[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is August 8, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 22nd to LOS, T-dred. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] Five. Voyager Technologies has acquired software developer electromagnetic systems. Four. Rocket Lab, GlobalStar, and Carmen Space and Defense have reported second quarter financial results. Three. Rocket Lab has completed the systems integration review for the US Space Force's Victus Hayes mission. Two. China has conducted its first test of a lunar lander that they plan to use to take humans to the moon. One. Vision Space Technologies has demonstrated software vulnerability exploits on satellites, as well as on the ground stations that control them. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] And it is Friday. Hooray! And our partners at nasaspaceflight.com will be bringing us the Space Trafford report after today's headlines. They'll be wrapping up the launch news from the last seven days and taking a look at what's to come in the week ahead. Don't miss it. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] You made it to Friday, everybody. Congratulations. In the meantime, let's get into our daily briefing. Our top story comes from the world of space cybersecurity, because right now it is a very special time in Las Vegas for cybersecurity professionals. It's affectionately known as Hacker Summer Camp, a mega-week of professional conferences in Las Vegas, including major events like Black Hat and Def Con, where researchers often share key findings from their work. This year's Black Hat conference included a major finding in the realm of space cybersecurity from researchers at Vision Space Technologies, according to a new piece from the register. The researchers found a number of vulnerabilities, some rated critical, and a number of software that is heavily used in the space industry on board satellites, as well as in ground stations. And those include CryptoLiv, YAMS, OpenC3 Cosmos, and NASA's core flight system Aquila. During their Black Hat presentation, the Vision Space researchers simulated being able to send an unauthorized command to fire a satellite's thrusters and immediately change its course. Another vulnerability that they found, when exploited using an unauthenticated telephone, could completely crash a satellite's onboard software, forcing it to reboot and in some cases fully reset. Vision Space showed that other flaws that they discovered in space flight system software allowed for remote code executions, denial of service attacks, credential leakage, cross-site scripting attacks, or even granted full code execution permissions. It is crucial to note here that the researchers responsibly disclosed these vulnerabilities with the software owners and the vulnerabilities have subsequently been remediated prior to the Black Hat presentation. In plain language, there are fixes for all of these problems. And we will have links to the full research posts from Vision Space in the show notes for you, which includes more detail on their research, along with the specific CVEs for these vulnerabilities if that is information that you need. Moving on now, and China has conducted its first test of a lunar lander that they plan to use to take humans to the moon. China's manned space agency says, "The test involved multiple operational conditions, a lengthy testing period, and high technical complexity, making it a critical milestone in the development of China's manned lunar exploration program. The lander's ascent and descent systems were tested at a site in Hebei province that was designed to simulate the moon's surface. The lunar lander known as Lan Yue, which translates to "embrace the moon," will be used to transport astronauts between the lunar orbit and the moon's surface. The agency says it will also serve as a living space, power source, and data center after they land on the moon. Rocket Lab has completed the systems integration review for the US Space Force's Victus Hayes mission. Victus Hayes is part of the Space Systems Command's Tactically Response Space Program, led by Space Safari, in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit. The review, although only announced yesterday, was actually completed in May, and marked a critical program milestone confirming that all spacecraft components, systems, and software were ready for final integration and testing. It followed Rocket Lab's successful critical design review earlier in the year, which validated the mission design and cleared the way for production. Following the systems integration review, Rocket Lab completed spacecraft integration, and the vehicle is now entering final testing just 15 months after contract award. And staying with Rocket Lab, by the way, they, along with two other space companies, filed second quarter financial updates yesterday. It's been a big year for Rocket Lab, with quarterly revenue of $144 million, which represents a 36% year-on-year growth. The company's launch cadence is steadily increasing, as they completed five launches in the quarter, including two launches two days apart, from the same launch site in New Zealand. Impressive stuff. Global Star and Carbon Space and Defense also reported their quarterly updates. Global Star says it generated second quarter revenue of $67.1 million, which is an 11% increase over the prior year period, and it was driven by higher wholesale capacity services and commercial IoT revenue. And for its part, Carbon Space and Defense produced record quarterly revenue of $115.1 million, a 35.3% year-over-year, and you can read all of those full results by following the links in our show notes, and there you will also find updates on Firefly Aerospace's NASDAQ debut. And last up, Voyager Technologies has acquired software developer Electromagnetic Systems, also known as EMSI. EMSI develops AI and machine learning-based automated target recognition software and intelligence analytics for space-based radar systems. And the acquisition is part of Voyager's plan to scale AI-native, mission-resilient systems that align directly with U.S. defense and intelligence priorities. The companies say that together they can expand their offerings with cutting-edge machine learning and AI to deliver advanced imaging, automated target recognition, and feature exploitation. [Music] And that concludes today's Friday Intel Briefing for you. We will have more space stories coming up with the NSF Space Traffic Report, but before we get into that, N2K Senior Producer Alice Gerooth joins us now with the other headlines from across the space industry that didn't quite make today's Top 5. Thanks, Maria. We have three additional stories linked in today's selected reading section of the show notes. The first is an update on the interstellar comment that's apparently joined our solar system. Okay, seriously, I love this story, so what's the latest? Our favorite space telescope, Hubble, has made a size estimate of it pretty neat. Air Environment and SNC are partnering to collaborate on golden dome submissions, and Muon Space has unveiled a new satellite platform and announced that its first customer for it is the Hubble network. And the other Hubble, that is, not the space telescope, just to be clear. Right. So as I mentioned, the links for all these stories are in the show notes, which are included on the podcast platform that you're listening to us on right now. And they can also be found on our website, space.n2k.com. Just click on today's episode title. Hey, T-minus crew, tune in tomorrow for T-minus Deep Space. It's our show for extended interviews, special editions, and deep dives. With some of the most influential professionals in the space industry, tomorrow we have Audrey Schaefer, who is the vice president of strategy and policy at Slingshot Aerospace, talking with me about supporting the traffic coordination system for space. Yeah, tracks. Lots of news about that lately, right? Check it out while you are at the gym, heading to Salt Lake City for a small sack, or simply taking some me time this weekend to unwind. You deserve it. Definitely don't miss it. [music] [sirens] [whoosh] [whoosh] I'll hand you over now to our partners at nasaspaceflight.com. [whoosh] I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T-minus Space. Starting off the week, we had the 34th launch of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket. Lift-off took place on August 3rd at 1242 UTC from Blue's Launch Site 1 in West Texas. The flight carried six passengers on board to the edge of space and back. By the way, Blue Origin keeps calling them astronauts, and there's this whole debate about whether you should say astronauts or just passengers, for the time being, we are just going to keep using passengers since it's a more general term. Feel free to discuss that in the comments. The six passengers were Arvy Bahaul, Gokin Erdem, Debra Martirel, Lionel Pitchford, JD Russell, and H.E. Justin Sun. Justin Sun was the passenger who, in 2021, had bid $28 million to be New Shepard's first paying passenger, but he wasn't able to commit to the eventual launch, which was planned for just about a month later. It seems like he might have had a rather busy schedule if it wasn't until now, in 2025, that he had enough time to be able to go to space. For this mission, Blue Origin flew Tail 4 as the booster, which performed its 15th launch and landing on this flight. The New Shepard capsule on this flight was also the RSS first step capsule, completing its 14th launch and landing. And by the way, that's the same one that was used for the first passenger flight on New Shepard back in 2021, so I guess Justin Sun still ended up flying on that capsule anyways. Now we go from suborbital launches to orbital launches, and we've had a few this week, starting from Florida with SpaceX's Falcon 9. Lift-off took place on August 4th at 757 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The mission was carrying 28 Starlink V-2 mini-satellites into low Earth orbit. With this mission, SpaceX has now launched a total of 9,342 Starlink satellites into orbit, of which 1,221 have re-entered, and 7,042 have moved into their operational orbit. The booster used on this mission, B-1080, was flying for a 21st time, and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, Just Read the Instructions. From China, we had yet another launch of Internet satellites on board a Changjiang-12 rocket. Lift-off happened on August 4th at 1021 UTC from Launch Complex 2 at the commercial Wenchang Space Launch Site, located on the island of Hainan in China. The rocket was carrying a batch of 9 GuoWang satellites into low Earth orbit, the 7th operational batch of these satellites to be deployed in orbit. With this launch, China has now launched a total of 57 of these operational satellites into orbit, as well as about a couple dozen test satellites. This was also the second flight of the Changjiang-12 rocket, having had its debut flight back in November of last year. From China, we go to New Zealand and rocket lab's Electron rocket on the mission called the Harvest Goddess Thribes. Electron took off on August 5th at 410 UTC from Launch Complex 1B, carrying the QPS SAR-12 satellite for Japanese company IQPS. The QPS SAR satellites are small Earth observation satellites that use a small deployable antenna to perform synthetic aperture radar imaging of Earth. This was Electron's 11th launch of the year and 69th overall. Right at the end of the week, we had the launch of a Jellong-3 taking off from the Dongfang-Hung TianGang Launch Platform off the coast of China. The rocket was carrying the 4th batch of Jili satellites into low Earth orbit. The Jili satellites are part of the Jili constellation of satellites developed by G-Space, a subsidiary of the Chinese automotive company Jili. These satellites are used by Jili as navigation augmentation satellites that connect to their own vehicles on the ground, providing more accurate positioning than with just the traditional global navigation positioning system satellites. Going into next week, or maybe it's already happened, is the return of SpaceX's Crew 10 from the International Space Station. The return was supposed to have happened earlier in the week, but bad weather kept pushing the departure by a few days. As of recording, the undocking of Crew 10 was supposed to happen on August 8th at 22.05 UTC, so it may have already undocked by the time you're watching this, unless the weather has delayed it again. We'll definitely cover it in more detail next week once it happens. Now that's of course a Crew return, but we've got lots of other launches next week as usual. There's a handful of Starlink launches scheduled, which are also split almost half-and-half between Florida and California in terms of where they're launching from. But also next week, we've got the third launch of ULA's Vulcan rocket with the USSF-106 mission. That mission should hopefully be the first national security mission on Vulcan after a long delay in getting its certification. Someone expected, given me oopsies, that they had with the SRB nozzle on Vulcan's second flight. Now if all goes well and there aren't any more delays, that launch should occur no earlier than August 12th at 23.49 UTC. Less than an hour later, we'll also have the third launch of another rocket, this time of Ariane 6 in its two SRB configuration from French Guiana. That launch will be carrying the METOP-SGA1 weather satellite for Europe. The satellite's part of the second-generation meteorological operational satellite developed by the European Space Agency. It was originally supposed to launch on a Soyuz rocket, but after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, ESA decided to move it to the Ariane 6. I'm Alicia Segal for NSF, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. [Music] We will be right back. [Music] Welcome back. The National Space Society has rolled out a new competition to mark 100 years since Robert Goddard's first rocket launch. Yeah, it's coming up next year, would you believe it? The Goddard 100 student contest is officially open everybody, and it's a call to the next generation of thinkers, makers, and space streamers. And the contest invites students to envision space futures through writing, art, video, or models. And not that school projects are not cool on their own, but this is actually more than just that. Winning entries will be published in Ad Astra, which is the magazine of the National Space Society, and showcased at the International Space Development Conference and honored with cash prizes. Not bad. The contest is open to K-12 and college students, with categories ranging from essays to 3D models of rockets and habitats. It is a fitting tribute to Goddard's legacy after all, because here we are a century later, after his revolutionary launch just down the road for me in Auburn, Massachusetts. And now students are helping imagine where we get to go next. So you've got time to get your students involved. Submissions close on March 15th, 2026. You've got some time. That is one day before the 100th anniversary officially, by the way. So we will be watching closely to see what bold ideas take shape. Because if history tells us anything, it only takes one spark to launch the future. [Music] And that is 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 on 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's senior producer is Alice Carruth. 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 am your host, Marie Varmazis. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
