Today is January 9th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmausus and this is T-minus. T-minus. Twenty seconds to L-O-N. Open aboard. Five. U.S. Space Force's X-37B space plane surpasses one year in orbit. Four. The ISS National Lab releases up to $650,000 in funding for tech advancement using the orbiting lab. ESA releases images of Bepe Colombo's Mercury flyby. Maxar has been awarded a $14 million contract by the Netherlands Ministry of Defense. And NASA has selected Columbus Technologies to provide electrical and electronic engineering support to the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center worth $1.1 billion. And T-minus space is on the road later this month and we're heading to Florida for Space Week. Find out what we're planning for Spacecom and how you can join us later in the show. T-minus producer Alice Caruth will be joining me to share her thoughts on the big three events happening during Space Week from January 27th through the 30th. Happy Thursday everybody. We're kicking off today's Intel briefing with a roundup of news from NASA, starting with the news that Columbus Technologies and Services has been selected to provide electrical and electronic engineering support to the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center. The indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract has a maximum estimated value of $1.1 billion. And the base period of performance begins on April 9th and runs for five years. The US Space Agency also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Florida University Space Research Consortium. The partnership aims to aid NASA research and development to assist with missions and contribute to NASA's Moon to Mars exploration approach. The creation of the consortium was the result of more than a year of efforts by leaders at Kennedy, the University of Florida, the University of Central Florida, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The agreement serves as the official start to partnering activities with Florida now the only state with the University Consortium affiliated with one of NASA's centers. And Florida's Governor Rhonda Santis joined members of the consortium and NASA at the signing ceremony. The governor used the opportunity to emphasize how Florida is primed to lead the nation in developing a blueprint for state space partnerships in the future. He also mentioned that there is an interest in moving the headquarters of NASA to Kennedy's Space Center and that he is supportive of that move. Well, we'll see if that is part of the incoming administration's initiatives in the coming months. Maxar Intelligence has been awarded a 13.6 million euro or 14.4 million dollar framework contract by the Netherlands Ministry of Defense. The contract provides a four-year subscription to Maxar Geospatial Platform Pro and associated geospatial products and solutions. In addition, Maxar will help the Netherlands' defense geographic agency and its hundreds of users enrich the agency's geospatial foundational data and derivative product portfolio in support of its mapping, intelligence, and operational support missions. It is admittedly a little awkward to include a story about images in an audio-only podcast, but honestly, we couldn't miss the chance to celebrate ESA's newly released images of Mercury, so you really should go and check them out right now by following the link in our show notes if you haven't seen them yet. The pictures were captured earlier this week when the ESA-JAXA-BEPI-COLUMBO mission flew past Mercury for the sixth time, and while it was doing that, the spacecraft successfully completed the final gravity assist maneuver needed to steer it into orbit around the planet in late 2026. The spacecraft flew just a few hundred kilometers above the planet's North Pole, and it took some photos while it was doing that, and the close-up images that have been shared expose possibly icy craters whose floors are in permanent shadow and its vast, sunlit northern plains. It is really quite beautiful. Don't miss the photos. The International Space Station National Laboratory is soliciting flight concepts for technology advancement that uses the space-based environment of the orbiting lab. The solicitation called "Technology Advancement and Applied Research Leveraging the ISS National Lab" is open to a broad range of technology areas, including chemical and material synthesis in space, translational medicine, in-space edge computing, and in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing. It also encompasses the application of space station remote sensing data to improve geospatial analytics for commercial use. Multiple projects are expected to be awarded through this research announcement, with up to $650,000 in total funding available. More details if you're interested can be found by following the link in our show notes. And the US Space Force's X-37B orbital test vehicle, aka the Spaceplane, has surpassed one year in orbit. The secretive spaceplane launched in December 2023 and has been in a highly elliptical high Earth orbit since. The vehicle has performed aerobrake maneuvers to alter its orbit around the Earth and has released a service module during its mission, but beyond that, little is known about the test vehicle. It is the secretive spaceplane after all. It is also unknown when the vehicle plans to return to Earth. That concludes our intel briefing for this Thursday. Head to the selected reading section of our show notes to find links to all the stories mentioned. And today we've included three extra for you, one from Chinese media about how the nation is likely to beat the US in the race to retrieve samples from Mars. Others on Rocket Lab's completion of a preliminary design