The best defense (6/27/23)

Good morning. A bit of space history for you to use at your next trivia night: On this day in 1995, the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Florida for the first of 11 meet-ups in orbit between US shuttles and Russia’s Mir space station, a program that laid the groundwork for the ISS.

Today’s newsletter:
💥 Countering space threats
🎙️ Pathfinder #0053
🔁 People on the move

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Time to Build a Defense, Says the Mitchell Institute

It’s about time for the US Space Force to start seriously building out its counterspace capabilities, the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies argues in a report released yesterday.

The report looks at what threats US assets face in space, particularly from China, and encourages the USSF to start building out its own arsenal of military defenses in space sooner rather than later.

“I think we're past the point of, ‘Is space a warfighting domain?’” Maj. Gen. David Miller of the US Space Command said on a press call. “I think we're past the point of, ‘Has space been weaponized?’” The answer to both questions, based on past actions from the US’ adversaries such as China and Russia, is an unequivocal yes.

The threat at hand: Since the world started launching satellites 60+ years ago, the space domain has remained, essentially, peaceful. Still, it hasn’t been entirely without conflict.

• Several countries have kinetic direct-ascent anti-satellite capabilities (i.e., the ability to target and destroy a specific satellite in orbit), and there have been 16 such ASAT tests since 1968. Most recently, Russia destroyed a defunct Soviet satellite in Nov. 2021, creating a debris field in LEO.

• Other, non-kinetic ASAT approaches—including RF jamming and cyberattacking, among others—have also been utilized in wartime scenarios, including by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine.

The Mitchell Institute argues that China has been more aggressive in its development of counterspace capabilities than the US, and that if the US isn’t prepared, an attack on its space assets could wreak havoc on military systems as well as civilians’ daily lives.

“A day without space would be a bad day,” Robert Atkin, VP of special space systems at General Atomics, said on the call. “A month without space could very easily bring our society to a complete grinding halt.”

Building a defense: There are a few agreements in place to help ensure the continued safety and security of the space domain, including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty banning the use of weapons of mass destruction in space. More recently, the US led the charge last year on aself-imposed ban on kinetic direct-ascent ASAT testing. Beyond that, though, international limitations on weapons in space are slim.

The report encourages the USSF to speed up its production of several categories of counterspace capabilities:

1. Space situational awareness (SSA). It’s very tough to defend yourself against an adversary you never saw coming.

2. Resilience to attack. The DoD is looking into approaches, including proliferated architectures, to ensure that potential threats don’t bring down entire space capabilities.

3. Responsible counterspace. “The United States has largely shunned the thought of fielding space weapons since the end of the Cold War,” the report’s author, Charles Galbreath, wrote. “However, recognizing space as a warfighting domain means any serious effort to achieve space security must include space weapons.”

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Phantom’s Series B and Pathfinder #0053 with Jim Cantrell

Phantom Space may be on the verge of closing a $60M Series B, which is being led by Balerion Space Ventures, the company’s cofounder and CEO Jim Cantrell told Payload on this week’s Pathfinder podcast.

Phantom primer: Phantom's strategy focuses around a central idea: mass production of rockets. Instead of going all-in on vertical integration, Cantrell's choosing to leverage the expertise of outside specialists for key technology—for example, propulsion company Ursa Major is fueling Phantom's rocket engines. By providing some but not all the R&D, the company can operate with a substantially leaner core staff.

The thought is that this mass-produced, Henry Ford-like development and production approach will substantially lower costs and increase efficiency. Cantrell is targeting $100M in total development costs ahead of Phantom’s first launch, which would be substantially lower than competitors. The company’s product roadmap includes:

• The Daytona, which is a two-stage rocket designed to deliver payloads up to 450 kg to LEO, is​ expected to first launch in late 2024/early 2025.

• Its larger sibling, Laguna, has a planned lift capacity of 1,200 kg to LEO with the first launch expected in 2027. The Laguna will have both an expendable and reusable configuration for its first stage, similar to SpaceX's Falcon 9.

A sneak peek…

Jim began his career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and the French Space Agency (CNES), working on Mars exploration technologies and a joint French-Soviet Mars program​​. He was a founding member of SpaceX, serving as its first VP of business development. He later co-founded Moon Express, a company focused on commercial lunar robotic transportation​ and Vector Space, a micro-launch vehicle company​.

In addition to Phantom’s early days, Mo and Jim discuss:

• The infamous Elon and Russian ICBM story

• Learnings from Vector

• The evolution of venture capitalists and space

• Pros and cons of vertical integration

• Team construction

• And much more…

Pathfinder #0053 is live now…

…check it out on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or desktop. And reply to this email to let us know what you think! 

In Other News

• ODIN Space has successfully begun conducting in-situ space debris monitoring via a sensor riding on D-Orbit’s ION satellite.

• China conducted parachute tests in preparation for its asteroid sample return mission, which is expected to launch in 2025.

• North Korea’s spy satellite has reportedly been recovered from the sea.

• The UK military will collaborate with the US Space Command to access space domain data.

• SpaceX conducted a six-engine Starship 25 static-fire test.

The View from Space

Not to be outdone by JWST, Hubble captured a picture of a dense collection of tens of thousands of stars 8,000+ light-years from Earth.