NASA’s Artemis is delayed again.

[MUSIC] You know, as we were recording our show yesterday, NASA leaders gathered in Washington to hold a news conference to update the public on the Artemis campaign. And we knew and we saw the conference announced that things were about to get hot for NASA. Quite literally as we have all been waiting for an update on what happened with the Artemis One heat shields. What came next really wasn't a surprise to anyone working in the space industry. Yeah, the launch schedule is slipping again. So I feel like I need to have a bit of a joke to lighten the mood after that one. So as you know, Maria, I've just got back from the UK, so I've got a very British joke for you. You ready? Okay. All right, I'm ready. What does a British alien drink? British alien drinks. There's a tea joke in there. A tea. It is gravity. Gravity. It has to be tea somewhere. It's got to be tea. A cup of gravity. Today is December 6th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmausus. And I'm Alice Carruth and this is T-minus. T-minus. NASA delays Artemis 2 until 2026. Europe's Vega C rocket launched the Sentinel-1C satellite for Copernicus. The US released its plan for civil Earth observation. And we'll be sharing the nasaspaceflight.com's weekly space traffic report with you later in the show rounding up the launches from the last few weeks and talking about what's to come in the next seven days. Happy Friday, everybody. Let's dive into the Intel briefing for today. And as we mentioned at the top of the show, yesterday NASA top brass appeared at a press conference and to little surprise, they announced Artemis program delays. The official timelines are now April 2026 for the launch of Artemis 2, which will go around the moon, and mid 2027 for Artemis 3, which will land upon it. The cause of the delay stemmed from unexpected erosion found on the Artemis-1 Orion capsule heat shield after its reentry. After an investigation, NASA's root cause analysis found that the heat had accumulated inside the heat shield. Not where you want that to happen. Due to permeability in the heat shield, which led to increased pressure buildup between the heat shield and the capsule, resulting in that cracking. And after that investigation, subsequent corrective actions on the heat shield, environmental controls, and life support systems, all have NASA leadership saying that they feel confident in moving ahead with the current Artemis 2 capsule and heat shield. There is a caveat though. NASA will be modifying the Orion capsule's entry trajectory to limit the amount of time that the capsule will spend in the temperature range where the heat shield encountered its issue in Artemis 1. And there were some interesting comments made during the briefing. Firstly, in NASA administrator Bill Nelson's mention of the new timelines, he made a point to add that these dates still put the US ahead of China's stated ambition of landing humans on the moon by 2030, which Nelson said would directly threaten US interests in the lunar South Pole region. Secondly, the conference presented a unified front on the need for a steady pace of missions to retain both industrial expertise and capacity to support these advanced missions. Here's a quote from NASA associate administrator Jim Free. Knowing what we know now, it also proves how important it is to maintain the continuity of NASA's industrial base and sustain a regular flight cadence to ensure the expertise and critical information remaining grained in our collective knowledge. It builds on what you heard earlier on the diversity and the resilience of our solution. In addition to sustaining manufacturing capabilities and supply chain, we must all do everything in our power to honor our schedule commitments. Commitments that are codified in the contracts that we have with all of our suppliers for each Artemis mission. A regular flight cadence not only helps us to avoid repeating past challenges, but also helps us to advance the goals of Artemis with greater efficiency and foresight to ensure we remain a global leader in science and exploration for the benefit of all. The stacking of the solid rocket boosters for Artemis 2 has been underway since last month and is continuing ahead to meet the new April 2026 target date. Last night, Europe's Vega C rocket returned to flight after being grounded for nearly two years. This was the third flight for the Vega C and it's the first since a failure in the vehicle's second stage led to complete loss of its payload in December of 2022. Ariane Space launched the Vega C rocket from French Guiana. The Italian-made rocket carried the Sentinel-1C satellite into orbit for the European Union's Copernicus Earth Observation Program. The U.S. National Science and Technology Council has released the National Plan for Civil Earth Observation. The 36-page document outlines a mechanism to ensure greater coordination of the research, operations, and activities relating to civilian Earth observation. It provides a vision for continued U.S. global leadership in enabling and leveraging civil EO to increase access to Earth data and address global changes. The plan established three overarching principles that guide its approach and support the vision. Number one, improve the integration of Earth observing services across federal agencies and the broader Earth Observation Enterprise or EOE. Number two, ensure integrity and long-term quality of EO data across the EOE. And number three, ensure the continued availability of foundational U.S. government capabilities in EO while expanding the use of commercial data and services. You can read that full plan by following the link in our show notes. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration held the kickoff meeting of an aerospace rulemaking committee created to update the Part 450 commercial space launch and re-entry licensing rule. The FAA is seeking to foster more clarity, flexibility, efficiency, and innovation while ensuring timely licensing determinations without compromising public safety. To date, the FAA has issued seven Part 450 licenses. The committee is focusing on nine topics including flight safety analyses, system safety, and means of compliance. It is expected to submit a recommendation report by late summer 2025. The FAA will then use the recommendations to plan possible future rulemaking actions. The 24-member committee primarily consists of current and prospective commercial space launch and re-entry licensees who have familiarity and experience with the Part 450 regulations. Layoffs at Boeing, which we previously shared on the show last month, have started affecting teams across Florida. The Florida Department of Commerce has reported that 141 people have lost their jobs at Boeing in the state, including 26 people at Kennedy Space Center. Almost all employees impacted are expected to leave Boeing by mid-January. Rocket Lab has announced a launch window for an upcoming electron mission to deploy the latest satellite insinpectives growing Earth observation constellation. The All the Way Up mission is scheduled to launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand. Don't laugh at me, Maria. During a launch window that opens on December the 18th, you knew what I was going to go with. All the way up. You did it. Iran launched its heaviest payload to space earlier today. State media reported that the launch took place at Imam Khomeini Spaceport in rural Semnon province, which is the site of Iran's civilian space program. The rocket carried a payload, which included an orbital propulsion system, as well as two research systems and a satellite for Iran's military. Maria, what's the name of that satellite? Don't make me say it! You guys can Google it. That concludes today's briefing. We hope that you check out the links in our show notes to find out more about all the stories mentioned throughout the show. Hey T-minus crew, tune in for tomorrow's T-minus Deep Space. It's our show for extended interviews, special editions and deep dives with some of the most influential professionals in the space industry. Tomorrow we have Nikolina Elric talking about becoming the first Scottish woman to go to space. Check it out while you're decorating for the holidays, doing your holiday shopping, or just keeping cozy and warm, at least in the northern hemisphere, while it snows outside, as it has been where I am in Massachusetts. You don't want to miss it. [Music] Our friends at nasaspaceflight.com are bringing us the weekly space traffic news report. I'm Alicia Segal for NSF and this is your weekly space traffic report for T-minus space. This was a very active week with a ton of launches, so let's get started with the first one of the week. None other than a SpaceX Falcon 9, of course. Lift-off took place on November 30th at 5 o'clock UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida. The mission was carrying a batch of 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this launch, B1083, was flying for a sixth time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's droneship just read the instructions. Going from the east coast to the west coast of the U.S., there was another Falcon 9 launch, this time from Vandenberg. Lift-off happened on November 30th at 810 UTC, just a few hours after the previous launch from Florida. The mission was carrying a batch of Starlink V2 mini satellites and two Star Shield satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office as part of the agency's NRL-126 mission. Similar to its previous launch from Vandenberg, SpaceX's coverage once again started after lift-off rather than before. This mission is now the fifth officially recognized mission for the NRO's proliferated space architecture constellation, which consists of a swarm of hundreds of satellites orbiting the Earth to provide several different types of intelligence to the agency. This type of intelligence gathering relies on several satellites instead of a larger, dedicated one, making it more resilient against enemy attacks and jamming. While not fully confirmed, it's largely speculated that these are SpaceX Star Shield satellites, a government version of the Starlink satellite bus fitted with sensors built and developed by Northrop Grumman. Prior official missions for this constellation carried entire batches of Star Shield satellites, but for this mission in particular, that was not the case. Instead, SpaceX decided to launch 20 regular Starlink V2 mini satellites along with two Star Shield satellites. This also marks the first time Starlink V2 mini satellites have been launched into a 70-degree inclination orbit. Up until now, SpaceX had only launched Starlink V1.5 satellites, and that was between 2021 and 2023. The first stage for this mission, B1088, was a new booster and it now gets to join the fleet after successfully landing on the drone ship of Course I Still Love You, ready to launch once again in just a few weeks. And from booster debuts, we'll go to rocket debuts with the first launch of the Changjiang-12 rocket out of China. The flight began on November 30th at 1425 UTC from launch complex 2 at the commercial Wenchang Satellite Launch Center. The rocket was carrying two satellites into low-Earth orbit. These are both test satellites for testing satellite internet technology for different providers, although not much information has been disclosed at this time. This was the first flight of this new Changjiang rocket, the Changjiang-12, which joins the long list of Changjiang rockets being developed by different agencies within the Chinese government. This one in particular was developed and built by the Shanghai Academy of Space Flight Technology, also known as SAST, and is a medium-lift launch vehicle very similar in size and performance to the Falcon 9 in its V1.1 configuration. Much like what happened to Falcon 9, SAST wants to upgrade the Changjiang-12 in the future to introduce upgrades in performance and to propulsively land the first stage for reuse. That, however, will probably take some time to materialize. That Changjiang-12 debut flight was the 29th