[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is August 1st, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 22nd to L-O-N, T-dred. Open aboard. Right side. [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] Five. NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland is seeking proposals for the use of its historic aircraft hangar. The US Space Force has approved the operational acceptance of a milestone upgrade to the ground-based optical sensor system at White Sands Missile Range. IceSpace has entered an agreement with Bridgestone Corporation to advance the application of their tires for lunar rovers. EchoStar has selected MDA Space as the prime contractor for a directed device satellite constellation. NASA SpaceX Crew 11 are heading to the International Space Station. [MUSIC PLAYING] And on Fridays, our partners at nasaspaceflight.com bring us the Space Traffic Report. There's lots to go over from the last seven days, and we have a lot on schedule for the coming week. So stick around to hear more about that after today's Intel briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Friday and happy August. Thanks for joining me. It was the second time around for NASA's SpaceX Crew 11, who finally launched on their mission to the International Space Station earlier today. After yesterday's last-minute scrub due to unfavorable weather conditions, Crew 11 is finally in orbit and heading to the orbiting lab to start Expedition 73. NASA astronauts Zina Cardman and Mike Finke, along with JAXA astronaut Kimia Huey and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Oleg Platinov, are all smiles following the launch from Kennedy Space Center, and they're due to dock with the Space Station on Sunday. Among the crowd-sharing them on were acting NASA Administrator Shondufi and his Russian counterpart, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakunov. And they held a meeting ahead of the launch attempt yesterday. It was the first in-person meeting between the top NASA and Russian Space Agency heads in eight years. Russia's Task News Agency reported that Bakunov said, the conversation went very well. And they agreed to continue using the ISS until 2028, and they would work on the de-orbiting process until 2030. Bakunov is expected to participate in the post-launch press conference, which is scheduled for the time that we are recording today's show right now. So we will bring you more on that in the next week. EchoStar Corporation has selected MDA Space as the prime contractor for a new non-terrestrial low-Earth orbit direct-to-device satellite constellation. And with this contract, MDA Space is on track to begin volume manufacturing of the world's first three GPP 5G-compliant non-terrestrial network using Leo satellites. The initial contract is valued at approximately $1.3 billion and includes the design, manufacturing, and testing of over 100 software-defined NDA Aurora D2D satellites. The contract comes with options for a full initial configuration of a network of over 200 satellites, which would increase the approximate total value to $2.5 billion. The constellation will be fully compliant with the newly created non-terrestrial network and three GPP standards, allowing EchoStar to provide messaging, voice, and broadband data and video services upon launch to all phones configured to the standard without modifications. Delivery of satellites is planned for 2028 with commercial service starting in 2029. Let's head on over to Japan now. And iSpace has entered into an agreement with Bridgestone Corporation. Bridgestone is developing tires for lunar rovers, and the new partnership aims to advance the practical application of the tires. iSpace will collaborate with Bridgestone to enhance the performance of its small and medium-sized lunar rovers by equipping them with Bridgestone's tires. iSpace is currently developing prototypes of the rovers, featuring lunar surface exploration capabilities, including high-resolution video and data capture functions, as well as a design that prioritizes functionality, despite their compact size, for use in lunar water resource utilization. Both companies plan to assess the feasibility of the technologies and business opportunities on the lunar surface and aim for the practical application of these tires as early as 2029. The US Space Force has approved the operational acceptance of a milestone upgrade to the ground-based optical sensor system known as G-BOSS at White Sands Missile Range. The G-BOSS at the ground-based electro-optical deep space surveillance site in New Mexico was the first to go through final testing, and now USSF is in the integrated testing phase of an upgrade to its ground-based electro-optical deep space surveillance site in Maui, which will upgrade to G-BOSS upon operational acceptance. The Space Force continues to invest in capabilities like G-BOSS to advance space domain awareness. It offers capabilities that provide timely, relevant, and actionable understanding of the operational environment that allows military forces to plan, integrate, execute, and assess space operations. G-BOSS improves on the USSF's ability to map the space operating environment for guardians to conduct defensive and offensive operations in response to threats and close, protect, and defend kill chains. NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland is seeking proposals for the use of its historic aircraft hangar, along with a parking lot, tarmac, and a small neighboring office building. And the hangar, formerly known as the Flight Research Building, is available for lease by signing a National Historic Preservation Act Agreement for a 10-year base period and two optional five-year extensions. The property available for lease includes up to 6.7 acres of land. Proceeds from this lease will be used to maintain Glenn facilities and infrastructure. If you're interested, proposals are due by 1 PM Eastern time on November 28. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] And you can find links to that call for proposals in the selected reading of our show notes. And UK senior producer, Alice Carruth, joins us now with the other stories that we've added in today. Alice? Thanks, Maria. We've included two launch announcements that our friends at NSF will be talking about in the Space Traffic Report. New Shepard's NS-34 is due to lift off on Sunday and Rocket Lab is due to launch a fifth electron mission for IQPS on August the 5th. And those links can also be found on our website, space.n2k.com. Alice, do you want to introduce our deep space for this weekend? Sure. Hey, Team Minus Crew, tuning in tomorrow for Team 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, I'll be talking to Wendy Lawrence about her career as a former NASA astronaut and her support for STEM outreach in the future space workforce. Check it out while you're gardening, hitting the gym, or simply getting over the shock that we're already in the month of August. How on Earth did that happen? You don't want to miss it. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] And as always, on Fridays, we have our partners at nasaspaceflight.com giving us the Space Traffic Report. I'll hand you over to NSF now. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for Team Minus Space. It was a busy week with launches all over the world, starting off on July 26 with a Vegas sea launch from French Guiana. The rocket ignited its solid first stage and jumped off the pad at Europe Space Port at 203 UTC, carrying a total of five satellites to space. One of the payloads was the microcarb satellite, a joint mission between the UK Space Agency and the French Space Agency CNES. From its perch and sunsynchronous orbit, it'll map carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, studying how greenhouse gas is emitted and absorbed across the world. With microcarb, the agencies want to learn more about the CO2 released by human activities and how much of it is absorbed by natural sinks like forests and oceans. The other four satellites on this launch were also for CNES, specifically for the agency's CO3D mission. The satellites will observe our planet's surface in three dimensions for both military and civilian purposes. What's special about these satellites is that they're built by airbus based on a satellite bus derived from the OneWeb internet satellites. One of the satellites is also equipped with a system to test optical laser communications for sending data back to Earth. Later that day, at 9/01 Universal Time, a Falcon 9 lifted off from Florida, carrying 28 Starlink V2 mini-satellites into low Earth orbit. The mission was flown by booster B1078. It wrapped up its 22nd flight by successfully touching down on SpaceX's drone ship a shortfall of Gravitas. The next day, another Starlink mission took off, but this time from California. Though the mission was labeled 17-2, this was actually the third batch of 24 satellites, Starlink Group 17. SpaceX doesn't seem to launch those missions in order. Booster B1075 flew this mission on its 19th flight, which ended successfully by landing on the deck of, of course, I still love you. Over in China, we had a Chongjiang 6A launching internet satellites from the Taiwan Satellite Launch Center. Lifting off on July 27 at 10.03, the rocket carried five satellites into polar orbit, which joined the Gouwan constellation, also known as SatNet. So far, we've only seen a handful of launches for this constellation, but it's supposed to grow to a true mega constellation with around 13,000 satellites. On July 29, a Hyperbola 1 rocket lifted off from Zhouchuan at 411 UTC. This marked the return to flight for this rocket just over a year after its last failure. Hyperbola 1 is developed by Chinese company iSpace with a capital S not to be confused with Japanese lunar exploration company iSpace, all lowercase. For this launch, the rocket carried the third satellite for the Kuan Pung constellation of commercial Earth observation satellites. The flight went without issue, giving the Hyperbola 1 a success rate of 50% over eight launches. Next up, we had the long anticipated launch of the first Australian built orbital rocket. It ignited its four hybrid engines at the Bowen Orbital spaceport in Australia on July 29 at 2235 UTC before slowly climbing and clearing the tower. But that's about all that it achieved. Shortly after