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Today is July 25th, 2025. I'm Alice Carruth and this is T-minus. Aereroenvironment has unveiled a potential future mission concept for a next-generation Mars helicopter developed with NASA's JPL. Blue Origin has signed an agreement with Scout Space to integrate one of its space domain awareness, our sensors, on board the first mission of Blue Ring. Cascade Space has raised $5.9 million in seed funding. The ISS and the Luxembourg government are planning to develop a second satellite for GovSat, a Russian Soyuz rocket launched an Iranian-built communications satellite to Earth orbit. And coming up after today's headlines, our partners at nasaspaceflight.com will be sharing the Space Traffic Report. They'll be wrapping up the launch stories from the last seven days and taking a look at what's on the schedule for the coming week. Happy Friday everyone! Let's dive into today's Intel Briefing, shall we? A Russian rocket launched an Iranian-designed and built communications satellite earlier today. Iranian state television announced that the Nahid-2 communications satellite was launched from Russia's Vostostnyi Cosmodrome using a Soyuz rocket. The satellite was commissioned by the Iranian Space Agency and developed in collaboration with the Iranian Space Research Centre. The Nahid-2 is designed to remain in orbit for five years and is reportedly equipped with a propulsion system capable of adjusting its altitude by up to 50 kilometres. The launch was announced shortly before nuclear talks between Iran and Britain, France and Germany began in Istanbul. The Soyuz 2.1B rocket also carried Russia's IonaSphere M3 and M4 satellites towards Earth orbit along with around 17 other payloads. The first two IonaSphere M satellites were launched late last year. The two new spacecraft will complete the constellation, which is designed to monitor space-worth phenomena such as the impact of solar wind on near Earth which can affect civilian and military systems. The 17 smaller payloads are thought to be Russian-built CubeSats that will conduct remote sensing and other work in orbit. SES and the Luxembourg government are planning to develop a second satellite for GovSat. GovSat, also known as Luxe GovSat SA, is the public-private partnership and 50/50 joint venture between SES and the Luxembourg government that provide satellite communication services for governments. GovSat 2 will be positioned over the European satellite arc. The new satellite will extend the coverage and scale of the first GovSat and is designed to address the needs of defence users at the highest security and service assurance level. The satellite will add new ultra-high frequency channels, ex-and military KA-band and will include other security features such as dedicated hardening, an advanced anti-jamming system and embedded geo-location. The satellite will be co-funded by SES and the Luxembourg government and is still subject to approval of the corresponding draft law by Parliament. It will be built by Talis Elania Space on its Spacebus 4000 B2 platform. Staying with satellite communications, Cascade Space has raised $5.9 million in seed funding. The company is building a platform for design, test and operation for space communication systems. The funding will accelerate the development of the company's platform for a communication system called Cascade Portal. Cascade recently released the Spacelink Python Library open source. This library contains functions for a communication system analysis that's used on the Cascade Portal implementation. Blue Origin has signed an agreement with Scout Space to integrate one of its space domain awareness, our sensors, on board the first mission of Blue Ring. Blue Ring is a multi-mission, multi-destination vehicle providing full service payload delivery, hosting and end-to-end mission operations. Scout's OWL sensor is designed to enhance real-time tracking, characterization and assessment of space objects by integrating advanced optical sensing, on-board artificial intelligence-driven processing and autonomous decision-making capabilities. It's aiming to deliver domain-wide intelligence in space in support of the US Space Forces Space Control Mission set. Blue Ring's first mission is expected to launch in spring 2026 with initial injection into geostationary transfer orbit and additional services performed in geostationary orbit. Air Environment has unveiled a potential future mission concept for its next-generation Mars helicopters developed with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. Known as Skyfall, the vehicle is designed to help pave the way for human landing on Mars through autonomous and aerial exploration. The concept is heavily focused on rapidly delivering an affordable, technically mature solution for expanded Mars exploration that would be ready for launch by 2028. The Skyfall helicopter is designed to deploy six Scout helicopters on the Red Planet, where they would explore many of the sites selected by NASA and industry as top candidate landing sites for America's first Martian astronauts. Go and check out the concept images by following the link in my show notes. That wraps up today's Intel Briefing. This is when I get to drag our producer Liz Dokes into the studio to ask what other stories we're watching today. Liz, no kicking and screaming, okay? I would never do that. I'll happily be dragged in to let the T-minus crew know where to find all the links. And speaking of which, you can find the links to all the original sources of the stories mentioned throughout the show in the show notes. Today, we've included a few extra stories that we're keeping an eye on. Vega-C is due to lift off on the VV-27 mission. Millennium space systems have started commissioning of NASA's Tracers mission. Satellite tracker Space Flux has received 5 million pounds in funding, and Cytus Space has unveiled a new satellite called Lunar Lizzie. And I promise it's not named after me. Are you sure, Lizzie? Where can we find all those show notes? They're available on all good podcast platforms and on our website, space.ntuk.com. Thanks for that. 