[MUSIC] >> Today is May 16th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] >> T-minus. >> 20 seconds to L-O-N, Peter. >> Open aboard. [MUSIC] >> Live. >> ISI has opened a new office and a satellite assembly production line in Greece. >> Or. >> Reflect Orbital has raised a $20 million Series A funding round. >> Three. >> Space Solar Company Celestial has raised $17 million in a Series A funding round. >> Two. >> NASA has selected Rocket Lab to launch the agency's Aspera mission. >> One. >> Gilmore Space delays the inaugural launch of its Eris spacecraft after the nose cone fell off the rocket ahead of liftoff. [MUSIC] >> We are zero. [MUSIC] >> Let's go. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Every Friday our partners at nasaspaceflight.com bring us the Space Traffic Report, rounding up the news from the week that's just been and reviewing what's to come in the next seven days. So stick around for that after today's intelligence briefing. [MUSIC] >> We're kicking off today's show with an update on the inaugural launch of Gilmore Space's Eris rocket. I'll be honest, we're very used to delays to launches on this show, but never in our history have we dealt with a reason quite like this one. Gilmore Space's CEO, Adam Gilmore, shared on LinkedIn an update ahead of Friday's scheduled launch, saying, "An unexpected anomaly last night a few hours before we started the fuel fill. The payload fairing did a spectacular triple back somersault and avoided the rocket and the launch infrastructure. Yes, in other words, the nose cone of the rocket took a dive. We are not quite sure how this happens to a rocket on a launch pad, but it seems that the delays will set back what was set to be Australia's first orbital launch in 50 years for a few weeks at least." Gilmore shared in the post that, "Legends back at head office got the spare ready to send without even asking. We will be back on the pad again in about three weeks, I hope. And yeah, we hope so too." Over to the United States now, and NASA has selected Rocket Lab to launch the agency's Aspera mission. Aspera is a small sat to study galaxy formation and evolution, providing you insights into how the universe works. The selection is part of NASA's Venture Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare Launch Services Contract, otherwise known as the Vader Contract. And Vader allows the agency to make fixed price and definite delivery and definite quantity launch service task order awards during its five-year ordering period, with a maximum total contract value of $300 million. Space Solar Company Celestial has raised $17 million in a series A funding round. Celestial says the new funding will enable the company to continue scaling its manufacturing capacity of silicon photovoltaics to 1 megawatt per year, which is a rate comparable to the estimated annual manufacturing capacity of all U.S. and E.U. 3V space solar companies combined. Alongside the rays, Celestial also announced the appointment of former ASTRA VP Margo DeNarray as Chief Executive Officer. Founding CEO Stanislav Harris-Semenka will assume the role of Chief Technology Officer to focus on advancing the company's product roadmap and rapidly scaling operations technology. In speaking of series A funding rounds, Reflect Orbital has also raised one, in this case a $20 million series A funding round. Reflect says the funding will be used to accelerate development of its satellite constellation. The company is building a constellation of satellites designed to reflect sunlight down to Earth for large-scale lighting and energy applications, and this new funding will support team growth, scaled operations and the company's first space missions. And since tomorrow is the Eurovision final, this next story has me feeling all sorts of ways. ICE-I has opened a new office and a satellite assembly production line in Greece. The company says its growing footprint in Greece is an important step in their participation in the Greek National Satellite Space Program AXIS 1.2 in cooperation with the Hellenic Space Agency and the Ministry of Digital Governance. AXIS 1.2 covers the Greek Synthetic Aperture Radar Space segment and includes both radar imagery and the development of a Greek observation system with two ICE-I S.A.R. satellites and their launches. In addition to sovereign satellites, ICE will also have access to AXIS existing S.A.R. satellite constellation. That concludes today's Intel briefing, but I have a sneaky suspicion that N2K Senior Producer Alice Carruth has more to add to today's stories. Alice? How did you know, Maria? Yes, we've added four additional links to today's selected reading section of our show notes. Their stories for you to read up on at your leisure. The first is about Norway joining the Artemis Accords. Muan Space has been given a follow-on contract from the NRO for the next phase of commercial electro-optical capabilities. There's also financial updates from Cyda Space and Virgin Galactic, and the news that the latter is going to be increasing the cost of their tourism flights. Yeah, they've