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Today is April 22nd, 2025. I'm Alice Carruth and this is T-minus. T-minus. Twenty seconds to L-O-N team. Open aboard. Five. NASA's Lucy shares close-up images of asteroid DonaldJohansson. Four. iSpace and ENT-X awarded a grant from the Australian government for a lunar night's survival technology demonstration. Three. SpaceX launches the bandwagon 3 mission carrying payloads for South Korea, tomorrow companies and ATMOS space cargo. Two. India to partner with NASA and ESA on experiments for the Axiom-4 mission. One. ISRO has completed a second satellite docking demonstration as part of the SPAD-X mission. Let's go. And today is Earth Day. Maria Varmazis will be speaking to Dan Barstow from EarthMusicTheatre.org about the Earth Harmony Sonata Special they've released today. It features images captured by Butch and Sunny on their recent mission. Dan will be sharing more about those videos later in the show, so stick around for that chat. Happy Tuesday everyone. Let's dive into today's intelligence briefing. We're kicking off with an update from India on this SPAD-X mission. Despite the difficult start, the India Space Research Organisation known as ISRO has now managed to successfully dock two satellites for a second time during the mission. The space docking experiment satellites Chase and Target completed the second docking on Sunday. The mission also included a power transfer demonstration between the two spacecraft. The experiment saw a heater element operating in one of the satellites through power from the other. ISRO shared that the duration of the power transfer was approximately four minutes and the performance of the satellites was as expected. The docking was completed with four autonomy from an inter-satellite distance of 15 metres till docking. That's five times the distance that was achieved in the first docking mission. The satellites were successfully docked for the first time on January 16 after a series of delays and undocked on March 13. ISRO also shared that further experiments are planned in the next two weeks. And staying in India, scientists are collaborating with NASA and the European Space Agency on seven experiments that are scheduled to head to the International Space Station. The experiments will be part of the AXIUM-4 mission which is scheduled to launch no earlier than May this year. The mission will be India's first astronaut to visit the orbiting lab. The AXIUM-4 research complement includes around 60 scientific studies and activities representing 31 countries including India, the US, Poland, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Nigeria, UAE and nations across Europe. AXIOM says this will be the most research and science related activities conducted on an AXIUM space mission aboard the ISS to date. SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket last night from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida for the Banwagon 3 ride-share mission. The workhorse spacecraft carried payloads for South Korea's Agency for Defence Development, the Tomorrow S7 satellite from Tomorrow Company's Inc. and the Phoenix One re-entry capsule developed by Atmos Space Cargo. Banwagon 3 was the third in a series of dedicated ride-share missions to mid-inclination orbits. A fourth mission is expected before the end of the year. iSpace is partnering with an Australian nuclear engineering and technology company to develop tech to survive the lunar night. iSpace and ENTX have reached an agreement to transport and test a radioactive heating unit, or RHU, on the lunar surface as part of a future iSpace mission. The demonstration will be funded in part by a $200,000 Australian grant from the Space Cooperation and Innovation Fund supported by the State of South Australia. The companies have signed an agreement to develop a shared understanding for a technology demonstration of ENTX's RHU on the moon surface and its possible integration to a future lunar lander. And there's nothing quite like an audio program talking about a visual story, but indulge me please if you will. NASA's Lucy spacecraft has released stunning imagery captured of the asteroid Donald Johansson. On April 20th, Lucy conducted a close flyby of the asteroid, capturing detailed pictures of the elongated lumpy space rock located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid measures approximately five miles in length and two miles in width. Its unusual shape prevented the spacecraft from capturing it entirely in initial images. It's named after paleoanthropologist Donald Johansson, who discovered the famous Lucy fossil. This encounter served as a preparatory mission for Lucy's future flybys of Trojan asteroids near Jupiter scheduled through 2033. The data collected during this flyby will aid scientists in understanding the asteroid's formation and contribute to insights into the early solar system. Go and check out the images by following the link in our show notes. And speaking of our show notes, senior producer Elliot Peltzman has more on the stories that didn't make today's top five. Elliot? Yes, we have three additional links in the show notes today that cover financial results from Lockheed Martin and Iridium, and an op-ed from Chad Anderson that states the honeymoon is over for a space investors. Would you agree, Alice? I think we're in an economic grey area right now, but honestly there are still some great startups out there that are looking for investors, and for those investors it's always a good time to get involved in the space industry. But I'm not a VC or an economist, just a certified space nerd, so don't take my word for it. Anyway Elliot, can you remind us where those links are again please? Yes, links can always be found in the selected reading section of our show notes and on our website, space.ntuk.com. Just click on this episode title. Thanks Elliot. Hey T-miners crew, if you're just joining us be sure to follow T-minerspaceDaily in your favourite