Starlab Space<\/a> is a US-led global joint venture and partner network that is ensuring a continued human presence in low-earth orbit. Led by Voyager Technologies, Starlab is the most advanced commercial space station under development, bringing together decades of ISS experience, Al-enabled design and global partnerships into a platform designed to scale science and industry in space. From manufacturing and life sciences to defense applications and international collaboration, Starlab is built for real work, real discovery and real continuity, providing a seamless transition from the International Space Station to the new commercial space station era.<\/p>\nClick here for Notes and Transcript<\/p>\n
Time Markers<\/p>\n
00:00 \u2013 Episode introduction
01:13 \u2013 Jason Kim, firefly Aerospace chat
08:45 \u2013 Jeff Foust panel introduction
11:12 \u2013 Casey Dreier on space policy advocacy and budget challenges
16:00 \u2013 Aubrey Dunne and Steve Chien on AI-driven dynamic targeting in space
20:51 \u2013 Roger Hunter on NASA\u2019s Starling mission and autonomous swarms
23:29 \u2013 Casey Dreier \u2013 An update on the budget process
27:56 \u2013 Steve Chien & Aubrey Dunne \u2013 Commercial and scientific applications of onboard AI
31:19 \u2013 The future of space policy, AI, and exploration<\/p>\n
Segment 1 Transcript \u2013 Jason Kim Conversation<\/p>\n
This transcript has been edited-for-clarity.<\/p>\n
Debra Werner \u2013 Hello, Jason.<\/p>\n
Jason Kim \u2013 It\u2019s great to be here. Very, very thankful for this honor. I bet half of the whole Firefly 13 in-person team is here. And it\u2019s really awesome to be with all these great people. I mean, Bill Nye, Science Guy \u2014 he\u2019s probably just walked out of his Porsche doing like 360s \u2014 and then you\u2019ve got Bird Dog, General Purdy, you don\u2019t get to see him too often. And then you\u2019ve got Matt Anderson, who\u2019s going to do great things for the nation and the world. Johnny Dyer \u2014 man, I was with you. Man, I didn\u2019t do too well in that class either.<\/p>\n
And then you\u2019ve got people like Ray \u2014 I\u2019m going to get this right \u2014 Jayawardana. You\u2019ve got Ray Allensworth, and you\u2019ve got Jordan and Farah and Alan and Joe and Annie and Trina. I get to work with those great people all the time. And of course, you and Jeff Foust and Sandra and Jason \u2014 you get to see all everywhere. We don\u2019t have very much time.<\/p>\n
Debra Werner \u2013 So if anybody doesn\u2019t know Jason Kim, I\u2019m going to give you in one minute what ChatGPT would tell you without hallucinating.<\/p>\n
After the Air Force Academy, he worked in Air Force space superiority and reconnaissance. He is an electrical engineer and an MBA who has worked at Northrop Grumman, Raytheon. He was the CEO of Millennium Space and is now Firefly CEO for a little over a year.<\/p>\n
So will you tell us a little bit about the highs and lows of that year? Because it\u2019s been quite a year.<\/p>\n
Jason Kim \u2013 Yeah, I mean, I wouldn\u2019t have it any other way. I mean, we landed on the Moon on March second. That\u2019s Texas Independence Day. So for all the Texans in the room, I mean, that was incredible.<\/p>\n
I mean, I don\u2019t know who can\u2019t get excited about the Moon. Just think \u2014 365 days ago, I had to tell investors why we\u2019re going to the Moon. Now no one can shut up about it. Everybody wants to go to the Moon, right? Even the next NASA administrator \u2014 hopefully he wants to go to the Moon over and over again. We\u2019re happy to do that for them.<\/p>\n
And so that was historic. I mean, we took 10 NASA payloads up there, did a bunch of experiments like GPS on the Moon, drilled the longest into the actual surface of the Moon, took some temperatures \u2014 it just goes on and on \u2014 120 gigabytes of data.<\/p>\n
So in the last hour that the team let go, it was all autonomous operations and doing hazard navigation and avoiding boulder one, boulder two, crater number three, and then landing one meter away from the new target. So it was a bullseye. Whoever said that \u2014 Mike Gruss \u2014 it was a bullseye.<\/p>\n
So very proud of the team for doing that. A lot of passion in this team. A lot of rehearsals, long nights, sacrifices that they did. So I\u2019m very proud of them.<\/p>\n
And then I didn\u2019t think they could top that, but they did. We went IPO in August, and it was crazy, because it was the biggest space IPO, but it was also one of the top 10 industrials in history. We were up there with UPS, where we went in one price and then actually went up two more times. So it was pretty historic, now that we\u2019re processing it right now.<\/p>\n
So those were some great moments. But you know, we go through challenges too in this industry. Anybody that doesn\u2019t, I feel sorry for them, because they\u2019re not learning, they\u2019re not getting back up. And that\u2019s what makes great companies.<\/p>\n
