January is going to be a moon-to-fur, as it seems like the January SpaceX Falcon 9 transporter will have two lunar lander missions aboard, both from private space companies. One will be the Blue Ghost from Firefly Aerospace, the company's first lunar landing attempt, and the other will be Mission 2, the descriptive name for the second lunar landing attempt by Ice Base of Japan with their upgraded Hakutio Arlander named Resilience. Today is December 19th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmasus and this is T-Minus. SpaceX to launch commercial lunar missions in January for Firefly and Ice Base, Vast, TAPS, SpaceX for ISS astronaut flights, China holds its longest EVA, and our guests today are Felix Hatvig and Simi Vespi from ETH Zurich's rocket team. Felix and Simi will be bringing us an update on their projects for launch guided reentry and their rotating detonation rocket engine testing, so stay with us for that. We're going to be kicking off 2025 with a double moon mission y'all. Japan's Ice Base has just announced that it will be using the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch that's planning to launch Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost mission for their own Hakutio Arventure Moon Mission 2. Firefly's first blue ghost mission named Ghost Riders in the Sky is planning to deliver scientific instruments and technology demos to the lunar surface as part of NASA's commercial lunar payload services or CLIPS initiative. Blue Ghost plans to spend approximately 45 days in transit to the moon allowing ample time to conduct health checks on each subsystem and begin payload science. The spacecraft then plans to land in Maricrisium and operate payloads for a complete lunar day. Blue Ghost will also be used to capture imagery of the lunar sunset and provide critical data on how lunar regularity reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions. And the Ice Base Resilience Lunar Lander will be the second to deploy during the mission and the resilience lander will take a low energy orbit as it had also done during mission 1. The plan is for its transit to take several months ahead of a targeted landing four to five months after launch. Ice Base has released a set of criteria known as mission 2 milestones between launch and landing and aims to achieve the success criteria established for each of these milestones. Makes sense. In addition, Tenacious will be operated by Ice Base Europe once deployed on the lunar surface and will undertake ventures including delivering the moon house payload to the lunar surface as well as collecting lunar regolith under a contract with NASA. You might remember that Ice Base's first lunar landing attempt, mission 1, was back in April 2023 when the Hakuto Arra crashed above the lunar surface as it was attempting to land as the instrumentation got confused by the rim of a lunar crater causing the lander to run out of fuel while attempting to perform its controlled descent. SpaceX's Falcon 9 carrying both missions will lift off from Florida's Space Coast no earlier than mid-January 2025. In addition to the first flight in 2025, Firefly Aerospace has been awarded a nearly $179.6 million by NASA to deliver and operate six NASA instruments in the Great Heisen Dome on the moon's near side in 2028. The mission will use Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar lander, Elytra Dark Orbital Vehicle, and a rover from an as-yet-unnamed industry provider to investigate the unique composition of the Great Heisen Dome, a part of the moon that has yet never been explored. And speaking of the rovers, NASA completed the first round of human-in-the-loop testing on three commercially owned and developed lunar terrain vehicles or LTVs from Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Each company delivered a static mock-up of their vehicle to Johnson at the end of September, initiated rover testing in October, and completed the first round of testing in December inside the Active Response Gravity Offload System test facility, also known as Argos. Test teams delivered evaluations to understand the interactions between the crew, the space suits, and the LTV mock-ups. NASA plans to issue a request for task order proposals in 2025 to any eligible providers for a demonstration mission to continue developing the LTV, deliver it to the surface of the moon, and validate its performance and safety ahead of Artemis 5 when NASA intends to use the LTV for crewed operations. VAST has contracted SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to launch up to two Dragon missions to the International Space Station in support of VAST's future bid for NASA's private astronaut missions, also known as PAM. While VAST is developing its private space station, the Haven 1, the company plans to leverage additional missions to the ISS in partnership with NASA to draw on the agency's extensive expertise. These missions provide opportunities to collaborate with private individuals and international space agency customers through the NASA PAM program and strengthen current partnerships. VAST says this is an important step as the company prepares to compete with its Haven 2 design and NASA's upcoming commercial low-Earth orbit destination Phase 2 program, which is positioned to select a successor to the ISS. The China manned space agency says the crew on board the Tiangong space station completed a record-breaking nine-hour spacewalk yesterday. The extravehicular activity was not only the longest by Chinese astronauts, but also included the first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut born -- brace yourself for this -- in 1990 -- talk about making me feel old -- Tyconauts Sai Xuze and Song Lingdong carried out the EVA, installing space debris protection devices with assistance from the station's robotic arm and ground-based teams. Maxar Intelligence has been awarded a total of $35 million in new tasking contracts from two government customers in the Asia-Pacific region. Both contracts allow the customer's use of synthetic aperture radar imagery from Maxar partner Umbra. According to Maxar, Umbra's SAR imagery enables customers to monitor activity at night and in all weather conditions, serving as a powerful complement to Maxar's high-resolution electro-optical imagery. The