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The Space Industry by satsearch - sharing stories about the businesses taking us into orbit.
We delve into the opinions and expertise of the people behind the commercial space companies of today, who could become the household names of tomorrow. Find out more about the companies and technologies discussed on this show at satsearch.com.
[00:00:00] Hywel: Hello everybody, I'd like to welcome you to The Space Industry by satsearch, where we share stories about the companies taking us into orbit. In this podcast, we delve into the opinions and expertise of the people behind the commercial space organizations of today, who could become the household names of tomorrow.
[00:00:17] Hywel: Before we get started with the episode, remember you can find out more information about the suppliers, products and innovations that are mentioned in this discussion on the Global Marketplace for Space at satsearch.
[00:00:28] com. Hi, and welcome to yet another episode of the Space Industry Podcast. Today we have Laura Crabtree, who is the co founder and CEO of Epsilon3.
[00:00:38] And Epsilon3 is a company that builds softwares for complex engineering assembly testing and operations supporting companies that are building rockets and satellites. Laura, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
[00:00:51] Laura: Yeah, thank you for having me.
[00:00:52] Great. As a quick introduction to possibly listeners who are hearing about Epsilon3 for the first time. I would love for [00:01:00] you to maybe give a short introduction about Epsilon3 before we dive into this particular topic that we're going to discuss today.
[00:01:08] Laura: Let me start from the beginning, which is why we exist. So we exist because I worked in the industry. Doing what a lot of you all do, mostly in later stage program, life cycle, integration tests and operations. And I saw firsthand the lack of software tools that were geared directly towards what I needed to do.
[00:01:35] Laura: And I worked for a long time at both Northrop Grumman at SpaceX and saw a lot of the issues that I would have wanted to solve. And when I left, I wanted to solve those issues. And now what we have done over the course of the last four years is build a software largely based on the feedback of our customers.
[00:01:59] Laura: We [00:02:00] started with operations integrated procedures and how we actually run operations on our spacecraft, satellites, launch vehicles, et cetera. And we have expanded to integration tests to build, and it's been a really fun ride. And I think we're here to talk mostly about some of the latest developments that we have added to the platform.
[00:02:26] Excellent. So I think that's that gives us a good baseline. I think in previous episodes that we've recorded with you, we've gone over some of the things that you guys have done with respect to the procedures and automation for AIT for spacecraft and rocket developers and so on.
[00:02:42] You guys have now pivoted a bit more towards also trying to add features that go into operations. So I'm wondering why are you focusing now also on the operations bit and how did you get to this place where you thought that is also something that Epsilon3 needs to then [00:03:00] go build for?
[00:03:01] Laura: Yeah. As we started really geared towards operations, it was always a place we wanted to go. And we wanted to add in the automation as it made sense for people, if you go to a customer, a potential customer that has paper based procedures or word docs you tell them here, you upload this and we'll fully automate everything.
[00:03:26] Laura: You don't need to do anything anymore. They're probably going to think that you're crazy and they probably will not become customers of yours. So the only way to really solve the bigger problem is to do it step by step is to do, the first step is putting it on a platform. That can be fully integrated with the rest of your process.
[00:03:49] Laura: And then the next step is integrating with command and telemetry so that in the future, when you want to automate, you have the potential to do that. And then [00:04:00] the next step, you can see where this is going. So you can see why. As our customers are maturing, they want us to step more into the automation space.
[00:04:08] You've mentioned about your customers and so on, but I want to take a step back towards what is happening within the TT&C ecosystem itself. As far as I understand, there are two segments of people already operating there, right? So one is obviously the ground station providers who have the assets on the ground, who are then talking to the spacecraft and so on.
[00:04:27] And then you have the software companies that may be working with some of these ground station providers and the spacecraft operators to be able to then bridge that operations, right? What gaps do you see in this ecosystem that exists that you're then, bridging with Epsilon3, then coming in to build that features for the users of your tools.
[00:04:48] Laura: So for the ground station providers, they're providing the means to get data to the operators. So if you have a spacecraft, you need [00:05:00] a ground station to pipe that data to you. And what we're doing is providing the means by which you can automate some of the work that you need to do on the spacecraft from the ground.
[00:05:15] Laura: So if you were to look at all of your flight software, you have probably automated certain responses to certain failures and Within the flight software and the embedded software on your systems in space. However, as the vehicles, go through their life cycle, there may be additional pieces of the operation that you either need to automate and haven't gotten to, to upload new patches of software or cannot automate and need to automate from the ground.