got to make money somehow, I guess. And please remind us where those links can be found. We include links to all the original sources of all the stories we mentioned throughout the show in our show notes, which can also be found on our website space.n2k.com Hey T-minus crew, tune in tomorrow for T-minus Deep Space, 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 friend of the show, Brandon Karp, talking about GRC and DevSecOps for space startups. Don't know what that means, you will definitely want to tune in tomorrow. So check it out while you're out enjoying the May weather, winding down from the week that was or gearing up for the week to come. You don't want to miss it. [Music] Our partners at nasaspaceflight.com now have the weekly space traffic report. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and this is your weekly space traffic report for T-minus Space. This week was a busy one starting off with a Starlink launch on May 10th. Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 19 minutes past midnight UTC adding 26 Starlink V2 mini-satellites to the constellation. SpaceX used booster B-1081 for this mission and after successfully touching down on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, it's now logged 14 flights. Over on the other coast, we had another Starlink mission just over 6 hours later. Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral with 28 Starlink V2 mini-satellites on board. The mission was flown by booster B-1083 which has some impressive missions to its name, flying crew twice on crew 8 and Polaris Dawn and launching the IM2 lunar mission in February. It flew for the 11th time this week and successfully landed on space in the space. SpaceX's drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas Around the time that mission took off, an unusual spacecraft also returned to Earth. Now originally, this spacecraft was set to touch down on Venus, but it clearly didn't make it that far. In late March of 1972, the Soviet Union launched the Venera 8 mission which successfully landed on Venus later that year. However, a few days after that launch, another spacecraft was launched from Baikonur which is believed to have also been destined for Venus. Unfortunately, a failure occurred and it never made it beyond Earth orbit. This spacecraft was later designated as Cosmos 482. Well, it stayed in that orbit for many years, slowly decaying over time. And this week, it finally re-entered Earth's atmosphere. As the spacecraft was designed to survive its descent through Venus's extreme atmosphere, the capsule might have even survived re-entry, but we just don't know for sure if it did. Determining the exact time and location where the spacecraft re-entered proved to be immensely challenging as there are a number of factors that affected where and how the spacecraft entered the atmosphere. According to Roscosmos, this happened above the Indian Ocean on May 10th at 624 UTC. But the European Space Agency estimated it 8 minutes earlier, meaning that it would have re-entered over Central Asia. But there's also an uncertainty of +/- 22 minutes attached to ESA's estimate. So far, we haven't seen any reports of people witnessing the re-entry, so fortunately, the spacecraft most likely came down far from any populated areas. Next, we had a launch from China. A Changjiang 6A took off from the Taiyuan satellite launch center on March 11th. Its fairing was loaded with three remote-sensing satellites, which were delivered into a polar orbit. According to official statements, the purpose of these satellites is to probe the electromagnetic environment. Reportedly, the launch campaign for the Changjiang 6A has now been shortened to 14 days, clocking the rocket's turnaround record at 22 days since the previous mission on April 19th. A day later, a Changjiang 3C launched from Xichang. The rocket lifted off from the spaceport's launch complex 3 on May 12th at 1809 Universal Time. It carried a single satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit, which, according to official reports, is meant to verify multi-band high-speed satellite communication technology. But that's all we know about this classified satellite. On May 13th, we had two more Starlink missions, the first of which also happened to be the 100th orbital launch attempt of the year. It lifted off from Vandenberg at 115 UTC. Falcon 9's fairing contained 26 Starlink V2 mini-satellites, which were delivered into low-Earth orbit. The booster on this mission was B1088, and it ended the mission by successfully landing on SpaceX's drone ship, of course I still love you. B1088 now has six flights under its belt. A few hours later, the next Starlink mission took off from the Kennedy Space Center at 505 UTC. The mission delivered 28th Starlink V2 mini-satellites into low-Earth orbit. The mission was flown by SpaceX's most experienced booster, B1067, which became the first to fly 28 times, just over 28 days after its previous mission. And there's likely more to come, as it perfectly executed its 28th landing by touching down on the