55 years ago this week, Apollo 12 launched the United States' second manned mission to the moon. Commander Pete Conrad, Command Module Pilot Richard Gordon and Lunar Module Pilot Alan Meen lifted off from Cape Canaveral on November 14, 1969, with the Saturn V launching Apollo 12 into a dark and rainy sky. And I mentioned that as the launch pad and later the vehicle were hit by lightning during liftoff, causing the spacecraft's electronics to go offline for a period, and this triggered a famous fix of switching the signal conditioning equipment, also known as the SCE, to the auxiliary position, the birth of an uber meme. Many a space hipster's favorite response to any issue, so Happy Anniversary Apollo 12. It does remind me, Maria, that I believe NASA is sending a satellite to apologize to the aliens. They're calling it Apollo G. That gets a clap. That gets a clap. I like it. Thank you. Today is November 15, 2024. I'm Maria Varmausus. I'm Alice Karuth and this is T-minus. And we'll be bringing you the weekly space traffic report by our friends at nasaspaceflight.com in the second half of the show, so stay with us for that. Happy Friday, everybody, and we are kicking off this end of week intel briefing with a roundup of financial reports that came out in the last 24 hours. We're starting off with news from AST Space Mobile, which launched the first five of their Bluebird cellular broadband satellites during the quarter. AST reported a strong balance sheet with cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash of $518.9 million. The company also used the opportunity to announce a multi-launch campaign from Florida. AST Space Mobile has selected Blue Origin to deliver multiple next-generation Block II Bluebird satellites to low-Earth orbit on their new Glenn. AST Space Mobile's global service aims to initially target key markets such as the United States, Europe, Japan, the U.S. government, and other strategic markets. AST says the Cape Canaveral Florida Space Force Station launch campaign, which is scheduled during 2025 and 2026, will utilize existing launch vehicles and Blue Origin's new Glenn rocket for up to 60 Block II satellites to low-Earth orbit. MDA Space has released their financial results from the third quarter of the year, with revenues of $282.4 million. That's an improvement of up to 38 percent year over year. The Canadian Space Mission Partner Company also reported a backlog of $4.6 billion at quarter end, driven by new order bookings including the $1 billion award for Phases C&D of the Canada Armed Three Programme announced in Q2 of this year. AST reported their third quarter 2024 financial results. The company reported revenues of $1.9 million, a 90 percent increase year over year. AST also announced the closing of its previously announced underwritten public offering of 5,600,000 shares of its Class A common stock. The stock was sold at a public offering price of $1.25 per share for gross proceeds of $7 million before deducting underwriting discounts and offering expenses. Impulse Space has signed a contract with SpaceX for three Falcon 9 rocket launches that will support the ongoing development and deployment of Impulse's vehicles, Helios and Mira. The first of these missions will be the inaugural launch of Helios and is targeted for mid-2026. ABL has announced the decision to step away from the commercial launch market. ABL's founder and president Dan Pimond took to social media to share the announcement and explained the decision to focus the company's efforts on national defense, specifically on missile defense technologies. The decision follows a number of setbacks for ABL, including the loss of their RS1 vehicle during testing in July of this year. Sierra Space and the U.S. Department of Energy have unveiled a collaboration on thermal protection for space vehicles. The DOE's Oak Ridge National Lab has worked with Sierra on developing exterior spacecraft tiles that can withstand the high temperatures of re-entering Earth's atmosphere over multiple frequent missions. Sierra Space and Oak Ridge National Lab have completed the first development phase of the patent-pending thermal protection system. The next phase requires more testing, which includes subjecting the tiles to testing at NASA's ArcJet Plasma Facility, which simulates the conditions of re-entry to Earth from space with heated gas flow. And we have a few contract announcements to close out today's briefing with, starting with the Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio being awarded a contract by NASA for a NOAA space weather program. Southwest Research Institute will build three coronagraphs for the Lagrange One Series project, which is part of NOAA's Space Weather Next program. The 10-year contract is valued at $60 million. I-Space, U.S. and Volta space have reached an agreement to collaborate on lunar missions. I-Space and Volta have signed an initial framework for negotiations on a future partnership to develop a commercial offering for survive-the-night capability, integrate Volta's light-port receiver into I-Space U.S.'s future missions, and deliver other Volta payloads to the moon's surface. And Planet has signed an expansion agreement with their partner, Abelio. And Abelio uses the Planet Insights platform and the company's Planet Scope