naffah is Chief of NASA's Space Communications and Spectrum Management Office.  In this interview, conducted onsite at NASA's Glenn Research Center, Eli discusses NASA's new Communications Services Program (CSP).

NASA has long been a leader in space communications services, but the agency is now looking to U.S. industry to develop healthy commercially-provided satellite communications (SATCOM) capabilities, using radio frequency and optical systems, for near-Earth operations. The agency will continue to develop technologies and systems for deep space exploration, but for missions in low-Earth orbit, like those to the International Space Station, NASA believes using commercial SATCOM will help drive market innovation, improve efficiencies for NASA, and reduce costs for all providers and users. 

In the first step toward using these next-gen communications systems, NASA has established the Communications Services Program (CSP), which aims to better understand the current capabilities and the feasibility of integrating SATCOM systems into future agency missions in low-Earth orbit and eventually beyond. 

The first phase is positioned much like a “study,” where the CSP team will develop a strategy to identify and analyze NASA’s current usage and future communication needs. During this time, the team will also evaluate existing industry capabilities as we look to align all parties – those internal to NASA, within industry and among other government agencies – on possible future states. The CSP team will use the information already gathered under the Space Relay Partnership and Services Study solicitation to inform its work during this phase. 

Once the initial assessment is complete, NASA will begin to establish mutually-beneficial partnerships and award multiple contracts to develop and demonstrate system capabilities that meet various mission needs. This will lead to increased public-private collaboration, which will then bring us to the final phase, where NASA will acquire and transition to reliable and cost-effective SATCOM services from multiple industry partners.

In this episode we welcome Tory Bruno, the president & CEO of United Launch Alliance. Tory joins us by phone to discuss how his interest in model rockets at the age of nine years old let to him pursuing a career in aerospace engineering, beginning at Lockheed Martin until he joined ULA in 2014. Tory discusses how ULA has achieved an incredible (and unsurpassed) 100% mission success rate, as well as the development of the new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which is set to launch in 2021 on its first mission with sending a lander to the Moon!

About Tory Bruno
Salvatore T. “Tory” Bruno is the president and chief executive officer for United Launch Alliance (ULA). In this role, Tory serves as the principal strategic leader of the organization and oversees all business management and operations. ULA is the nation’s most experienced space launch company with more than 137 successful consecutive launches since 2006 and a 100% mission success rate. 

About ULA's Vulcan Centaur
ULA is transforming the future of space launch, making it more affordable, accessible and commercialized with its new, next-generation rocket. Vulcan Centaur is superior in reliability, cost, weight and capability, and provides a solution for the nation’s most critical need: reliable access to space. Vulcan Centaur will do it all – affordability with higher performance – while continuing to deliver on ULA’s unparalleled reliability and precision.

For more information, visit https://www.ulalaunch.com

Special thanks to Wayward Plane of LaunchRats.com for discussing her space journey in this episode!

Interview with Tory Bruno recorded May 7, 2020. 

Music: Cylinder Eight (http://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/) by Chris Zabriskie (http://chriszabriskie.com/); licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Sylvia France is the President of OrbitsEdge, Inc., a startup company on Florida’s Space Coast that helps companies collect and process huge amounts of data in space. This amazing company is working to create robust data centers in space--above the cloud, helping to reduce bottlenecks in data processing. 

Commercializing space needs more than launch capabilities and satellite communications. Today’s satellites are not designed to handle the huge amounts of space-born data. An in-orbit data infrastructure is necessary to drive growth and space commercialization.  OrbitsEdge’s core mission is to provide the missing piece, an in-orbit virtualized data infrastructure at the edge of space, that’s agile and adapts to new demands turning data into actionable insights. 

In the last decade, especially the last few years, low-cost reusable rocket technology has completely disrupted the projections of space industrialization. Getting satellites into space is getting cheaper and easier every day.  For cloud computing on Earth, the initial problems were processing capacity and data security. With the maturation of the Cloud, these problems have been resolved.  Now latency and bandwidth are the most common challenges. The Orbital Data Bottleneck encounters similar patterns: processing power, memory capacity, with bandwidth and latency being the most severe.  While Low Earth Orbit provides the best case scenario for satellite-Earth latency because of its proximity, there is also the future of data growth itself. 

Along with the growth of data, a remarkable increase in the number of satellites (such as Cubesats) are being launched with thousands planned in the following years. Being small, many may lack the processing and memory options that OrbitsEdge SatFrame™ 445 LE will provide, creating an Above-the-Cloud™ web service for data processing and analytics for satellites unable to meet the demands themselves.  The OrbitsEdge SatFrame is designed to protect a micro data center from the harsh conditions of space, especially radiation shielding and thermal regulation which requires a special design - especially considering the heightened thermal regulation demands of any data center.