and final orbital flight of November, and yes, that's almost one launch per day. It's been quite an active month. In fact, it's quite possibly the most active month in the entire history of orbital spaceflight. With those 29 flights, the world ended November with 229 launches, breaking the record for a number of orbital launches in a year, which was last year's 221. At this rate, we could see up to a total of 250 launches by the end of 2024, or maybe even up to 260 before the year is out, with over 30 launches still planned for this the last month of the year. But before going into how the first few launches of December went, we have to go all the way to Mercury, where ESA and JAXA's Beppi Colombo spacecraft flew by at the opening of the month. The spacecraft swung by the closest planet to our Sun this last week on December 1, making its closest approach to Mercury at 1423 UTC at a distance of 37,628 kilometers from the surface. This flyby tweaked the spacecraft's trajectory, changing its orbit around the Sun, and allowing it to save fuel as it gradually makes its way to eventually orbit Mercury. During this flyby, the Beppi Colombo spacecraft used its infrared spectrometer for the first time, giving us a never-before-seen observation of Mercury. Unfortunately, it'll take some time for those images and data to be fully downloaded and processed, so we'll have to be patient for that to come out. A sixth and hopefully final flyby of Mercury is expected next month, which will further change the orbit and set Beppi Colombo for an orbital insertion around Mercury in late 2026. Going back to launches, the next couple happened from China and from the same spaceport. The first one of this doubleheader was a Changjung 3BE, launching on December 3 at 556 UTC from Launch Complex 3 at the Shichang Satellite Launch Center. The rocket was carrying the TJS-13 satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. TJS stands for Tongxian Jishu Xi'an, which roughly means "communication technology test satellite." Not much more is known as it's a classified satellite for the Chinese military. The second launch of this doubleheader was of a Kwaijo-1A rocket from one of the mobile launch pads at Shichang. Lift-off took place the day after on December 4th at 446 UTC, and it was carrying the Haishao-1 satellite into low-Earth orbit. The Haishao-1 satellite is a synthetic aperture radar satellite from the Chinese Academy of Science meant to study ocean dynamics from space with its radar systems. This was the first flight of the upgraded Kwaijo-1A rocket. The third stage of the rocket now has the same diameter as the first and second stages, the fourth stage has been upgraded to be restartable, and the new version also accommodates a larger payload fairing as well. Overall, these upgrades boost the rocket's performance by 30 to 50 percent, depending on the destination orbit. Going further down the list of launches, we also had another Falcon 9, the third of five Falcon 9 launches this week. That launch happened on December 4th at 1013 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida, and it carried 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low-Earth orbit. The first stage for this mission, B1067, was a record breaker, becoming the first to fly 24 times. It was also a rather fast turnaround time for a high-flight booster at 22 days, and the cherry on top is that it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship a shortfall of Gravitas, so it'll be able to continue to break reusability records in the future. This week, we also had the launch of a Soyuz 2.1B rocket from Plesetsk. The launch took place on December 4th at 1803 UTC, carrying a classified payload to low-Earth orbit for the Russian Ministry of Defense. As usual for classified Russian payloads, it was officially named Cosmos 2580, but it's theorized that this might be a Lodos S1 satellite, a type of electronics intelligence satellite system. After that, we had the fourth Falcon 9 launch of the week, this time from Vandenberg. Lift-off happened on December 5th at 305 UTC, carrying another batch of Starlink Direct-to-Cell and Starlink V2 mini satellites into low-Earth orbit. Once again, the SpaceX coverage began after Lift-off, but despite that, everything went successfully with the mission. With this mission, SpaceX has now completed the first constellation of Direct-to-Cell Starlink satellites, but this won't mean the end of launches of those types of satellites, as just next week, we have another batch of them launching. The booster for this mission, B-1081, was flying for a twelfth time and it successfully landed on "Of Course I Still Love You." With this mission, SpaceX has now launched a total of 7,523 Starlink satellites, of which 675 have re-entered over the course of the program, and 6,031 Starlink satellites have moved into their operational orbit. And from the original Starlink, we'll go to the Chinese Starlink with the Changjiang 6A rocket. That launch took off just an hour later on December 5th at 441 UTC from Launch Complex 9A at the Taiwan Satellite Launch Center. The rocket was carrying a batch of Qianfeng satellites into polar orbit. Qianfeng is a low-Earth orbit satellite internet constellation, very much like Starlink or OneWeb, developed by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology. This is the third operational launch of this constellation, which has so far been into polar orbits. And believe it or not, there were still more launches this week, the next one being India's PSLV rocket. Liftoff, or "Leap-Off" if you will, took place on December 5th at 1034 UTC from the Satish Devon Launch Center, carrying the European Space Agency's Proba-3 spacecraft into a highly elliptical orbit. The Proba-3 mission consists of a pair of spacecraft that will try to fly in formation, one occulting the Sun relative to the other in order to study the feasibility of doing something similar with an actual space telescope. This type of formation flying would create an artificial eclipse that could allow future telescopes