Today is January 10th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmausus, and this is T-minus. Blue Origin's New Glenn sets a new launch window for January 12th, with SpaceX's 7th airship test flight scheduled for January 13th. Black skies selected by the US Space Force for multiple surveillance reconnaissance and tracking missions. Rocket labs' neutrons selected by NASA for launch services. MTSI selected for a $640 million space force contract for cybersecurity defense. The European Space Agency updates 2025 missions and announces reductions to its annual budget. It's Friday, and our friends at NSF will be sharing the latest launch news in the Weekly Space Traffic Report, taking a look at the launches from last week and reviewing what's coming up on the schedule calendar over the next seven days, so stay with us for that later in the show. Happy Friday everybody! Let's dive into today's intel briefing. The European Space Agency held its annual press briefing yesterday to deliver updates to their 2025 plans and provide an outlook on the agency's annual budget. ESA Director General Josef Ossbacher addressed the briefing, sharing that the agency's annual budget for 2025 would be €7.68 billion, which is down 1.4% from 2024. Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom cut their contributions to ESA significantly in 2025 compared to 2024. Ossbacher did not go into details about individual member states' contributions, but suggested that some countries, in particular the UK, could increase their funding in the near future. He stated that he expects further budgetary decisions to come in the coming weeks. He also dismissed concerns when raised by the media that some individual states are charting their own course in space exploration. Italy was mentioned specifically when asked about this, as they are currently courting SpaceX Starlink opportunities. And the European Space Agency will begin testing on the Ariane 6 P160 solid fuel booster in March. The booster will replace the current P120 booster and will be a key element in enabling Ariane space to deliver on an 18-launch contract for Amazon's Project Kuiper satellites. Modern Technology Solutions, Aang, also known as MTSI, has secured a $640 million contract from the US Space Force to build and deliver defensive cyber operations for space, or DCOS, capabilities across the military branch. The contract with Space Systems Command has a one-year-based term and four option years. The contract for the Digital Blood Hound Program calls for the vendor to provide software development and deployment, integrated program management, cloud services and mission field deployment, and sustainment support to mitigate cyber risks and improve defensive cyber capabilities across the space force. Rocket Lab has been selected by NASA to provide neutron launch services to the agency through Rocket Lab's existing Venture Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare or VADER contract. Neutron is designed to deploy 13,000 kilos to low-earth orbit. The rocket is tailored to deploy constellations and national security missions, as well as science and exploration payloads. Neutron is scheduled for its debut launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 3 in Virginia from mid-2025. BlackSky Technology has been selected for multiple rapid procurement contracts through the US Space Force's online global data marketplace, supporting a variety of tactical surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking missions. The contract team up multiple commercial data providers to cover specific requests for real-time operational planning products, offering insight into global trends and events from violent extremism to humanitarian and disaster response, as well as identification of potential threats. And some launch news now to round up the show. Most Blue Origin's New Glenn and SpaceX's Starship are expected to launch in the coming days. New Glenn has been pushed back yet again until no earlier than January 12th, with the launch window opening at 1 a.m. in Florida, and SpaceX plans to launch their seventh Starship flight no earlier than January 13th, with their launch window opening at 4 p.m. in Texas. Our friends at NSF will be bringing us more on both flights in the Space Traffic Report later on in this show. That concludes our briefing for today. Head to the selected reading section of our show notes for links to further information on all the stories mentioned. You'll also find a blog from the Swedish Space Corporation on their support for NASA's Near Space Network. Hey T-minus crew, tune in tomorrow for 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 authors Rob Sarver and Alex Genzier talking about their new book, Warrior to Civilian, the Field Manual for the Hero's Journey, the definitive guide to transition to civilian life for veterans and their spouses and families. Check it out while you're catching up on chores, running your kids to their social engagements like you kids, or enjoying a quiet weekend moment. You don't want to miss it. On Fridays, our partners at nasaspaceflight.com bring us the Space Traffic Report. I'm Alicia Segal for NSF, and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T-minus Space. The first launch of the year took flight on January 4th. At 127 UTC, a Falcon 9 lifted off from Florida carrying a communications satellite for the United Arab Emirates-based company, Space 42. Falcon delivered the satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit, and from there, it'll take several months to reach its operational geostationary orbit. Once operational, the satellite is set to provide communications across Africa, Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East. The booster for this mission was B-1073, which flew for the 20th time. It ended its mission by successfully touching down on the deck of SpaceX's drone ship, a shortfall of Gravitas. For the next mission, we go to China, where a Changjiang-3B launched on January 6th at 20 UTC. This was the 555th flight of the Changjiang or Long March series of rockets. The payload on this mission, Xi Jian-25, was placed into a geostationary transfer orbit. This satellite's main mission is to test technology for refueling other satellites and extending their lives. Back in Florida, another Falcon 9 launched less than an hour later, and this time, it was for a Starlink mission. The rocket's fairing was packed with 24 Starlink V-2 mini-satellites, which were all delivered to low Earth orbit. This mission was flown by booster B-1077 on its 17th mission, and it touched down successfully on drone ship Just Read the Instructions. The next space traffic event took place elsewhere in the solar system, as Beppi Colombo performed its sixth flyby of Mercury this week. Beppi Colombo is a joint mission between the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency that will eventually deploy two spacecraft in orbit around Mercury. These orbiters are currently traveling together, and they performed a series of flybys to get on the right trajectory for it to arrive in orbit around the planet. During these flybys, Beppi Colombo swung by Mercury, allowing the planet's