review for the Space Development Agency's Tronche 2 Transport Layer Beta program, and a third story from Redwire on their camera technology which will be heading to the moon onboard Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Lunar Lander later this month. AT-Mine is 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 love to hear from you. Send us an email at space@n2k.com, or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals. T-Minus Daily Podcast will be at Space Com later this month, and T-Minus producer Alice Caruth and I wanted to share a little bit about what you can expect if you're going to join us in Orlando. We have T-Minus producer Alice Caruth here with me in the studio to talk about the event that's coming up at the end of January that I know we're both very excited about. So without further ado, Alice, end of this month we're going to be in Florida with our co-worker Liz, Liz Stokes, who's also coming with us. The three of us will be there to do what exactly? So it's Space Week in Florida, and that's actually three different events that we're going to be covering. So Liz and I are going to be at the Global Space Port Alliance conference on the Monday. That's literally, as it says on the sticker, all of the Global Space Ports gather together once a year to talk through things like policy, to talk about what works, what doesn't work from each other, and really start to set the foundations of what's going to be the future infrastructure of space transportation and point to point. This is going to be based about space ports as an economic powerhouse. And I know you're going to be speaking to Dr. George Neal next week, who's the chairman of the Global Space Port Alliance. So he'll be telling us more about that. So we're going to be there just to kind of chat to people, talk about what's going on on these space ports. Hopefully we've got a couple of announcements that are coming out that day that we'll be able to report on as well for you. You're obviously going to be joining us there on Monday evening, and on Tuesday we've got Space Mobility. Now this is a really growing conference as part of the Space Week. What do we mean by Space Mobility? Just real quick, because I don't know exactly what we mean by that. Yeah, it's about space force and meeting up with industry and academia. I know you spoke to Tony Brown, they're talking about the acquisition panel that's going on this week. So they are really focusing on how to sort of build those bridges between what's going on at Space Force and what they need from the commercial sector and academia as well to sort of help support the military. So it's very space force oriented. There's obviously a few coming from Air Force as well, but they're talking about maybe link 16, I'm sure is going to be a big topic this year, but also again, those acquisitions are going to be coming up in the next year. And on Tuesday they're going to be opening up the convention center as well for Space Con, which is the third event of the week, which you and I get to do a whole live podcast during, which we're really excited about. So we're going to be recording in the convention center space from Tuesday at noon all the way through to Thursday at three o'clock. So if people are interested, come down, see what we do and come speak to us. We'd love to be able to chat to people that listen to our show. Yeah, we love seeing people. We love meeting listeners. It's always fun. Come guy, come get your photo with us if you want, I suppose. But it's really fun to see how the podcast sausage is made for a lot of folks. And it's really fun to do interviews on the floor. I love it. That's probably my favorite part of this gig is when I can do this face to face with people in person at events. I think the energy is so fantastic. Everybody's feeling really good. We're full of really cool ideas and it's just scintillating. I love it. So it is magic. So come on by and see us. But if you want to be interviewed for the show, don't wait. Act now. Yeah, yes. We're already getting people reach out to us and say, can we book interviews during the conference? And of course we've said yes. So if you're interested in getting an interview while you're at space comm, space mobility or GSA, please, please, please email me and I'll make sure you get onto the calendar. So you can email me straight away at space@n2k.com. Come straight to both Maria and I. And same when it comes to cybersecurity as well because Liz, who's our colleague from the cyberwires, going to be there. We're going to make sure we get lots of national security and cybersecurity topics covered as well because, you know, working with the space force, all of those areas really start to intertwine. So we know that there's going to be people across the whole spectrum there and N2K is really excited to be partnering on this one. Yes. Please give me a chance to nerd out about cybersecurity. I want to put that old hat back on. I enjoy it so much. So let's do it, everybody. Yeah, don't leave it to the last minute. Book with us earlier rather than later so we can fit you in our schedule. So it's going to be fun. Yeah. And come on by the booth as well. You know, we are on the floor. We're right in amongst, I think they've put us in amongst all of the space force folks, which is going to be quite exciting to have all that activity going on around us. So we're booth 1217. So I know that they've got a really cool app where you can sort of scan through what's going on on the convention center floor. Go look for 1217, come find N2K T-minus. 