podcast app. And also do us a favour, share the intel with your friends and co-workers. A growing audience is the most important thing for us and we'd love your help as part of the T-miners crew. If you find T-miners useful, please share so other professionals like you can find the show. Thanks, it really does mean a lot to us. Today is Earth Day and our friends at earthmusictheatre.org have released a beautiful video which we've included in our show notes, celebrating our home planet all captured by NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams. Dan Barstow spoke to Maria Varmazis about the Earth Harmony Sonata and the videos he produces. I used to be the senior education manager for the International Space Station. I retired but now I volunteer with the astronauts, the members of the Association of Space Explorers. I manage their archive of photos and movies taken of Earth, taken by the astronauts. It's gorgeous, it's just hundreds of hours of movies that nobody's ever seen before. So we've decided to use music to help reveal the beauty of Earth. We now have some 35 musicians from jazz to organ to choral music, all of whom are donating their music. And we use these movies and then release one new movie every week. This is all part of a project called Earth Music Theatre. We have a website, earthmusictheatre.org. Yeah, and I just want to say when your emails arrive Friday, Alice and I both say it's the highlight of our Friday when that lands in our inbox. Wonderful. Yeah, yeah. So, and that's the idea of pacing them one at a time. So you get a chance to focus on that one. Well, Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore, as listeners may know, recently had an extended stay on the space station. They were in their happy place. It meant that they had time to look out the window and enjoy our glorious home planet. So here they are orbiting every 92 minutes. It's daytime, nighttime. They pick some of their favorite views. And we selected one pass. And Butch did a movie going from Equatorial Africa over the Sahara, then Gaza in the Middle East, and then on up to Turkey and Armenia. It's a beautiful, beautiful pass. The Sahara, though interweaving oranges and reds, it's just magical. I'm launching the link right now so I can look at it while you're describing it to me. So I'll understand. If you're distracted, I'll be very pleased. Well, yeah, please go ahead. Meanwhile, Sonny, for her part, preferred to take photos, not the movies, but the photos. Just, oh, look at that click. She took some 10,000 photos. And I had the great fortune of reviewing every one of them. Then I tried to select 60 favorites. Now, who knows, you know, but they just appealed to me just because they're so insightful or something. We put those together with a Bach trio sonata for organ. Now, Bach, you know, we do jazz, we do all kinds, but Bach is a master of harmonies and earth is harmonies. So you listen to the music and you see the land, the mountains, the sand, the water, the rivers all interweaving. And you sort of, Bach's harmonies reveal Earth's harmonies. So now we're releasing this special movie for Earth Day. I love Bach. Bach's sonatas, especially the imagery is, of course, is beautiful, but I love the idea of this. What you just said about Earth's harmony, Bach is harmony, and also this for Earth Day. What a beautiful initiative. And oh, my God, I'm just flabbergasted. Look at this. This is so gorgeous. Oh, my gosh. Does it ever get old? No, it doesn't. And I tell you, we have some 35 musicians that we have agreements with. They're all donating their music. They keep on getting more. We do live performances as well. The views of Earth, you know, you're saying it's gorgeous. That's why we do this. Earth is at risk. You know, there's climate change. There are all kinds of issues, fires and so on. We are not giving this message of, you know, how horrible you've treated Earth. Rather, we're saying love Earth. Feel in your heart this beauty for Earth. Just watch and enjoy. Listen to the music and feel the harmonies and fill yourself with the glory of Earth and the joy of music. That's the emotion that we're trying to convey to our global audience. I think it does a spectacular job of that. And as the images are cycling through, I just saw a beautiful image of the moon. Of course, there's little bits and angles of the ISS through there as well, which is just a wonderful reminder of the vantage point that this is all coming from. You see, Canada arm at one point, it's great to see. I think it's so important that, you know, we take a moment, especially on Earth Day of all days, to appreciate our planet and also acknowledge that we have to do more to do right by our home. You learn to sort of appreciate Earth from this vantage of there. It's actually, you know, it's 250 miles above the Earth, which is not that far. It's not like the way out at the moon. And so you have this intimacy with Earth and yet a scale that reveals new things. Can you tell me a little bit more about maybe how Butch and Sonny, they acquired their images in a little bit of a different way? Can you tell me about that? They use handheld cameras, Nikon Z9 cameras, they're superb. I mean, this is like 8K resolution. Very good gradations of colors and so on. They have several of them up there. They have multiple lenses. Butch likes to take movies. Now, the way he does that is by using this, not a movie camera. It's this, you know, an SLR digital camera. He fixed mounts it to the window. He first, he figures out the orbital path. He says, you know, tomorrow afternoon at 3pm, we're going to fly over Greece and I want to get that. So he sets his watch and plans to make sure he's not doing anything else. Then he mounts the camera in the window and has to take a picture once every second. It's an automated process. Then it does like a half hour pass. Now, just to get a technical for a moment, that one frame per second, if you were to watch it at that speed, it'd be stop motion. You'd