Germany plans to go on the offensive in space.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is September 26, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 20 seconds to LOS, T-dred. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Five. Axiom Space and Burgeal Holdings have released the preliminary results of the suite ride, Diabetes Research, that was conducted during the Axiom Mission 4. Four. Spaceforge is partnering with United Semiconductors to develop the supply chain for space-grown semiconductor materials. Three. SpaceX has filed with the Federal Communications Commission asking to launch 15,000 new satellites for direct-to-device service. Two. NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the Dream Chasers contract for resupply missions. One. Germany plans to invest 35 billion euros in space-related defense projects by 2030. Three. Zero. [INAUDIBLE] Lift off. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Make sure to stay with us after today's headlines, because our partners at nasaspaceflight.com will be wrapping up the launch news that was and what will come next week with our Space Traffic Report. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Friday, everybody. You made it to the end of another week. And it's been a busy week in the space industry, which increasingly seems to be bleeding into the defense industry, just like our top story today. And that is, Germany's Defense Minister has announced that the nation plans to invest 35 billion euros-- that's around $41 billion-- in space-related defense projects by 2030. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius made the announcement at the German industry's third space Congress held in Berlin. Pistorius outlined the plans for military space security architecture. Germany plans to harden systems against attacks, improve orbital surveillance through radar and telescopes, and develop guardian satellites. And if you're asking yourself, why now? Well, Pistorius warned about the growing threat posed by Russian space activities, citing concerns over two Russian satellites shadowing Intel-SAT satellites used by German forces and others. He said, quote, "Russia and China have expanded their capabilities for warfare in space rapidly over the past years. They can disrupt satellite operations, blind satellites, manipulate, or kinetically destroy them." He made the case for talks on developing offensive capabilities in space as a deterrent. And this, we should note, marks the departure from Germany's prior space policies, which had been explicitly defensive. He also said, quote, "We must be able to deter in space in order to be defensible." And certainly, Germany is not the only nation feeling this way recently. Ah, 1967 Outer Space Treaty, we hardly knew ye. The announcement comes as tensions rise in the region between NATO countries and Russia. Russia had been warned that NATO is ready to respond to further violations of its airspace with full force, including by shooting down Russian planes, following recent incidents in Poland and Estonia. Let us hope that the warning is an active deterrent before offense is used as defense. Moving on now, and we have an update on Sierra's space's dream chaser. Yes, we'd almost forgotten about the space plane, too. It has actually been nine years since NASA awarded a commercial resupply services to contract to Sierra Space. They plan to use the space plane for resupply missions to the ISS, with Sierra Space awarded a minimum seven flights. But with the ISS being decommissioned in five years and the dream chaser still not proven in flight, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract. They have determined that the dream chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, which they plan to conduct in late 2026. Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of dream chaser, including through the flight demonstration. NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and flight demonstration. And as part of this modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions. However, the agency says it may order dream chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space, following a successful free flight as part of its current contract. And we should note, there are rumors of layoffs at Sierra Space following the contract renegotiations, and we do wish those affected the very best of luck in their new endeavors. And we recently reported that SpaceX had secured new spectrum access purchased from EchoStar, and now we're learning about the company's plans for the spectrum use. SpaceX has filed with the Federal Communications Commission, asking to launch 15,000 new satellites for direct-to-device service. SpaceX claims that with the new satellites and access to the spectrum purchased, it will be capable of providing connectivity virtually anywhere on Earth. The filing is a little light on details only, stating that the service will support voice, texting, and high-speed data, and a quote, "array of offerings "to address the connectivity needs of Americans "wherever they are and whatever they are doing." SpaceX plans to operate the 15,000 satellites in low Earth orbit and very low Earth orbit, operating in mobile satellite spectrum. Let's head on over to our friends in the UK now, and Spaceforge is partnering with United Semiconductors to develop the supply chain for space-grown semiconductor materials. The companies have formalized the ongoing collaborative efforts that started over a year ago with the signing of a memorandum of understanding. The MOU establishes a collaborative foundation for developing commercially viable in-space semiconductor manufacturing capabilities. Spaceforge will design and develop advanced materials, deposition processes, and equipment, and integrate manufacturing systems that are compatible with its Forgestar