Today is March 28, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. T-minus. Twenty seconds to L-O-I, Peter. Open aboard. Five. Assignments for the NASA SpaceX Crew 11 mission to the ISS have been announced. Four. Isai says that it'll be providing satellite data to the Situation Center at NATO HQ. Three. UN agencies for telecommunications, aviation and maritime shipping have called for urgent protection of the Radio Navigation Satellite Service. Two. Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo freighter NG-22 mission to the ISS has been delayed indefinitely. One. The US Space Forces Space Systems Command has on-ramped Rocket Lab and Stoke Space for National Security Space Launch missions. [Music] Our partners at nasaspaceflight.com will be bringing us the Space Traffic Report, rounding up the launch news from the last seven days and taking a look at what's to come in the next week. [Music] Happy Friday everybody. I hope you're having a great one. Here's today's intel briefing for you. The US Space Forces Space Systems Command has on-ramped Rocket Lab and Stoke Space for National Security Space Launch missions. The two companies have been awarded firm fixed price indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 contracts. Get all that? Rocket Lab and Stoke Space joined Blue Origin, SpaceX and ULA who were on-ramped to Lane 1 last year. Rocket Lab and Stoke Space will each receive a $5 million firm fixed price task order to conduct an initial capabilities assessment and develop their approach to tailored mission assurance. As we mentioned in yesterday's show with the announcement of ULA's Vulcan being certified as an NSSL partner, it is a long process to get the full approvals. SSE's tailored mission assurance is a tiered approach to the government's breadth and depth of the launch vehicle baseline understanding and the associated risks to the mission. Space Systems Command says the next opportunity for providers to on-ramp their emerging systems to the Lane 1 IDIQ contract will occur in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. Engineers have found an issue with Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo freighter delaying the NG-22 mission to the International Space Station. The resupply and trash removal mission has been delayed indefinitely after engineers confirmed that the pressurized cargo module had sustained damage during shipping. The damage is thought to have been caused by heavy equipment striking the shipping container. Northrop Grumman notified NASA of the issue earlier this month. It was scheduled to make a resupply mission to the ISS today. SpaceX will instead carry the next resupply mission to the orbiting station in April. A spokesperson for NASA said that Northrop Grumman's commercial resupply services 23 will be the company's next flight to the International Space Station for NASA, targeted to launch no earlier than fall 2025. We hope nobody on the station was waiting for a really important mail. Don't you just hate it when the trash starts to smell? The United Nations Agencies for Telecommunications, Aviation and Maritime Shipping have called for urgent protection of the Radio Navigation Satellite Service known as RNSS. In a joint statement, the agency is noted with grave concern, the increasing number of cases of harmful interference in the form of jamming and spoofing affecting the Radio Navigation Satellite Service. The service supports accurate global navigation and timekeeping and is critical for navigation of civil aircraft, maritime vessels, humanitarian assistance vehicles, as well as for time synchronization of telecommunications networks. The agencies urged their member states worldwide to take necessary measures to prevent satellite systems from suffering harmful interference. It went on to call on member states to reinforce resilience of the systems which rely on RNSS for navigation, position and timing in relation to this type of interference. ICI has announced that it will be providing satellite data to the Situation Center at NATO HQ, also known as CITSEN. CITSEN will be able to access ICI capabilities, which ICI says will enhance its capacity to deliver better and faster data-driven assessments to decision makers. ICI has already supplied synthetic aperture radar or SAR data and satellites to a number of NATO Allied and friendly nations. They say this announcement deepens the collaboration with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. No details were shared about the contract value. Assignments for the NASA SpaceX Crew 11 mission to the ISS have been announced. Four crew members from three space agencies will join crew members aboard the space station no earlier than July 2025. The assigned crew includes NASA astronauts Commander Zina Cardman and Pilot Mike Fink, JAXA astronaut mission specialist Kimia Huey and Roscosmos Cosmonaut mission specialist Oleg Platinov. The flight is the 11th crew rotation with SpaceX to the station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Zina Cardman will finally get her first space flight after being dropped from the Crew 9 team due to the decision to keep Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore on station for a longer rotation. Congratulations to the entire Crew 11 team! We look forward to hearing more about the science that they're going to be working on during their ISS rotation. [Music] That's it for our Friday Intel Briefing, and 2K Senior Producer Alice Karuth has more on the stories that we think you should be aware of. Alice? Maria, there are five additional links in the show notes for you to read today. TechCrunch has laid out China's dates for their planned planetary missions. Vandenberg Space Force Base has added an advanced vehicle operations room. The US Air Force is reportedly looking at cancelling the space development agency's future transport-layer satellites in favour of tapping SpaceX. ISAR Aerospace has postponed their first flight from Norway to no earlier than Saturday, March 29. Fingers crossed for them. And Saxophone Space Force has inked an agreement with the west of Scotland space cluster for R&D. That is a lot of additional stories. And where are those links again? We add links to all the stories mentioned throughout the show in the selected reading section of our show notes, which can be found on the podcast platform you listen through, or on our website space.intuk.com and click on this episode title. 