The DownLink Podcast

In this episode, Laura Winter speaks with Dan Ceperley, the co-founder and CEO of LeoLabs, a Silicon Valley space-start-up that’s attracted $100 million in venture capital, as well as contracts from the Department of Defense. Ceperley reveals his “ah-ha” moment that transformed him into an entrepreneur and explains the business case for tracking the satellites and space trash on orbit - as a paid service.

Should the United States use space nuclear thermal propulsion for its key on-orbit assets? It’s not just simply to stuff of Star Trek. In fact the idea has been around since before we landed on the moon. The Russians, the Chinese and the U.S. are pursuing it for deep space operations. Laura Winter speaks with Christopher Stone, who is a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Research Center, and the author of a paper outlining why he thinks it’s time for nuclear powered satellites and other spacecraft for space maneuver warfare.

Welcome to the New Year!... And to federal budget purgatory… The National Defense Authorization Act for the financial year 2022 is law, but the U.S. Senate hasn’t passed a budget to pay for it. Lawmakers know this is not how you run a railroad, so this coming Wednesday the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense is holding a hearing about the impact. In this episode Laura Winter asks, who should be testifying and what questions need to be answered, from Mir Sadat, a former National Security Council director for defense and space policy, an Atlantic Council fellow, and a scholar with West Point’s Modern War Institute; Peter Garretson, a book author, and podcaster, a senior defense studies fellow Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, as well as the editor of one of the most important space reports out there, State Of The Space Industrial Base; and Christopher Stone, a Senior Fellow for Space Studies for the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Research Center, and the author of the upcoming policy paper Maneuver Warfare in Space: The Strategic Mandate for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion.

In this year-end episode of The DownLink, Laura Winter unravels a space threat story through three key interviews with Donald Kessler, the now-retired NASA astrophysicist who first theorized what is now known as the “Kessler Syndrome”; Brian Weeden a space policy analyst and advocate from the Secure World Foundation; and Robin Dickey, a space policy and strategy analyst with the Aerospace Corporation. But first, Laura first gives us her top three 2021 data points with effects that she believes will punch through into 2022 and beyond.

Last month Russia tested an anti-satellite weapons system, ostensibly as a warning to anyone that may wish to assist Ukraine, the U.S., or NATO. So while it’s clear that military satellites could be targeted, what’s the risk to commercial satellite operators that provide services to the DoD? To get the answers, Laura Winter speaks with David Koplow, former Special Counsel for Arms Control to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense and the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law at Georgetown University; Chris Kunstadter, Global Head of Space at AXA XL; and Kaitlyn Johnson, Deputy Director and Fellow, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Aerospace Security Project.

This week on The DownLink, Laura Winter speaks with Iridium Communications, Inc. CEO Matt Desch to discuss what he hopes will remain a rare story - the hypersonic bust-up of his company’s satellite in orbit. Many who serve the defense policy-making ecosystem, here in the United States and within multinational organizations are coming to better appreciate the fragile nature of the near-earth space environment. Nevertheless, debris and junk orbiting the earth at hypersonic speeds feels somewhat academic, even with last month’s Russian anti-satellite missile test. Putting the Russia-Ukraine crisis to the side, but not completely out of view, Desch tells the story of the Iridium-33 and gives us his take on what policy-makers, leaders, and space operators need to do to preserve our freedom of action - a.k.a the ability to project power over the horizon - in low earth orbit.

This week U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris convened the Biden Administration’s inaugural National Space Council meeting. It had three agenda items: STEM education, to create the future space-based workforce; using space-based assets and the data they produce to combat climate change; and space-based security, which at present has precious few rules or norms governing behavior. Also, this week, the U.S. Department of Defense shared that it had completed its Global Posture Review, but didn’t include space in its report, which has raised more than a few eyebrows. To unpack the week's events, Laura Winter speaks with Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation, Daniel Dumbacher, the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Sarah Mineiro, a true space and defense policy nerd, who is an adjunct fellow with the Center for a New American Security.

In this episode of The DownLink podcast, Laura Winter is shedding light on satellite communications over the optical part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s called laser communication or optical wireless communication. DARPA, the Space Development Agency, the United States Space Force are already working with the commercial sector to develop and deploy laser satellite communication. What makes this recently recognized technology so special is that by all accounts it’s near impossible to jam, spoof, intercept, or even detect. Laura speaks with Bridgecom CEO Barry Matsumori, who is a veteran of Qualcomm, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic, about how optical wireless works to defeat adversaries. In the episode’s second half she speaks with a laser communications pioneer, David Czajkowski, the co-founder and CEO of Space Micro. Space Micro has been in the news this week because Venture Space Holdings announced earlier this week that it is acquiring a majority stake in Czajkowski’s company.

This week’s episode take a closer look at Monday’s Russian anti-satellite missile test and the debris field it caused, which forced the seven astronauts and cosmonauts on board the International Space Station to take cover. Jamie Shea, who after three decades with NATO, and having served as that organization’s Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, says he does not believe the ASAT test is a coincidence, but part of an effort to keep the Allies on the back foot as tensions rise on Eastern Europe’s border with Russia. Daniel Dumbacher, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’s Executive Director and U.K. Amb. Aidan Liddle discuss their efforts to codify norms of behavior and what’s at stake if governments do not agree to a set of rules for space.

This week on The DownLinK, we’re looking at U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s four-day trip to Paris. She had a number of events, but what we’re interested in is her discussion with French President Emanuel Macron, very specifically the portion of their chat at the Élysée that covered cooperation in space. There were three key developments. To unpack these developments, Laura Winter spoke to Xavier Pasco, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research; Dimitrios Stroikos, from the London School of Economics; and Todd Harrison, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. They are space and defense experts from both sides of the Atlantic.