Today is May 28, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. T-minus. Twenty seconds to L-O-I, T-minus. Go for the floor. China says pre-launch preparations are progressing smoothly. Ahead of the launch of the asteroid-probing mission, Tianwen-2. The European Space Agency has put out a call to the scientific community to select regions of interest on the moon. Sierra Space has been awarded a NASA contract to study the use of the company's expandable space station technology on the moon. Rocket Lab to acquire payload development and manufacturing company Geost, for $275 million. SpaceX's Starship Test Flight #9 fails to meet its mission objectives. [Music] Happy hump day everybody. You are anything like the T-minus team, then you're slowly coming down from last night's excitement. And if you don't know what I'm referring to then, well, stick with me. SpaceX's Starship launched for its ninth test flight from Starbase in Texas, just after 6.30pm local time last night. The launch had many objectives, and unfortunately not all were met, but they did demonstrate the first reuse of a super heavy booster. The booster itself performed a full-duration ascent burn with all 33 of its Raptor engines and separated from Starship's upper stage in a hot staging maneuver. It looked like all was going to plan. During separation, Super Heavy performed the first deterministic flip followed by its boost back burn, and it also demonstrated its ability to fly at a higher angle of attack during its descent back to Earth. Then when the booster ignited its engines ahead of its designated splashdown area, it experienced what they call a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Yep, yet another explosion in the Gulf. So then the attention went back to Starship. It made it to its suborbital trajectory to cheers from the team at Starbase and Mission Control Hawthorne. Next up was its planned payload deployment. However, things continued to go... off-nominal. Starship's payload Baydoor was unable to open, which prevented the deployment of the eight Starlink simulator satellites. The flight continued, but later an attitude control error resulted in bypassing the Raptor relight and prevented Starship from getting into the intended position for re-entry. Starship then went through an automated saving process to vent the remaining pressure to place the vehicle in the safest condition for re-entry. Contact with Starship was lost approximately 46 minutes into the flight. All debris was expected to fall within the planned hazard area in the Indian Ocean. So, what does this all mean for SpaceX? Well, they say the failed mission objectives are all part of their plan. They collected a ton of data from the flight, which will give them the information they need to adjust and go at it again. SpaceX says, and I quote, "developmental testing by definition is unpredictable, but every lesson learned marks progress towards Starship's goal of enabling life to become multi-planetary." For sure, they will wrap up the Mishap Report as quickly as they possibly can, and we'll see Test Flight 10, no doubt, in the coming weeks. Rocket Lab has agreed to acquire the parent holding company of Geost. Geost is an Arizona-based electro-optical and infrared payload development and manufacturing company and provider to high priority national security satellites. Geost's offering include electro-optical and infrared sensor systems for missile warning and tracking, tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, Earth observation, and space domain awareness. Rocket Lab has agreed to the acquisition from Lightridge Solutions, a portfolio company of ATL partners, for $270 million in a mix of $125 million of cash and $150 million in privately placed shares of Rocket Lab common stock, plus up to $50 million in potential additional cash-earned-out payments tied to revenue targets. The acquisition marks Rocket Lab's formal entry into the satellite payload segment and is expected to close in the second half of 2025. Sierra Space has been awarded a NASA contract to study the use of the company's expandable space station technology on the moon. The purpose of this contract will be to ultimately develop innovative solutions for lunar surface logistics and mobility, supporting NASA's moon-to-mars architecture. The contract, which is under the Next Step 2 Appendix R for Lunar Logistics and Mobility Studies, includes everything from the potential use of Sierra Space's inflatable life habitat technology for tunnels around a moon base, to tracking and storage of goods on the moon, as well as integration of the entire framework for habitation on the lunar surface. And staying with the moon, the European Space Agency has put out a call to the scientific community to select regions of interest on the lunar surface. ESA is asking the European Scientific Community to provide evidence regarding the locations which might offer the greatest opportunities for scientific research, or that address fundamental questions. ESA is establishing a roadmap for the future of exploration and is looking for projects that are enabled by access to the lunar surface using European lunar surface infrastructure to be established from 2030. More details about the call can be found by following the link in our show notes. And heading over to China now, China says pre-launch preparations are progressing smoothly ahead of the launch of the asteroid-proving mission Tianwen-2. The mission is set to launch on Thursday and will conduct multiple deep-space tasks in a single launch, including a flyby and sample return mission to near-Earth asteroid 2016 H03, as well as a flyby investigation of the main belt Comet 311P. Tianwen-2's observations are expected to fill critical gaps in current knowledge about the physical structure, composition, and evolutionary mechanisms of small solar system bodies. The mission will span an operational period of nine and a half years and will target asteroid 2016 H03, referred to as Earth's quasi-satellite, due to its stable orbit near our planet. Researchers hope to gain new insights into the composition and evolution of early solar system bodies from samples they plan to retrieve from its surface. Following the sample return phase, the spacecraft will continue to study Comet 311P, which resides in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. 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 will help other space professionals like you find the show and join the T-minus crew. Thank you, we really appreciate it. Stay with us for the latest update on the NASA EZ mission. Is it ever going to be easy? [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. NASA launched the Electrojet Zeman Imaging Explorer, otherwise known as EZ aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in March of 2025 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission is now cleared to begin its 16-month-long scientific investigation after successfully collecting first light measurements and completing initial checkups. So, it's going to be doing something involving a rural electrojet. So, what exactly are a rural electrojet? Well, they are intense electric currents that flow high above Earth's polar regions when auroras light up the sky. They're produced during geomagnetic storms caused by solar activity, releasing bursts of energetic particles into Earth's upper atmosphere. And while they create beautiful auroras, they can also impact navigation and communication systems as we've well seen before, as well as ground-based infrastructure like power grids. The EZ mission is the first space mission dedicated to studying the magnetic footprint of the auroral electrojets. And by analyzing these magnetic fields, scientists hope to solve decades-old questions about the structure and evolution of the electrojets. And this knowledge is essential for our understanding about how space weather can impact humans and our technology from creating vivid auroras to triggering power outages or endangering astronauts. The EZ mission itself uses three CubeSats. These satellites are flying in a pearls-on-a-string configuration, following each other over the same spot about two to ten minutes apart. As they orbit from pole to pole approximately 370 miles above our Earth's surface, each satellite uses four dishes, pointed at different angles, to measure magnetic fields created by the electrojets. The data from EZ also sheds light on other magnetized planets, such as Saturn and Jupiter, and strengthens our understanding of planets in the solar system and beyond. Isn't space science just amazing? That's it for T-minus from May 28th, 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. 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 for 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 are mixed by Elliott Peltzman and Tre Hester, with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpey is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
