All right, so here's a word we don't often use in this industry. Bargain. Well, how else would you describe a space tourism ticket to go past the Carmen line at about half the price of competitors prices strike you? Still expensive to be sure, but by comparison, it's quite a deal, isn't it? No wonder then that tickets sold out in 20 minutes. Must be nice to have over 200k burning a hole in your pocket. Hi, Alice. Right. Hey, Maria. I've got a stem joke for you this week. OK. Why should you wear glasses in math class? You should wear glasses in math class because I'm terribly myopic and can't see the blackboard. That is not a funny answer, is it? No, it helps with division. Oh, no. Oh, no. Thank you, Jen. Curse you, Jen. Oh, thanks, Jen. Oh, that's a good. Oh, no. T minus. 20 seconds to Al-O-I. Open aboard. Today is October 25th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmasus. I'm Alice Karuth and this is T minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] China's deep blue aerospace sells tickets to space. India approves new funding for space startups. NASA's SpaceX Crew 8 finally splashes down to Earth. And Alicia Segal will be bringing us the nasaspaceflight.com space traffic report. This weekly update will round up the space launch news from the week that's just been released of what to look forward to this week. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Friday. We've got that very Friday energy right now. Let's get into today's briefing, shall we? And this may sound a little familiar to our audience in the west. The space tourism company with the name Blue in the title opened up the opportunity for space tourists to take trips to the Karman line and back to Earth yesterday. But in this case, it's deep blue aerospace based in China's eastern Jiangsu province, which held a live stream to open up ticket sales for their suborbital flights to space, which they say sold out in 20 minutes. According to Chinese media, over 3 million people tuned in to find out more about the 12 minute flight to space and purchase tickets for 1.5 million yuan. And that's around $210,000 each. Deep blue aerospace chairman, Huo Liang said that ticket prices at several hundred thousand yuan may soon become a reality. Could China drive down the cost of space tourism? Maybe. But when will we be seeing deep blue aerospace flying commercial passengers to space? They say the rocket rides will begin in 2027. The rocket remains to be done for the company to meet its announced timeline. Last month, the rocket failed to complete a high altitude vertical recovery test flight. A new test is scheduled for November, while the company has said it will ramp up testing in 2025 and 2026 to ensure the safety and reliability of suborbital manned travel. I can just see inside of that rocket now saying made in China. According in China, scientific payloads for space breeding and other sci-tech experiments carried by China's first reusable and returnable satellite, the Xi Jinping 19, have been returned to the principal investigators. The China National Space Administration and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation signed payload delivery certificates with domestic and international users, including those from Thailand and Pakistan, at a ceremony in Beijing. China says the satellite carried 500 kilos of payloads back to Earth in the recent mission. China aims to use the spacecraft more than 10 times, significantly reducing manufacturing costs and improving operational efficiency. India's cabinet has announced a new venture capital fund for the space sector. The fund is set at about 150 million US dollars. The move is seen as a significant boost to the growing space startup ecosystem in the country. The initiative aims to support 30 to 40 startups initially, focusing on taking concepts from ideation to commercialization. And finally we get to say welcome home crew eight. NASA's SpaceX crew eight mission successfully splashed down at 3 29 a.m. this morning, Florida time, concluding a nearly eight month stay at the International Space Station. It's the agency's eighth commercial rotation mission to the ISS. NASA astronauts Matthew Dominic, Michael Barat and Jeanette Epps, as well as Roscosmos Cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, spent 232 days on board the International Space Station. The crew were flown to Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital after landing. Three of the crew have been released, but one unnamed member, which NASA assures us is in stable condition, remains under observation. NASA has not disclosed what happened during splashdown or recovery to cause the situation. NASA has released its third agency wide economic impact report. And the US Space Agency says its moon to Mars activities, climate change research and technology development, and other projects generated more than $75.6 billion in economic output across all 50 states and Washington DC in fiscal year 2023. NASA estimates that they generated $9.5 billion in federal, state and local taxes throughout the United States. And you can read the full report by following the link in our show notes. L3Harris is the latest aerospace company to file Q3 findings. They reported third quarter 2024 revenue of $5.3 billion, an increase of 8% over last year. L3Harris is updating their 2024 savings target to at least $600 million and now expects to reach the overall target of $1 billion a year early. Who says there's no money to be made in space, eh? And a few months back we were waiting and bracing ourselves for the inevitable, or so we thought, cuts that were to be announced for the Chandra and Hubble missions given the squeeze on NASA's budget. But it seems that they're holding off on any major decisions until the next fiscal year. Phew! Mark Clampin, who is director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, told the audience of an online town hall meeting that the agency was holding off on any changes in the operations of the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope while awaiting Congress to finalize appropriations for the fiscal year that started on October 1st. NASA is giving $15.6 million in grant funding to 15 projects supporting the maintenance of open source tools, frameworks and libraries. I know this story is right up your