[MUSIC] >> Today is September 23rd, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] Online attackers are targeting European organizations in the defense, manufacturing, telecommunications, and aerospace sectors. >> Four. >> GE Aerospace has successfully completed supersonic captive carry flight tests of its Atlas flight test vehicle. >> Three. >> Archesis has been selected as the commercial sustaining and maintenance partner for NASA's Astro-V. >> Two. >> NASA buys additional science and operational data from Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost One mission. >> One. >> And NASA announces its 24th astronaut class. [MUSIC] Our guest today is Greg Burgess, VP of Space Systems at General Atomics. I'll be talking to Greg about the latest demonstration of air-to-space optical communications that General Atomics and Kepler demonstrated for the SDA, so join us later in the show to find out more. [MUSIC] Happy Tuesday, everybody. Thanks for joining me. Let's dive into our Intel briefing. While NASA deals with budget cuts and layoffs, its astronaut office has expanded. Out of 8,000 applicants, 10 have been selected to begin a two-year training to become career astronauts, and maybe be part of a near future mission to the moon or to Mars. NASA has selected 360 astronaut candidates since the program's inception in 1959, but yesterday's announcement marks the very first astronaut class in four years, and for the first time, women outnumber the men. Four men, six women make up the 24th astronaut class, and they will start training immediately. Their resumes, zero surprise here, do not disappoint. The class includes engineers, test pilots, physicians, helo pilots, and a geologist among the selected elite, along with a name that some may be familiar with, a prior astronaut. Yes, Anna Mennon broke the record for the highest altitude flown by a woman, along with her crewmate, Sarah Gillis, and she now goes down in history as the first candidate selected by NASA to have already flown in space prior to joining the astronaut corps. After all, Anna was part of the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission in September 2024, and she has already worked at NASA for seven years, and for six of those, she served as a biomedical flight controller for the International Space Station, assisting ISS crews, and leading biomedical operations for Expedition 41. She also happens to be married to a fellow NASA astronaut, Annelle Mennon, who has not been to space just yet. All the best to this new ASCEN class. And, relatedly, yes, it is actually good news from NASA for the Artemis-2 mission, as the US Space Agency says today that the mission is not only on track for its April 2026 launch, but it could even potentially be moved up to February. Nothing like a deadline, huh? Onto our next story now, and Firefly Aerospace has been awarded a $10 million contract addendum under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative for acquisition of additional science and operational data collected beyond the initial contractual requirements for the BlueGhost mission 1. In total, Firefly collected nearly 120 gigabytes of data during transit landing and operations on the lunar surface, and the scope of this data encompasses images captured by Firefly's BlueGhost Lunar Lander during its 45-day transit to the Moon and more than 14 days of surface operations. It includes the first high-definition images of a solar eclipse and sunset captured from the Moon's surface. The data buy also includes communications data and transmit speeds from BlueGhost's S-band and X-band antennas, propulsion data from Firefly's Spectre thrusters during critical burns and the final lunar descent, and other lander performance data. Firefly will also provide NASA with additional payload science data, as well as lander and payload temperature data that was all captured during a 500-degree Fahrenheit temperature delta on the Moon. Archesis has been selected as the commercial sustaining and maintenance partner for NASA's Astro-B. Now Astro-B is, as many of us know, the adorable free-flying robotic facility aboard the International Space Station. NASA's Astro-B consists of three autonomous free-flyer robots, software, and a docking station aboard the space station, providing mobility, interaction, and experimentation capabilities in microgravity. Archesis will now work with NASA's Ames Research Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, and Johnson Space Center to extend the life and capability of Astro-B, continuing its legacy as a test bed for groundbreaking science, technology, demonstrations, and in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing advancements. GE Aerospace has successfully completed supersonic captive-carry flight tests of its atmospheric test of launched air-breathing system, or ATLAS flight test vehicle. GE says the tests mark a major milestone in advancing solid fuel ramjet propulsion technology. The system was carried aloft on a Starfighter's F-104 aircraft at Kennedy Space Center. The test campaign included three successful flights with the system reaching supersonic speeds. And if you work in the aerospace industry in Europe, then please listen up, because right now is time to be even more vigilant against online scams. Suspected Iranian government-backed online attackers have expanded their European cyber ops with fake job portals and new malware, specifically targeting organizations in defense, manufacturing, telecoms, and aerospace sectors in Europe. A new report from Checkpoint Research says that it has been tracking waves of this activity since earlier this year. The attackers claim to represent companies in the aerospace defense manufacturing and telecoms industries that are looking to hire staff. The attack begins with a phishing link that directs the victim to a fake job-related login page, spoofing companies including Boeing, Airbus, Ryn Medal, and Fly Dubai. Each victim receives a unique set of credentials with the link to the login page, and then after they enter the correct information, the site delivers a malicious archive. The site delivers a malicious archive containing malware. So friends, please stay vigilant as always. And if you encounter a similar campaign, definitely report the links to the right authorities. And that cautionary tale wraps up today's top five stories. We are always keeping up with the latest news from across the space industry, and our producer Alice Carruth joins me now with additional stories that we believe you should know about as well. Alice, what are you looking at today? Just four additional stories for today. Trust me, there was more. NASA has pushed the launch of IMAP until no earlier than tomorrow. The Washington Times had a piece on China's threat in space. Terran Orbital has delivered bus platforms to