Today is January 17th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazes and this is T-minus. T-minus. Twenty seconds to L-O-N, team. Go for the floor. Five. U.S. President Biden signs an executive order on strengthening cybersecurity to include the federal space sector. Four. NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab will open next week to any personnel who need to be at the facility following the devastating L.A. fires. Three. The U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency announces its vendors for the $200 million LUNO-B commercial data contract. Two. China launches a satellite for Pakistan. One. Starship experiences a rapid, unscheduled assembly during its seventh test flight. Our partners at NSF will be sharing the weekly space traffic report later in the show, bringing us the highlights from all of the incredible launches we've seen this week, can you say chopstick catch, and taking a look at what's to come in the next seven days. Happy Friday, everybody! I'm sure that you, like me, were glued to your screen yesterday during the seventh test flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket. What a start for the newly upgraded Super Heavy rocket. It was a truly gorgeous launch, followed by a breathtaking catch by the Mechazilla. Only for that joy to be quickly dashed when we saw the spacecraft go dark for quite a while and then later find out that it experienced a rapid, unscheduled disassembly, as SpaceX often likes to say. The 171-foot tall Starship broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean roughly 8.5 minutes after liftoff. It was an epic explosion that created streaks of debris that was captured by observers across the Caribbean. Though it's too early to definitively explain what went wrong, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared the following statement on his social media platform X. "Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity. Apart from obviously double checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month." Here's what was recorded at the time of the event by air traffic controllers in the Caribbean. "Oh, there's got a major streak going from at least 60 miles with all these different colors. Just curious, it looked like it was coming towards us, but obviously because of this, just made you know." "Can you give an estimate on how far away it is?" "Now at 200, it looks like it's beyond at least 200 miles from us, but it's pretty high in the atmosphere. Let me get closer, we can let you know." "Start of Starlink." "Is it no longer falling or is it still airborne?" "No longer falling. We can still see like a red shade right there, but it's already on the ocean." "Starting in the ocean, thanks a lot. Let me know if you do see any more that are airborne." "Space vehicle means that possible debris is falling into the national earthquake system for approximately..." "Space vehicle means that debris response area has been activated. Beginning south of Jals, Georgetown, Great Exuma extending to the southeast, impacting Providence-Java's Grand Turk area, extending further beyond and ending at the San Juan and Piarco FIA boundary just north of St. Martin. Standby for individual instructions." Although the debris mostly seemed to have fallen in the designated fallout zone, the FAA told media that it briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling in an abundance of caution. Let's hope they can recover that debris quickly and learn from the mishap. Space X is expected to run regular test flights this year to ready Starship for their planned Mars mission in 2026. Onto our next story now, moving over to China. And China launched a Long March 2D carrier rocket from the Juchuan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China earlier today. The rocket carried three satellites, including one for Pakistan. The PRSC E01 satellite aims to boost Pakistan's ability to monitor and manage natural resources, respond to disasters, and improve urban planning and agricultural development. The satellite uses electro-optical sensors to collect data and images of the Earth's surface by detecting and measuring reflected sunlight or emitted radiation. The Long March 2D rocket also carried two other satellites, the Tianlu-1 and Blue Carbon-1. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation says the Tianlu-1 is an atmospheric sounding satellite developed by China's private satellite manufacturer, Galaxy Space. The Blue Carbon-1, also known as the Lan-Tan-1, was developed by Geespace for Hangzhou-Dianzi University. The US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency has selected the vendors for the $200 million Lunobi Commercial Data Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity Contract. The 13 vendors, which include Black Sky, Maxar, and Planet Labs, will provide the national security community with timely access to high-quality commercial geospatial intelligence, also known as GeoINT. The Lunobi contract will enable NGA to lead the GeoINT enterprise in applying, yet again, GeoINT artificial intelligence, while