platform. United Semiconductors will contribute its proven crystal growth processes, design specialized equipment, and accessories for in-space manufacturing environments, identify potential materials suitable for space-based production, and perform comprehensive wafer processing and testing. And I don't know about you, but I'm regularly letting people know about why space is really important for folks who aren't really paying attention to this scene, and often using examples of breakthroughs, you know, more modern ones than Yeolde, Velcro, and Tang, that are indeed thanks to space. So this next story is definitely going in my personal Rolodex. Axiom Space and Burgeal Holdings have released the preliminary results of their sweet ride research that was conducted during the Axiom mission four, and the research concluded that everyday diabetes tools used by millions of people on Earth can be used comprehensively to provide end-to-end diabetes monitoring from space to ground and back to space. It has quite a breakthrough in opening the door to future astronauts who may have diabetes, and for those of us, of course, here on Space of Earth, it provides new solutions in remote healthcare. The next step in the program is to potentially send an astronaut who has diabetes to space, which has, as you might imagine, historically been among one of the disqualifying conditions for an astronaut candidate. Axiom Space and Burgeal Holdings say they will continue to work together to find innovative solutions in chronic disease management for use on and off the planet. That is an awesome story. (upbeat music) - And that wraps up today's intelligence briefing. Coming up next, our partners at NSF will be wrapping up the launch news from this past week, but before we get to the space traffic report, N2K senior producer Alice Carruth has some info to share on today's show notes. What do you have today, Alice? - Maria, as you know, we include links to the original sources of all the stories we mentioned throughout the episode in the selected reading section of the show notes. We also like to include a few additional stories that we think would be of interest to you, our T-minus crew. Today, there are three additional links in there for you. One on China's Shenzhou 20 crew successfully completing their fourth round of spacewalks. NASA and ISRO's NISAR has shared the first radar images of Earth's surface, and NASA has selected Science and Technology Corp to support atmospheric research and development at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center. - A T-minus crew, make sure to 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 a really cool talk with NRL space roboticist, Dr. Samantha Chapman, and NRL computer research scientist, Dr. Kenneth Stewart. And they are gonna be talking to me about their recent robotics demo on the ISS and the future of autonomous robotics in space. Definitely check it out while you are, I don't know, traveling to the IAC in Sydney. Oh yeah, that starts next week, by the way. Or maybe like me, hiding over the fact that you're not traveling to the IAC. We're with you friends, you don't wanna miss it. (upbeat music) - Let's check on in with our friends and partners at NSF now, who have the Space Traffic Report. - I'm Ryan Cates in front of NSF, and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T-minus Space. Kicking off a very busy week in launches, we had a Falcon 9 taking off on September 21st at 10.53 UTC from Florida. The launch was carrying 28-stung V-2 mini-satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this mission, B-1085, was flying for an 11th time, and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, a shortfall of Gravitas. The second Falcon 9 of the week launched on September 22nd at 17.38 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East in Vandenberg, California. The rocket was carrying out the NRL-48 mission from the National Reconnaissance Office. For this mission, Falcon 9 was carrying a batch of star shield satellites for the NRO's own pre-affiried Space Architecture Constellation. This was the 11th mission of the program, and the fifth so far in 2025. The first stage for this mission, B-1081, was flying for an 18th time, and it successfully returned to Earth, landing at a very foggy landing zone 4 in Vandenberg. This week, we also had a suborbital launch of an orbital rocket. Rocket Lab launched on September 23rd at midnight UTC, an electron rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility as part of a secretive Haste mission. Haste missions make use of electron rockets flown on suborbital trajectories in order to test hypersonic payloads as they re-enter through the atmosphere. Unfortunately, because of the highly secretive nature of the launch, there was no coverage from Rocket Lab. But we know it happened because locals saw it happen, and we knew about it ahead of time because there were launch notices as well. Out in space, NASA's OSIRIS APEX spacecraft zip-passed Earth on its trip to meet with asteroid Apophis. The spacecraft had been previously part of the OSIRIS REX mission, which brought samples back to Earth from asteroid Bennu. The main spacecraft, however, still working fine, so NASA decided to tweak its trajectory a bit so that it would encounter the asteroid Apophis in 2029. That year, Apophis is expected to make a really close encounter of Earth, and there will be lots of cool and interesting gravitational effects on its surface that will be studied by OSIRIS APEX. To help tweak that orbit, the spacecraft is performing two flybys of Earth, with one of them having its closest approach to our planet on September 23rd at 1656 UTC. During this flyover, OSIRIS APEX flew within 3,400 kilometers from Earth before flying out into deep space again. The spacecraft will perform another Earth flyby in 2027, before meeting