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. Tomorrow, we'll have a chat with Yulanda Aruyami talking about Omman's Etlat spaceport. Check it out while you're at the gym catching up on errands or simply unwinding from the work week. You don't want to miss it. I'll hand you over now to our partners at nasaspaceflight.com. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T-minus Space. We started off the week with the Starlink Group 17-3 mission on board a Falcon 9. Lift-off took place on July 19 at 353 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The rocket was carrying 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites into sun synchronous orbit. The mission was the second operational launch of Starlink V2 mini satellites into a polar orbit and should allow increased coverage and speeds to Starlink users in higher latitudes. The first stage booster for this mission, B-1082, was flying for a 14th time and had successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, of course I still love you. Going to the east coast of the United States, another Falcon 9 lifted off with more internet satellites, but it wasn't Starlink this time. Falcon 9 took to the skies on July 22 at 2112 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida carrying two O3B M-Power satellites into medium-Earth orbit. The O3B M-Power satellites are internet satellites built by Boeing and operated by Luxembourg-based SES. These are the second generation of the company's O3B constellation, having previously launched 20 of these first-generation satellites between 2013 and 2019. These were the ninth and tenth of these improved O3B satellites, which started deployment back in 2022. The constellation was originally supposed to have 11 of these and this mission was in fact supposed to have carried the ninth, tenth, and eleventh satellites. However, issues with the electrical systems on the first four satellites forced SES to order another extra pair of these satellites from Boeing. So that meant changing the launch plans and only launching two on this mission, just like on the previous four. The next mission, scheduled for 2026, should hopefully be the last and will be carrying the last three satellites needed for SES to complete the constellation. It'll be interesting to see if, after this is completed, the company will choose a low-Earth orbit constellation as its successor, or whether they'll stick with the constellation in medium-Earth orbit. For this mission, SpaceX used booster B-1090, which was flying for a sixth time. Despite being young, the booster successfully made it back to Earth, landing on SpaceX's drone ship just read the instructions. After that, we headed back to Vandenberg for the third and final Falcon 9 launch of the week. Lift-off took place on July 23 at 1813 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Falcon 9 was carrying NASA's Tracer's mission, along with eight other ride shares, into Sun synchronous orbit. Tracers, which stands for Tandem Reconnection and CUSP Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, are actually two satellites in one single mission. The satellites are meant to orbit one after the other in the same orbit around Earth, measuring magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection is a physical process that occurs on Earth's own magnetic field when the solar wind interacts with it, modifying its shape and causing magnetic lines to disconnect and reconnect. Large flares, for example, can trigger a discharge of charged particles down to Earth's atmosphere, creating not just beautiful auroras, but also issues with our own electrical systems here on the ground. Thanks to their near-polar orbit, the two spacecraft will be able to measure these discharges in tandem as they travel close to the Earth's magnetic poles. The mission is led by David Miles from the University of Iowa, which was also the home university of famed physicist James Van Allen. He's the one that the Van Allen belts are named after. Alongside tracers were also eight other ride shares, some of them also by NASA. One of them, called REEAL, which stands for Realistic Electron Atmospheric Loss, is related very closely to tracers. REEAL is set to study the loss of particles from the Van Allen radiation belts as it's able to detect protons and electrons being discharged into our atmosphere. Another payload, called BARD, was built by York Space Systems and carries the Polylingual Experimental Terminal, or PECST. The terminal is designed to enable interoperability between government and commercial satellite relay networks as part of NASA's efforts to move to commercial communication systems. The other payloads on board were NOVAWARKS Athena, Tyvex-Lide spacecraft, and four spacecraft as part of the Skycraft 4 constellation. The launch was originally scheduled to launch on July 22, but it had to be aborted less than a minute from liftoff. The reason had to do with a power outage in Santa Barbara, which disrupted telecommunications at the FAA's Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center, which manages air traffic control over the Pacific Ocean. This forced the FAA to postpone the launch in order to ensure the safety of the public. Thankfully, the launch occurred the next day