Today is March 19th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. NASA's Crew 9 returns to Earth, completing their rotation on the International Space Station. Valerian has been awarded a 3.6 million euros co-funded contract from ESA's Business Applications and Space Solutions Program. Germany's OHB announces a new subsidiary based at the Bristol and Bath Science Park in the UK. Norway's Andeoja Spaceport and EXO launch to collaborate on an integration facility, as ISAR Aerospace receives their launch license for the site. ESA releases the first batch of survey data from the Euclid mission, including a preview of its deep fields. Happy Wednesday, everybody! Let's dive into today's intelligence briefing. And we're kicking off with the first batch of data shared from the European Space Agency's Euclid mission. If you're looking for six minutes to get lost in space today, then ESA has you covered, with the collage of images that it has recently shared. The visuals include numerous galaxy clusters, active galactic nuclei and transient phenomena, as well as the first classification survey of more than a mere 380,000 galaxies and 500 gravitational lens candidates compiled through combined artificial intelligence and citizen science efforts. It is amazing, and it sets the scene for the broad range of topics that the Dark Universe Detective Euclid is set to address with its rich data set. ESA describes the first information gathered as "unlocking a treasure trove of information for scientists to dive into and tackle some of the most intriguing questions in modern science." Euclid has scouted out three areas in the sky where it will eventually provide the deepest observations of its mission. In just one week of observations, with one scan of each region so far, Euclid has already spotted 26 million galaxies. The farthest of those are up to 10.5 billion light-years away. Euclid is on a mission to map the sky, after all. So far, it has captured 63 square degrees of the area that it can see, the equivalent area of more than 300 times of the full moon. The data shared has already given an impressive preview of the scale of Euclid's grand cosmic atlas when the mission is complete. This atlas will cover one-third of the entire visible sky, which is about 14,000 square degrees in high-quality detail. So, yeah, seriously, go check out the images from this data dump. It is really worth your time. Norway's Andoja spaceport has announced a strategic collaboration with ExoLaunch. The partnership aims to leverage ExoLaunch's satellite processing expertise for Andoja spaceport's planned integration facility in the spaceport village at Nordmela. It's hoped that the facility will become a hub for the small satellite market in Europe. No further details were shared about the timeline for the facility's development or the cost of the project. The announcement comes as ISAR Aerospace prepares for their first launch from the spaceport. ISAR Aerospace has received a launch operator license for their vehicle Spectrum's first test flight and plans to lift off within a launch period beginning tomorrow, the 20th of March. And we wish them the best of luck. Over to the UK now, and Bristol's space sector has received a multi-million pound investment from German space company OHB. The funding is expected to create up to 50 specialist jobs in Bristol, working on satellites and exploration spacecraft. OHB's initial investment will create a new UK subsidiary, based at Bristol and Bath Science Park, to develop tech for satellites and spacecraft. The move was secured by the UK Department for Business and Trade, working together with the Space West cluster, Invest Bristol and Bath and the UK Space Agency. The announcement supports the UK government's plan for change and delivering more skilled jobs, higher living standards and productivity growth across the nation. And staying in the UK, Valerian has been awarded a 3.6 million euro co-funded contract from the European Space Agency's Business Applications and Space Solutions Program. The contract will support the development and demonstration of an AI and satellite data enabled traffic monitoring and incident detection platform, designed to enhance nationwide road network safety and efficiency. Valerian's platform uses deep data fusion to process very large volumes of current and historical traffic related data, to instantly deliver a holistic real-time overview of single corridor road traffic. The company says it enables road traffic authorities in Europe, the United States and Central and Latin Americas, to adopt a proactive road traffic management approach, while achieving a double percentage reduction in serious traffic accidents. And you knew this story was coming. Last night, crew 9 splashed down in a dragon capsule off the coast of Florida, after completing their rotation on the International Space Station. Finally, the daylight event was watched by millions across the globe, as the fate of Sunni Williams and Butch Willmore captured the attention of global media, and they were even greeted in the Gulf waters by a pod of dolphins. It was super cute. All four crew members exited the spacecraft with smiles and waves to the team on the SpaceX recovery vessel. They underwent standard medical assessments with NASA and SpaceX, before heading by helicopter back to the mainland. The crew were later transferred to Houston, where they will continue to undergo debriefs, before enjoying some much needed time off. Welcome home to Nick, Alexander and of course Butch and Sunni. [Music] And N2K Senior Producer Alice Carruth was at the crew 9 launch with the NASA social event last September. What was it like to watch them return to Earth last night, Alice? I wish I could have been there in person to see the splash down, but it was exciting to watch on TV as Nick and Alexander completed their mission, along with Sunni and Butch. I really think the dolphins stole the show, thanks to the incredible drone work at the landing site. They absolutely did. It was stunning to see. Do you have any other stories for us today, Alice? Yes, we've included five additional links today in the selected reading section of our show notes. The first is an RFI from NOAA on commercial space capabilities. Then we have customer updates from Rocket Lab and Black Sky, along with a new product announcement from Spire. And finally, we have a story from Defense One on China, apparently practicing dog fighting in space. And where can we find those stories? Links to all the stories mentioned throughout the show can be found in the show notes on the podcast platform that you download us from. You'll also find the links in the episode page on our website, which can be found at space.intuk.com. Just click on this episode title. Hey, T-Minus Crew, if you find this podcast useful, please do us a favor and share a five-star rating and short review in your favorite podcast app. It'll help other space professionals like you to find the show and join the T-Minus Crew. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost has completed its mission and shut down now, and or put otherwise, it is in Monument Mode, as we covered on Monday's show. And the day before it signed off for good, Blue Ghost took a series of high-definition photos of a lunar sunset from a couple of different angles, which Firefly took and put together to make a video of the view. Notably during the sunset, you can see the lunar horizon glow, a sunset scatters throughout the dust hovering near the moon's surface. It's a phenomenon first observed during the Surveyor Mission and seen by Apollo moonwalkers as well. And there actually are quite a few high-definition videos from this mission. Many of them are of instrumentation payloads on Blue Ghost as they go about completing their missions. You can see NASA's Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity, or the Lister Drill, drill into the lunar surface in HD. Or there's a video courtesy of 9,000 photo frames captured by NASA's Stereo-Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies, or SCALPS, studying the interaction between the lander's rocket plume and the moon's surface in not just HD, but once they process it in 3D. So expect lots more videos and findings from the Blue Ghost Mission, one as analysis of all that great data continues. That's it for T-minus from March 19th, 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. You can email us at space@n2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes. Your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. N2K's Strategic Workforce Intelligence optimizes the value of your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your team while making your team smarter. N2K's Senior Producer is Alice Carruth. Our Producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Tre Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our Executive Producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-minus. [BLANK_AUDIO]
