Today is February 4th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. NASA is seeking U.S. proposals for the Viper rover Moon mission. Thales Alenia Space has signed a cooperation agreement with the UAE's Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center. The UK Space Agency has selected two companies to share 16 million pounds for new projects to boost UK benefits of satellite constellations. Viasat was awarded a task order to provide SATCOM for the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency. Blue Origin successfully launches the 29th new Shepard mission, flying 30 payloads to the Karman Line. And our guest today is space archaeologist Dr. Beth O'Leary. Now Beth is a member of the International Scientific Committee on Aerospace Heritage and was part of the team that proposed the nomination to the World Monuments Fund to list the lunar landings as historical preservation sites. This is a great chat about historical preservation on the Moon, so make sure to join us later in the show for that. It was a beautiful, clear morning in Van Horn, Texas for Blue Origin's new Shepard NS-29 mission. The launch of the suborbital vehicle had been delayed multiple times over the last week, but seemingly went without issue beyond one of the parachutes deployment today. The mission aimed to simulate the Moon's gravity and carried 30 payloads, all of one of which was focused on testing lunar-related technologies. The new Shepard crew capsule used its reaction control system to spin up to approximately 11 revolutions per minute, and this spin rate is designed to simulate 1/6 of Earth's gravity at the midpoint of the crew capsule lockers. Blue Origin says the payloads experienced at least two minutes of lunar gravity forces, which was a first for new Shepard and made possible in part through support from NASA. The flight tested six broad lunar technology areas, including in situ resource utilization, dust mitigation, advanced habitation systems, sensors and instrumentation, small spacecraft technologies, and entry descent and landing. 29 of the payloads flew inside the crew capsule, and one was placed on the booster with exposure to the ambient space environment. More than half of the payloads were supported by NASA's Flight Opportunities Program. Congrats to everybody on the team on a nominal launch, and we look forward to hearing the results from this testing. Moving on to other news, ViASAT's subdivision in Marsat Government has been awarded a task order to provide satellite communication services under the proliferated, low-Earth orbit satellite-based services. The task order is part of an indefinite delivery and definite quantity contract, which was awarded in 2023 to multiple vendors by the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency on behalf of the U.S. Space Force and Space Systems Command Commercial Satellite Communications Office. As part of this three-and-a-half million-dollar task order, ViASAT aims to provide a suite of fully-managed, Leo satellite-based services and capabilities to include space relay services supplemented by Geo and NGSO satellites supporting all domains, space air land, maritime and cyber. ViASAT will also provide network management support, including real-time data through an online account management tool, and offer technical support 24/7 to ensure uninterrupted service. Moving over to the UK now, and the UK Space Agency has selected two companies to share 16 million pounds for new projects to boost the UK benefits of satellite constellations. UKSA says the funding will enable UK industry to capture a greater portion of the satellite mega-constellation market by developing technology that improves their efficiency and capability. 10 million pounds has been given to Oxford Shers and Silica to develop novel silicon chips and software for a user terminal. This will be compatible with UK and European constellations like OneWeb Next Generation. And the second company, Accelerate Technology based in Cardiff, will receive 6 million pounds to develop the small and flexible Mobility and Autonomy Market User Terminal, which will allow users to choose the operator and orbit via an app, reducing costs and enhancing global configurability. TALUS-Alenia Space has signed a cooperation agreement with the UAE's Mohammed Bid Rashid Space Center. Under this agreement, TALUS-Alenia Space will become a strategic partner in the country's role in the Lunar Gateway Space Station. The Crown Prince of Dubai attended the ceremony and shared on social media that this trailblazing project will usher in a new era of human space exploration, paving the way for the first Emirati Arab astronaut to enter lunar orbit. And NASA is seeking US proposals for the Viper rover moon mission. No, it's not dead yet. Viper, which stands for Volatile's Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is aiming to demonstrate US industry's ability to search for ice on the lunar surface and collect science data. We've included a link in the show notes that shares proposal instructions and evaluation criteria for a new Lunar Volatile's science partnership. By the way, responses are due by Thursday, February 20th. NASA is expected to make a decision on the Viper mission this summer. And that is it for our briefing for today. We've added two additional stories to the selected reading section of our show notes for you to digest. And the first is a piece from ours Technica on Boeing's Starliner program. And the second is an announcement that we missed last week that Ariane 6 will launch ESA's Play-Doh spacecraft. Those links