We had a combustion event at our Texas site for our stage one for flight seven. And once we found out it wasn\u2019t a design problem, it was a process problem, we immediately took action. We implemented corrective measures and even had a one-day stand-down for production integration and test.<\/p>\n
We really took that moment and said, \u201cHey, how can we improve in all these different procedures?\u201d And we\u2019re a better company for that.<\/p>\n
So now the path forward \u2014 second stage is already at Vandenberg. We\u2019re getting the first stage from the production line pulled forward, and that\u2019s getting ready to ship. Then we\u2019ve got to do a wet dress and a hot fire test. And between the end of the year and early first quarter is when we\u2019ll be able to launch, based on range availability.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m confident in the design. I\u2019m confident in our team and their passion to succeed and do it safely and reliably. That was kind of a challenge that we grew from.<\/p>\n
And then the crazy thing is, we\u2019re just getting started. Landing on the Moon, launching several times, building an even bigger reusable rocket, and then putting some orbiters up there \u2014 we\u2019re just getting started.<\/p>\n
Debra Werner \u2013 So what do you see ahead for 2026? It sounds like there will be an Alpha launch.<\/p>\n
Jason Kim \u2013 Yeah, several Alpha launches is what we\u2019re looking forward to. We\u2019re going to do a lot of integration and test of our Eclipse rocket, because we want to get to that first launch \u2014 the inaugural launch.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a big rocket. It\u2019s 200 feet tall, 15 feet in diameter. We\u2019re getting all the flight engines through their qualification, and those are going to start getting integrated.<\/p>\n
So really excited about that. I\u2019m very grateful for the companies ahead of us that have done reusable launch. It gives us a lot of motivation to do the same thing.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re really looking forward to that. Someday, more lunar lander missions. We\u2019re going to go to the far side of the Moon, and it\u2019s going to be a really sick mission, because it\u2019s a 22-foot stack lunar lander.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s got probably a Nobel Prize\u2013nominated quality sensor on it. It\u2019s going to go look into deep space and look for our signals from the dark ages.<\/p>\n
But then it\u2019s got an orbiter. That orbiter is going to drop off the lunar lander and a European Space Agency satellite called Lunar Pathfinder. Then it\u2019s going to start orbiting and take lunar mapping imaging at very high resolution, and we\u2019re going to sell that data commercially.<\/p>\n
So talk about growing the ecosystem \u2014 there are a lot of game-changing things that we\u2019re going to do on that Blue Ghost 2 mission.<\/p>\n
Debra Werner \u2013 So a lot coming up. You also recently acquired SciTech, so in our last minute \u2014 why did you do that?<\/p>\n
Jason Kim \u2013 Well, I think we were pretty transparent about our vision. We think that even before all these other CEOs were talking about servers in space, we were thinking of that decades ago.<\/p>\n
If you think about what space can do for humanity, we think we can process more in space, connect all that data, get it to the user wherever they are, with low latency.<\/p>\n
So when you look at something like SciTech \u2014 all these servers in space, all these servers on the ground \u2014 what good are they without the software? SciTech has over 45 years of software applications they\u2019ve developed, a whole library of algorithms they can mix and match like Lego blocks and apply to things like missile warning and missile tracking. That\u2019s what they\u2019re doing for the Space Force.<\/p>\n
Joe Purdy calls me and says, \u201cHey, don\u2019t screw it up,\u201d right? That\u2019s the kind of stuff they do for a living. It\u2019s a $600 million FORGE program. It\u2019s a no-fail program. They\u2019re using AI to help the user in the room \u2014 the operator room \u2014 to force-multiply themselves to keep us safe at night. That\u2019s what SciTech does.<\/p>\n
But there are also synergies. All of our hardware solutions \u2014 rockets, reusable rockets, orbiters, lunar landers \u2014 they all need software. So we just acquired a software company that has 500 employees, 40 percent of them software developers, and they can help us with our own software as well.<\/p>\n
Debra Werner \u2013 So thank you so much for talking to us today, and thank you everyone for joining us tonight. That concludes our program. Congratulations to all the winners.<\/p>\n
