Rocket Labs’ Neutron launch site opens on MARS.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is August 29, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-Minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-Minus, 22nd to LOS, T-Dress. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] Five. NewView has received an additional $5 million from the DoD's National Security Innovation Capital program to enhance the development of its space-based LiDAR payloads. Four. SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 booster for a record-setting 30th time. Three. Skyperfect JSAT Corporation selected by JAXA to research and develop satellite communication technology with quantum cryptography. Two. NASA has opened a new complex in the Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center for Orion. One. Rocket Lab has opened its dedicated test launch and landing facility for its reusable rocket, Neutron. [MUSIC PLAYING] Lift off. [MUSIC PLAYING] Our partners at nasaspaceflight.com will be bringing us the weekly Space Traffic Report today, wrapping up the launch news from the last seven days, and taking a look at what's to come this week. Stick around for that after today's headlines. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Friday, everybody. Another working week is complete here in the United States, and we here at T-minus are taking Monday off to enjoy the Labor Day holiday. But our regular Intel briefings and episodes will be back on Tuesday next week. Don't worry, though, we'll still be sharing some fun insights for you on Monday. But for now, let's dive into today's Intel Briefing, shall we? First up, Rocket Lab. They held a ceremony yesterday to open their new dedicated test launch and landing facility for its reusable rocket, Neutron. And the facility is within the Virginia Space Port Authority's Mid-Atlantic Regional Space Port, otherwise known as Mars, at Pad 0D on Wallops Island, Virginia. Rocket Lab says Launch Complex 3 stands ready to deliver the largest orbital launch capacity in the space port's territory with Neutron. Now, Neutron is capable of launching 33,000 pounds to space for commercial constellations, national security, and interplanetary missions, and eventually human spaceflight. Construction on Launch Complex 3 began in late 2023. It is Rocket Lab's fourth launch site and is located directly next to Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2, the company's exclusive use orbital launch pad for its electron launch vehicle. Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Sir Peter Beck says, "Our Neutron rocket, with its ability for responsive space access as a high cadence reusable launch vehicle, expands Virginia's aerospace capabilities to enable the United States to quickly and reliably reach the International Space Station and low Earth orbit, as well as explore beyond Earth and onto the Moon and Mars." Yep, we could be going to Mars from Mars. I'm sure there are many on the East Coast, myself included, excited to see this site start to be put to use. And it's not just Rocket Lab that's debuting a new facility. NASA has also opened a new complex in the Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center. And the new facility is for Orion, which is the capsule that'll take humans to the Moon for the Artemis missions. The new mission evaluation room will house dozens of engineers who will be monitoring the spacecraft and collecting data, while the flight control team located in Mission Control's White Flight Control Room is simultaneously operating and sending commands to Orion during the flight. The orbital team will rely on the engineering expertise of the evaluation room to help with unexpected spacecraft behaviors that may arise during the mission and help analyze Orion's performance data. The mission evaluation room team will be made up of engineers from NASA, Lockheed Martin, ESA, and Airbus. Let's head on over to Japan now. And Skyperfect, JSAAT Corporation, has announced that it is participating in a new research and development project for JAXA. It is titled Development and Verification of Satellite Communication Technology with Quantum Cryptography, and it's part of the Space Strategy Fund initiative led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, also known as JAXA. The project is driven by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, known as NICT, which has been selected as the principal research institution. NICT aims to develop a small satellite capable of leveraging satellite-based quantum key distribution to use encryption keys that can be delivered over long distances and to mobile platforms, all of which offers significant advantages in terms of security and resilience compared to terrestrial fiber-optic networks. Skyperfect, JSAAT will join the project, contributing specifically to the design and planning of the satellite control system, as well as evaluating candidate satellites for launch as part of its related responsibilities. And now we here at T-Minus don't usually cover Starlink launches on the show because they are so frequent nowadays. Who knew we'd be saying that so soon? But it is worth noting that SpaceX did reach a major milestone this week during a recent Falcon 9 launch carrying a batch of Starlink satellites to Leo. Not only did they achieve a second Starlink launch in 24 hours, the lift-off featured the flight of a Falcon 9 booster for