without a hitch, and we were able to see booster B-1081 returning back to Earth for a sixteenth time, at SpaceX's landing zone 4. To wrap up the week, we had the launch of a Soyuz 2.1B from Vistachny, carrying a multi-payload mission. Liftoff took place on July 25 at 554 UTC from Site 1S at the Vistachny Cosmodrome in Russia. The rocket was carrying two Ionospheric M satellites and 18 other rideshares into Sun synchronous orbit. These were the third and fourth Ionospheric M satellites to be launched following the launch of the first pair in November of last year. This constellation of four satellites is set to measure the Earth's ionosphere and magnetosphere with an array of eight instruments, which includes four different types of spectrometers, as well as particle detectors and magnetometers. Along for the ride were 18 different satellites, with one of them being an experimental Iranian communications satellite. Going into next week, we'll have a week packed with activity. For starters, we've got up to four Starlink missions, two from Florida and two from Vandenberg. On top of that, we've got the fifth flight of the European Vegas sea rocket from French Guiana. The mission, set to launch as soon as this weekend, will be carrying two missions in one single launch for CNES, the French Space Agency. One of the missions, the Constellation Optique in 3D, also known as CO3D, consists of four Earth observation satellites, which will map Earth's surface in great detail in order to create 3D maps of the globe. The other mission is a single small satellite riding along called microcarb and is set to map where carbon dioxide is created and absorbed on Earth at a global scale. Next week on July 30, we're also expecting the launch of a GSLV Mk.2 from India, carrying the NISAR spacecraft. NISAR, which stands for NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, is an Earth observation satellite born of a collaboration between the American and Indian space agencies. Several of the satellite systems have been provided by NASA, while ISRO is the one launching the mission and provided the satellite bus, as well as some of the instruments. Next week, we're also hoping to see Australian company Gilmore Space finally attempting its maiden launch of its AERUS rocket, which had to be delayed from a July 16 debut to July 26. Let's hope that this one is the final attempt. And it's not just Starlink that SpaceX will be launching next week, as the company is also aiming to fly its next human spaceflight mission, Crew-11. The mission is currently set to launch no earlier than July 31 at 1609 UTC from Launch Complex 39A in Florida. It'll be SpaceX's 11th crew rotation mission to the International Space Station and will feature the sixth flight of Crew Dragon Endeavour, the most flights of any Dragon capsule to date. Teams are currently preparing the launch pad and hardware for that mission. The transporter-erector at LC-39A rolled back to the hangar this Thursday, and Endeavour was transported from mating to its rocket. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Michael Fink will serve as commander and pilot for this mission. Both of them will be accompanied by mission specialists and JAXA astronaut Kimia Yuwi and mission specialists and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platinov. Next week we may also have a few launches from China, including the return to flight for the Hyperbola-1 rocket, as well as the launch of another batch of Gwo Wong internet satellites. There's also the potential for the launch of a haste mission from Wallops, Virginia, carrying a secretive hypersonic payload. As always, a lot of these dates and missions can change over time, so we recommend that you check nextspaceflight.com for the latest updates or download the app to your phone. 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. Ever wondered what it's like to pop a bottle of champagne in microgravity? French champagne house Mum has done just that. Launching Mum Cordon Rouge Stella, the first champagne crafted for spaceflight, designed with a high-tech bottle and specially developed wine blend. This bubbly isn't just for toasting milestones on Earth, it's now part of celebrating humanity's push into orbit. Why does it matter? Because even in space, culture and connection follow us. The Mum team worked with space agencies and experts to ensure that astronauts and one-day space tourists can safely sip champagne while floating in zero gravity. From a space tech perspective, it's a small but intriguing innovation, merging tradition with a future of space exploration and commercialization. As more private companies aim for low Earth orbit and beyond, Mum's cosmic champagne reminds us that space is becoming a place not just for work, but for life. So whether it's sealing a successful mission or just marking a stellar moment, cheers to sipping among the stars. And that's it for T-Minus Space. And that's it for T-Minus, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. We're conducting our annual audience survey to learn more about our listeners. We're collecting your insights until August 31st. There's a link in the show notes, so please fill it out for us. We're proud 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 helps space and cybersecurity professionals grow, learn and stay informed. As the nexus for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, technology and ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how at N2K.com. N2K's 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. Maria Varmazis is our host and she'll be back on the air next Tuesday. And I'm senior producer Alice Carruth. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