Segment 2 Transcript \u2013 Panel Conversation<\/p>\n
This transcript has been edited-for-clarity.<\/p>\n
Jeff Foust \u2013 Good evening. First of all, congratulations to all the winners up here on the stage, all the other winners in the audience. Thanks to the Bloomberg Center for the wonderful venue that\u2019s hosting us here tonight.<\/p>\n
So what we do here with this panel is give the winners an opportunity to talk a little bit about their areas of work, dive into a little bit greater detail, and also maybe look at some cross-cutting issues.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll notice we have a bit of an eclectic panel up here \u2014 technology and policy \u2014 but I think this really combines two of probably the biggest overarching issues or trends in space in 2025. One is the growing adoption of automation and artificial intelligence technologies in space operations to allow spacecraft to do more things on their own without intervention from people on the ground.<\/p>\n
Whether that\u2019s coordinating maneuvers to prevent close approaches, determining whether and how to collect data, or even how to analyze data \u2014 in other words, making spacecraft smarter.<\/p>\n
The other trend is certainly the policy upheavals we\u2019ve seen in the last year with changes in administrations, budget proposals, proposed cancellations, and how the space community \u2014 space advocates, people in industry \u2014 have mobilized to respond to those. You could consider that making policymakers smarter. I\u2019m not sure which is harder: making the spacecraft smarter or the policymakers smarter.<\/p>\n
But Casey, we\u2019ll start with you. As Mike mentioned in the award description, you\u2019ve compiled a tremendous amount of data resources about a lot of these policy issues, and you\u2019re a tremendous resource for those of us who are reporting on it. But that information is a means to an end. The end is advocacy.<\/p>\n
So maybe you can talk a little bit about how you\u2019re using those resources to reach out to policymakers and shape things like the budget negotiations that are ongoing.<\/p>\n
Casey Dreier \u2013 Thanks, Jeff, and thank you again for the honor of being here, and the other nominees. And of course, I have to acknowledge my colleague Jack Corral. Even though it\u2019s an individual achievement, this has not happened without my great colleague Jack and my other colleagues at the Society.<\/p>\n
I think what the data-driven approach does is that, strangely enough, in this business there\u2019s tons of data floating around, so to speak. The problem is that a lot of it just isn\u2019t compiled or presented in a way that\u2019s useful. That\u2019s a fundamental problem.<\/p>\n
To connect this more broadly, AI has been a helpful way to integrate, categorize, and help me code a lot of this stuff. These new tools, mixed with massive data sets, bring this into sudden relevance.<\/p>\n
Being able to present situations like, \u201cThis isn\u2019t just a normal proposed budget cut \u2014 this is extraordinary,\u201d and not just me saying that, but showing the numbers and actual percentages, showing that this has never been proposed at this degree before \u2014 that gets people listening. That gets our members and the public listening, and it gets policymakers listening.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a discussion of tweaking numbers. This is a wholesale fundamental change, primarily for the worse, for various types of things that don\u2019t have commercial systems ready to stand in. There\u2019s no private option for space science.<\/p>\n
Being able to back that up with numbers and appeal to objectivity and historical context has been very powerful, and packaging it in a way people can use themselves has empowered others. That\u2019s really what\u2019s driven a lot of our work.<\/p>\n
Jeff Foust \u2013 And how has that been implemented? For example, you had a Day of Action on Capitol Hill a couple months ago. What\u2019s been the effect of that advocacy in shaping the ongoing budget debates?<\/p>\n
Casey Dreier \u2013 Unfortunately, yes, we still live in this period of limbo. But one thing that was remarkable \u2014 and I don\u2019t have numbers for this \u2014 is that we had nearly 300 people. They all paid their own way to Washington. These aren\u2019t people who are going to get contracts if this happens.<\/p>\n
They came because they care. That was twice the most people we\u2019ve ever had through a Day of Action. It\u2019s very likely the most people who have ever come to Washington to talk about space science in history for an advocacy event.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s extraordinary. These are people who don\u2019t have professional stakes \u2014 they care because space science matters. It gives access to the sublime. When you look at images from Hubble or vistas on Mars, it\u2019s not just technology or workforce \u2014 it\u2019s something more profound about us as Americans.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s resonating. We saw bipartisan rejection of the proposed cuts. We\u2019ve seen commitments like EXOMars and OSIRIS-APEX continue. I\u2019m not ready to say I\u2019m optimistic, but I\u2019m less pessimistic than I was six months ago.<\/p>\n
