How is the space sector reacting to Russia’s war in Ukraine and mitigating against an uptick in cyber threats to space systems? Laura Winter speaks with Dan Dumbacher, Executive Director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, or AIAA; and with Frank Backes, Senior Vice president of Kratos Federal Space and Board Chair of the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or Space ISAC; Sam Visner, Technical Fellow at the Mitre Corporation and Vice Chair of the Space ISAC; and the organization’s Executive Director Erin Miller.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has kicked off financial and technical sanctions targeting Russian space programs,…

Balloons as big as a football stadium provide the Department of Defense with suborbital services, such as payload hosting and persistent ultra-high quality and high definition earth observation data. Is it enough for a business? Is this a little-known opportunity? Laura Winter speaks with Ryan Hartman, CEO of World View.

If you think sanctions to counter Russian aggression have not and will not make a…

The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence released its much-anticipated inaugural space policy paper “Defence Space Strategy: Operationalising the Space Domain”. The U.K., the No. 1 ally of the United States, is a member of the European Space Agency and a signatory to the U.S. -led Artemis Accords. To understand Britain’s space security ambitions, Laura Winter speaks with Bleddyn Bowen, a space warfare expert at the University of Leicester, and the author of the book, “War In Space: Strategy, Spacepower, Geopolitics”, and with Juliana Seus, the Royal United Services Institute space security policy lead.

When the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday outlined what forces…

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…

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.