a record setting 30th time. The Starlink 1011 mission placed another 28 Starlink V2 mini broadband internet satellites into orbit on Thursday, following a sunrise launch on Wednesday from neighboring Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It is also worth noting that SpaceX has launched more than 1,800 of these satellites across 74 missions so far in 2025. Now that is impressive work. Newview has been awarded an additional $5 million from the Department of Defense's National Security Innovation Capital Program known as NSIC to enhance the development of its space-based LiDAR payloads. The new funding builds on an earlier NSIC investment and advances Newview's mission to deliver high-resolution 3D mapping of Earth from orbit, supporting applications critical to national security, economic competitiveness, and environmental resilience. The award will enable rapid prototyping of Newview's enhanced LiDAR payload, a critical step towards delivering the company's first commercial space-based LiDAR system. Once operational, the payload will establish the Foundation for Newview's planned constellation, which will provide persistent high-resolution 3D data for civil, commercial, and defense customers worldwide. [music] And that concludes our Friday intel briefing for you, but stay with us for NSF's Space Traffic Report. And before I hand you over, though, our producer, Alice Carruth, is joining me now to share the other stories making today's headlines. Alice? We've added two additional stories in the selected reading section of our show notes. The first is on Space Kinetic Court being added as a Draper-Sparks partner, and the other is on the Comrad Challenge. Now, if you have any summer-return pretty fans in your house, then I'm not talking about the better brother, obviously. I'm talking about the STEM Challenge. Applications opened yesterday for students around the globe, age 13 to 18. And we look forward to hearing more about those applications later this year. And a reminder, folks, that the show notes can also be found on our website, which is space.ntuk.com. IT-Crew, to and end tomorrow for T-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 NSTXL founder and president, Tim Grief, talking about how public-private partnerships are transforming defense innovation, especially in space, by accelerating procurement timelines and opening the door to emerging tech providers. Definitely check it out while you're relaxing over the long weekend. You've earned it. Don't miss it. [music] Our partners at nasaspaceflight.com have the Space Traffic Report for us now. [music] I'm Alicia Segal for NSF, and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T-Misspace. This week there were a number of launches, including Starship, so get ready, because this is going to be a long one. The first launch of the week was with the Falcon 9 from Vandenberg, lifting off on August 22nd at 1704 UTC. The rocket was carrying 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites into sun synchronous orbit. The first stage for this mission, B-1081, was flying for a 17th time, and it successfully landed on "Of Course I Still Love You." After that, we had an electron from New Zealand with the mission "Live/Live Launch." Lift-off happened on August 23rd at 2242 UTC, with the electron carrying five different payloads into sun synchronous orbit. The customer and payloads for this mission remained confidential, but we think one of them is the Lyra 2 satellite for Echo Star's Internet of Things constellation Lyra. Back in the United States, another Falcon 9 launch, SpaceX's 33rd cargo/dragon resupply mission to the International Space Station. Lift-off took place on August 24th at 645 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida. Dragon was carrying about 2,300 kilograms of supplies, experiments, and hardware to the orbiting outpost. The mission is the third one for capsule C-211, which previously flew on the CRS-26 and CRS-29 missions. C-211 docked the ISS front docking port about 28 hours after launch on August 25th at 1105 UTC. The exciting thing about this mission is that for this flight, Dragon carried a "boost kit" in its trunk. This boost kit consists of multiple propellant and pressurization bottles, as well as two extra draco thrusters attached to the inside of the trunk. This will allow the spacecraft to re-boost the station during its four-month stay at the ISS. During this time, it will take over the duties of re-boosting the station from progress, allowing the Progress spacecraft on the Russian side of the station to instead use that propellant to fill up the onboard propellant tanks on the ISS service module. This extra reserve of propellant will later be used to control the ISS attitude and orbit once the station's de-orbit process is carried out a few years from now. The station's Canadarm inspected this boost kit after docking, and the first re-boost is set for next week on September 3rd at 1815 UTC. The re-boost is expected to add about half a meter per second to the station's velocity. For this mission, SpaceX used booster B-1090 on its seventh flight, and due to the extra mass on Dragon's Trunk, it landed on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas out in the Atlantic Ocean. This week, we also had the launch of a Changjiang 8A from Launch Complex 1 at the commercial Wenchang spaceport in China. The lift-off occurred on August 25th at 1908 