1217, that's the one. All right. And yeah, well, maybe we'll do giveaways or anything. Are we going to do anything like that? We're going to have some stickers. Yeah, we'll have some stickers. Because I think we're going to have some pins. We'll see what else we can wrestle up. We might see if we can find some poker chips again, because I know they went down really well at Space and Parisian. Those are popular. Yeah. They were. They were a lot of fun. And you know, come by and give us ideas as well. What is it you want to hear on the show? Because I love finding out from that. I know we do a call to action every day on the show, but we rarely get people actually reaching out to us saying, this is what I want to hear. This is what I'd love to be able to find out. A big thank you to Isaac, who does send us a lot of great ideas. Yes. Thank you, Isaac. Yeah, we do get some great ones come through. But if you've got any ideas or you think I really would love to hear what's going on with this organization or that, you know, please email us, come by and chat to us. We'd love to be able to hear from our people that listen to us. And hopefully we really have got our fingers crossed. There's going to be a launch on the schedule while we're in Florida, because Maria, you've never seen a launch, have you? I have not. I've only been to Florida once in my life, and it was to Miami. So I've never even been to the Orlando area in my life. So this is going to be a lot of firsts for me at this month. I know. The problem with when you go to conferences, you don't get to see too much, but we're going to be on that international drive area in Orlando. I've been, this is my third time at the conference. In fact, this was the conference that I was at when I met Brandon Kauff, who said to me, "I'm recruiting for a producer for a podcast on space. Would you be interested in applying?" So I'm excited. I remember. This is my first time back going to this one and saying, "Hey, guys." This is where I was recruited. I remember him telling me, "I just met the perfect producer for the show," and it was you. So yes, it was a magical time. I was not at the conference, but I was hearing about it remotely, and it was a, "So I've never been. This will be my first time, so you're going to have to show me around, show me all the good stuff." I don't know if there's a favorite restaurant. The one at Space Foundation does the bee. Yeah, no, there's no bees there. There are some great restaurants. It's a downtown Orlando touristy area, so there's lots of places for us to go to. There's going to be lots of luncheons and events going on at the conference. So I'd love to get some invites to those. If anybody's got an event going on during SpaceCon, and they want us to come and cover it and chat to you, please send us an email again at space@intk.com. We'd love to be able to join you, find out what's happening with your new launches of products and what we've got to expect in 2025, because I really think it's going to be an interesting year this year in space. Particularly with the new transition to a new administration, always shakes things up when NASA, you never know what's going to happen. And you and I are particularly interested in one of the panelists this year, Dr. Siam Proctor, who worked with obviously Jared Isaacman. So we are hoping to speak to Siam Proctor while we're there to see what's going on with her and all the developments since she went on Inspiration 4. I mean, she's an inspiration, so she's going to be a great person to chat to. She is an inspiration times 4. Yes. Dr. Proctor, we would love to speak to you. We can go fangirl on her, I'm real. Dr. Proctor, we would love to speak to you. Putting that out into the universe. We would love to interview you for T-minus. Please, please, please. Be great. I'm looking forward to it immensely. Yeah, I was going to say, I'm encouraging everybody. If you've not signed up for Spacecom, you want to come, go check it out, Spacecom Expo, I think it is, if you Google it and find out what's happening. Come and join us. Come say hi. We're really looking forward to being in Florida in just a couple of weeks. 12.17, that's us. I'll be right back. Welcome back. Sky watchers in the Southern Hemisphere, does our universe have a treat for you this month? The comet known as G3 Atlas will be making its closest and brightest pass by Earth in the coming week for a once in a 160,000 year fly by. Comet G3 Atlas will be the brightest comet seen from Earth in nearly 20 years. Southern Hemisphere viewers, I'm a bit jealous, I won't lie. And for those of us in the North that have thus far not been able to see the comet due to its position low on the southeastern horizon and it being perpetually obscured by the glow of bright morning twilight, we may actually catch a glimpse of it as it makes its way around the sun, which will bring it curving just far enough north. But don't count your lucky stars just yet. Some astronomers are saying that the comet has an only 50/50 chance of surviving its brush with the sun, as some have seen it display some early signs of disintegration, sad face. Either way, astronomers across the globe are watching the comet with great interest and say that it is expected to reach Perihelion on January 13th at 10.17 universal time at a distance just shy of a mere 9 million miles from the sun. Later that same day, it will come closest to Earth at a distance of 87.1 million miles. So keep your eyes to the skies and let us know if you managed to see this once in a great lifetime visitor. [Music] That's it for T-Minus for January 9th, 2025, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. For privilege 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 Forge in 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 Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I'm your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [MUSIC] T-Minus. [MUSIC]