Apophis in April 2029 and entering orbit around it in June of that year. Back on Earth, we had a launch from China of the Zhiyang-3 rocket. Lift-off took place on September 24th at 0756 UTC from the Dongfeng-Hung Tianjiang offshore platform. Just like on the previous two Zhiyang-3 flights, the rocket was carrying a batch of 11 G-Sat satellites for car manufacturer Gili. The launch was also carrying a small test satellite called Star-01, developed jointly between Peking University and G-Space. Coming back to the United States, we had another Falcon 9 lifting off on September 24th at 1130 UTC from Launch Complex 39A in Florida. The mission was carrying three space weather science missions to the Sun Earth Lagrange Point 1. The primary payload was NASA's IMAP spacecraft, which was accompanied by the agency's Caruthers Geocorona Observatory and NOAA's SWIFO-L1 spacecraft. IMAP stands for Ingestegular Mapping and Acceleration Probe and its main focus is to study the Sun's heliosphere, a bubble around our solar system of material created and expelled by our own Sun. The mission intends to answer four key questions. What are the properties of the local interstellar medium that is the medium directly outside the heliosphere? How do magnetic fields interact with that medium? How does the solar wind interact with that medium at the outer boundary of the heliosphere, a boundary called the heliopause, and lastly, how are particles in the Sun's solar wind accelerated to high speeds? In order to answer these key questions, IMAP carries 10 instruments on board. Since it's a mapper, it of course includes three imaging instruments. These imaging instruments will measure the presence and map the distribution of what are called energetic neutral atoms or ENAs. These are non-charged particles with high energy that can be found buzzing around the solar system and that have different sources. These different sources lead to different levels of high energy for these ENAs. So one imager is specialized to search for them at low, but still high energies, another at high, high energies, and the other looks at ENAs at ultra-high energies. Hence why they're called IMAP low, IMAP high, and IMAP ultra. Another instrument is the GLOWS instrument, which stands for Global Solar Wind Structure. This is a photometer that literally counts single photons a thousand times a second, but the photons it counts are carefully selected to be one type of frequency that's emitted when ultraviolet light hits non-charged hydrogen atoms. The interstellar medium is quite full of these atoms, and as they fly past our solar system, they get hit by the Sun's ultraviolet photons of light, which are absorbed by the atoms and then re-emitted again. These are the photons that this instrument will be observing as it'll literally be the glow from our own heliosphere, hence the cheeky name of this instrument. IMAP also has a dust collector, which analyzes the interstellar and interplanetary dust to investigate their composition, their speed, their concentrations, and how they interact with solar wind. Since a lot of the activity in the Sun's heliosphere is dominated by what the Sun's magnetic field does, IMAP carries a magnetometer to measure said magnetic field. It also carries an instrument that collects and detects electrons from the solar wind at various energies. A similar instrument called Swapi is also tasked with collecting and counting other particles from the solar wind, as well as counting charged particles that may have come from interstellar space and punched through our heliosphere to where IMAP will be located. A close twin of Swapi is Kodice, which will do a similar task, but will do it instead for higher energy particles. And to round up the list of instruments, IMAP also has a telescope dedicated to detect and map the different types of particles coming from the Sun at high energies. All of these different data points should give a much more comprehensive view of the Sun's heliosphere and should go a long way to answering those four key questions we mentioned before. The other NASA spacecraft on this mission, the Kuroofa's GeoCorona Observatory, will also study the Sun, but by looking back to Earth. Of the many layers of our own atmosphere, the exosphere is the outermost layer, and it is the one that's most affected by space weather. This layer is mostly made out of hydrogen, which, as we mentioned for IMAP, can glow on its own when hit by very specific photons. This glow of ultraviolet light around the Earth is what is called the GeoCorona, and this observatory carries two ultraviolet images to be able to observe this phenomenon. The mission is named after physicist and engineer George Kareefers, who, among many things, designed a compact ultraviolet spectrograph that was carried on Apollo 16. This spectrograph successfully imaged the GeoCorona, and it is one of only a few images that we have of it, until this spacecraft starts science operations, that is. Observing the GeoCorona can be very important for two reasons. The first is that knowing about what's going on in the exosphere can be very helpful from a simple space weather awareness standpoint, but also the second reason is about the source of that hydrogen that's present in the exosphere. The current theory is that this hydrogen comes from Earth's water that evaporates and ascends to some of the layers below the exosphere, where it gets broken down into oxygen and hydrogen by the Sun's light. The hydrogen, being an extremely low-density gas, then continues ascending until it reaches the exosphere, where it gets blown away by the solar wind and ultimately escapes Earth. This is a process that is not very well understood, and it's thought to lead to the loss of water in planets with weak or non-existent magnetic fields like Mars, so it's kind of a big deal to understand this if we want to