deck of Just Read the Instructions. We had another capsule re-enter this week, but unlike the Venera probe, this one was actually meant to come back to Earth. We also know exactly where it landed on May 14th at 207 UTC. The capsule of VARDA's W3 mission touched down under a parachute at the Kuniba Test Range in South Australia. This was VARDA's third mission, which was launched aboard the Transporter 13 mission in March, and returned just 11 weeks after the previous mission touched down successfully. The company is developing these capsules specifically to return materials from orbit to enable space-based manufacturing. The payload on this mission was an inertial measurement unit or navigation system, provided by the US Air Force to test if it could withstand the re-entry speeds that it was designed for. Back in China, a Chongjiang 2D took to the skies above Zhou Tuan on May 14th. After lifting off at 412 UTC, the rocket carried 12 satellites into a sun-synchronous orbit. The satellites will test on-orbit data processing technologies and inter-satellite laser links. The ultimate goal of this program is to build a constellation to perform initial data processing for other satellites. Traditionally, this would have been done on the ground, but that approach is limited by data link bandwidth with the ground stations. Moving this step to a space-bound data processing system makes the process much more efficient. Later that day, we had another Starlink mission from Florida, with T-Zero occurring at 1638 UTC on May 14th. Falcon 9 lifted off with 28 Starlink V2 minis to add to the constellation. The booster for this mission was B-1090, which flew its fourth mission and successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, a shortfall of Gravitas. And now to Australia for an interesting launch that didn't happen. What did happen was actually kind of weird. The front fell off. So what exactly went down in the land down under? Well, Australian rocket company Gilmore Space had planned to launch the maiden flight of its Aeris rocket this week. This would have been the first orbital launch from Australia since the United Kingdom's last Black Arrow launch in 1971. Gilmore Space got approval from the Australian Space Agency on May 13th, and the company planned to launch the next day. Then a technical issue in the ground support systems delayed the launch by 24 hours, setting it up for May 15th UTC, or May 16th local time. However, Aeris wasn't meant to fly that day. Gilmore performed some final checkouts the night before, and during those procedures, the rocket's fairing accidentally deployed following an electrical fault. This fairing protects the payload during the first minutes of flight and is only meant to deploy once the rocket has left most of Earth's atmosphere behind. Definitely not on the launch pad. Gilmore has since moved Aeris back to the vehicle assembly building, where engineers will fit a new set of fairings, and we assume thoroughly check their staging. The company wants to get to the root of the issue before the next launch attempt, which is now delayed by at least a few weeks. And don't worry, despite the fairing's failure to protect the payload, Gilmore confirmed on social media that the jar of edgemite that served as the mission payload had survived the untimely fairing deployment. And wrapping up the week, there was another Starlink mission launching from Vandenberg. Bet you didn't see that one coming. This time, Falcon 9 carried a batch of 29 V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit, and the mission's booster, B1093, successfully ended its second mission on the deck of Drone Ship, Of Course I Still Love You. In total, we had six Starlink missions this week, and I think that's a record. Including those launched this week, SpaceX has now launched a total of 8,664 Starlink satellites. Of those, 6,676 are now in their operational orbit, and 1,138 have returned back to Earth. Next week is shaping up to be another busy week with spaceflight events expected all around the world. We'll see two Starlink missions, and if the schedule holds, the second of these will mark SpaceX's 15th Starlink flight in a row, following the Bandwagon 3 mission a few weeks ago. Over in New Zealand, Rocket Lab is set to launch another radar satellite for IQPS. India is also planning to launch a radar satellite this week on their PSLV rocket. The current schedule also includes three potential launches from China on three different rockets, a Chang-Jung 7A from Wenchang, a Connecticut 1 from Zhouchuan, and a series 1S from a ship stationed off the coast in the Yellow Sea. SpaceX's CRS-32 cargo mission is also expected to return from the ISS next week. It's currently scheduled to undock from the Harmony Module on May 22nd, and will also be able to launch the Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific off the coast of California. But next week's main event might just be a Starship mission, or so we hope. As you probably know, SpaceX is gearing up for Starship's 9th test flight, having already tested both Ship 35 and