Jeff Foust \u2013 Steve and Aubrey, dynamic targeting sounds like common sense \u2014 don\u2019t take pictures where it\u2019s cloudy \u2014 but what made this possible?<\/p>\n
Aubrey Dunne \u2013 There were quite a lot of challenges. We deployed something that, to our knowledge, had never been done before on a small spacecraft. Timing was key.<\/p>\n
We had between 60 and 90 seconds to capture a look-ahead image, process it with AI onboard, identify cloudy regions, and then reorient the spacecraft to capture the least cloudy region.<\/p>\n
Power was also a huge constraint. We operated the AI system at about three watts. That required careful selection of algorithms and hardware.<\/p>\n
The team solving this was very small \u2014 four or five engineers \u2014 but built on a much larger ecosystem that enabled AI onboard in the first place. Ultimately, this is about maximizing the value return of imagery.<\/p>\n
Steve Chien \u2013 One thing I\u2019ll add is that we did similar things almost 20 years ago, but the difference now is computing power. We\u2019re seeing response times drop from hours to seconds.<\/p>\n
Every spacecraft in the future will have some version of this. I worked on the Rosetta mission, where we had to plan observations weeks in advance. With this technology, you can see a plume, track it, and respond in real time. That\u2019s a complete game-changer.<\/p>\n
Jeff Foust \u2013 Roger, Starling has evolved beyond its original mission. What\u2019s it doing now?<\/p>\n
Roger Hunter \u2013 We extended the mission to December 2026. While processing star-tracker data, we discovered we could see other spacecraft, debris, and rocket bodies.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re now exploring navigation without GPS by using other space objects as beacons. We\u2019re also using software-defined radios to track low-power transmitters on Earth to study animal migration patterns affected by climate change.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re merging optical and RF data to build a better picture of what\u2019s happening in low Earth orbit. All of this is informing what the next generation swarm will look like.<\/p>\n
Jeff Foust \u2013 And what might that next generation look like?<\/p>\n
Roger Hunter \u2013 We want to go to cislunar space and planetary space. We want to deploy swarms that provide navigation, communications, timing, and space situational awareness at the Moon.<\/p>\n
Everywhere humans go, we bring infrastructure. Swarms can provide that rapidly.<\/p>\n
Jeff Foust \u2013 Casey, where do things stand right now in the budget process?<\/p>\n
Casey Dreier \u2013 As of about five o\u2019clock, we\u2019re still under a continuing resolution. House and Senate top lines match, but allocations differ. The Senate keeps science roughly flat; the House is lower but still better than the White House proposal.<\/p>\n
NASA isn\u2019t what\u2019s holding this up. Space science enjoys broad bipartisan support. The challenge is the broader political context.<\/p>\n
Once you shut off a spacecraft, you don\u2019t get it back. So keeping missions running is critical. Again, less pessimistic than before.<\/p>\n
Jeff Foust \u2013 Steve and Aubrey, what\u2019s next for this technology?<\/p>\n
Steve Chien \u2013 There\u2019s strong commercial interest, especially in avoiding clouds. We\u2019ve launched an initiative called FAME. Our goal is to deploy AI on 60 spacecraft in three years.<\/p>\n
Aubrey Dunne \u2013 We\u2019re focused on proactive operations \u2014 satellites acting as agents looking for specific features. If they don\u2019t see anything of interest, they return nothing.<\/p>\n
Maritime situational awareness is a key use case. It\u2019s about returning information, not just data.<\/p>\n
Jeff Foust \u2013 In our final minute, what are you most looking forward to in the next year?<\/p>\n
Roger Hunter \u2013 People should watch AI in space. In the next year, you\u2019ll see things you wouldn\u2019t have imagined.<\/p>\n
Aubrey Dunne \u2013 AI-driven tip-and-cue and the FAME project \u2014 the world\u2019s largest federated AI experiment in space.<\/p>\n
Casey Dreier \u2013 I hope for more sanity in policy, and more time to build tools that bring clarity rather than putting out fires.<\/p>\n
Jeff Foust \u2013 I think that illustrates how these areas overlap. Please give the panelists a round of applause.<\/p>\n
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