delivering decision advantage to warfighters, policymakers, and mission partners. GeoINT users will have access to data and analytic services that add new context to analytic assessments by characterizing worldwide economic, environmental, and geopolitical activities, as well as illegal, unregulated, and unreported activities. Lunobi has a five-year base ordering period with a $200 million ceiling. Vendors will compete on a full and open basis for future delivery orders. Moving over to NASA news now, and Laurie Leshen, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, took to social media to provide an update on the JPL facility following the devastating LA fires. JPL will be open next week to any personnel who need to be at the lab. However, to enable full cleanup and repair of minor wind damage, NASA leadership is strongly encouraging telework next week for those who are able to do so. Laurie reminded everyone that JPL has been operational even during the fire threat. The lab is still flying more than 40 missions through the Deep Space Network and preparing for three launches in the next three months. Although thankfully the lab escaped fire damage, the team that worked there have been personally impacted by the fires. More than 200 employees have lost everything, and many others will have long-term impacts. And for our last story, you may have missed it in the flurry of announcements about last-minute executive orders from the outgoing Biden administration, but something space-related was in yesterday's executive order on strengthening and promoting innovation in the nation's cybersecurity. Section 3, subsection E, has the bulk of what might interest you. Essentially, it's a rally to shore up space cybersecurity measures, especially for space systems owned by the US government. Stands to reason. Here's what it says in part. In light of the pivotal role space systems play in global critical infrastructure and communications resilience and to further protect space systems and the supporting digital infrastructure vital to our national security, including our economic security, agencies shall take steps to continually verify that federal space systems have the requisite cybersecurity capabilities through actions including continuous assessments, testing, exercises, and modeling and simulation. Civil space gets a special call out in that section to make sure that spacecraft, data and transit and ground stations all become more resilient to outside monitoring or interference. [Music] And that concludes our Friday Intel briefing for you. We hope you'll have a wonderful weekend, everybody. We've added three additional stories to our show notes for you to read today. One's on reports that the director of the space development agency is under investigation. Another on General Raymond's appointment to the planet's board of directors. And the third is a US space force contract announcement for Govini. 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. And tomorrow we have Giacomo Gatto and Joy Faunott talking about how space is used in everyday businesses and how AWS for aerospace and satellite is assisting. Check it out while you're heading out of town for the long holiday weekend, catching up on the exercise that you've had to do with your New Year's resolution, or just staying home to catch up on rest and relaxation. You've earned it. [Music] It has been an incredible weekend space launch, to say the least. And our partners at nasaspaceflight.com have the full space traffic report for you now. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and this is your weekly space traffic report for T-minus space. Starting off the week, we had the launch of a Zhellong III out of China. Lift-off took place on January 13 at 3 o'clock UTC from the Dongfanghang Tianjiang barge off the coast of Haiyang. The rocket was carrying 10 CentiSpace One satellites into low Earth orbit. These satellites are global navigation satellite system augmentation signal satellites from Chinese company Future Navigation. This batch of satellites is the second being launched to support this constellation, which is planned to include up to 160 satellites. And speaking of satellite constellations, the next launch we had was none other than a Starlink launch from SpaceX. The mission started on January 13 at 1647 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40, and it was carrying eight Starlink V-2 Mini and 13 Starlink Direct-to-Cell satellites to low Earth orbit. The first stage supporting this mission, the B-1080, was flying for the 15th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, a shortfall of Gravitas. Just about a day after that, we had another Falcon 9 launch, but this time as part of SpaceX's transporter 12 mission. The launch took place on January 14 at 1909 from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg. Falcon 9 was carrying 131 different payloads into Sunsynchronous orbit. Transporter 12 is the company's latest launch as part of its small sat ride share program, the 14th overall, and the 12th of the transporter's height missions. These