gravitational pull to change its path. This maneuver is therefore also known as a gravity assist. On January 8th, at 559 UTC, Beppi Colombo screamed past Mercury at an altitude of only 295 kilometers above the planet's surface. A few minutes later, it flew directly over the planet's North Pole, at which point ESA took the opportunity to point Beppi Colombo's monitoring cameras, or MCAMs, at the planet. Now, these cameras were never meant for scientific observations, as their purpose was to check whether the spacecraft systems had deployed correctly, but nevertheless, they took some impressive images of Mercury. This flyby was Beppi Colombo's sixth and final. The next time the spacecraft meets Mercury will be in late 2026, when it will enter orbit around the planet. Both orbiters will start their science missions shortly thereafter, so there's much more to come from the planet closest to the Sun. Back on Earth, we had another Starlink mission. On January 8th, Falcon 9 took to the Floridian skies at 1527 UTC, adding 21 more Starlink satellites to the constellation. Of these, 13 had direct to-cell capability, and the other eight were regular Starlink V2 mini-satellites. This was the third mission of Booster B1086, which landed successfully on the deck of a shortfall of Gravitas. With the Starlink missions this week, SpaceX has now launched a total of 7,677 Starlink satellites. Of these, 765 satellites have re-entered, and 6,227 have moved into their operational orbit. The next mission took place on January 10th. Falcon 9 lifted off from California for the seventh launch of the National Reconnaissance Office's proliferated architecture, also known as StarShield. Some of the previous launches have carried some Starlink satellites as rideshare payloads, but we don't know if that also happened this time. This mission was flown by Booster B1071. It became the fifth booster to fly 22 times and landed successfully on droneship Of Course I Still Love You. Next week promises to be a very exciting week in spaceflight. Starting off the week, New Glenn's maiden flight is currently scheduled for January 12th. We've followed Blue Origin's preparations for this important mission in previous episodes, and this week, New Glenn rolled out of its hangar back to the launch pad after it received its blue-ring payload. The launch was originally scheduled for January 10th, but delayed because of rough seas in the landing zone, approximately 620 kilometers downrange in the Atlantic. While recovering a rocket booster on the very first flight is very ambitious, Blue wants to try anyway and give it a chance of succeeding. The window for New Glenn's first flight opens on January 12th at 6 o'clock UTC, and it lasts for three hours. If the weather or the rocket don't cooperate for some reason, backup opportunities are available on the following days. On January 13th, we'll have a Starlink mission from Florida. Falcon 9 is set to deliver another batch of direct-to-cell satellites into low Earth orbit. T-Zero is expected during a roughly four and a half hour window, starting at 14.59 Universal Time. Next week definitely looks to be the week of massive rockets, as Starship is set to fly on its seventh flight test on January 13th. This will be the first flight of Starship Block 2, which is even taller than its predecessor, and features many many upgrades and redesigns. That's more, SpaceX wants to test if Starship is ready to fly Starlink missions and plans to deploy 10 Starlink simulators while the ship is on its almost but not quite orbital trajectory. The window for this launch is scheduled to open on January 13th at 2200 UTC, with backup windows available in the following days just in case. The next mission is SpaceX's 12th transporter mission. This flight is expected to lift off from California on January 14th, with T-Zero set during a nearly one hour window, starting at 18.49 UTC. On board are a number of rideshare payloads, and among them is a satellite for YouTuber Mark Rober's company. And if two massive rockets weren't exciting enough, we'll also have a mission to the moon next week. Or actually, two missions in a single launch. Falcon 9 is set to take off from Florida on January 15th, with two lunar landers on board. The first passenger is Firefly's first blue ghost lander, and the other is the second Hakudo R lander from the Japanese company iSpace. T-Zero for this mission is expected on January 15th, around 6/11 Universal Time. And closing out the week, we'll have a spacewalk on the ISS on January 16th. NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Sunita Williams, yes, one of the Starliner astronauts, I mean why not, she's up there already, are set to step outside of the station at 12 o'clock UTC. During this extravehicular activity, the astronauts will service two science experiments. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and that's your weekly space traffic report. Now back to T-Minus Space. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Turning our focus today to the raging wildfires devastating the Los Angeles area at the moment, satellite data has been a shining example of risk mitigation at work, as data from open source and even private sector satellites showed growing fire hotspots to get people to safety faster and help firefighters understand where the fires were moving. And the satellite imagery often spoke for itself, the power of these fires and their heartbreaking and unfathomable scope. We do applaud the Earth observation data providers who made their imagery of the LA area freely available and hope even more companies will do the same so people can know the status of their homes as quickly as possible. Keeping things in perspective, people have been killed by these fires. Many, many people have lost their homes. And the fires are still as of the time of this recording, raging largely out of control. The scope of the damage from these fires is truly hard to believe. And one of the fires, the Eaton fire, has been raging in the communities of Altadena and Pasadena, home to many astrophysics and space organizations, including Caltech, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Carnegie Observatories and others. So far, it seems like these facilities are still safe from fire damage. But no doubt, as you have heard, as we have, many of our friends and colleagues working in the space sciences and industry have lost their homes. I hope when we do our Intel briefing on Monday that I'll be reporting that the fires have been brought under control or better yet extinguished. But in the meantime to our listeners affected by this catastrophe, you are all in our thoughts. And we hope you, your loved ones and your homes will all be safe. That's it for Team Minus for January 10th, 2025, 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 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 team 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 Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president, Peter Kilpe is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmasus. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday. T-minus. [Music] [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