see something for a second and then you'd wait in the next picture. Well, we use software that invents 29 pictures in between those two to give 30 frames per second. So it's in a sense, it's like artificial intelligence figuring this out. But the flight is so smooth that that's shifting and it enables us actually to adjust the speed of the movie to be the real speed of the ISS or to align it with the music. So for example, you know, Brian Hoffman, who's the organist, plays this beautiful. There are three moments here. There's one that's Allegro, this very lively joyous piece. And then there's one that is a Largo, sort of a slower piece and then another Allegro. So we can adjust the speed of the movie to align with the speed, the tempo of the music. Now, Sonny, for her part, does just hand held and just looking and just pointing wherever it is, looking behind her in front of her, off to the horizon, straight down. And she just takes individual pictures that they'll typically take maybe 10 to 20 pictures of a particular region as they fly over. And then they wait in the end. Oh, look at that. They click a bunch. I find that her pictures, it's usually the first one that is the most beautiful because that's the one that captured her attention. And then she had to engage her brain and said, oh, maybe I want a wider angle or maybe I should get, but it's the first one that hits her heart to get her to take the picture. Oh, that's an interesting insight, isn't it? That's a fascinating point. Yeah, sometimes it's that instinct that drives us to take that picture and that's often the best frame that we get. And then we start thinking about it and then that instinct is not, we're thinking instead of working on instinct and then the art is a little bit diminished. Exactly. Oh, what an interesting insight. I love that. I love that. I love this. And that's also what gives the power. You know, there are satellites taking pictures all the time. So if scientists want to have their volcano erupting, they'll just have the satellite every time flies over that part of Italy, it'll take a picture of that volcano. But that's an automated process. Whereas the human intervention, the power of the astronauts is that they say, oh, wow, look at that and click, take the picture. They frame it in a way that speaks to them. And so this human element is what gives these visuals their power. That is such a fascinating. I completely agree because you're absolutely right. Why is this different when you think about it in the abstract? Why is this so different? Just looking at it, if you didn't know who was behind the lens, why is it so different from those satellite images or just automated images that we see captured from the ISS? It is exactly that human element and that judgment that gives it this power that we can't necessarily name. But in this case, we can. We know why. I love that. Oh, damn. And that's also why I love that this is Butch and Sunny. Yeah. In fact, NASA often releases movies that they've taken, but they say this is the crew of ISS-72 or something. But we're trying to elevate the individual. So naming the person and highlighting Butch and Sunny have a story. It helps bring this whole movie to life. It is a very compelling, very human story. And Dan, it's such a treat to be able to see this. And the idea of this being for Earth Day especially is just really powerful. I also mentioned the organization that is putting these together is the Association of Space Explorers. This is the professional association of flown astronauts from 38 countries around the world. I'm not an astronaut, although I feel like it with all the movies I've seen. But the fact that this is the astronauts trying to tell this story themselves. We work with these musicians. The astronauts pick their favorite movies. I pick some. The musicians pick some. But again, it highlights the human element of the astronauts. All these are from the International Space Station. It's up there for almost 25 years. So we even have a historical record of these views. Have they seen like erosion or drying up lake or something? We see the dynamics of Earth changing. It's part of what we all have to be aware of that. Earth's a alive and dynamic and diverse and wonderful place. But we have to love it and take care of it. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Today is Earth Day, which began in 1970 as a unified response to environmental crises from oil spills to air pollution. It marked the start of the modern environmental movement and led to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency, among other organizations. Today, Earth Day is a global event reminding us of our collective responsibility to safeguard our planet. It's widely celebrated in the space community. The US Space Agency offers unique ways to engage with Earth Day. Just check out NASA's Earth Day 2025 page, which features stunning satellite imagery, interactive tools and educational resources that showcase our planet's beauty and fragility. You can explore Earth from space, learn about climate change and even participate in citizen science projects. Of course, there are smaller ways you can mark today. My son's school sent home a reminder to reduce our household energy consumption and water waste, look to adopt more green habits in our home like composting or using rain barrels, not so helpful where I am in the high desert, but using solar power is definitely a good option. You could also get involved or even run a community cleanup event. At the very least, take today to give thanks to this amazing spaceship Earth and its incredible abilities to support life. [Music] That's it for T-minus for April 22, 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 1,400 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. 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 Kilpie is our publisher and I'm N2K's senior producer, Alice Carruth. Thanks for listening. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