UTC, with nine GuoWang satellites riding onboard into a low-Earth orbit. The third Falcon 9 launch of the week came from Vandenberg on August 26th at 1853 UTC. The mission was carrying the NAUS satellite for Luxembourg, as well as seven other ride-share missions into a Sun-synchronous orbit. NAUS, which stands for National Advanced Optical System, is a military reconnaissance satellite for Luxembourg built by OHB Italia. Along for the ride were also planets Pelican-3 and Pelican-4 satellites, Capella-space's Akkadia-6 satellite, Pixels Firefly-1, 2 and 3 satellites, as well as Druva-space's Leap-1. The booster for this mission was SpaceX's oldest booster in the fleet, B1063, which was flying for a 27th time on this mission. It successfully returned to Earth, landing on SpaceX's landing zone 4 at Vandenberg. After three failures in a row earlier this year and a ground explosion during testing in June, SpaceX's starship finally broke the curse this week, achieving all the goals set for the rocket during its 10th test flight. Booster 16 and Ship 37 lifted off on August 26th at 2330 UTC from Launchpad 1 at SpaceX's Starbase launch site. The mission planned for Flight 10 was to carry out many of the goals and experiments that were never achieved on previous flights. The launch followed two previous scrubs on the 24th and 25th due to a liquid oxygen leak on the ship's quick disconnect arm and a violation of the Anvil Cloud weather rule, respectively. Much better weather on the 26th provided us with great views of Starship's flight, including an amazing vapor cone around the point of Max-Q. Booster 16's ascent went well with the only mishap being that one of the Raptor engines in the middle ring of engines cut off early at around 90 seconds into flight. But with Super Heavy's engine out capability, this wasn't an issue, and everything continued as planned with hot staging occurring about two and a half minutes into flight. Super Heavy once again performed a controlled flip just like we saw on Flight 9 and performed its boost back burn. Booster 16's main goal during return was to simulate an off-nominal scenario during landing. It would ignite all 13 inner engines for landing as usual and then disable one of the three center engines as if it were lost. At the same time, the booster would use one of the engines in the middle ring of 10 engines to serve as a backup to the disabled one. Booster 16 carried out all of this even while missing one engine on the middle ring of 10 engines. The end of the landing burn also featured two of the three center engines lit as planned and then cut off at a high altitude so the booster could drop into the water and explode into bits, unlike Booster 13 which landed in one piece with parts of it staying floating in the water for several hours. Of course, the booster's return was more of a side experiment. After all, SpaceX has already demonstrated that it can not only return Super Heavy for a catch at the launch tower but also reuse it. The bigger deal here was the ship because after Flight 7, 8 and 9 plus Ship 36's ground explosion, all hopes were on Ship 37 to break the curse and actually perform as intended. Ship 37's ascent didn't seem to have any issues and the vehicle completed it as planned. Unlike the previous flight with Ship 35, Ship 37 was able to maintain attitude control and reoriented itself for the first deployment test of Starlink simulators from its payload bay. This test also went well with the payload bay door opening and all eight Starlink simulators deploying from Starship's PES dispenser, the very first time that this mechanism was tested in flight. The eight satellites were stacked in four pairs with the mechanism first releasing the one closest to the door and then the one in the back before continuing on with the next pair. The ones on the front seemed to leave the payload bay nominally while the ones in the back seemed to rotate a bit after deployment. We even saw one of them hitting the top of the payload bay opening on its way out. Now this probably isn't a huge deal for at least two reasons. The first is that while these are mass simulators for real Starlinks, they probably don't have the same mass distribution, something that would change the way in which they rotate as they're flung out from the dispenser. The second reason is that a small ding on the way out like that is probably nothing compared to what the Starlink satellites already go through when they're deployed from Falcon 9. During that process, there's no fancy dispenser. Instead, they're all piled up in one massive stack and are let go during deployment by releasing the retention rods. Once they start flying away, they'll pretty much just bump into each other anyway, so they're built to survive low speed impacts just like that. With the simulated satellites deployed, Ship 37 then prepared for the other test during its coast phase. The relight of one of its sea level Raptor engines in space. This was a test that was successfully carried out by Ship 31 on Starship's sixth flight last year, but had yet to be performed on one of the Block 2 ships. Ship 37 was able to do the relight, taking off another major milestone for Flight 10. The last, but certainly not least important milestone was the test of the ship's re-entry. Now this was the first time that a Block 2 ship reached this point while being in the right attitude, so it was also the first time that many of