and further reading on all the stories I've mentioned can be found on our website, space.n2k.com. Just click on this episode title. Hey, T-Minus Crew. If you're just joining us from meeting us at Commercial Space Week, for example, welcome and be sure to follow T-Minus Space Daily in your favorite podcast app. Also, if you could do us all a favor, share this intel with your friends and coworkers. Here's a little challenge for you. By Friday, could you show three friends or coworkers this podcast? The reason we ask is because a growing audience is the most important thing for us, and we would love your help as part of the T-Minus Crew. So if you find T-Minus useful, please share so other professionals like you can find the show. Thank you so much, everybody. It means a lot to me. Our guest today is Dr. Beth O'Leary. Beth is a member of the International Scientific Committee on Aerospace Heritage, and the committee is part of Akamos and proposed the nomination to the World Monuments Fund to list the lunar landings as historical preservation sites. And I asked Beth to tell me more about how this proposal came about. I've been doing space archaeology and heritage for about the last 25 years. So it started with a great question at New Mexico State University where I was a professor and a student in a graduate class said, "What's on the moon and does federal law protect it?" And I've been running with that question since. So luckily, I'm with some like-minded colleagues, and we are interested in trying to find ways internationally as nations concerned with heritage to protect those significant places and artifacts on the moon. Thank you so much for that introduction. What you're working on is just so fascinating. And I bet a lot of people just at the outset, they go, "Space archaeology, how does that even work?" I'm sure that's like the first question you often get. We do. We often do. And then people say, "Have you been there to work?" And I say, "No, I have not. I have received some grants, but they were never that big to get back to the moon." Who knows? Maybe one day, right? When we're talking about protecting heritage sites on the moon, can you give me a sense of what we're talking about? Is it literally everything or just certain things? No, we don't protect everything here on Earth. And we have sets of criteria in the United States, the National Historic Preservation Act, that lays out criteria for evaluating what's significant. So what we're trying to do in this committee, and I think the World Monuments watch, is to get nations to come together and agree on an evaluative system. How do we decide what's really important to preserve? How do we get together? And then how do we preserve it ourselves? Because we have a heritage the United States does. So does the USSR, Russia, China. And how do we honor and respect each other's antiquities? And it's only been, what, 55 and a half years since we first stepped on the moon? Yeah, that's an archaeological blink. So that's really the thrust. And it started 25 years ago with a good question by a student. And then the state of California and the state of New Mexico put Tranquility Base, the first lunar landing site, on their respective state registers. Now, that doesn't mean New Mexico or California owns it, but they recognize and respect that as a significant property to which they contributed. They helped get those guys to the moon. How did you help inform the committee about why this all needs to be protected? The USSR put the first robotic on the moon, Luna 2, in 1959. Now, that's an important first for humanity. And that's the big thrust of this. Humanity did this. It's not one genius in a country. It's all geniuses and all people that got together, the engineers all over the world, that got together and allowed this amazing exploration, if you will, of humanity to another celestial body. So the thrust is, how do we, as people, get together and say, yes, the first lunar landing site with humans is important? Yes, the first robotic is in the first robotic site on the moon is important. So we're all trying to figure out how we can agree, how we can come up with criteria and protocols and agree that we protect what humanity finds important. And this step certainly is another important declaration in that. I guess the question that comes to mind for me is now that we have more voices, more important groups saying these are important sites for humanity. What happens next with all this? Is there something beyond this that we need to also be doing? Yeah, the big work starts now because it has to be international in scope. Now, we have examples of this luckily here on Earth. The continent of Antarctica is governed by treaty and agreements. And it's kind of the most remote place, if you will, on Earth. It's not quite as remote as the moon. But people got together there and said, okay, Shackleton's hut, the ship that he was on. All these things people agreed with that these are important objects, these are important places. And not that we're going to stop everybody from visiting them, but we're going to come up with protocols that do the least damage, that allow tourism, for example, but that also preserve the integrity of those amazing accomplishments. Same thing on the moon. It's a very remote place. It's been protected by its remoteness for a long time. But the future is much more activity. And as this announcement was being made on the 15th of January, SpaceX just sent two lunar rovers up. So I think the time is now and we have precedence. So we can do this. It's not impossible. It's certainly