small sat ride share missions are regular launches that carry multiple small payloads all bundled together in the same Falcon 9 for a lower price than a dedicated ride to orbit. As compared to the transporter missions, they go into Sunsynchronous orbit as compared to the bandwagon missions, which are also part of this program, but go to mid-inclination low Earth orbits. This particular mission carried 131 payloads to orbit, and of course if we went through every single payload, we'd need an hour long episode. But don't fret, because you can check out a full rundown of these payloads at NSF's news site, courtesy of our writer Danny Lenz. For this mission, SpaceX used a very young booster, B-1088. Launching this mission was only its second flight, and it made an epic return to launch site landing at landing zone 4 just a few hundred meters away from the launch mount. We also had another Falcon 9 launch a few hours later, but this one was moonbound. The mission started on January 15th at 611 UTC from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Falcon 9 was carrying two lunar landers on their way to the moon. The two lunar landers in question were Firefly's first blue ghost lander and I-Space's second Hakuto R lander. Firefly's blue ghost was flying as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract, flying a number of payloads for the agency to the moon as well as some other commercial ones. This is the third mission overall for that program after Astrobotics' Peregrine lander and Intuitive Machines' Nova Sea lander, which both flew last year. Falcon deployed blue ghost into low Earth orbit where it will spend 25 days. Firefly later confirmed that the lander was doing well and that it had completed on orbit commissioning. On March 2nd, blue ghost will complete its journey to the moon and attempt to land on the lunar surface near Mons Latriel in the Marais Chrissium Volcanic Basin. If all goes well, the lander is set to operate its 10 science payloads on the moon for one lunar day. After Falcon 9 released blue ghost, it fired its upper-stage engine once more to reach the deployment trajectory for Hakuto R. This trajectory takes the lander to the moon in about 4 to 5 months where it's set to land near the center of Marais Frigoris. This will be Icebase's second attempt to land on the lunar surface after a software issue caused the first Hakuto R mission to crash into the moon in 2023. The lander for the second attempt carries a tiny rover, three science experiments, a commemorative plate, and an art piece. Of course, we'll cover both landings in more detail in a future episode. We wish Firefly and Icebase the best of luck with their landing attempts. Now all that said, we already know for sure that one thing from this mission landed successfully, and that was, of course, Falcon 9's booster B-1085, which flew for its fifth time and touched down on the deck of Drone Ship Just Read the Instructions. Now if a double mission to the moon wasn't big enough, two huge rockets also launched this week. The first was Blue Origin's New Glenn, which finally lifted off for its long-anticipated inaugural flight. After a scrub earlier in the week, New Glenn lifted off from Cape Canaveral on January 16th at 703 UTC and slowly crawled into the sky atop a pillar of blue flames. The ride up was uneventful. The rocket stages separated successfully, the second stage performed both of its burns without issue, and New Glenn delivered its Blue Ring Pathfinder payload into its target orbit. Blue Ring is a space tug and satellite bus developed by Blue Origin itself, and New Glenn's first flight presented a perfect opportunity for some testing. Unfortunately, the secondary mission of trying to land and recover the booster didn't go as smoothly. The booster's entry burn didn't slow down the booster as much as it should have, and it was subsequently lost. That is of course sad, but it wasn't the main objective for this mission, which was just to reach orbit. Blue Origin managed to do that on its very first attempt, and thus, mission complete. We also had a spacewalk on the ISS this week. This extravehicular activity, or EVA, was performed by NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Sonny Williams, yes, one of the Starliner astronauts. The duo stepped outside of the station on January 16th for a spacewalk that lasted exactly six hours, starting at 1301 Universal Time. The astronauts performed several tasks during the EVA, including conducting repairs on the NICER X-ray telescope. NICER is short for Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer. The telescope's thermal shields had been damaged, letting light into places where it isn't supposed to be. Nick Hague patched the holes so that the telescope can resume daytime operations. Meanwhile, Sonny replaced a reflector on the international docking adapter that her ride home, Crew Dragon Freedom, is currently attached to. The astronauts also did some preparations for future maintenance on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment and replaced a rate gyro assembly, which the