Lockheed Martin for the Tranche 1 transport layer, and Kazakhstan's Kazakh Telecom has signed an agreement with Amazon's Project Khyper. That is quite a lot, and where can we learn about all those stories? We include links to the original sources of all the stories we mentioned throughout the show in the selected reading section of our show notes. They can also be found on the episode page on our website, space.intuk.com. Hey, T-Minus Crew. Regular listeners know that every day at the end of each T-Minus episode, I read the names of all the people who work on the show. It is a big team effort to get this show published every day. And you, dear listener, play a very important role too. Every time you share an episode of T-Minus with colleagues or on social media, that not only helps us grow, but more importantly, it also shows how our work is useful and interesting to you. So if you enjoy T-Minus, don't keep us hidden. Share our show in your social and professional networks, please, because it helps us grow and it makes T-Minus even better every day. Thank you for being a part of the T-Minus Crew. [Music] Today's guest is Greg Burgess, VP of Space Systems at General Atomics. I'm Greg Burgess. I'm the vice president and general manager for the Space Systems Division at General Atomics. The company builds satellites ranging from 75 kilograms up to 900 kilograms for national security customers, the Space Force and NASA. And we also develop optical payloads for weather tracking, missile warning, and also the topic we're going to discuss today, which is optical communications. Yes, indeed. I've been in the business for a number of decades as a technologist, spacecraft architect, and a general manager like I'm doing today. Oh, that's exciting. Glad to be on your show. Oh, thank you so much, Greg. And thanks for joining me and for sharing some of your expertise with me today. I'm really excited to dig into this a little bit. So, yeah, we're talking about optical tech today and General Atomics, you all had a very interesting announcement recently about a tech demo that you did that is related to optical tech. Can you walk me through some of just the basics of that first? Like, what was the announcement about? So, the announcement was about a series of successful tests that we did for the Space Development Agency. We did those throughout July and August 2025. And on the airborne end was a laser communication terminal or optical communication terminal on a twin-autor aircraft. And we were testing communications between that aircraft and spacecraft in low-worth orbit. The spacecraft were built by Kepler, a space communications company out of Canada. And the goal was to show that we could get to reliable laser-based communications to create a fast and secure connection between the aircraft and the satellite. That kind of link is important because it allows high data rate information to go between the air and space domains. And in a future operational scenario, you could imagine data going from the aircraft up to space and then across a space constellation to the other side of the planet and back down to an aircraft or ground station. And all of that would happen literally in less than a couple of seconds. That's quite amazing. And so, in the process of that, we demonstrated the full data rates consistent with the Space Development Agency's TRONCH zero standard, which is the foundational layer of their satellite constellation that was launched back in '23. The optical links for communications, very fascinating to hear how quickly that tech has been progressing and the amazing strides that have been made. And I'm curious, this demonstration was relatively recent. Can you tell me about what it was like on the ground, so to speak? So, on the ground, like any kind of test with spacecraft or aircraft, there's a lot of planning that goes into it. So, there was a lot of communication ahead of each of these tests between General Atomics and Kepler on exactly where we were going to fly the aircraft and exactly where the spacecraft was going to be. A key part of optical communications is the ability to point and track at the other terminal. So, you really need to have a very good idea of where the other system is to make sure the mathematics are going to close. So, there's a fair amount of planning ahead of time. We did this with a manned aircraft, so we had to coordinate with the pilots, come up with a flight plan for them. And because it is optical communications, which can be affected by weather, we also had to look at weather forecasts a couple days in advance and predict the best operational times to go ahead and do that test. Once we did, we would go airborne. The spacecraft actually had our coordinates uploaded well in advance of the pass. So, several hours in advance, they knew exactly where we were going to be. Then when they came overhead, they turned on their terminal, we turned on ours, and went through what's called the pointing acquisition and tracking process. The two terminals locked on to each other, and then it started exchanging data. So, it was basically described how we did these experiments. That's really cool. I love being walked through that kind of thing, because there's always a lot more that goes into it than certainly is often included in a press release. It's a lot of coordination, a lot of moving pieces, and I'm sure that was just scratching the surface even there. So, thank you for walking me through that. So, yeah, the outcomes of this tech demo, it's clearly it was a success. You hit the data transfer that was needed. I'm wondering, was anything learned from this tech demo aside from, "Yes, we can do it." Was there any other conclusion? One of the biggest learnings actually out of this is not really technical. In that, the aircraft terminal was built by General Atomics. Kepler's terminal was actually built by a German firm, TSAT. So, the fact that we communicated not just across domains, but two different companies building terminals to the same standard, that was a major achievement here, and it really paves the way we think for operational acceptance for laser communications. Interoperability, right? Yeah. Interoperability, absolutely. And this has been a vision of the Space Development Agency, SDA, for some years. They would publish a common standard. I think it's interesting that they got a commercial company, Kepler, to accept that standard. And we proved the success of that with this, with the series of tests. Fantastic. As we had success with the early flights where we optimized everything to make sure it was perfect, then SDA had us do things like have the satellite be at lower elevation angles in the sky. So, the laser beams were transferring through more air. So, it was degrading the signal somewhat. And also, with those lower elevation passes, the