alley, Maria. It sure is. The agency's open source tools, frameworks and libraries awards aims to provide support for the sustainable development of tools freely available to everyone and critical for the goals of the agency's science mission directorate. And you can read the full list of recipients of those awards by clicking on the links in our show notes. You'll also find links to further reading on all of the other stories that we mentioned throughout the show. Hey, T-miners crew, tune in tomorrow for T-miners Deep Space, our show for extended interviews, special editions and deep dives with some of the most influential professionals in the space industry. Tomorrow we have Maria's chat with Daniel Faber, CEO of Warbot FAB, talking about gas stations in space. Check it out while you're stacking up on candy ahead of Halloween chaos, visiting multiple trunk or treat events, or scrambling to find last minute costumes for the kiddos. Oh no, that's just me. You don't want to miss it. [Music] It is Friday, so over here at T-minus that can mean only one thing. Our friends at NSF have the Space Traffic Report rounding up the week that's been and letting us know what we have to look forward to in the coming week. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T-minus Space. Starting off the week, we had the first of four Falcon 9 launches that took place since our last Space Traffic Report. Lift-off happened on October 18th at 2331 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 carrying a batch of Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. Seven of these were Starlink V2 mini-satellites and 13 were direct to sell. The first stage for this mission, B-1076, was flying for a 17th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship. Just read the instructions. For the second Falcon 9 of the week, we'll go to Vandenberg. Lift-off took place on October 20th at 513 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East. The rocket was carrying 20 satellites for OneWeb's first-generation constellation. The first stage for this mission, B-1082, was flying for a 7th time and it successfully landed back on land at SpaceX's landing zone 4. With this launch, there have been a total of 660 OneWeb satellites launched, of which six have re-entered and 627 are in their operational orbit. From California, we'll head to China for a Chongzhang 6 that lifted off on October 22 at 10 minutes past midnight UTC from the Taiwan Satellite Launch Center. The rocket was carrying three Tianping 3 satellites into sun-synchronous orbit. Tianping satellites are a series of experimental satellites used for ground-equipment calibration. This is the third series of Tianping after the first launched in 2018 and the second launched in 2022. This was also the 13th launch of Chongzhang 6 overall and the third just this year. Also from China, we had the launch of a Chongzhang 2C rocket on October 23 at 109 UTC from the Shichang Satellite Launch Center. It was carrying a trio of YaoGan 43 satellites into low-Earth orbit. YaoGan 43 satellites are a series of satellites aimed at testing technologies for future military low-Earth orbit constellations. This was the third batch of YaoGan 43 satellites launched so far after nine launched in August and another six launched just last month. This week we also had the launch of a new Shepard rocket from Blue Origin's Launch Site 1 in West Texas. The rocket lifted off on October 23 at 1526 UTC flying a new booster and a new capsule named RSS Karman Line. This was the second set of a human-rated new Shepard booster and capsule that Blue Origin has produced and launched. Although built to carry humans, this mission did not carry anyone on board and was instead used as a demonstration flight for both vehicles. Both booster and capsule also sported improvements relative to the previous set and even a new livery. While no humans were on board, New Shepard did carry 12 payloads on this flight, five on the booster and seven on the crew capsule. These payloads include development hardware for Nuglen, which the company is preparing to launch soon. Included in this mission, there are also two different LiDAR sensors for Blue's Lunar Permanence Program and a set of ultra-wideband proximity operations sensors for NASA's Flight Opportunities Program. For this mission, the booster and the capsule reached an apogee of 102 kilometers above mean sea level and landed successfully, ready for another flight soon. Also this week, we had the return of SpaceX's Crew 8 mission from the International Space Station. After several weeks of delays due to bad weather, Crew Dragon Endeavour was finally given the go to depart the orbital outpost. Undocking from the Zenith docking port of the ISS Harmony Module took place on October 23 at 2105 UTC. This spacecraft performed several departure burns that set it for a re-entry approximately 34 hours later off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. This wraps up a record-breaking mission for both human spaceflight and SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft. From launch to splashdown, this mission lasted a total of 235 days and 5.5 hours, marking the longest spaceflight for a human-rated vehicle. It also extended Endeavour's current record as the human-rated vehicle with the most time spent in space as it has now accumulated almost 702 days of flight time across its five flights. For comparison, this is 2.3 times more flight time than the space shuttle orbiter that it was named after. It'll be interesting to see just how much more time in Space Crew Dragon Endeavour accumulates over its future missions before retirement, but it's definitely going to be a while until the record is beaten by a different spacecraft. Maybe that'll be SpaceX's Starship? In any case, with Crew 8 now back home, that also means that all four crew members on board get to add those over 235 days of flight time to their records. Commander Matthew Dominic and mission specialist Jeanette Epps and Alexander Grabenken were all flying for their first time on this mission, so their total flight time is the same as the duration of Crew 8. As for pilot Mike Barrett, this was his third mission in space after having flown on Soyuz's TMA-14 and STS-133, so he has now accumulated 447 days in space. Shortly after Crew 8's undocking