[00:05:48] Laura: Because as your vehicle flies longer, you might end up with more failures and if, or more things you need to respond to. There's always the piece that [00:06:00] you learn in flight, and that's why we want to help with automation and integration with command and telemetry, because as you learn more about your vehicle, you might want to automate things from the ground instead of always automating in space.
[00:06:15] Laura: And so we wanted to add that. That capability to our software as more and more users are controlling their assets in space using Epsilon3,
[00:06:23] right? The user experience that you then want to build through this integration as well is is then, how would then the consumer or the user on the other side would then, use this feature.
[00:06:34] You mean that basically then people are using Epsilon3, not just in the spacecraft build process, but also then. On the tpnc as well, but these are then two separate teams within an organization, but then they have integration between those two, is that what you're trying to say?
[00:06:54] Laura: Exactly. So if you're monitoring the build process with Epsilon3 and you build an [00:07:00] entire spacecraft and then you launch that spacecraft and operate it with the same platform, now you have the ability to go back in time and look at specific things that were done during the build process or the testing.
[00:07:13] Laura: of that vehicle's life cycle, such that if you have an anomaly in space and you want to go back to some of the data that was gathered when that vehicle was being built on the ground, you have access to do and you can integrate data from the test bed. You can integrate data from any of the tools on the ground, and then you can also integrate data from in space and you can have full traceability of everything that happened to that vehicle, everything that vehicle has told you over the course of its life cycle.
[00:07:45] I know that I may, I can't push you to give us scenarios of your customers running this, but since you've been involved with several missions through the course of your career, are there any specific examples that you've seen, through the course of your career?
[00:07:58] Either with other teams or so [00:08:00] on that you can state where this problem between the teams of doing ALT and operations would have been solved by exactly this kind of integration.
[00:08:09] Laura: Yeah I usually give one specific example that's been, that was very public at the time from SpaceX, which was during the, one of the earlier missions for Dragon, we had a failure of a certain number of valves on our vehicle.
[00:08:30] Laura: And. We had, when we get to space, the initialization of our prop system did not happen as it was expected to do. And we had to go back into testing and the build process to figure out where those valves came from, to figure out if there was a root cause. that could cause the same, that number of valves to fail.
[00:08:58] Laura: Now we traced it back to a [00:09:00] specific lot from a specific vendor. And that lot was actually built wrong. And once we figured out the problem, then we recovered the vehicle and completed the mission, but not without not any number of engineers. I think it was roughly 10 to 20 engineers over the course of, multiple hours to figure out that was the problem.
[00:09:25] Laura: And if that had been, different people at a different time, We could have lost the mission. And so going back to, if that happened and you were using Epsilon3, you could trace back to where those valves came from, who installed them and the data that was gathered on them in seconds, not hours, potentially more.
[00:09:50] So I guess through this particular development that you guys are doing you are trying to basically automate a lot of the command, execution and real [00:10:00] time monitoring and, predictive analysis and so on. What impact do you think, this has on the operations teams themselves?
[00:10:08] who are using tools, whatever tools that you that they're doing today.
[00:10:11] Laura: Yeah. My, my sincere hope is that this kind of development allows the operations teams to be smaller and operate from home or from their phones or monitor what the computer did in response to specific anomalies or specific things that happen on the vehicle and not have to either go into mission control to monitor.
[00:10:35] Laura: Or re evaluate and plot and look at data over time to send and determine the right commands. My hope is that, with Epsilon3, you'll be able to do that automatically, respond to anomalies, and then just follow along with what the computer did in response to any specific anomaly that you've programmed into the system.
[00:10:56] And from what you're describing, I'm guessing that this is [00:11:00] limited to just the monitoring part of the TTNC and not really like gathering payload data and things like these.
[00:11:07] Laura: No, we don't do like imagery or payload data within the platform. It's more. On the health and safety of the vehicle.
[00:11:17] Laura: We do, we could turn on and off payloads, but we're not gathering and disseminating payload data. There are a lot of other providers that do that.
[00:11:27] Yeah, exactly. Because I guess that's a completely different niche because at the end that's just the service provider that then needs to then collect that data and so on.