the new modifications to the heat shield were tested. This includes, for example, the relocation of the forward flaps further lured and closer to the tip of the nose cone to prevent plasma from hitting directly on the gap between the flap and vehicle. Ship 37 demonstrated that indeed this design change works, and the forward flaps were nowhere near as damaged as what we saw on the three successful re-entries of Block 1 vehicles back in 2024. The ship also tested a number of changes to the side of the vehicle that will eventually be used for ship catches. This includes the ship catch pins that survived Ship 37's re-entry. SpaceX also added protective ramps on delicate parts of the side of the vehicle, tapered the edge of the heat shield with the leeward side, and installed a blade of material beyond this heat shield edge to prevent damage to the steel in those areas. And all of this also worked during re-entry. Now one rather interesting thing that occurred during this flight was the damage to the aft flaps. See, on those three successful re-entries of Block 1 vehicles that I mentioned earlier, they seem to not have had much damage to the aft flaps. Rather, the damage occurred on the forward flaps, hence the redesign for Block 2. But Ship 37's aft flaps had actually been damaged already, well before the thick of re-entry. For example, the starboard aft flap had visible damage, as seen from the ship's cameras at T+40 minutes, when the ship was still quite high up at 131 km in altitude and nowhere near re-entry. Then at around T+47 minutes, when entry had just started, but still far from peak heating, a quite energetic event occurred on the skirt of the ship that damaged the bottom of the other aft flap. Now this is interesting because it's in those areas where the ship's engine chill pipes are located. Before the engines are ignited, they're conditioned by flowing methane and oxygen through the fuel and oxidizer pumps. This creates gaseous oxygen and methane that have to be vented out in flight through those engine chill lines. On Block 1, they were located separately and further lured on the skirt, but for Block 2, they were tucked into the aft flap air covers. It wouldn't be surprising if this change in design is what led to that early damage of the bottom of the aft flaps, which of course got worse as the heat of re-entry started melting these places. Earlier in the flight, we can see oxidation marks on the bottom of the flaps. You can see them because there's a lot of discoloration in that area. These marks are likely from the venting of the oxygen through those engine chill pipes. Now you might think that this could be from hot staging, but if we go to Flight 9's footage, we can see that this is a discoloration that's not present shortly after hot staging, but is there later in flight. Unfortunately on Flight 10, they just didn't show the aft flaps until after-seaco, so we gotta go by Flight 9's footage instead. The discoloration is also present on previous flights, like Flight 6 with Ship 31. However, in that case, the discoloration is located further out from the vehicle, likely because on Block 1 ships, the engine chill line was further lured and therefore further away from the flap. In the case of Ship 31, the aft flaps didn't suffer any damage, like the ones on Ship 37, as a result of this discoloration, so this alone wouldn't explain the issue. In other words, there's something else going on here that's probably something that SpaceX will eventually figure out, as always. Thankfully, Ship 37's aft flaps endured the heat of re-entry quite well despite that early damage and were able to guide the vehicle down to the splashdown site. Ship 37 also carried out the planned stress test of these aft flaps later during its re-entry. About 66 and a half minutes after launch, Ship 37 conducted its flip and landing burn and splashed down into the waters of the Indian Ocean right next to SpaceX's own buoy. After the flight, SpaceX released footage from the buoy and a drone that was placed in the area, which showed not just the landing itself, but also the state of the heat shield tiles after the re-entry. Yes, it's orange! The tiles are still there, but they were covered in a layer of orange material that makes them look like that. SpaceX was flying several different metallic tiles near the area where the orange patch starts, one of them which also had active cooling. Elon later confirmed that indeed, the orange was from some of those metallic tiles that oxidized and deposited their rust onto the rest of the tiles. He also said that the white near the nose cone is from the insulation where SpaceX deliberately removed the tiles. The landing footage also shows the damage on the port aft flap and skirt from the little explosion at T+47 minutes. It's amazing the ship was still able to make it down to the water in one piece after having gone through all of that. SpaceX also says the ship landed within three meters of the target spot, which is quite the precision given that it went about two-thirds around the world. Now, the big question is what will happen on the next flight, Flight 11, which will also be the last flight of Block 2. With all the great data gathered on Flight 10, SpaceX will no doubt implement all of the lessons that they've learned from it into Flight 11, and we can't wait to watch. Following Starship, we had two more Falcon 9 missions from Florida to wrap up the