from the ISS, we had the third Falcon 9 launch of the week, this time from Florida. Lift-off happened on October 23 at 2147 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 carrying another batch of Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. This mission was carrying 23 Starlink V2 mini-satellites and it was a return to the Group 6 missions that we'd been used to in 2023 and in the first half of 2024. This also meant a return to a Southeastern trajectory to insert the satellites into a 43-degree inclination orbit. Now, we're not sure if this was just a one-off and if SpaceX will continue future launches of Group 6 missions, but you can count on us to report on that if it happens. The booster for this mission, B-1073, was flying for an 18th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship a shortfall of Gravitas. By the way, for those who like stats, this mission also marked SpaceX's 100th successful launch of any Falcon rocket this year. With the two Starlink launches this week, SpaceX has now launched a total of 7,148 Starlink satellites, of which 654 have re-entered and 6,151 are currently in their operational orbit. And there was a fourth and final launch this week of a Falcon 9 rocket out from Vandenberg. Lift-off happened on October 24th at 1714 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East in California. Falcon 9 was carrying a batch of StarShield satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office's proliferated space architecture constellation. This was the fourth launch in support of this highly secretive constellation and two more are expected before the end of the year. The first stage for this mission, B-1063, was a veteran one, having previously flown 20 times before. With the recent loss of B-1062 and SpaceX expending B-1061, this is actually now the oldest booster in the fleet, having had its first flight all the way back in 2020. With its successful landing on SpaceX's drone ship, of course I still love you, the booster should be preparing for another launch very soon. Going into next week, we'll have, of course, even more Starlink launches coming from SpaceX. The first one, Starlink Group 10-8, is set to take flight from Florida within a four-hour window that opens on October 26th at 2147 UTC. Right after that, we'll have the launch of another Starlink mission, Starlink Group 9-9 from Vandenberg. The four-hour launch window was set to open on October 29th at 1030 UTC. Also next week, we'll have the next crew rotation mission to the Tiangong Space Station, Shenzhou-19. The spacecraft will be carrying three new Chinese astronauts to replace the three crew members currently inhabiting the orbital outpost. Lift-off is currently set to take place on October 29th at around 20 UTC from the Zhouchuan Satellite Launch Center in China. Docking to the forward port of the Tiangong module would then take place about six hours later after a fast-track four-orbit rendezvous. And from China, we go to Japan, where JAXA's H3 rocket is set to launch for a fourth time next week. The agency is planning to launch the Kira-Meki-3 communications satellite within a roughly two-hour window that opens on October 30th at 646 UTC. And to wrap up the week and potentially the month of October, we'll have none other than another Starlink launch from Florida. The four-hour launch window for that mission is set to open on October 30th at 2010 UTC. I'm Alicia Segal for NSF, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. [Music] We will be right back. [Music] Welcome back. If you missed your shot at getting a ticket to space from Deep Blue from that fast-selling ticketing livestream that we mentioned at the top of the show, fret not. There are other opportunities if you have space-faring ambitions, thanks to the Space Exploration and Research Agency, otherwise known as CERA. CERA just announced a new mission with a different blue. This one's Blue Origin, aiming to make space accessible to more people, especially from countries that haven't yet had a presence in space. They've teamed up with Whale Cornell Medicine and the University of Austin to set up biomedical experiments that a team of citizen astronauts will carry out. Anyone from partner nations can apply for a spot on this mission, and the public gets to vote on who makes the crew. Sounds like fun. By reserving spots to space, especially for people from underrepresented nations in space missions, CERA's goal is to make space science more inclusive. And alongside voting on who gets to make the crew, the public is also invited to submit and vote on experiment ideas. So really, the world gets a voice in who's going and what they're going to be doing. So if you've got ideas about what we should be testing in space, or if you want to be part of this historic moment, your chance is coming up. And I know many of us in the United States are at a saturation point with voting messaging, but seriously, if you'd like to cast your vote for who and what you want to see in low-Earth orbit, your voice matters. Keep an eye on CERA's mission platform in the coming months for when more mission details drop and get involved in a future of space exploration for all. Okay, I've got to ask, would you go? No. No, me? No, I'm a giant chicken. Absolutely not. I was going to say, you could represent Greece. I could represent the UK. Between the two of us, we're underrepresented. We'd be perfect. There are way better candidates from Greece than me. I would be terrible. You're underselling yourself, my dear. Mmm. That's it for Team Miners for October 25th, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like our show and we really do hope you do, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Check that out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. We're privileged that N2K Cyberwire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector, from the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. N2K makes it easy for companies to optimize your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your teams while making your teams smarter. Learn how at n2k.com. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. And I'm your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. Have a lovely weekend. [Music] [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
