SpaceX to boost the ISS.

Maria, it's been a long week. I have a great joke to lighten up the mood. I could use that. Let's go for it, Alice. I'm prepared. Good, because I'm going with that kangaroo theme that I started last week. What do you call a lazy kangaroo on a rocket? I'm not even giving you that answer. Do you call it anything? A lazy? A lazy kangaroo on a rocket. The moment you say it's going to be so obvious and just my mind just goes, "Bleugh." I don't know. What do you call a lazy kangaroo on a rocket? A pouch potato in space. What? That's funny. Where do you get these jokes? Team minus. 20 seconds to Al-O-I. Open aboard. Today is November 8th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmasus. I'm Alice Carruth and this is T-minus. SpaceX to boost the altitude of the ISS as part of a deorbit vehicle development test. BlackSky acquires Leo Stella. Vast signs an MOU with the checks. And Alicia Segal will be bringing us the nasa spaceflight.com space traffic report. This week the update will give us a roundup of the space launch news from the week that's just been and will bring us a taste of what we have to look forward to this week. [Music] [Music] Happy Friday, everybody. It feels like it's been a particularly long week for all of us, but we're about to go into a long weekend for Veterans Day here in the United States. We'll be sharing a special program for that on Monday. But for now, let's get into today's briefing, shall we? And we are starting with the story that we are currently watching rollout in Leo as we record thanks to the Sen camera on the ISS. SpaceX's cargo dragon, which is currently attached to the International Space Station, held a reboot demonstration as part of testing for the vehicle that will eventually deorbit the ISS. The demo aimed to increase the orbiting lab's altitude using the Draco thrusters on board the capsule. This isn't the first time a cargo capsule has maneuvered the ISS, as previously, Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft and Russia's Progress spacecraft have both completed these maneuvers to raise the space station's position in orbit. This test is different, though, as its results will influence SpaceX's development of a deorbit vehicle. Bill Spetsch, who is Operations and Integration Manager with NASA's International Space Station program, says this is an important flight test objective for this mission, as we continue to increase the capabilities of all vehicles on ISS. SpaceX used Dragon's aft-control Draco engines, firing the thrusters for about 12 and a half minutes, before handing control back to the ISS. Earth observation company BlackSky has fully acquired small satellite manufacturer, Leo Stella. Leo Stella was a 50/50 joint venture between BlackSky and Talaselania space. The small satellite manufacturer based in Washington State builds BlackSky's satellites. BlackSky and Leo Stella have been collaborating on the Gen 3 satellite constellation. The first Gen 3 satellite is completing final testing and is expected to ship to Rocket Lab's launch site in New Zealand within the next few weeks for launch. The Czech Ministry of Transport has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with VAST. The MOU was signed as part of Czech Space Week and outlines a commitment by VAST and the Ministry of Transport to explore ways to partner on future human spaceflight projects, whether through private astronaut missions to the International Space Station before it's retired in 2030, or on missions to VAST's own Haven space stations, and to engage with a growing Czech space industry and startup ecosystem. Lithuanian Life Science Company Delta Biosciences is the first company in Europe to be selected for NASA's Space H accelerator programme. Space H is a new initiative designed by Starburst in collaboration with NASA's Human Research programme, the Translational Research Institute for Space Health and Methuselah Foundation, and made possible by support from Microsoft Federal. Space H is a space health accelerator and will serve to drive innovation and investment in next-generation biological and medical technology to enable space exploration. Together with NASA, Delta Biosciences aims to contribute to innovative solutions in space healthcare, helping to prepare for deep space missions. Maxar Intelligence has expanded the partnership with HEAR technologies to enhance the accuracy and automation of HEAR's map-making process. HEAR has already utilised Maxar satellite imagery and geospatial content products for more than 15 years. This new multi-year renewed agreement includes a subscription to Maxar's geospatial platform Pro for access to the most current, very high-resolution imagery collected by the Maxar constellation. Maxar says this content provides HEAR with a visually consistent and highly detailed view of the Earth's surface, supporting precise and timely updates to its maps. I-Space Japan and Thailand have announced a partnership on lunar exploration. Thailand's National Space Agency and MuSpace intend to collaborate with I-Space on a study looking at the potential for lunar exploration programmes within the framework of Thailand's National Space Experiment and Exploration Plan. The organisations plan to work together on research and development, human resource development, as well as knowledge transfer related to space technology to implement a lunar exploration mission. Ghana has launched its first national space policy this week, recognising the critical role that space science and technology plays in addressing complex challenges and improving various sectors of its economy. Space technology is already widely used in the nation across various sectors such as agriculture, health, transportation energy and security, and the policy seeks to strengthen coordination between governmental agencies and the private sector and optimise space-related