European Space Agency has released its annual Space Economy Report. The 2024 report covers the Space Economy's full range of activities and the use of resources that create value and benefits to human beings in the course of exploring, researching, understanding, managing, and using space. It focuses on the prior year, 2023, and found institutional space budgets, both civil and defense, reached a new historic high of 106 billion euros in 2023, which is an 11% increase compared to 2022, and continuing their growth path with an 8% compound annual growth rate over the past five years. You can read the full report by following the link in our show notes. Turian Space has been awarded a $32.6 million firm fixed-priced contract for multi-payload satellites and real-time command and control by the US Air Force Space Systems Command. The contract provides for the demonstrations of a rapid build of three satellites with rendezvous proximity operations with high-resolution satellite to satellite imagery collection capabilities. Work will be performed in California and is expected to be completed by October 31st, 2028. Raytheon and Ursa Major have completed an advanced long-range solid rocket motor flight test for the US Army. Raytheon selected Ursa Major's advanced propulsion technology as a key enabler to provide affordable solutions for the US Army at extended ranges. During the next phase of the program, Raytheon and Ursa Major will incorporate manufacturing improvements leading towards additional flight tests in 2025, qualification in 2026. Exelange says it has successfully integrated its customer satellites for the upcoming Transporter 12 rideshare mission with SpaceX. The Transporter 12 mission is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in early 2025. And that is it for our Intel briefing for today. You'll find two additional articles in the selected reading section of our show notes, ones on Viasat's sale of their energy services systems integration business and another's from SES with an update on their Astra 1P satellite. Hey T-minus crew, if your business is looking to grow your voice in the industry, expand the reach of your thought leadership or recruit talent, T-minus can help. We'd like to hear from you. Just send us an email at space@ntk.com or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals. My guests today are Felix Hatvig and Simi Vespi from ETH Xerix Rocket Team. And you know we first spoke to Felix and Simi six months ago and they wanted to bring us an update on their two projects, one of which is a new guided reentry development and the other is their rotating detonation rocket engine or RDRE. I'm Felix Hatvig. I'm the project manager of Niko Yee. We spoke like half a year ago and since then we had a lot of testing going on, a lot of full system tests and we were just preparing to get ready for the launches and have them in October, November, in debt and we were able to achieve a lot of things. We had all our tests done and we were able to conduct the launch in Switzerland and yeah, our rocket flew. It didn't really work the way we intended it to so the guided recovery, the parachute that comes out of the rocket which is the core system of our rocket didn't come out the way we wanted it to. There was a small mistake there. The rocket however landed safely so just touched on very lightly and I think we were a little bit lucky with some snow as well so that helped and with this we however decided to find and fix our mistakes and then go again on the 30th and the second time everything worked exactly as intended. We landed just six meters away from the target so we're really happy about that and we were able to conduct it and two launches in two weeks I think we were the world's first student team that ever did this with it and it's one rocket so it's not like I have the one and have another one but we were just able to yeah conclude it and go again and like even the second time there was no mistake so we could go again. We won't because we want to leave some space for the next team which is now already going on like the past two three months which is harmless. We'll build a new rocket with a new motor and which still uses our system however for the guided recovery but yeah it was some crazy months. I was just gonna say your November sounded nuts. Alright so that's incredible congratulations by the way that's an incredible achievement to you and the team honestly that's really wonderful and I remember how excited you were when we last spoke about everything that was coming up so I mean that's huge. Remind us a bit about the goals of your what your rocket was you set out to do with the rocket and what you want to do achieve and all the milestones that you hit. So what we're building is a sounding rocket it's a type of rocket category and we use a cot solid motor so just we buy a motor a cot stands for commercial off the shelf and then this is not really our focus but the focus we have is making a rocket that is able to recover itself so similar to SpaceX or other companies which you reuse that but we have a different approach so we don't use thrust vectoring to control and land like this like upright but we use a parachute based system and use a ram error that's like traditional parachute you would use and we steered using electric motors use all the wind data all the telemetry all of this to fly a certain pattern and then land in the target location and that was our goal there was the goal for the project to have a launch and recovered safely and we're able to do that now. That is fantastic I want to ask you about what's next but I want to get to see me next because well so hold that thought so see me over to you now so for Perseus what's been going on with Perseus? I'm Simi Vespi I am project manager of project Perseus it's funny because actually Felix's project and mine became kind of synchronous in the sense that they had their first launch on the 16th and the second launch on the 30th and we happened to have our first firing of the RDR-E on the 16th and the second firing on the 30th so both times we were like waiting for their goal ahead we're like like in the midst of our preparations we like took a three-minute break to watch a live stream that we went back and continue along with our firing sequences