to directly observe exoplanets. The fifth and final Falcon 9 launch of the week took place just a few hours later from Florida. The launch was also on December 5th, but at 1610 UTC from Launch Complex 39A, carrying the SXM-9 satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit for Sirius XM. The SXM-9 satellite is the latest radio broadcast satellite for Sirius XM, a company known for its satellite radio service, and some of you may even have it. The satellite was built as a replacement for the SXM-7 satellite, which was also launched on a Falcon 9 a few years ago, but unfortunately suffered issues a few weeks after arriving in geostationary orbit. The first stage for this mission, B-1076, was flying for a 19th time and successfully landed on SpaceX's droneship just read the instructions. And finally, to wrap up the super-active and quite varied week of launches, we had the return to flight of Arianespace's Vega-C rocket from French Guiana. This was another leap-off with the high thrust two-weight ratio Vega-C rocket making its own rumble in the jungle on December 5th at 2120 UTC. And yes, that's five launches on December 5th. The mission was carrying the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1C satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit. This satellite is the third in the Sentinel-1 series of satellites, which use C-band synthetic aperture radar to observe the Earth in all weather conditions and also during the night, since it doesn't use optical wavelengths. The satellite serves as something of a replacement to the Sentinel-1B satellite, which failed in orbit a few years ago, so this was quite an important flight for ESA to restore those important Earth observation capabilities. It was even more important because this was the return to flight of Vega-C. The rocket had a successful debut flight back in July of 2022, but its second flight in December of 2022 didn't go so well. A second stage failure terminated the flight prematurely without ever coming close to orbit. The road to recovery wasn't easy either, as teams hit a snag back in July of last year when a second stage failed during ground testing, adding yet another issue to the list of things that needed to be fixed. That work seems to have paid off, though, as the flight was completely successful with Sentinel-1C now in orbit and calling back home. So that's a sigh of relief for both ESA and Ariane space. And now to Ryan for some late-breaking news. Remember the part where Alicia just said, and finally to wrap up the superactive week? Well, that didn't wrap up the superactive week because we had a surprise launch from Iran on Friday, December 6th at 0314 UTC. Iranian media reported shortly after launch the Taysimog rocket successfully launched from the Seminand Space Center at the Imam Homin-e spaceport carrying three payloads into a low-Earth orbit. The launch featured the first flight of the Saman-1 kickstage, which was used to insert a test keepsat called 4-1 into a low-Earth orbit. Going into next week, and I'm a bit scared to say this out loud, but we only have three launches on the schedule for now, and they're also all Falcon 9 rockets. The first of these will be taking off from Florida with Starlink Direct-to-Cell and V2 mini-satellites. The four-hour launch window is set to open on December 8th at 510 UTC. Next week, we'll also have the return of SpaceX's CRS-31 cargo dragon spacecraft. The capsule is set to undock from the station's Harmony Module on December 12th at 1605 UTC. Splashdown off the coast of Florida should happen a few hours later. That same day, we should have two back-to-back Falcon 9 launches with the first taking place from Vandenberg with more Starlink satellites. The four-hour launch window is set to open on December 12th at 1933 UTC. The second will be from Florida carrying another pair of O3-BM power satellites for SES. The launch window for that mission will open on December 12th at 2058 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. I know, breaking news alert, but we're huge space fans on the show. Nothing makes our hearts swell more than photographs from space, so it should come as no surprise to many of you that we've been addicted to Matt Dominic's social media since he has been up on the International Space Station. Matt is a NASA astronaut, the Expedition 72 flight engineer, and a budding space photography enthusiast. Although I'd say at this point he's a professional, truly. And his work has been absolutely spectacular this year. His social media account has become a visual diary showcasing the beauty of our planet captured from low-earth orbit during his 235 days in space. And the very neat part about Matt's post is that he shares his astrophotography journey along with tips and tricks with his followers. He has shared his camera settings and insights into his creative process, inviting followers to appreciate the artistry involved. And honestly, if you haven't seen his footage from the Aurora displays earlier this year, then honestly, you're really missing out. Matt has captured over half a million photos of Earth and snapshots of life aboard the International Space Station, all while having traveled 99,708,603 total statue miles around the Earth. Exactly. Orbiting our home planet 3,760 times. We're hoping that he can put some of these incredible images into a book, which I would win 1,000% by just saying, so we can continue to gaze at these incredible photos in awe and so that he can continue to inspire others to take up astrophotography or at least learn to appreciate space through his lens. That's it for T-minus 4, December 6th, 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 the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send us an email at 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 Forge in 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 Iban. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpey is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmasas. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]