[00:11:35] But you guys are really streamlining the whole asset operation. Of the spacecraft itself will not really bother about the service in itself.
[00:11:44] Laura: Yes, exactly. What
[00:11:45] type of missions would this make sense for? Obviously today there are people building, I don't know, very small CubeSats. to then bigger spacecraft to to, even human stations right at the end.
[00:11:57] So is this something that scales [00:12:00] across different teams, works across different spacecraft sizes and types of missions?
[00:12:06] Laura: Absolutely. And what I would say is, The earlier you are, the better it is to start with something like Epsilon3, and then as you automate more and more into your flight software Epsilon3 becomes more of a monitoring and anomaly resolution for things that you may not have planned for and can then record into the system and essentially learn and grow from.
[00:12:34] Laura: So let's say you are a space station provider. And Epsilon3 can be your operations platform. That's something that we are doing with a number of our customers. Then you also have launch vehicle operations and engine testing. That is another really good use case for Epsilon3, especially in the integration test and integration [00:13:00] of command and telemetry.
[00:13:01] Laura: And then for satellite operators, for the first, let's say you're building a constellation for the first, second, third, fifth launch of your constellation, You may not have the flight software completely automated, and Epsilon3 can really help with that. And then as you get into, the 10th, 20th launch of your satellite constellation, you'll probably rely on Epsilon3 a little less for nominal operations and a little more for anomaly operations.
[00:13:35] So one of the things that we haven't yet discussed is what are the key features within the TTNC automation itself? So can you give us a very quick walkthrough of which are the key features that are built in?
[00:13:48] Laura: For the integration of command and telemetry, it's mostly on displaying real time data.
[00:13:57] Laura: Okay. And displaying passing or failing [00:14:00] criteria on that data, creating a real time plot with time series data from the past, so you can have a long plot to help you evaluate if you have spikes over time, especially when it comes to things like pressures or temperatures. And then for commanding. You can either command and set up a hard coded command.
[00:14:25] Laura: Let's say you want to turn something on or turn something off. You can hard code that command or you can set up a variable. Let's say you have five batteries and as soon as you start the procedure, You want to read in information from a specific battery that's having a problem. You can define that variable and have the same procedure run for each of the batteries, rather than having five procedures that says battery one, battery two to X.
[00:14:52] Laura: And so that's one of the things that. I was really passionate about was, I don't want to build the same thing, [00:15:00] only writing a different number in every single time. So let's build it once and let's be able to reuse it for any number of satellites or within a specific satellite, any number of thrusters or batteries or flight computers so that you don't have to do the same thing.
[00:15:17] Laura: Many times,
[00:15:18] right? And from the perspective of going ahead with some more added features that are, maybe troubling spacecraft operators in the future as spacecraft do get crowded in space. Do you see foresee any new integrations such as, I don't know, like space situational awareness?
[00:15:35] data being integrated into all of this? That is not just, taking care of then the T and C itself, but also the general safety of the spacecraft in itself.
[00:15:44] Laura: Absolutely. And I know, and I talked to a lot of the space situational awareness companies and have plans for That as well as a lot of other data sets that spacecraft operators utilize on a daily basis.[00:16:00]
[00:16:00] Laura: So I don't want to just provide your data. I want to provide other data outside of your data to provide health and safety and situational awareness for the entirety of the space industry. Because I think, there's power in people sharing Data if only to share sort of their T. L. E.
[00:16:20] Laura: File and, current status of their vehicle or maybe if their vehicles in distress. So that you can share it across the platform with others and make sure that space is safe for everybody.
[00:16:33] So let's talk a little bit from the user experience side. Let's say, I already have a running team.
[00:16:39] That is built procedures on whatever an Excel spreadsheet or even paper or so on. And then I have a space cloud operations team that is working independently and so on. So now, if I'm in this situation and I look at Epsilon3 and I want to use it. Do I then need to, bring in a lot of the routines up to speed on the AIT side, and then also bring in a lot of the [00:17:00] routines on the TTNC side separately, and then be, in a position where I can use Epsilon3, or how does that work if I'm a team that has now looked at it and said, okay, this is something that I want to use.
[00:17:11] And that is an interest that is spiked by, let's say my DTNC team.
[00:17:15] Laura: Sure. I would say you don't have to start with the entirety of the team. You can start small and then build out from there. We've seen, five to seven person teams. And then once other people see how they run things, they want to join in on the fun.