not easy and presents a lot of challenges. But we have an opportunity to do this. I'm curious if you have a sort of call to action for folks in the space industry especially, as we grapple with these fascinating questions. And as more companies are trying to have some sort of presence on the moon to say nothing of other nations, what would you like them to know? Well, I was part of a team that NASA put together in 2011 to write recommendations for space-faring entities. And that was the commercial sector also. They were actually asked, they actually asked NASA, what should we do? And again, their recommendations. So again, we depend on the expertise of people in space. We want to understand when you put a lunar lander down, how much regolith does it move? How far away should one be to not obliterate tracks, footprints, or affect those significant properties, those cultural resources on the moon? So the question really becomes, how can we all use our expertise together to figure out ways to preserve what we want to preserve and to preserve things for the future? I have to ask a sort of a sci-fi question because my mind is just asking, at what point do we say we've preserved everything up to now? Now, everything, what do you imagine we might get to a point where, you know, the things that are in the moon, those are going to be safe. But after a certain cutoff, like it's open place, I don't even know how to answer, ask that question. No, no, no, that's a good question. For example, you know, we have had discussions about what we call the first space age, or from about 1959 to '72 when was the last Apollo mission. Should those be grandfathered in? Because obviously, that was the space race. It's part of the Cold War. But, you know, a commercial interest put the first things there. Is that important? China, in 1969, when those guys landed on the moon, China wasn't even involved in it. So, the Chinese have an interest in preserving their cultural resources on the moon. So, that's a good question. Much of preservation here in the United States is done by evaluating the site for significance and then trying to avoid or mitigate the adverse impacts to it. So, you know, having places that you can't go to. We have a World Heritage site right here in New Mexico called Chaco Canyon. You know, it's available for people to see. It's an amazing site, but there are restrictions on what you can do at Chaco Canyon and you can't take the artifacts away from there. So, again, we have these protocols not just in the United States, but all over the world. And if we can agree on those, then I think we're preserving humanity's heritage and respecting the fact that other nations that are non-spacefaring also see the moon as an important place and also have a relationship through it, through its stories, its spiritual practices. So, again, I can't emphasize enough the fact that humanity has to decide these things because this is our big chance for me. This is our big moment. I remember when they stepped, Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the moon in 1969 and I know that many people have seen the footage from there. There are critical and extraordinary moments in the history of humanity and I think they deserve our attention and they deserve a chance to exist in the world to the future. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. You know, I'm still kind of a buzz from seeing my very first rocket launch last week. I think I've described the experiences just about anyone who will listen. Did I mention I saw my very first rocket launch last week? And I bet a bunch of people out there today are also marking their first launches too because today, February 4th, we are slated to have five, count them, five, rocket launches today around the world. This morning saw a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch at Cape Canaveral and, as we mentioned earlier in the show, Blue Origin had its new Shepherd NS-29 mission in Texas and then, quick spin around the world, we've got a Rocket Lab electron set to lift off from New Zealand for the IoT for you and me mission and then, another little quick spin around the world, SpaceX plans to have another mission from Florida on another Falcon 9 and then late tonight, another spinner around the world, a Roscosmos Soyuz 2.1V/Volga will launch from Platesk Cosmodrome. Whew, there you go. That's five launches in one day. So, hey, that's cool. So anyway, it feels like a good time to mention this, you know, for no reason at all, that there's a new report out in Nature's scientific reports called, and I quote, "Aerospace closures due to re-entering space objects that worked on the probability for a rocket body re-entry within airspace over a range of air traffic densities. For large, busy regions like the one I live in, the entire Northeast United States, Northern Europe, and major cities in Asia Pacific, apparently, according to this report, there is a 26% risk of uncontrolled space debris re-entry causing problems. To be clear, those problems mainly mean aerospace closures and the risk of collision with an aircraft in flight is extremely low, but, I mean, something to consider, I guess. Did I mention I saw my first rocket launch last week? Yeah, yeah. [Music] And that's it for T-Minus for February 4th, 2025, 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. N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliott Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Peter Kilpie is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-Minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