activities for the country's development. When you think of space food, do your taste buds get excited? No, me neither. Well, NASA is looking to change that and recently welcomed more than 50 commercial food and commercial space companies to learn about the evolving space food system supporting NASA missions. Experts from NASA's Space Food Systems Lab shared the unique requirements and conditions surrounding the formulation, production, packaging and logistics of space food for enabling the success of commercial low-Earth orbit missions. The aim of the event was to start to hand over the support of space food production in Leo, allowing the agency to focus its resources on developing food systems for longer duration human space exploration missions. And that concludes our briefing for today. Head to the selected reading section of our show notes for links to further reading on all the stories that we've mentioned. And today we've added an article from the NASDAQ on space stock soaring after the US election earlier this week. Hey T-miners crew, tune in tomorrow for T-miners Deep Space. Our show for extended interviews, special editions and deep dives were some of the most influential professionals in the space industry. Tomorrow we have Maria's chat with her baker talking about his memoir from Apollo to Artemis stories from my 50 years with NASA. Check it out while you're walking the dog, cooking dinner, driving your kids to the game, folding laundry, decorating for Thanksgiving, whatever it is that's going to be occupying you this weekend. You don't want to miss it. [Music] It is Friday so that can only mean 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 this coming week. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T-Minus Space. Starting off the week on November 2nd, we had the re-entry of NASA's legendary WISE Space Telescope. WISE, which is short for Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer, was launched atop a Delta II back in 2009. Its original mission was to scan the entire sky in infrared for seven months, which was completed by July of 2010. During this mission, it cataloged three-quarters of a billion objects, among which were millions of newly discovered black holes and the most luminous galaxy in the universe. Unfortunately, the telescope ran out of the hydrogen that it used to cool the sensitive instruments a few months later, but that didn't mean the end for the spacecraft. NASA assigned it a new mission to study near-Earth objects, and so WISE became neowISE. The lack of coolant meant WISE could no longer observe distant objects, but it was still very capable of studying objects nearby. Under its new directive, the telescope surveyed the main-belt asteroids until February of 2011 when NASA put the spacecraft into hibernation. As we now know, that didn't spell the end of the mission either. NASA woke up the spacecraft again in 2013 to look for potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids, and only six days later, it discovered the first. In 2020, neowISE made one of its most famous discoveries, a comet now called C-2020 F3 neowISE, which was visible with the naked eye during the summer of that year. It was one of 25 comets the spacecraft discovered during its mission. NeowISE observed more than 44,000 objects in the solar system and was the first to spot 215 near-Earth objects, but ultimately, it was the sun that spelled the spacecraft's demise. Increased solar activity accelerated the decay of the telescope's orbit, and without propulsion to stay in orbit, it could no longer continue its mission. NASA turned off the spacecraft's transmitter this past summer, and this week, it returned back to Earth. It re-entered over the Indian Ocean, west of Australia, on November 2 at 49 minutes past midnight UTC. But neowISE's legacy lives on as NASA is working on its successor, neosurveyor, which will look for the asteroids and comets that are the hardest to find. So even though we've lost neowISE, we now get to look forward to the launch of its successor in 2027. Going from one re-entering spacecraft to another, Shenzhou 18 and its crew returned on November 3. The spacecraft undocked from China's Tiangong Space Station at 812 UTC and re-entered Earth's atmosphere nine hours later. During descent, a hole appeared in the spacecraft's parachute, which also happened during the return of Shenzhou 16 in 2023. Now, while that might sound scary, this hole was mostly harmless. The spacecraft is also fitted with a backup parachute and landing thrusters to ensure a soft touchdown. Fortunately, the backup wasn't needed, and Shenzhou 18 touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in China's Inner Mongolia region on November 3 at 1724 UTC. This marked the end of a six-month mission for Ye Guangfu, Li Zong, and Li Guangsu. It was the second space flight for Ye Guangfu, who also became the first Chinese astronaut to accumulate more than a year in space spread over both missions. Together with Li Guangsu, he broke another record at Tiangong. A month into their mission, they performed the longest-duration Chinese spacewalk at eight and a half hours, during which they installed space debris protection on the outside of the station. The crew handed over the station to Shenzhou 19, who arrived last week for their six-month mission. Over in Japan, we had the fourth flight of an H-3 rocket on November 4. The rocket lifted off from the beautiful Tanigashima Space Center at 648 Universal Time. On board was a military communications satellite designed to use X-band radio frequencies, which was successfully delivered into a geostationary transfer orbit. Later that day, a Soyuz took off from the Vistachnyi Cosmodrome in eastern Russia. Lift-off occurred on November 4 at 2318 UTC. The main payloads for this mission were two Ionospheric M satellites developed for the Russian Ionizont system that