week. The first one took place on August 26th at 1853 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40, carrying 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this mission, B-1095, was flying for just its second mission -- oh, they're so cute when they're young -- and it successfully made it back to the deck of SpaceX's drone ship, just read the instructions. The other Falcon 9 launch occurred on August 28th at 812 UTC from Launch Complex 39A. It carried 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this mission was none other than B-1067, which broke its own record for most flights of any Falcon booster by flying for a 30th time on this mission. Yes, 30 flights. This booster debuted all the way back in June 2021 on the CRS-23 mission, and since then, it's launched over 600 satellites. To mark this feat, before launch, SpaceX painted a crown above the booster number to indicate that it's the queen of the fleet. The booster not only successfully launched for a 30th time, but also landed successfully for a 30th time, returning to SpaceX's drone ship, a shortfall of Gravitas. With the three Starlink satellites this week, SpaceX has now launched a total of 9,498 Starlink satellites into orbit, of which 1,251 have re-entered and 7,102 have moved into their operational orbit. This week, Starlink also crossed 7 million users worldwide, so all those new satellites launched this week will surely be very helpful for all of those users. Next week in launches will be dominated by Falcon 9 and Starlink, with up to five different Starlink missions potentially taking place between now and our next space traffic report. One of those missions from Vandenberg will be making use of a brand new Falcon 9 booster, so that'll be a bit of a rare occurrence. But the much more interesting event next week might be in deep space. Ease's Juve spacecraft is set to perform a flyby of Venus on August 31st. The spacecraft will use the planet's gravity to change its orbit, so that it leads to an encounter with Earth next year in September. The second in a series of three flybys of Earth needed for it to arrive at Jupiter in 2031. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and that's your weekly space traffic report. Now back to T-Minus Space. [Music] We will be right back. Welcome back. Here's a little brain teaser for you. How do you do CPR in zero gravity? No, seriously, how does that work? Now I can't say I ever really thought about it before today, but once the question came up, I've been honestly puzzling it a bit. I'm terra firmer. You have to kneel over the person receiving CPR and using both strength and your body weight to hard chest compressions. So how in the heck do you replicate that in microgravity or zero gravity for that matter? The answer isn't, well, I hope we never need to find out if we hope to ever become an interplanetary species one day because health emergencies are going to happen, unfortunately. Thankfully, folks at space agencies have indeed been thinking over this conundrum and in fact crew on the ISS have been practicing chest compressions in space. But it's not great. So to do CPR on the ISS right now, astronauts put themselves and the person getting CPR between two hard objects and then the astronaut giving CPR has to brace themselves and essentially do a handstand on the person's chest, pushing up with their legs to try and deliver compressions. I'll give you a second to visualize that like an in space leg press and handstand all in one. So how effective could that possibly be? Unfortunately, tests show that this method only achieves about two thirds of the compressive depth needed to be effective. So it is better than nothing, but the best we can do right now in space is likely just not enough to probably save someone's life. But thankfully, a research team in France is working on figuring out if there are better existing solutions that we can try. And according to a new article in New Scientist, using a training dummy during parabolic flights, the research team tested mechanical chest compression devices, which are the kind normally used in places that are really, really compact, like air ambulances. And it ends up that the best machine reached the required compression depth outperforming the really fabulous handstand technique. NASA says right now, astronauts are screened to reduce the risk of such emergencies in space. But of course, as I mentioned earlier, as missions get longer and crews get more diverse, and presumably are not always in prime peak physical condition either, the chances of cardiac events will go up, which means devices like this one could one day be essential medical gear for deep space exploration. And maybe it's best if we keep two-person handstand leg presses and zero G for fun and games only. And that's T-minus brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. If we'd love to know what you think of this podcast, your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like our show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes, or send us an email at space@n2k.com. We would love to hear from you. We are 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 in 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 Kilpe is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thank you for listening. We'll return with daily Intel briefings on Tuesday. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]