satellite data to enhance their digital agriculture solutions. Through this expansion, Abelio will have access to agricultural data across France, nearly three times the amount of Planet data that it previously integrated into its solutions in 2023. That concludes our Intel briefing for today. Stick around for the NSF Space Traffic Report. And if you're looking for more information on any of the stories we mentioned, then head to the selected reading section of our show notes. There, you'll also find links to all the sources for our stories. We've added two additional ones to read about. One is a call from NASA for proposals to lease the vibration test facility. And another is a partnership announcement from Foursway and ESA. Hey, T-Minus Crew, tune in tomorrow for T-Minus Deep Space. More show for extended interviews, special editions, and deep dives with some of the most influential professionals in the space industry. And tomorrow we have our latest AWS in orbit episode talking about decision intelligence from space with Sature. Check it out while you're catching up on your chores, stocking up for the holiday season, or packing up for your trip overseas like Alice's. You don't want to miss it. [Music] [Music] Alicia Segal from nasaspaceflight.com brings us the Space Traffic Report. [Music] I'm Alicia Segal for NSF, and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T-Minus Space. This week was quite a busy one, and it started off with a Changjiang-2C launching from China. Lift-off took place on November 9th at 339 UTC from South Launch Site 2 at the Jochuan Satellite Launch Center. The rocket was carrying four PISAT satellites into sun synchronous orbit. PISAT satellites are synthetic aperture radar satellites in X-Band that fly in a wheel pattern formation around the Earth. In this formation, one of them, which is called the Master Satellite, is positioned at the center of the wheel with the other three, called assistant satellites, flying in formation around it. This type of flight allows the satellites to perform interferometric synthetic aperture radar observations of the ground via their X-Band radar systems at millimeter level precision. Going from China to California, a few hours later we had the first of five Falcon 9 launches this week. Lift-off took place on November 9th at 614 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East in Vandenberg. For this mission, Falcon 9 was carrying 20 Starlink satellites. Thirteen of them were direct to cell and the other seven were Starlink V2 mini satellites. The first stage for this mission, B-1081, was flying 4 and 11th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, of course I still love you. A few days later, from China again, we had the launch of a Connecticut 1 rocket, also known as Leagion 1, with a set of ride-sharing satellites. Lift-off took place on November 11th at 403 UTC from Site 130 at the Jochuan Satellite Launch Center. This mission, the fifth for the Connecticut 1 rocket, saw 15 different satellites launched into a sun-synchronous orbit and all but three of them were Earth observation satellites. Some of them focused on remote sensing, such as the two Zhilin-1 satellites flying on the mission, along with the Tianyuan-24 satellite and the Oman-IRSS-1-OL-1 satellite, which was the first foreign satellite launched by a Chinese commercial space company. Other Earth observation satellites on board included the two Xiguan-1 satellites for commercial high-resolution methane-source detection and the deployment of six Yuenia-1 weather satellites. Along for the ride were also three satellites called Xi-Yan-26A, 26B, and 26C, which had been classed as experimental test satellites. Later that day, we had another Falcon 9, the second of the week, from Florida. Lift-off took place on November 11th at 1722 UTC from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The mission was carrying the KoreaSat-6A satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. KoreaSat-6A is a three-and-a-half-ton satellite manufactured by TALUS-ELINIA Space for KT-SAT, a South Korean communications company. Once at its orbital slot in geostationary orbit, the satellite will deliver broadcast communication services to South Korea, replacing the aging KoreaSat-6 satellite. The first stage for this mission, B-1067, was flying for its 23rd time and it successfully returned to SpaceX's landing zone 1 ground pad at the Cape, making it the first booster to fly and land 23 times. Just a few hours later, we had another Falcon 9 from neighboring pad 40 at the Cape. Lift-off took place on November 11th at 2128 UTC, carrying another batch of 24 Starlink V2 mini-satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this mission, B-1080, was flying for a 12th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship a shortfall of Gravitas. This week, we also had the launch of a Cheong-Jung 4B rocket on November 13th at 2242 UTC from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China. The rocket was carrying the Haiyang 401 satellite into a Sun synchronous orbit. This satellite is an oceanography satellite, the first of a new generation of Chinese Earth observation satellites aimed at studying the oceans. This will boost and upgrade the country's capability to monitor ocean salinity and marine