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 former White House Principal Deputy National Cyber Director Jake Braun, talking about whether space should be designated as critical infrastructure. So check it out while you're heading to a game, spring gardening, or mentally preparing for a space symposium because many of us are flying to Colorado in a week. You don't want to miss it. It's time for the Space Traffic Report from our partners at nasaspaceflight.com. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T-minus Space. Let's start off with NASA's Parker Solar Probe and the scorching heat of the sun. On March 22 at 2242 UTC, NASA's Parker Solar Probe made its 23rd closest approach to the sun of its entire mission, matching its own record for shortest distance to the sun and speed around our own star. The spacecraft arrived at its current orbit following a Venus flyby executed in November, after which it had its closest approach ever on December 24 of last year. Just like that encounter, this one is the closest yet, and it was also successful. NASA confirmed that the probe phoned back home on Tuesday, March 25, confirming good health. Through these approaches, Parker will be able to gather unprecedented data on the solar corona and solar wind. Moving back down to Earth, we had a few launches this week, starting with a Falcon 9. Lift-off took place on March 24 at 1748 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The rocket was carrying out the NRL-69 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. While the mission was classified, things like hazard notices and the performance needed from Falcon 9 give us a clue as to what kind of payload it might be carrying. It appears that for this mission, the NRL-69 payload was a Naval Ocean Surveillance System satellite, which is a type of signals-intelligent satellite operated by the US Navy. These satellites often orbit the Earth in orbits ranging between 1,000 and 1,200 kilometers in altitude and at an approximately 63-degree inclination. Given that orbital inclination, these payloads have traditionally been launched from Vandenberg, and in fact, SpaceX launched one of them from here in 2022 on the NRL-85 mission. However, with Falcon 9's payload performance, it's still possible to launch into these types of orbits from the Cape if the rocket performs an inclination change later in the mission. In fact, due to this peculiar mission profile, many people in Northern Europe were able to observe the dump of propellant from the Falcon 9 second stage after it performed its sea orbit burn following payload deployment. This is a totally common procedure that the Falcon 9 second stage performs after its mission is completed in order to go into a safe state by venting excess propellant, lowering its tank pressure, and powering down its batteries. On other missions, this maneuver often ends up taking place over Australia or over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, so it's not something that Europeans would be very used to seeing. If you saw it and had no idea what it was, well, now you know. The first stage for this mission, B-1092, was a rookie one flying for only its second time on this mission. It successfully returned to Earth landing back at SpaceX's landing zone 1 ground pad just a few miles south of the launch site. From the Southern Hemisphere, we also had another electron launch this week, the fifth overall for this year. The mission, called "Finding Hot Wildfires Near You," started off on March 26 at 1530 UTC from Rocket Lab's own spaceport in New Zealand. Electron was carrying eight satellites for Aurora Tech into Sun-Synchronous orbit. These eight satellites are part of a constellation of spacecraft that Aurora Tech is building in orbit to better monitor wildfires with more frequency to assist with better response times here on the ground. Hence the cheeky name for this mission. The satellites employ a set of thermal infrared cameras to spot the wildfires and changes in the landscape to monitor their growth. And with multiple of these satellites going into orbit, the company hopes to have a nearly continuous observation capability. That same day, just a few minutes later, we had a Changjiang 3BE rocket launching from China. Lift-off took place on March 26 at 1555 UTC from Launch Complex 2 at the Shichang Satellite Launch Center. The mission was carrying the fourth Tian Lian-2 satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. Tian Lian-2 satellites are Chinese communication relay satellites used to support communications between satellites orbiting Earth and ground stations when they're outside of ground station coverage. These satellites are akin to the US Tracking Data and Relay Satellite System, or TDRS, which NASA uses for communication with several of its orbital assets, like the International Space Station. China uses the Tian Lian satellites in the same manner, such as in support of its Tian Gang Space Station for operations outside of ground station coverage. And to wrap up the week, we had the launch of a Starlink mission from Vandenberg. Lift-off of Falcon 9 occurred on March 26 at 2211 UTC, carrying a batch of 27 Starlink V2 mini-satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this launch, B1063, was flying for a 24th time, and despite its age, it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, of course I still love you. With that batch of satellites, SpaceX has now launched a total of 8,144 Starlink satellites, of which 109 have