[00:17:34] Laura: I think. The value comes when you have more people collaborating with one another, and you have a standardized process across the company. If you have a standardized process for how you test the vehicle, and you have a standardized process for how you operate the vehicle that is when you find the highest level of efficiency.
[00:17:53] Laura: But, definitely starting small. Starting with one project one subsystem, one [00:18:00] vehicle is the way to go because then you figure out how the system best works for your company and can perpetuate that outside into the other groups.
[00:18:09] I think for the benefit of some of the listeners I saw that you guys have a specific demo.
[00:18:15] Of you know the feature in itself that's been recorded and it's on the Epsilon3’s youtube channel. So we're going to try to link that for people to Either check out that particular Video where you have a brief demo Of what of the future in itself and so on. Just as a, last one of the last couple of questions that I have for you.
[00:18:35] Talked about reducing team sizes and making teams more efficient and so on. Obviously that is a good outcome for teams in itself, but how much of this is also about, increasing reliability? If our false space missions,
[00:18:53] Laura: Yeah, I think it's increasing your level of confidence in success, really.
[00:18:59] Laura: [00:19:00] So it's knowing that you've done everything that you can do to make sure that you have a successful mission. And it's recording those things such that if you do have a failure, You can go back and recreate all the decisions that were made to understand where that failure occurred and how not to do the same thing again.
[00:19:23] Laura: And I think it's both the team size. Reduction and increase in confidence that, you will have a successful mission,
[00:19:33] As a passing in note, I would love to for you to, paint a picture on what is coming in the future as well, because we know that, obviously, Epsilon3 started with automating a lot of the I.
[00:19:44] T. Procedures and so on. And now we are in T and C. And you briefly talked about SSA and so on. Obviously there is the life of the spacecraft going from like design, development, launch operations and then end of life. In all of this where do you see Epsilon3 [00:20:00] heading in, in the entirety of this?
[00:20:01] So do you look at Epsilon3 as then as a comprehensive tool where you have modules for each of these and how do you think, Things will shape up for you guys in the future now.
[00:20:10] Laura: Yeah, I'm really excited to integrate with all of the other data sets to increase people's confidence in their missions and not have to go a lot of different places for all the different information that they need in their brains to run their missions.
[00:20:25] Laura: I'm also really excited about the ability to create a, an operations schedule and recreate what happened on your vehicle. So you had a past schedule and you have a future schedule so that you can see over time how often things occur. How often are you responding to anomaly one, two, or three and recreate that.
[00:20:52] Laura: Within the scheduling piece, it's really important for you to know where you are in your mission, what you have to do [00:21:00] that day and where other people are. So that's additionally something that we are continuing to build upon.
[00:21:06] And I think one of the other things that piques my curiosity here is things like space weather.
[00:21:12] which has been having a pretty big impact for a number of spacecraft in the last couple of years. Things like insurance, for example, where there is a tremendous lack of data that is reliable for new types of insurance to come up for spacecraft operators. Do you see gaps there where you can look at bridging some of this and eventually a whole lot of these things would evolve?
[00:21:34] I think for an insurance provider, having end to end traceability on everything. Maybe very interesting because at the end that is something that is completely missing in this industry.
[00:21:43] Laura: I think there's a lot of potential there. It's not something that we have dug into too deeply yet. But I think if people have really good traceability of their operations, they can, and they're increasing the likelihood of success.
[00:21:59] Laura: My hope [00:22:00] is that does actually decrease insurance costs so that people can get to space faster and more reliably. for listening.
[00:22:08] Great. Thank you so much for spending the time here. So as I said we'll link this video for people who are interested to then have shot at the feature in itself, or as always, Laura, you're one of the most knowledgeable people in this industry and having been through several of these missions.
[00:22:22] It's always a great pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for taking the time.
[00:22:26] Laura: Yeah. Thank you.
[00:22:30] Hywel: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Space Industry by SatSearch. I hope you enjoyed today's story about one of the companies taking us into orbit. We'll be back soon with more in depth, behind the scenes insights from private space businesses.
[00:22:42] Hywel: In the meantime, you can go to satsearch. com for more information on the space industry today, or find us on social media if you have any questions or comments. To stay up to date, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and you can also get each podcast on demand on iTunes, Spotify, the Google Play Store, or whichever podcast service you typically [00:23:00] use.