ecosystems as well as perform long-term climate change research. Coming back to the United States, we had another Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg. Lift-off took place on November 14th at 523 UTC, carrying another batch of Starlink satellites, seven of them being Starlink V2 mini and 13 being direct-to-cell satellites. The booster for this mission, B-1082, was flying for an 8th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. And a few hours later, the fifth and final Falcon 9 launch happened from Florida. The mission started on November 14th at 1321 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 and it carried another 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites into orbit. The first stage for this mission, B-1076, was flying for an 18th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship Just Read the Instructions. This mission marked the 17th launch by SpaceX over a period of 31 days, a record for the company thus far. This kind of cadence, if prolonged over an entire year, could allow SpaceX to launch up to 200 times per year. That's a lot! With the four Starlink satellites this week, SpaceX has now launched a total of 7,324 satellites, of which 667 have re-entered and 6,014 have entered their operational orbit. And to wrap up the very active week of launches, this morning we had the launch of a Changjiang 7 rocket from China carrying the next Tianzhou cargo resupply spacecraft to the Tianjiang space station. The Tianzhou 8 spacecraft is carrying about 7 tons of cargo for the crew of Shenzhou 19 who are currently living and working on board the station. The vehicle also carries cargo for the next crew complement, Shenzhou 20, which should be launching in spring of next year. Going into next week, we'll have a lot more launches, so get ready! The first of these is expected to be a Falcon 9 from Florida carrying the Optus-X satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit. The 118-minute launch window for this mission is set to open on November 17 at 2129 UTC. After that, there will be another Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg carrying another batch of Starlink satellites. The 4-hour launch window for this one is set to open on November 18 at 547 UTC. And coming back to Florida, another Falcon 9 will launch carrying the next communication satellite for India's space agency, GSAT 20. The roughly 2-hour window is set to open on November 18 at 1831 UTC. Also next week will be the 6th launch of SpaceX's Starship rocket from Starbase in Texas. If hardware and weather cooperate, this could take place as early as November 18 with the 30-minute launch window set to open at 2200 UTC. Next week, we might also have the next launch of Rocket Lab's Haste program, which makes use of electron rockets in suborbital trajectories to test hypersonic technologies. That launch is expected to take place from Wallops no earlier than midnight UTC on November 20. After that, we'll have the next launch of a Progress cargo resupply vehicle to the International Space Station. The Progress MS-29 spacecraft is set to lift off from Baikonur on November 21 at 1222 UTC and should be docking to the orbiting laboratory about two days later. And at the end of the week, we'll have another Falcon 9 with even more Starlink satellites launching from Florida. The 4-hour launch window is set to open on November 21 at 1553 UTC. I'm Alicia Siegel for MSF and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. . We'll be right back. Welcome back. Our final story will come as no surprise for anyone that has followed human spaceflight for some time. NASA has released a report that says, "Germany, please. Space travel accelerates the symptoms of aging." This is the first study to comprehensively examine biomarkers and pathways associated with spaceflight and terrestrial aging, frailty, and sarcopenia. The report found that human space travel induces genomic instability, mitochondrial dysfunction, and increased inflammation. Sounds fun. Anyone over the age of 40 can definitely relate to this one on TerraFirma. No comment on that. The report comes out the same week that NASA astronaut Sunny Williams has come under fire for her appearance on the ISS, which she attributes to looking her age. And we will say that she looks and is amazing, so let's please stop the rumors of issues. Yeah, the tabloids jumped on that wait story way too fast for my liking. Same here. The report concluded that NASA needs a frailty index, well that's a phrase, frailty index, to monitor development of frailty-related astronaut health risks during spaceflight. The results provide insights into potential avenues for developing countermeasures to combat frailty-related health risks for both astronauts and aging populations on Earth. So maybe we'll benefit from this study on how we can avoid accelerating the symptoms of aging without going to space. I'm in for that one. That's it for Team Miners. On November 15, 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 our podcast. Your feedback 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 and 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 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'm your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. [Music] [Music] [MUSIC]