be sending people to Mars, right? Along with IMAP and Caruthers was known as SWIFO-L1 satellite, which stands for Space Weather Follow-On Lagrange-1. This is a space weather monitoring satellite by NOAA, and it is the first one by the agency specifically designed for full continuous operational space weather observations. Once it arrives at L1, it will be renamed to Space Weather Operations at L1 to Advance Readiness 1, or Solar 1. The spacecraft will produce a constant stream of data down to Earth without interruption, which should allow faster warnings of certain events, sometimes within five minutes. Solar 1 has four instruments on board, two of them being sensors to measure the presence of solar wind plasma and highly energetic ions and electrons that are produced during high-energy events, such as coronal mass ejections. The other two instruments are a magnetometer to measure abrupt changes in the surrounding magnetic fields and a coronagraph to directly image the sun's corona for disturbances and coronal mass ejections. So, to summarise the work of these three spacecraft, IMAP will study the sun's heliosphere by mapping its surroundings and the boundary between the heliosphere and the interstellar medium. Caruthers will look back to Earth to see its interaction with the exosphere, the outer layer of our atmosphere, and SWIFO-L1 will look directly at the sun and its surroundings to alert us whenever a major solar event occurs. The information from the spacecraft will not only be valuable now, but it may also further our understanding of several fundamental processes that may be very helpful in the future as humanity moves to further planets and stars. As if it were some sort of poetic coincidence, this launch occurred in the morning shortly after sunrise at the Cape, which meant our team in the field was able to capture the transit of Falcon 9 in front of the disk of our sun. It's pretty poetic to see the launch of three spacecraft dedicated to learning about the sun flying in front of the sun. Following the launch of IMAP, SpaceX still had yet more Falcon 9s to launch, with one taking off from neighbouring Space Launch Complex 40 on September 25th at 0839 UTC. The rocket was carrying 28-stylen-V2 mini-satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this mission, B1080, was flying for a 20-second time, and it successfully landed on SpaceX's spaceship a shortfall off Gravitas. And just a few hours after Falcon 9 at 1209 UTC, an Atlas V lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 in Florida, carrying about 27 KYPERSatellites for Amazon's Project KYPER. This was the third mission of KYPERSatellites on board Atlas V, which was flying in the 551 configuration. With the three KYPERSatellites missions and the two KYPER Falcon missions so far, this brings up the total number of KYPERSatellites launched to 129. Up on orbit is the International Space Station, where SpaceX once again conducted a re-boost of its CRS-33 cargo dragon, but not for as long as they planned. Only three and a half of the 19 and a half minute burn was complete before it was stopped due to "being on unexpected tanks". Now, everything is safe, don't worry, but that's a new one for me. We've contacted NASA for comment, and we'll let you know if we get a response. To wrap up the week, this morning we had another batch of Starlink satellites from Vandenberg into Sun Synchronous Orbit. The first stage booster for this mission was B1082, which was flying for a 16th time, and it successfully landed on SpaceX's spaceship. Of course, I still love you. Going into next week, we could have up to three launches from China, as well as three Starlink launches. We may also have another one of those very secret hush-hush haste launches from Wallops, and there's yet another Kuiper launch scheduled as well, but this one will launch on a Falcon 9 rather than Atlas. As always, you can keep track of these launches and many other events by going to nextspaceflight.com or downloading the app on your phone. I've been Ryan Caden for NSF, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to Team Under Space. [Music] Welcome back. And for all of you road warriors who see the inside of an airport lounge more often than you would like, this story may be of special interest for you. And the story is that NASA researchers recently flew two science flights over Nuke in Greenland to measure how much cosmic radiation air travelers absorb, especially those of us on polar routes where Earth's magnetic shielding drops to nearly zero, like those long, long-haul flights across the Pacific that I've taken more times than I would like to admit. The campaign called SWXRAD is helping validate NASA's global radiation maps used for aviation planning, but the same instruments could one-day guide astronauts through the radiation hazards of lunar emissions and even Mars landings. And by comparing the real-world data from Greenland with space weather models, NASA is fine-tuning their tools that will both protect passengers, like me, in the skies, and explorers beyond Earth. And for a place that's best known for auroras dancing across the night sky, Greenland did offer a fitting backdrop, reminding us that space weather doesn't just happen out there. It is part of daily life here on Earth, shaping the safety of flight crews today and charting the path for human journeys one day far out into the solar system. [music] And that's T-minus brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. What do you think about T-minus Space Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. The link is in the show notes, friends, and thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. 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 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. Have a lovely weekend. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]