Booster 14, the two vehicles flying on that mission. As of recording, the latest hazard notices show that a launch could happen as soon as May 22nd, and if so, that launch will happen in the early evening local time around midnight UTC. Just this week, the FAA confirmed that it had approved the license modifications needed for the rocket's 9th flight. But since the previous flight ended in a mishap, it needed a mishap report. Therefore, Starship's 9th flight won't be able to launch until either the FAA closes out that report, or makes a return to flight determination. Ahead of this 9th flight, both SpaceX and the agency have conducted a short environmental assessment to update airspace closures ahead of launch. These updates come as a result of the failures from flights 7 and 8, which scattered debris over the Caribbean with some even reaching inhabited areas of Turks and Caicos. According to the assessment, the new aircraft hazard area is projected to affect over 175 flights, almost all of them international flights. Document also states that the average expected delay for flights going through that area would be approximately 40 minutes, but it could also be up to two hours. That said, the FAA also agreed that none of these changes would significantly affect the environment, with the highest impact being as a result of a launch anomaly that could scatter debris once again. Diverted flights would also consume more fuel and therefore emit more greenhouse gases, but the scale of this impact would still be minimal. For this reason, the FAA released a finding of no significant impact, or FONZ, stating that the changes to the aircraft hazard area could be integrated into the updated license for Flight 9. So with most of the paperwork out of the way, pending either the Mishap Report being cleared or the return to flight determination being signed, the question is will Starship be ready for flight next week? It's probably worth mentioning that of the paperwork previously mentioned. The FAA said that the Flight 8 Mishap Report wasn't submitted until May 14th, and the FONZ for Flight 9 wasn't signed until May 15th, so that's cutting it close. As for the hardware, well, Ship 35 just completed its minute-long static fire test on Monday, May 12th, and it's been in Mega Bay 2 ever since. If SpaceX wants to launch in the coming days, we'll need to see it roll out soon, otherwise that will also be cutting it close. It probably doesn't help that we've also recently seen an engine leaving Mega Bay 2, which could indicate a change of engine on Ship 35 once again. It's all a little bit confusing, but as always, we'll try to stay on top of this as the events unfold. Also, as always, you can expect even more updates and more analysis about this and other Starship-related events on our next Starbase Update episode. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. We'll be right back. Welcome back. It used to be not completely unheard of to come across a golden dollar coin in the United States. Usually here a buck is a sold green dollar bill, but sometimes the U.S. Mint feels a little fancy and says, "You know what? Let's do something different. Let's do what tons of other countries already do and have a common denomination as a coin. A gold one. So we can try to match Canada's loony. And for some reason, while dollar coins are one-year-old coins or 100-yen coins are extremely popular just about everywhere else in the world, they don't ever seem to catch on for popular use here in the United States. So they've been made basically for funsies as for commemorative reasons at this point. And the latest run of golden U.S. one dollar coins is the American Innovation Series, where each state gets to choose what homegrown innovation they want to celebrate. And there are several states that get something space related on their coins. Texas has an astronaut doing a spacewalk with the ISS in the background in honor of mission control in Houston. And I got to say, it is a pretty darn awesome design. Alabama has the Saturn V on its coin, of course. And Maryland has the Hubble Space Telescope. No love for web? Aw. And just released yesterday was Florida's Golden Dollar coin featuring a space shuttle blasting off with dramatic plumes of smoke all around it. And I should note that the Maryland Hubble coin, the Texas Mission Control coin, and now the Florida Shuttle coin all use the NASA Worm font for their coins, thus proving the Worm's superiority over the meatball once and for all case closed. Hmm. And yes, you can go get the Florida Space Shuttle Dollar coin right now from the U.S. Mint. And it is legal tender, so don't spend it all in one place. [Music] That's it for T-minus for May 16th, 2025 brought to you by N2K CybertraWire. 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 this rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send us an email at space@n2k.com We're privileged that N2K CybertraWire 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 Elliott Peltzman and Tre Hester with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
