 Hello, Space Mike here, and I wanted to talk about a few recent contracts that have been signed by Orbital ATK that will advance some of their future space projects, including their next generation launch vehicle and their mission extension vehicle. This is your space pod for Tuesday, January 9th, 2018. For their next generation launch vehicle, which is based on different vehicles that Orbital ATK is already making, their Pegasus rockets, their Minotaur rockets, and their Antares rockets, as well as the solids that have been used on the Space Shuttle for the SLS and the solid rocket boosters for the Delta family of rockets as well. And they're combining all of these different elements into a rocket that would be an Orbital class, or rather an EELV class rocket for national security payloads. And what this recent contract that they've signed is actually having to do, it's a cooperative research and development agreement with the United States Air Force, specifically the Space and Missile Systems Center, in order to provide the information that Orbital ATK would need in order to churn this vehicle into all the requirements needed to be an EELV class vehicle, an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle. Now, the Cooperative Research and Defense Agreements provides the framework and plan for data exchanges needed to certify Orbital ATK's launch vehicle. To date, the company has jointly invested with the Air Force more than $200 million to develop the next generation rocket family. There would be several different configurations of payload fairing sizes, different number of solid rocket boosters on the side, and there is a lot working on this, and I'm very hopeful to see this. The next phase of the next generation launch vehicle program is expected to begin when the Air Force awards launch service agreements in mid-2018. Either way, I find the idea really impressive of combining all of their different solid rocket inventory into one particular vehicle, and it's nice to finally see some quality artist renderings of this proposed rocket family as well. But the other exciting thing I wanted to talk about that Orbital ATK recently did is regarding their mission extension vehicle, which Orbital ATK has been working on for several years that could extend the life of geostationary satellites and even move them into different orbits. Now, what this new contract that they've signed regarding this has to do with is that they've signed a contract for their second commercial mission of this yet-to-fly spacecraft. The contract has been signed with IntelSat, who is also their first customer for the mission extension vehicle, and that first mission is scheduled for later this year in late 2018. And Orbital ATK plans to expand the satellite servicing capabilities and address additional in-orbit needs for customers, and they hope with the mission extension vehicle too, the second vehicle that they do for this, that they will be able to not only invest their own capital for this, but also have agreements with NASA through the Space Act agreements to be able to have next-generation life extension repair capabilities, as well as be able to do in-orbit assembly of larger structures and even possibly be able to do cargo delivery and related services to further out-stations, possibly even lunar stations, and align with the different CIST Lunar 1000 plans that are going around commercially. So I think that this is really great. It's good to see that despite some of the difficulties that they had with the, I should say, competition with DARPA and the favoritism that NASA had with some of the contracts with that, that Orbital ATK is going to be just fine, already signed up a second mission for this, and that we're going to see missions like this, and I really like the idea of being able to extend the lifespan of communications satellites for many more years and even move them into safe orbits, and hopefully this will lead to future systems like recovery of large pieces of orbital debris. But that was something that I wanted to talk about this week, and hopefully we'll see a lot more information about this really soon. Keep looking up, everybody, and don't forget, add Astra to the stars.