and our procedures and it worked it actually worked we were able to confirm detonation waves making us the first students in the world to ever build rotating the Tination rocket engine and as a chair on top for the last firing we also adapted an aerospike to our engine which means we became the first group ever in our country to fire an aerospike it was really exciting and it was really cool it was also kind of a triumphant moment in spite of all the doubts and of all the considerations and everything that's really cool. The pride from both of you just radiates through the screen you're both so proud I'm loving that and I'm just congratulations to you both I mean this is an unbelievable amount of hard work and how rewarding it is to see that that things have turned out the way you hoped so that's just so wonderful so let's get into the what's next because that is the inevitable question everybody hates answering you like you just did this why don't you think about what's next but we do so Felix why don't you start with that tell me what's gonna be next. I think I can give a quite good overview there's a new competition team which will go over the span of two years and we have we're lucky to have a focus project as well in combination with like one of our universities ethz.com and they develop the first flight ready by liquid engine of ours so we've done by liquid engines before but more like with no constraints on size or mass and now we bring it on to a rocket engine and this will be then included into the new team Hermes who set out to launch at Europe in 2025 so the European Rocket Area Challenge and then go second time in 2026 they want to include our guided recovery system which we've now proven to be very successful they of course want to do more tests on it so get more data on perfected get even closer to the targeted point but the main path for them now is the engine and including it into a rocket and right now it's actually looking very promising but even like already in the first year they will both be able to go close to 9k let's say so that they will fly in the highest category there is at Europe and maybe set the new record for the height of by liquid engines in Europe and looking forward to it so much super talented guys every one of them very passionate and we were able to bring a lot of people from from nickel year over to them which are now in like leadership positions so they have the experience they've worked in the team they know what they're doing and this is like a huge benefit for them now and I'm looking forward to that yeah that is what it's all about is bringing that knowledge forward and that's just amazing great to hear all of that it's gonna be very exciting to hear about Hermes see me over to you so what what is next next project is called Pegasus and the idea is to over two years make an RDI and make it interfaced with the Hermes rocket at a later point in time this is after Hermes has accomplished all of their goals in in a way it's separate from them this is not concerning them right now but the idea is to build an RDI for a sounding rocket I should say then interface those two and launch it it's still being worked out all the details and everything but we do have some some good requirements already some weights some sizes some some fuels and oxidizers some thrust levels that we want to reach we're we got something some some things in the chamber but yes something's cooking yes we're cooking something exactly yes that would in the in the same vein as becoming the first students in the world to a fire and RDI we we want to shoot for the highest flight of an RDI in the world this time competing with the big boys in the big leagues yeah that's what we're going for I love it and I love the ambition here and you all you all have the capability behind it too which again that's the important thing is that follow through congratulations again I'm thrilled for you all and please keep us updated on how things are going with Hermes with Pegasus I want to know whatever's cooking I'm really looking forward to learning about what that is when you all are ready to tell everybody alright so if people listening want to find out more information or if they want to support the work that you all are doing how do they find out more and reach out to you both that's a very good question I think the easiest way would just be to visit our website and there you can find all the projects you can find all the people you can find a short description of everything and if you're just interested in general or you may be considered partnering up with us just reach out to us via mail and we'll get back to you and we can figure something out [Music] we'll be right back welcome back ESA's Euclid telescope on the hunt for clues about the nature of dark matter and dark energy has been dazzling us with its incredible images since its commissioning in 2023 and now in this festive season we can say that its images are jingling and twinkling along with the usual dazzle and that is thanks to an audio podcast best friend when it comes to astrophotography image sonification in other words interpreting a visual image with sound so you can hear an image of oh I don't know a stellar nursery [Music] this is the sonification of the young star-forming region messier 78 to me it sounds quite like what childhood me imagined a clear winter night sky might sound like crystalline magic the pitch of the twinkling rises and falls with the amount of galaxies or stars in the image and how bright it is super bright star or galaxy that's a super bright chime image sonification is a wonderful mix of artistic interpretation and scientific data and this one of messier 87 was made by musician and sound artist house mielson beautiful work close [Music] that's it for t-minus for December 19th 2024 brought to you by N2K cyberwire for additional resources from today's report check out our show notes at space.n2k.com we're privileged that N2K and podcasts like t-minus are part of the daily routine of many 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 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 Kilpie is our publisher and I am your host Maria Varmasas thanks for listening we'll see you tomorrow [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [MUSIC]