ignition, one of the first-stage engines shut off and the rocket started moving sideways. Not too long after, it lost even more power and dropped to the ground after 14 seconds of flight. Later in the week, Gilmore posted on social media that it had recovered the rocket's payload from the rubble, a jar of Vegemite. It looks a bit battered, but the company believes that it's serviceable and reported that the payload is safe. Regardless of the outcome, the launch marked an exciting return to orbital launches from the country. And this time, with a homegrown rocket. As a parody account put it on social media, like your first time reversing a trailer, you're not supposed to nail it the first go. So here's to hoping that AERUS Test Flight 2 will go much farther. Next, we head back to the US for another Starlink mission. On July 30 at 337 Universal Time, Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying another 28 Starlink V2 minis. SpaceX used booster B1069 for this flight on its 26th mission. And after going to Space and back, it successfully landed on the deck of Just Read the Instructions. In China, a Changjiang 8A launched the second sat-net mission of the week on July 30. The rocket lifted off from the commercial side of Wenchang at 749 UTC, adding nine satellites to the constellation. Later that day, we also had a launch from India. A GSLV took to the skies above the Satish Devon Space Center to launch the NISAR satellite. NISAR is short for NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar. And as the name suggests, this joint mission will study our planet with its radar instrument. The satellite will map our planet's surface and measure changes down to a centimeter using two frequency ranges for its SAR observations. ISRO developed an instrument to use the S band at a 10 centimeter wavelength, which is sensitive to moisture and light vegetation among others. This helps the instrument to study agriculture, changes in soil moisture, and even vegetation growth. NASA also provided an instrument using the L band at 24 centimeter wavelength. It's sensitive to larger features and will be used to study changes in land and ice. And its signal can also penetrate deeper into vegetation. NASA plans to operate this instrument for three years, while ISRO wants to operate its instrument for five. But first, NISAR awaits a 90 day commissioning phase, which includes the deployment of its large reflector. Back in China, a Kwai-Jhe 1A from the company X-PACE lifted off from Shichang on July 31 at 2 o'clock universal time. Encapsulated in its fairing was a Chinese-built Earth observation satellite for Pakistan's National Space Agency, known as the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission, or SUPARCO. Reportedly, the satellite will be used for land surveys and disaster prevention and mitigation. Closing out the month of July, we had one more Starlink launch from California, which lifted 19 Starlink V2 mini satellites into a sun synchronous orbit. That number is a bit low for what we're used to. And since the previous Group 13 mission carried two classified payloads, it's possible that this flight also includes some satellites that SpaceX didn't tell us about. The booster for this mission was B-1071, which flew for the 27th time and became the second to do so. It landed successfully on SpaceX's drone ship, of course, I still love you, which was stationed downrange in the Pacific. The four Starlink missions this week added 99 satellites to the constellation, bringing the total launch up to 9,336. Of these, 1,240 have returned back to Earth, and 7,040 are currently in their operational orbits. And if you like numbers, here are a few more. Throughout the month of July, we saw 24 launches. As always, SpaceX led the pack with 13 Falcon 9 launches, including the rocket's 500th. China followed with six successful missions, and the month's single failure was the aforementioned ARIS launch, which also added a new launch operator country to Alex's spreadsheet, Australia. Closing out the week, we had the launch of SpaceX's Crew 11 mission to the International Space Station. The mission had been scheduled for a day earlier, but at just one minute to launch, it scrubbed for weather. It finally lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on August 1st at 11.43 a.m. Crew Dragon Endeavour carried a crew of four up to the ISS, commanded by rookie NASA astronaut, Zeena Cardman. The pilot of the mission is NASA astronaut, Mike Fink, who is now on his fourth mission. The mission specialists are Kimya Yui of Japan, flying to space for his second time, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platanov on his first mission. The four are set to arrive at the station on August 2nd. SpaceX used booster B1094 for this mission, which flew for the third time and landed successfully at landing zone one. The company announced that this was the final landing on this pad, as the lease will soon expire. Next week, we'll have even more launches for internet constellations. Currently, there are two Starlink missions scheduled, one from Florida and one from California. Falcon 9 is also set to launch its second mission for Amazon's Kuiper constellation from Florida. And it looks like we'll also have another launch for China's sat-night constellation, this time atop a Changjiang-12 from Wenchang. From New Zealand, we'll have an electron launch carrying up an Earth observation satellite for Japanese company IQPS. We'll also have some crew operations next week. Blue Origin's New Shepherd is scheduled to lift off from West Texas, carrying six passengers to just over the Karman Line. Among them is the winning bidder for the rocket's first human mission in 2021, who missed the flight due to a scheduling conflict. Over on the ISS, Crew Dragon Endurance is also set to undock on August 6th, returning the Crew 10 astronauts back to Earth. As always, things might change, so keep an eye on our next Space Flight app and website for the latest updates. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. (upbeat music) We'll be right back. Welcome back. You know, it's Friday and I know I need a nice quiet weekend. And listen, I know many of you all listen to this show specifically to get away from a lot of the chaos of the political realm right now that is basically inescapable otherwise. And we do try our best here to do just that. Sometimes there's a story that we see over and over and purposely just do not wanna touch it with a 10-foot pole because it has partisan political rank or written all over it. Location of Space Force HQ for one thing, it makes us go, "Do we gotta, "do we really gotta wait into this?" Yes, sometimes we gotta. Here's one recent example. The home of the space shuttle Discovery. Yes, it has been happily in the Smithsonian's ownership in the Washington, DC area since 2011. After NASA decommissioned it officially and the Smithsonian asserts, NASA signed all rights to the Discovery specifically to the Smithsonian's care. The update to all this is from this past July when President Trump's big beautiful bill, he may have heard of it, got signed into law. Neatly included in the reams and reams of pages of that bill was the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act" written by the two senators from Texas, Cornan and Cruz, who as it says on the tin, have provisioned $85 million to bring the Discovery to where they say she truly belongs, which would be the NASA Johnson Space Center or JSC in Houston. And as you can imagine, Texas government officials, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said, "It's long overdue for a retired NASA space shuttle "to rest at Houston's Johnson Space Center "so Texans can see, learn from, "and enjoy it for generations." And to be fair, think of the massive role that JSC plays in all things NASA, especially regarding human space flight and of course the space shuttles. When NASA decommissioned four shuttles at the end of the shuttle program, the Smithsonian and DC got Discovery, Kennedy Space Center in Florida got Atlantis, Cal Science and LA got the Endeavour, and the Intrepid Museum in New York City got the Enterprise, which was a training model and never went to space, but nothing for Houston. Now it has the independence, which to quote Monty Python, it's only a model. Understandably though, not getting the real deal felt like quite a snub. So here we are, more than a decade later, and this has not been forgotten. And so right now, even with the big beautiful Bales passage, the question is, can you just take the shuttle from the Smithsonian? And that's logistical questions aside because those are not minor in the slightest moving a space shuttle short distances, let alone across the country. But the legality of all this is unfortunately not super clear because of the Smithsonian's unique relationship to the United States government. The Smithsonian says that there is no way the shuttle can just be taken, and certainly other US legislators feel the same. Here's some commentary from Illinois Senator Dick Durbin about this potential move, and he said this, "One of the states that lost in that competition 12 years ago has come up with a new idea. Let's do it over again and make sure Texas wins. This is not a transfer, it's a heist, a heist by Texas because they lost the competition 12 years ago." Now, the big beautiful bill says that the move of an unnamed space vehicle is to happen by January, 2027. It is anyone's guess right now if that'll actually happen, or if it does, if it'll even be discovery. Yeah, goodness, what a mess when a space shuttle becomes a political football. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) And that's T-minus brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. We'd love to know what you think of our podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep 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 and the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. 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 next is for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, the technology, and the ideas, shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how at n2k.com. N2K 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'm your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. (upbeat music) - T minus. 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