re-entered and 6,492 have moved into their operational orbit. Going into next week, on March 29, we'll have a partial solar eclipse as seen here from Earth. The eclipse should be visible in the Northern Hemisphere, primarily over Northern Europe and Western Russia. The northeast of the United States, as well as Canada and Greenland, will also be able to see the event. This is only a partial solar eclipse, which means we won't have a path of totality, but there is a path of maximum eclipse, which will start from the Central Atlantic Ocean and should move north across the Earth, passing by Canada, grazing the North Pole, and finishing in Russia. If you're in the path and you want to observe it, remember to never look at it directly and use appropriate gear, or else you might risk damaging your eyes while trying. It's not every day that we can say a rocket launch might happen during a solar eclipse, but this weekend, there might be a possibility. Next week, ESAR Aerospace will try to get its Spectrum rocket off the ground for the very first time. After several delays due to weather, the company may try to launch as soon as March 29, with the 3-hour launch window opening at 11.30 UTC. If that date and time holds, that'll be right as the eclipse is happening over Norway. And if you don't want to miss this launch, you're in luck, because NSF is providing launch live stream production services to ESAR, so we'll be covering it as it happens. Our team is on site and ready to support from the land of the Midnight Sun. This weekend, we'll also have the launch of a Changjiang 7A rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China. The launch is currently targeted to take place within a 78-minute window that opens on March 29 at 15.57 UTC. Firefly's Alpha rocket is also waiting on good weather to take off to the skies, but the latest notices indicate the company may be aiming for another try this weekend. The 68-minute launch window for this mission, dubbed "Message in a Booster," is set to open on March 30 at 13.37 UTC. Schedules are still fluid since the company hasn't committed to this launch date yet, so don't be surprised if there are further delays. NSF will also be providing live stream production services to Firefly for this launch, so we'll be covering it on our channel as well. Next week, we'll also have a trio of Falcon 9 missions to end the month of March and kick off the month of April. First, we'll have a Starlink launch from Florida with the 4-hour launch window opening on March 30 at 19.16 UTC. After that, we'll have another Starlink launch, this time from Vandenberg, with the 4-hour launch window opening on April 1 at 1 minute past midnight UTC. Then, just a few minutes later, SpaceX will also be launching the From 2 mission, the first crewed flight to fly in a polar orbit around the globe. For this mission, Falcon 9 will be launching southeast from Launch Complex 39A, performing a dog leg around the southeast coast of Florida as it inserts Crew Dragon into a 90-degree orbital inclination. The window for this mission, set to take place on April 1, is approximately 5 hours long. Within that window, there are four available launch opportunities. The first is 147 UTC, the second at 320, and the third and fourth at 453, and 626 UTC, respectively. And to wrap up the week, we'll have another launch from China, this time with a Chongjiang 2D rocket. The 37-minute window for that launch opens on April 1 at 352 UTC. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. In just a few weeks, another Blue Origin flight to suborbital space will be lifting off from West Texas, this time with a celebrity-studded all-women crew aboard. The crew includes Gail King, who is co-host of CBS Mornings, which is a big morning TV show here in the United States. And it's funny because sending a morning TV show host to space is a major plot point in the last season's The Morning Show on Apple TV, where that host was played by Jennifer Aniston, who then gives up her seat to Reese Witherspoon. Anyway, art imitates reality, and the other way around, in this case, reality imitates TV. It's not the first time that that's happened when it comes to Blue Origin space missions either. Yeah, the shat. Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner, also went to suborbital space on a Blue Origin flight in 2021. At that time, he was 90, yeah, a sco-shoulder than Captain Kirk zipping around space on the Enterprise, but still. After playing the most iconic space explorer of all time, Shatner got to experience the real deal. Even nearly four years after his adventure, this trek, he gets a little emotional thinking about how beautifully poetic that was. And Sir William Shatner had some words of advice for his fellow TV star Gail King as she prepares for her own epic journey to the final frontier. "You're on an adventure. You've got to embrace it." Sorry, that was a terrible shat. Still, it's wise words from someone who's been there and inspired countless others to do the same. And now over to N2K producer Liz Stokes for some Fun Fact Friday. Welcome to Fun Fact Friday, your one stop shop for the Court Key's tip of wisdom. I'm your host, Liz Stokes, here at N2K, Sabahir. Ever wondered what it takes to break free from Earth's gravity? The answer? Speed. And lots of it. A spacecraft needs to hit a jaw-dropping 25,008 miles per hour to escape our planet's pool. That's nearly Mach 33, faster than most of us can even comprehend. So, next time you're in a rush, just remember, escaping gravity takes more than a good pair of sneakers. See you soon. [Music] That's it for T-minus from March 28, 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 insight that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share our 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 teams smarter. Learn how at N2K.com. 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. Have a wonderful weekend. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [MUSIC]