satellite was in view of the aircraft for less time. So, instead of eight or nine minutes, we may have only had three or four minutes. And so, there was a time pressure to make the link work. And one of the things that we demonstrated is we could get that to work on the lower elevation passes, which showed the robustness of the technology. I'm wondering, given the success of what it means for General Atomics in terms of maybe where you all are going to be going from here, and then also what it would mean for your customers, the industry, that kind of thing. So, why don't we start with General Atomics first? So, for GA, it's a validation of a fair amount of investment. And certainly, time we've been working at this for the last four years, in various domains for laser communication. So, it's certainly a validation of the investments we've made and of our technology. We are involved in another number of laser communication terminal programs. We actually have two going on with SDA, this one that we just did. We called that Stallion program. We have another program for SDA called Manhattan, where we're going to be launching two GA-built spacecraft with laser terminals next year. And that will demonstrate Trunch-1 communications. Then we have another program called the Enterprise Space Terminal Program with the Space Force, which will demonstrate space-to-space communications across a wide range of orbits. This demonstration and the rest of SDA's programs are all low Earth orbit. The Space Force is interested in communications across low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit, and even beyond, into what's called X-Geosospace. So, what this does for us is significantly reduce the risk of the technology developments that we're doing for the Space Force and the SDA. This kind of technology and these advancements are crucial for a lot of different developments that are ongoing at the moment. So, it is extremely encouraging to hear that they're going well. So, I'm curious sort of where we go from here. So, SDA has already indicated an interest that they want to communicate. They want to continue the airborne tests. So, we will be doing that. What this does really is enable planners for future military budgets to know, hey, air-to-space communications is not just a PowerPoint hope, it's actually been demonstrated and it's going to work. So, it provides confidence for the U.S. military and frankly other militaries to start putting this into their future architectures and fund the development of operational airborne systems. Let me talk a little bit about the advantages of laser communication. Please, yeah. Why do this in the first place? Yep. Okay. So, most communications between air and space or space to the ground are done over radio frequency communications, radios like you might have in your car. Those radio beams are fairly broad in nature, which allows one transmitter to communicate with many transmitters, but that also means that somebody could jam that communication if they're within the antenna field of view. So, as you can imagine for military operators, having jam-proof communication is pretty important. The beam width of the laser beam communication is so narrow that it's only about a kilometer wide on the ground when we're talking to a satellite that's 500 miles away. And so, that means it's very difficult to jam those laser communications because you don't know where they are. You can't see them unless you're right in that beam and it's unlikely that a laser detector would be there. So, it's an inherently jam-proof technology and it's very secure. For commercial operators, I think in the press recently, we saw that the Starlink company purchased some bandwidth for over a billion dollars so they could do space to telephone communications. So, in order to operate in the RF spectrum, you have to get a license. And those licenses can actually run into the billions of dollars of as we just saw. Laser communications don't require a license. The reason they don't is they don't interfere with each other. So, there's a great potential here in the commercial market to use laser communications for high bandwidth communication between spacecraft but also to get data to the ground without having to invest in a license for that communication. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. It's one of conspiracy theorists' favorite bit of Earth trivia. Oh yes, the Earth's magnetosphere sometimes switches polarity for no apparent reasons. But no, it doesn't cause a whole host of ills. It's just a thing that happens. Or at least that's what they want you to think. Just kidding. Just kidding. And it's not only Earth that sometimes changes its magnetic stripes, so to speak. Apparently, the black hole at the center of Galaxy M87 also likes to switch it up now and then magnetically at least. M87 for reference is about 55 million light-years away from Earth and has a supermassive black hole more than 6 billion times the mass of the Sun. And this new bit of knowledge that we are all learning about M87 is coming humanity's way thanks to the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT collaboration, which is a global network of radio telescopes acting as an Earth-sized observatory. They are the group that gave humanity our very first picture of a black hole in 2019, you might remember. And yes, it's a black hole, but it has that very angry-looking red RNG toroidal Event Horizon around it, right? The little eye of Sauron E, if I'm being honest. But in any case, EHT has just published a new paper in Astronomy and Astrophysics Journal that includes new polarized images showing that the black hole's magnetic patterns shifted dramatically between 2017, 2018, and 2021. At first, they spiraled one way, and then they stabilized, and then they later reversed direction. And that flip reveals a turbulent, evolving environment where magnetic fields guide how matter falls in and how energy shoots out in the galaxy's powerful jet. Astronomers also spotted the first hints of jet emission right at the black hole's base, offering some new insight into how these colossal structures are born and how they shape the galaxies all around them. Still a lot left for us to learn, of course, but who knows what kinds of fascinating knowledge will be built upon these foundations one day. And that's T-Minus, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. What do you think about T-Minus-based daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. And thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. 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 a nexus 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 are mixed by Elliott Peltzman and Tre Hester, with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpie is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