will monitor space weather. The Ionospheric M satellites on this launch were the first two of four that will monitor changes in the structure of the Ionosphere and disturbances of Earth's electromagnetic fields as well as study our planet's atmosphere. But these two spacecraft weren't the only passengers on this flight. There were also 53 small-sat ride-share passengers from various Russian companies and institutions, as well as international customers such as Iran, which contributed two satellites to the bunch. On November 5, we had the launch of SpaceX's CRS-31 resupply mission to the International Space Station. With Dragon on top, Falcon 9 lifted off from Launch Complex 39A in Florida on November 5 at 229 Universal Time. Not only was this the fifth flight for Dragon C-208, but its booster was also flying for the fifth time. B-1083 wrapped up that mission by successfully landing back at the Cape on landing zone 1. Dragon arrived at the station the next day and docked to the forward node on the Harmony module at 1452 UTC. That docking port had previously been occupied by Crew 9's Dragon, and to make way for the new deliveries, it relocated to the module's space-facing port on Sunday. On November 3, the full Crew of 4 boarded Dragon to execute this maneuver. Crew 9 undocked from the ISS at 1135 UTC and, after a short 50-minute fly-around, attached to its new location. CRS-31 brought up over 2,700 kilograms of supplies and experiments to the ISS, one of which is notably made of wood. Now, this is a rather unconventional material in spaceflight, but the tiny Japanese Lignosat is made from it to demonstrate that it can be a suitable material for building satellites. It will be released from the station at a later date. This Dragon also brought about another surprise of its own. In a news conference before launch, NASA announced that the CRS-31 Dragon will be the first Dragon to attempt to re-boost the International Space Station. The station is constantly being slowed down by the traces of atmosphere up there, and in order to stay in its orbit, it frequently needs to be re-boosted. Usually, this is done by a Russian Progress vehicle, but the American Cygnus cargo spacecraft has also had the capability for some years now. Dragon is set to demonstrate this capability as soon as November 8th, so it may have already happened by the time you are listening to this. If successful, NASA will have another way to keep the space station in place where it should be. This might also be useful to SpaceX, which recently received a NASA contract to develop a modified Dragon that can de-orbit the station at the end of its life in 2030. With this new Dragon capability, SpaceX gained some necessary experience to control the ISS during that future mission. The same was true for the first time in the world, but it also had an electron launch this week. On November 5th, at 10.54 universal time, electron lifted off from Rocket Lab's own spaceport in New Zealand. This mission was dubbed "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes," and it launched one satellite into sun-synchronous orbit. That's pretty much all we know about this mission, as both the payload and the customer were confidential. Some believe that the customer might be e-space, which specializes in communication satellite constellations. The spacecraft's spacecraft flew by Venus for a gravity assist. During this maneuver, the spacecraft used Venus' gravity to change its trajectory to get closer to the sun. This was the seventh Venus flyby since Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018 and the final flyby planned for the mission. During this flyby, the spacecraft passed within 380 km of the Venusian surface and took the opportunity to study the planet in more detail. In a previous flyby, Parker used its Wide Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, or WISPR instrument, to study the planet's surface in infrared. These images showed some spots that were brighter than expected, so this time Parker observed the same regions to see if anything had changed. With its last flyby now under its belt, Parker is on a trajectory to get closer to the sun than ever before. It's set to reach its perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, on December 24th. It'll then get about 6.2 million km from the sun's surface, which is closer than any spacecraft has gotten to our star. At least two more of these perihelion are planned for the remainder of Parker's mission. Wrapping up the week on November 7th, we had a Starlink mission from Florida. Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at 2013 UTC with 23 Starlink V2 mini-satellites on board. This was the third flight of booster B-1085, which also flew the recent Crew 9 mission. The booster successfully landed on the deck of SpaceX's drone ship, just read the instructions, and is now on its way back to port to get ready for its next flight. With this launch, SpaceX has launched a total of 7,236 satellites, of which 659 have re-entered, and 6,075 have moved into their operational orbit. Going into next week, we'll have a Chang-Jung-2C launch on November 9th. The mission is expected to lift off from the Jochuan Satellite Launch Center around 340 Universal Time. No information about the payload has been released at the time of recording. A few hours later, Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch a Starlink mission from Vandenberg. This time, it will carry 20 Starlink V2 mini-satellites, and 13 of those have direct-to-sell capability. Lift-off is expected during a 4-hour window starting at 614 UTC. Over on the other side of the country, another Starlink mission is scheduled for November 9th as well. Falcon 9 is expected to lift off from Florida during a 4-hour launch window starting no earlier than 2154 UTC. On November 11th, Falcon 9 is expected to launch KoreaSat 6A. This TV broadcasting satellite will be launched into geostationary transfer orbit to replace its predecessor, KoreaSat 6. The launch will be conducted from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, with lift-off planned no earlier than 1707 Universal Time. The next day, we'll have another Starlink mission from Vandenberg. T0 for this mission is set for November 12th during a 4-hour window starting at 507 UTC. That same day, yet another Starlink mission is expected to lift off from Florida. The window for this launch opens at 1126 UTC and also lasts for 4 hours. And closing out the week, a Changjiang 4C is scheduled to launch another unknown payload from China on November 13th. The mission is set to take off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center around 2250 UTC. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, let's do this. Maria, you've got both an exciting week coming up. Do you want to tell us what you're up to next week? I do, yeah. So next week, I'm going to be in DC to join a lot of really fascinating space industry folks and policymakers for the Beyond Earth Symposium that's happening November 12th and 13th. And I have the immense privilege of doing the fireside chat interview with a bit of a personal hero of mine, Ron D. Moore, who is a science fiction legend. So I'm so, so thrilled that I get to do that. And I hope anyone who's listening will join us for that session. It's happening at five o'clock on Tuesday at the Beyond Earth Symposium. And we will be videoing it and we will have that available for folks who miss it. But obviously, if you're going to be at this symposium, I hope you'll join us. I'm super jealous because I don't get to be there. We're sending Liz along because she's a bit more of a local than where I am over in New Mexico. I've got to ask though, what is the one question you're dying to ask Ron D. Moore? And are you going to ask it during the fireside chat or are you going to ask it when you're just chatting with him off camera? Oh, man. So I actually already met him a few days ago. So I kind of only asked the question. I feel like I sort of cheated. So I wanted to know about like technology that he's really interested in. But that feels like a very dry question to ask. The thing that I did ask him, and I'm really looking forward to him answering at the fireside chat, was what it's like for him to know that the work that he has done since basically the early 90s has influenced so many people into getting into science and engineering, especially in the space industry. And what it's like knowing that not only has he influenced that, but then people who grew up watching his work, who are now working in the space industry, are now back influencing the work that he is currently creating. It's like this whole cycle. I will clean that question up and ask it in a more coherent way on the stage. But it's just that feedback loop is so fascinating to me. And he knows that he's in that pantheon. And just what is that like for him? And he's got so many countless stories of people coming up to him and telling him that. I just want to hear from him. Spoiler alert, he's already told me, but I wanted to say it again. Like what is that like? Because he's just influenced so many people. People in the space industry often will talk about wanting to build the Star Trek future. And Ron DeMore is one of the people, one of the many people who have worked on Star Trek. And Battlestar Galactica and For All Mankind. Can you ask him when that next season is coming out, by the way? Because I'm desperate. Is it? Well, he can't, the thing is he can't tell us much aside from their working on it. Because you know, they're working on it. But we will actually probably be concentrating a little more, aside from the philosophical questions, probably a bit more about working on For All Mankind. Because that one's really like space wonky for... Space wonky. It's more immediate, right? Yeah, I mean, it's more immediate than Star Trek. Star Trek is very dreamy. So yeah, we're going to probably be talking more about For All Mankind. And the research that went into building that, working with Garrett Reisman, his astronaut consultant, the current tech that influenced him, where he thinks technology is going, what technology interests him that he wants to write more about. There's way more than a half an hour's worth of questions I could ask this incredible person. But I will have to limit myself. I can mention before, I've got a serious FOMO and I'm so excited for you. If anyone's good to meet the sci-fi legend, it's got to be you, because you are such a great sci-fi nerd that I love. So I'm really pleased for you and really excited. And we are recording it all and it will be shared on Black Friday. So if anybody is interested in asking a question of Rondi Moore, you've got a couple of days to email us space@n2k.com. I'll make sure the barrier gets it. Even if she doesn't get it on camera, we'll see if we can follow up or something later. And do join us for that on Black Friday. I will tell you this, if we get some questions from our listeners, I will make sure to ask, because we do have a 15-minute Q&A at the end. Audience Q&A, I should add, not just mine. So I'll be like, "We have a question from a T-minus listener." Oh, I love that. What a great opportunity. [Music] That's it for T-minus for November the 8th, 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 and shows. This ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. We are 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 are 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 Kilpey is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Vermazes. Alice has the mic next week on Tuesday and Wednesday. In the meantime, we'll see you next week. [Music] On Teebizie Laughings, do I react to my pouch potato? In space. In space. (coughs) [BLANK_AUDIO]