station uses to determine its orientation. And then it was time for the second big rocket launch, the seventh flight of SpaceX's Starship. Booster 14 and Ship 33 lifted off from Starbase on January 16th at 2237 Universal Time. The booster performed flawlessly on the way up, and after hot-staging, the booster and ship went their own separate ways. The booster performed its boost back burn to return to the launch site. While it didn't ignite all the engines that it was supposed to, it was good enough for SpaceX to commit to a catch attempt. And that worked out perfectly! The super-heavy booster softly touched down on the launch tower's chopsticks. After that, all eyes were on Ship 33 as it was a new version of Starship. Unfortunately, things went awry quickly after the booster's successful landing. The ship appeared to lose more and more engines, and telemetry stopped. The ship eventually broke up on reentry downrange, and Elon Musk later reported on X that there may have been an oxygen/fuel leak in the ship's engine section, which ultimately caused its demise. Closing out the week, a Changjiang 2D launched from China on January 17th. This launch was conducted from the Zhou Chuan satellite launch center. As is common for Chinese launches, no details about the payload were released before the flight, so we don't know much about it at the moment. Coming into next week, we'll have a Starlink launch on January 18th. Lifting off from California, Falcon 9 will deliver 27 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. T-Zero is set during a four-hour window, starting at 1557 Universal Time. Another Starlink launch is scheduled for January 21st. This will be the first launch of Starlink Group 13. This mission will be conducted from Launch Complex 39A in Florida, and the four-hour launch window opens at 513 UTC. Back in California, we'll have the third Starlink launch of the week on January 22nd. Lift off is expected during a four-hour window opening at 1438 UTC. There will be another spacewalk next week on January 23rd, starting at 1315 Universal Time, and this EVA will be conducted by NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams. NASA is really putting the Starliner astronauts to work while they're up there. They'll remove a radio antenna from the station's truss, prepare a spare part for the Canada arm in case it ever needs a joint replaced, and collect some samples from the station's exterior to test whether any microorganisms have decided to call it home. And wrapping up the week on January 24th, we'll have, you guessed it, another Starlink launch from Florida. The four-hour window for this launch opens at 2245 UTC. I'm Alessia Siegel for NSF, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. [Music] We'll be right back. [Music] Welcome back. There are a bunch of special deliveries heading to the moon right now, both on Firefly's Blue Ghost and Icebase's Resilience. Both lunar landers have a number of payloads aboard, mostly scientific, of course, but some things are also for fun. Imagine. Now that both landers are en route to the moon, we're learning more about those fun payloads, and one of them is the moon's very own copy of, you ready for this, the United States Constitution. Yes, a digital copy of the United States' foundational document will be on the moon pretty soon, thanks to the team at Copernick Space. Next time there is a lander heading to the moon later this year, in fact, Copernick will be working with Spacebit to send a physical copy of the US Constitution. So moon, buckle up. You've got some reading to do. I wonder if the digital version is a PDF or something, plain text file, I would hope. Still, what operating system does the moon have? Anyway, the physical copy will help if the digital version can't be opened, right? And if something about this story feels somehow familiar, didn't someone do something like this recently? You would be right. Last year, when Intuitive Machines' Odysseus had its successful soft landing on the moon, Lone Star data holdings, who we've interviewed in fact, tested Earth to Moon data transmission and storage by sending the US Declaration of Independence to the moon, the lander on it, that is, and then as a confirmation of receipt, the moon, the lander on the moon, back to the Earth, a copy of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. So in fact, since that mission last February, the moon is down a copy of the US Constitution having sent it back to us. So it's kind of nice of Copernick to replenish its supply. That's it for T-minus for January 17th, 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 our rating and review on your podcast app. Also please 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 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 Eiben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrell is our president, Peter Kilby is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Formazis. Thanks for listening. Have a wonderful long weekend. We'll be back with our Daily Intelligence briefings on Tuesday. [MUSIC] (birds chirping) [BLANK_AUDIO]
