Comms failings are a threat to space
Communication isn’t a luxury. It’s how you get buy-in. It’s how you justify your budget, get your mission approved, and build alliances.
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In a piece for Payload, Sonder London’s M.D., Victoria Pearson, writes that though technical excellence abounds in the space sector, communications issues are holding it back:
‘Communication isn’t a luxury. It’s how you get buy-in. It’s how you justify your budget, get your mission approved, and build alliances. Even the most groundbreaking ideas—quantum-secure networks, in-orbit manufacturing, real time Earth intelligence—won’t shape the future if they’re not understood in the present.
Take satellite data. Petabytes of it are gathered every year. It’s a technical marvel. But unless people understand how that data can warn that a flood is coming, or prevent crops from failing, or expose methane leaks, gathering data risks being seen as merely clever—rather than useful.
Or consider optical communication, a form of technology that can send information from space to Earth at staggering speeds—and with an unmatched degree of security. Most people have never even heard of it. Yet in a world of rising demand for bandwidth and declining radio spectrum availability, optical communication will be vital to the future of global connectivity—and vital already in conflict zones, where security is paramount. Without stakeholders clearly communicating their value, space technologies like data—or optical communications—will at best remain solutions to problems no one knows exist.
Good space sector communication is about explaining what you do, what problem your solution addresses, and why that matters—-in language that doesn’t require a PhD to comprehend.’
And from the pages of The Guardian: the White House has announced that Jason Isaacman, billionaire private astronaut and pal of Elon Musk, will not be NASA’s next administrator. The timing, as commentators have noted, is curious:
‘Donald Trump said he would announce a new candidate soon. “After a thorough review of prior associations, I am hereby withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman to head Nasa,” the US president posted online. “I will soon announce a new Nominee who will be mission aligned, and put America first in space.”
Isaacman was due next week for a much-delayed confirmation vote before the US Senate. His removal from consideration caught many in the space industry by surprise. Trump and the White House did not explain what led to the decision.
Isaacman, whose removal was earlier reported by Semafor, said he was “incredibly grateful” to Trump “and all those who supported me throughout this journey”. …
Isaacman’s removal comes just days after Musk’s official departure from the White House, where the SpaceX CEO’s role as a “special government employee” leading the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge) created turbulence for the administration and frustrated some of Trump’s aides.’
In Space News, Justin du Plessis argues that there’s a need to ‘overcome conservatism in the autonomous space revolution’:
‘The industry’s risk aversion isn’t without precedent. NASA’s 2005 Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technologies mission failed to meet any of its objectives, reinforcing the sector’s conservative tendencies. Such high-profile setbacks have cast long shadows over autonomous spacecraft development.
Most current approaches involve incrementally testing small technological components rather than implementing comprehensive autonomy solutions. Companies typically manually guide spacecraft to predefined positions before testing limited autonomous capabilities in controlled environments – a slow, cautious path to full autonomy.
Creating truly autonomous spacecraft requires mastering several critical functions without constant human supervision. … The space industry has reached an inflection point where operational demands are beginning to outpace traditional control methods. As satellite constellations grow larger and missions become more complex, autonomy shifts from luxury to necessity.’
David Bowie wondered if there was life on Mars. According to the BBC, there might be some on K2-18b:
‘A Cambridge team has detected signs of molecules which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms. This is the second, and more promising, time chemicals associated with life have been detected in the planet's atmosphere by Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
But the team and independent astronomers stress that more data is needed to confirm these results. The lead researcher, Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, told me at his lab at Cambridge University's Institute of Astronomy that he hopes to obtain the clinching evidence soon.
"This is the strongest evidence yet there is possibly life out there. I can realistically say that we can confirm this signal within one to two years."‘
At the SmallSat Europe conference in Amsterdam, we heard some of the leading voices in European space, including Cailabs’s Jean-François Morizur and Daniel Biedermann of space fund NewSpace Capital. One hot topic of conversation was IRIS2. Biedermann put it like this:
‘It needs to have a business case that is workable and I don’t think it does. Until there is a different proposition on the table I can’t see how an investor would commit to it.
This is a sovereign network, which means profitability may not be a priority.’
And finally, Johann Strauss’s The Blue Danube is to be broadcast into deep space to celebrate the 200th anniversary of its composer’s birth and the 50th year of the European Space Agency. The waltz was of course immortalised by Kubrick’s 2001: