[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is August 15, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus, 22nd to LOS, T-dris. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] Five. The Shenzhou-20 crew aboard China's Tiangong Space Station is planning a spacewalk this coming week in new spacesuits. Four. Side of space has released second quarter 2025 financial results. Three. NASA has released a call for industry input for developing efficient power supplies on the moon's surface. Two. Air and space forces say that there are calls for nearly $2.3 billion in spending cuts hidden in the 2026 fiscal year budget. One. The California Coastal Commission has voted against a plan to nearly double the number of Falcon 9 rocket launches that SpaceX is permitted to conduct each year from Vandenberg Space Force Base. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] After today's headlines, our colleagues at nasaspaceflight.com will be bringing us the weekly space traffic report, wrapping up the launch news from the last seven days and taking a look at what's to come this coming week. Stay with us. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Friday, everybody. It's over. The week's over. You made it. Let's dive into our intel briefing. It's not such a happy day for SpaceX who are once again facing an application rejection. The California Coastal Commission has voted against a plan to nearly double the number of Falcon 9 rocket launches that SpaceX is permitted to conduct each year from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Last October, the commission voted to oppose a previous SpaceX launch expansion from 36 to 50 at the installation. 51 rockets launched last year from Vandenberg. SpaceX Falcon 9s accounted for 46 of them. So SpaceX is looking to almost double the launch cadence again from 50 to 95. The commission said that military officials failed to provide data on potential impacts on local wildlife and neighboring towns. Will this actually stop SpaceX, though? The answer is maybe not. The US government can merely override the objections of California regulators and approve the latest plan, as they did following last year's rejection. The US Department of the Air Force has taken the position that the proposed launch expansion at Vandenberg is a federal activity exempt from further state oversight. SpaceX already sued the agency after its first rejection in October when commissioners voted 6 to 4 to reject the Space Force's proposal to increase launches. It would not be a surprise if they take the same stance with this latest rejection. And regardless, we will keep you updated should anything change. Moving on now, the Air and Space Forces magazine is reporting that hidden in the 2026 fiscal year budget are calls for nearly $2.3 billion in spending cuts. Budget documents referencing proposed reductions cite a pair of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump in February that directed federal agency leaders to work with DOGE staffers to reshape the workforce and rein in spending. Yes, we also thought we'd DOGED all the bullets. Har har har. The bulk of the cuts impact Air Force programs totaling nearly $2 billion, while about $289 million would affect the Space Force. NASA has released a call for industry input for developing a safe, reliable, and efficient power supply on the lunar surface. NASA recently declared its intent to put a nuclear reactor on the moon by the mid-2030s to support lunar exploration, provide power generation on Mars, and strengthen national security and space. The fission surface power effort is part of the US Space Agency's effort to engage the commercial space industry in powering the lunar economy and enabling future human exploration on Mars. NASA plans to work with industry to design a fission surface power system that would provide at least 100 kilowatts of electrical power, have a mass allocation of less than 15 metric tons, and use a closed, brightened cycle power conversion system, which converts heat to electricity. More details about the request for information can be found by following the link in our show notes. Moving on to business news now, and CIDIS Space has released second quarter 2025 financial results. The satellite company reported revenue of $1.3 million, up 36%, compared to $928,000 in Q2 2024. The company completed a capital raise during the quarter to fund key technology initiatives, including the dual-use multi-domain Fortis VPX product line, which supports applications across air, land, sea, and space. They also released details about their Lizzie Lunar to address the Moon's unique operational challenges. We're glad to see them among the space companies making progress this year. And we'll finish up today's Intel briefing with news from China's manned space agency. The Shenzhou-20 crew aboard China's Chiangong Space Station is planning a spacewalk this coming week. It'll be the third extravehicular activity for the crew during their stay on China's orbiting lab, but the first with newly arrived spacesuits. The new extravehicular spacesuits arrived last week as part of the Tiangong Nine cargo delivery to the orbiting lab. China's manned space agency says the astronauts are in good physical and mental health and are fully prepared for their next EVA. And that wraps up today's Friday headlines. NSF has the latest launch news coming up, but before we get to that, I'm going to turn to N2K senior producer Alice Carruth now. And Alice, do you have any extra stories for us today? Just a brief one from CBS on York's preparations for Golden Dome. I feel like that's every space company right now. You can read more about all the stories mentioned throughout the episode by following the links in our show notes. Those links are also included on today's episode page on our website, space.n2k.com. 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. And tomorrow we have SIFT CEO, Kartik Gulapudi, talking about solving the hardware software problem in aerospace. It is a really fascinating chat. Definitely tune in and check it out while you're enjoying what I hope will be a lovely weekend. Don't miss it. (upbeat music) Let me hand you over now to our partners at nasaspaceflight.com. (upbeat music) I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and this is your weekly space traffic report for T-minus space. We kicked off the week right where we left off on the last traffic report with a return from space. With the launch of SpaceX's 11th crew rotation mission to the International Space Station, it was time for the crew of crew 10 to return home. Crew Dragon Endurance and its crew of four undocked from the station's front docking port on August 8th at 2215 UTC. After roughly 17 hours in orbit around Earth, the spacecraft de-orbited and splashed down on August 9th at 1533 UTC off the coast of San Diego in California. On board endurance were Commander and NASA astronaut Anne McClain, Pilot and NASA astronaut Nicole Ayers, Mission Specialist and JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Mission Specialist and Roscosmos Cosmonaut, Karyl Peskov. With this mission, McClain and Onishi get to add another space flight to their careers, with McClain now having spent a total of about 351 days in space, while Onishi's total in space has now roughly 262 days. This was Ayers and Peskov's first trips to space, so they get to log the 147 days of the mission. This was the shortest SpaceX crew rotation mission to the station to date at just five months in duration. This shorter crew rotation mission allows for the launch later this month of the CRS-33 cargo dragon, which will be using the same docking port on the station that crew 10 used. This cargo mission includes a trunk outfitted with extra propellant tanks and thrusters in order to perform reboosts of the ISS and will stay docked to the station until December. Since there are only two docking ports on the US operating segment of the station, this meant that either crew 10 would have had to stay at the station for nearly a year until January, or there wouldn't have been a docking port available for a direct handover between crews as is customary. Crew 10 has also now become the first crew dragon mission for NASA to splash down off the coast of California following the transition of dragon recovery operations from Florida to California. The previous crew rotation mission for NASA, Crew 9, had been the last to splash down off the coast of Florida back in March. Since then, SpaceX has flown two private spaceflight missions from 2 and Axiom 4, which have both splashed down off the coast of California, but this was the first for NASA. Coming back to Earth, this weekend launches started with a Falcon 9 with more internet satellites, but this time they were Kuiper satellites from Amazon. Falcon 9 took off from Space Launch Complex 40 on August 11th at 1235 UTC, following a series of scrubs and delays, the first due to vehicle side issues and later for launch and then recovery weather. The rocket was carrying 24 Kuiper satellites for Amazon into low Earth orbit. With this mission, there are now a total of 102 operational Kuiper satellites in orbit, just over 1500 more to go Amazon, good job. This mission, just like the previous Falcon Kuiper flight, made use of a brand new booster, the 1091. However, this one was special because it technically wasn't a proper Falcon 9 booster, but rather a Falcon Heavy Center Corps flying in Falcon 9 configuration. Falcon Heavy Center Corps are specially made with thicker tank walls and reinforcements in order to take the loads from the Falcon Heavy side boosters during flight. This makes them a bit heavier than the regular Falcon 9 boosters, but if the rocket has plenty of margins, it should be just as good to use in Falcon 9 configuration. For this to happen, instead of installing the specific Falcon Heavy interstage and having the connections for the side boosters on the interstage and OctoWeb, the booster is just outfitted with the regular Falcon 9 interstage and normal Falcon 9 OctoWeb hardware. Now, the whole reason that SpaceX is doing this is because when the center corps fly on Falcon Heavy, they rarely get recovered, let alone reused. This means that the bulk cost of building one of these goes away in just one flight. Whereas, if they instead use it as a Falcon 9 booster first and fly it a few times, then at least they can recoup some of the expenses of having to build it in the first place before flying it on a Falcon Heavy mission as a center corps and most likely expending it. From Florida, we go to French Guiana, where this week we had the third flight of the Ariane 6 rocket. Lift-off happened on August 13th at 37 minutes past midnight UTC, with Ariane 6 carrying the METOP-SGA1 satellite for the European Space Agency and UMETSAT. The METOP-SGA1 is a weather observation satellite, part of the meteorological operational second-generation satellite system, which is what gives the satellite's METOP-SG name. The system consists of two series, the METOP-SGA and METOP-SGB series. The A-Series of satellites carry primarily optical instruments, while the B-Series of satellites carry primarily microwave imaging instruments. There are three planned satellites per series for a total of six satellites in this constellation, with this being the first of the A-Series. Some of the instruments onboard the A-Series of satellites include a visible and infrared imager, a radio occultation instrument, a multi-viewing, multi-channel, multi-polarization imager, and also ESA's Sentinel-5 spectrometer. This array of instruments will allow the satellites to gather weather information in greater detail than the previous generation. The data gathered from these satellites will better help scientists on the ground to improve weather forecasts, as well as study Earth's ever-changing climate patterns. 19 minutes after Ariane 6 is lift-off from French Kiana, ULA's Vulcan rocket also lifted off on its third flight, carrying the USSF-106 mission of the US Space Force into geostationary Earth orbit. This was a mission of first for ULA and Vulcan. This marked the first launch of Vulcan for the US Department of Defense after having been certified to fly on the department's National Security Space Launch missions earlier this year. This was a major win for ULA, as it demonstrated that its long-delayed Vulcan rocket could finally start delivering military payloads into orbit. ULA is in fierce competition with fellow launch company SpaceX, who has already taken several lucrative launch contracts from ULA's hands, both from the military and also from NASA. ULA will now need to demonstrate that it can keep the cadence and continue delivering future payloads with Vulcan, including for Amazon's Kuiper constellation, which has dozens of launches under contract with this rocket. One of the other firsts for this mission was that it was the first flight of Vulcan on its four solid rocket motor configuration, with the previous two flights carrying only two of them. With its four Gem63XL solid rocket motors and its two BE-4 engines, this launch also marked the most powerful rocket ever launched by ULA, surpassing the thrust of the Atlas V in its five SRB configuration. From the US, we go to China. A Changjiang 5B rocket, fitted with the Yuanjiang-2 kick stage, launched from Wenchang on August 13th at 643 UTC, carrying another batch of GuoWang internet satellites into low Earth orbit. This was the eighth dedicated operational launch for this constellation, which now brings the total number of GuoWang satellites launched into orbit up to 67. This week, we also had a double header of Starlink missions, with the first taking place from Vandenberg on August 14th at 505 UTC. The mission was carrying 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The booster flown on this mission, B1093, was flying for a fifth time and successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, of course, I still love you. A few hours later, at 1229 UTC, another Falcon 9 launched from Florida, carrying a batch of 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this mission, B1085, was flying for a tenth time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, just read the instructions. With these two Starlink missions, SpaceX has now launched a total of 9,394 Starlink satellites into orbit, of which 1,234 have re-entered and 7,103 have moved into their operational orbits. Wrapping up the week, we had the third launch of land space's Juche-2E rocket from Jochuan. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like this was a fully successful launch. Unconfirmed reports on Chinese social media indicate a potential failure of the second stage thrust vector control system during ascent, leaving the stage unable to control its steering, deviating it from its trajectory. Going into next week, we expect a launch of a Soyuz 2.1A rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying the Bion-M #2 spacecraft. What's interesting about this launch is that the Bion-M spacecraft are based on the Vostok spacecraft that flew way back during the early days of human spaceflight in the early 1960s. Aside from their use with humans on board, back in the day, they would also use these to fly film cameras that would then be recovered and analyzed afterwards for reconnaissance. Of course, now with digital cameras, this is no longer needed, but they're still being used to carry certain experiments into orbit that they can then recover afterwards for inspection. You know the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Well, in this case, they've been carrying that out now for over 60 years, hence why they're still using a modernized version of the Vostok capsule. From the United States, we also expect a couple of Starlink launches from Vandenberg, both of which will be heading southwest. So if you're in Southern California, you may be able to see them, but be mindful that this isn't the kind that hugs the coast and they will be going away from you. These will also happen a few hours after sunrise, so the viewing conditions may not be perfect. Also next week, we'll have the USS F-36 mission from Florida. This will be the eighth launch of the secretive X-37B space plane from the US Space Force, and it'll be the third time it's launched on a SpaceX rocket. The first time it was on a Falcon 9 back in September, 2017, and the second was just a few years ago in December, 2023, on board a Falcon Heavy, which sent the space plane out into a highly elliptical orbit. This mission will see the first stage booster, attempting a landing back on landing zone two. You may recall that SpaceX recently retired landing zone one. So with this return to land, it also means we should expect sonic booms across the eastern coast of central Florida. Next week, we may also potentially have an electron launch from New Zealand, but that's yet to be confirmed by Rocket Lab as of recording, though notices have started to be published. Once that's confirmed, I'm sure our next space flight teams will add it to our database. So if you want to stay up to date about that and any more upcoming launches and events, be sure to download the next space flight app on your phone or visit the website at nextspaceflight.com. I'm Alicia Segal for NSF, and that's your weekly space traffic report. Now back to T-Minus Space. (upbeat music) - We will be right back. (air whooshing) Welcome back. One of the many questions the James Webb Space Telescope was created to help us answer is one of the all-time biggies. Are we alone in the universe? Webb has instrumentation that helps us get a closer look at exoplanets, especially ones that are in the Goldilocks zone or the Havidable zone, just the right distance from a star, just the right temperature range for maybe an earth-like environment that maybe might harbor good conditions for life. So yeah, not too hot, not too cold, just maybe, just right. And there are a decent number of exoplanets out there in the universe in that Goldilocks zone. So we do have some contenders to examine in hopes that maybe we'll find some positive signs in the hole. Is there anyone else out there question? One such exoplanet, I know I had some high hopes for was Trappist 1D, which is part of the Trappist 1 system that has, as far as we have seen anyway, the most earth-like rocky planets orbiting a single star. And Trappist 1D is, again, a rocky planet in that Goldilocks zone from its cool red dwarf star. Like us, it's the third rock from the sun. Unlike us, though, it completes its orbit around the sun in a mere four days because it is 2% the distance to its star that we are to ours. So not the same, but some similarities. But according to a new study using data from web, unfortunately, we got a strike Trappist 1D from the list of potential earthy planets. That is a bummer. Caroline Piolle Gorayeb from the University of Chicago and Troetier Institute for Research on Exoplanets at the Université de Montréal, who is the lead author of the study published in the Astrophysical Journal, says, "Sadly, Trappist 1D does not have an earth-like atmosphere." And she added this, "There are a few potential reasons why we don't detect an atmosphere around Trappist 1D. It could have an extremely thin atmosphere that is difficult to detect, somewhat like Mars. Alternatively, it could have very thick, high-altitude clouds that are blocking our detection of specific atmospheric signatures, something more like Venus. Or it could be a barren rock with no atmosphere at all." Cue the sad trombone from folks like me who are still looking forward to some promising news, but don't give up yet on the Trappist 1 system. Piolle Gorayeb added this, "All hope is not lost for atmospheres around the Trappist 1 planets. While we didn't find a big, bold atmospheric signature at Planet D, there is still potential for the outer planets to be holding onto a lot of water and other atmospheric components. I am keeping my fingers crossed." (upbeat music) And that's T-Minus, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. We'd love to know what you think of our podcast. We're conducting our annual audience survey to learn more about our listeners. That's you. We're collecting your insights until August 31st, 2025. There's a link in the show notes for you. We would love to hear your feedback. 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 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 Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. Have a wonderful weekend. (upbeat music) - T-Minus. (upbeat music) (water splashing) [BLANK_AUDIO]