About Sylvia France, President of OrbitsEdge
Started in Silicon Valley, working on the early GPS mapping systems, Sylvia has remained a dominant force in tech startup culture with 30+ years of extensive executive experience in all aspects of traditional and digital marketing.  She is a self-proclaimed “Space Baby” as her father was integral in early space exploration and honed her skills creating new market opportunities for her clients such as Apple, The Home Depot, Verizon and Bozell.

About OrbitsEdge™ Inc.
Headquartered in Titusville, Florida (Space Coast), OrbitsEdge™ Inc. accelerates the commercialization of space by providing Low Earth Orbit (LEO) EDGE micro-data centers that allow organizations to economically access and rapidly analyze vast amounts of data in space. OribitsEdge creates solutions using existing industry-standard technology, off-the-shelf analytics software, and proprietary technology. OrbitsEdge removes the barriers to rapidly enter the space market by providing specialized aerospace expertise to a wide variety of organizations.   

For more information, visit https://orbitsedge.com/

Thanks to Danielle Spinola of Tupelo Honey Teas (https://www.tupelohoneyteas.com/) for sharing her space journey in this episode!

Backstage with Martha Davis of The Motels! In this episode we go backstage with Martha Davis & The Motels before her Valentine’s Day concert where she talks about performing (and her nunchi philosophy for reading the crowd), her upcoming SPACE-themed two-album set called “Escape From Planet Earth”.

Interview with astronaut Fred Haise, the lunar module pilot of Apollo 13!

50 years ago the world witnessed the amazing story of Apollo 13, launched on April 11, 1970. Two days into the mission, an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks prevented the three astronauts, Commander Jim Lovell, Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise, from landing on the Moon. The entire world awaited the safe return of the crew for four days, as the three astronauts used the Lunar Module Aquarius as a lifeboat until successfully splashing down in the South Pacific on April 17, 1970.

In this episode, astronaut Fred Haise joins us by phone to discuss his amazing career, where he also served as backup for Apollo 8, Apollo 11 and Apollo 16 (and slated to be Flight Commander for the later cancelled Apollo 19). Fred also was heavily involved in the space shuttle program and successfully landed the space shuttle Enterprise for the very first time. In this interview Fred also describes his thoughts leading up to his rookie flight on Apollo 13, his thoughts when the oxygen tank exploded, and his description of what it what like as their spacecraft made its closest approach to the Moon. 

Fred currently serves on the board of directors for the INFINITY Science Center. For more information, visit https://www.visitinfinity.com/  

Special thanks to Jason Fields of “Florida is Sinking” podcast for sharing his space journey!

NASA has just selected a new mission to study how the Sun generates and releases giant space weather storms into space. The new mission is called SunRISE, which stands for Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment. This mission will ultimately help protect astronauts traveling to the Moon and Mars by providing better information on how the Sun’s radiation affects the space environment they must travel through.

The principal investigator of SunRISE, Dr. Justin Kasper, joins us to discuss this incredible mission. Justin is also a professor of Space Science & Engineering for the University of Michigan, where he designs sensors for spacecraft that explore extreme environments in space from the surface of the Sun to the outer edges of the solar system. 

SunRISE is an array of six CubeSats operating as one very large radio telescope. NASA has awarded $62.6 million to design, build and launch SunRISE by no earlier than July 1, 2023.

NASA chose SunRISE in August 2017 as one of two Mission of Opportunity proposals to conduct an 11-month mission concept study. In February 2019, the agency approved a continued formulation study of the mission for an additional year. SunRISE is led by Justin Kasper at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. 

The mission design relies on six solar-powered CubeSats – each about the size of a toaster oven – to simultaneously observe radio images of low-frequency emission from solar activity and share them via NASA’s Deep Space Network. The constellation of CubeSats would fly within 6 miles of each other, above Earth's atmosphere, which otherwise blocks the radio signals SunRISE will observe. Together, the six CubeSats will create 3D maps to pinpoint where giant particle bursts originate on the Sun and how they evolve as they expand outward into space. This, in turn, will help determine what initiates and accelerates these giant jets of radiation. The six individual spacecraft will also work together to map, for the first time, the pattern of magnetic field lines reaching from the Sun out into interplanetary space.

For more information visit https://www.nasa.gov/sunearth

Special thanks to Stacey David Severn of StarTalk Radio for sharing her space journey!