Europe makes moves towards reusable rockets.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is September 30, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 22nd to LOS, T-dred. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] Five. Beyond gravity has been contracted to deliver thruster pointing mechanisms for Swiss to 12. Four. [INAUDIBLE] Phyllis Pazio and Ice Space are collaborating to support the growth of the lunar economy and exploiting the capabilities of moon-like communication and navigation services. Three. Axiom Space has selected Emiliano Ventura as its first ever project astronaut. Two. The UK Space Agency is supporting 23 new projects with a six and a half million pound boost from the International Bilateral Fund. One. Avio has signed a 43 million euro contract with the European Space Agency for an in-flight demonstration of a reusable upper stage. [MUSIC PLAYING] And Greg Gillinger from Integrity ISR will be bringing us our monthly update on what we are seeing in orbit. China has launched some satellites into some, shall we say, interesting orbits in the last month and Greg will be sharing his take on their missions after today's headlines. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Tuesday, everybody. Thank you for joining me today. We've got a flurry of European stories that were announced at the International Aeronautical Congress in Sydney in the last 48 hours, so let's get into it. First up, we are starting with Italy's Avio. They've signed a 40 million euro contract with the European Space Agency for an in-flight demonstration of a reusable upper stage. The contract spans a period of 24 months and marks a significant step forward in the transition of European launch systems towards full reusability. Yes, they are aiming to develop a system to rival SpaceX. ESA is aiming to define the requirements, system design, and enabling technologies needed to develop a demonstrator that's capable of safely returning to Earth and being reused in future missions. The activities covered in the contract will cover both the flight and ground segments and will culminate in the definition of an integrated preliminary system design. This initiative is part of ESA's broader strategic vision for the future of European space transportation, which foresees the development of high-frequency launchers that are supported by an orbital industrial ecosystem capable of delivering logistics services in space similar to the role that airports and train stations play on Earth today. It certainly follows the trend that we are seeing of nations developing their own sovereign capabilities and moving away from their reliance on the United States and its systems. Also announced at the IAC in Sydney recently, the UK Space Agency is supporting 23 new projects with a six and a half million pound boost from the International Bilateral Fund. UKSA says the selected projects will strengthen international space partnerships, develop national capabilities, and boost economic growth. The UK companies and universities will collaborate internationally on space innovation with partners in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Lithuania, and the United States. The selected programs span autonomous 3D printing and lunar agriculture to orbital threat detection, biotech manufacturing, medical research, and deep space radar. They cover life sciences, communications, in-orbit servicing, Earth observation, and advanced materials. UKSA says the space funding boost demonstrates the United Kingdom's commitment to international partnerships and a wide range of areas where the space sector can contribute to the UK's economic growth. And another announcement from the IAC for you, Axiom Space has named Emiliano Ventura as its first ever project astronaut. Now Emiliano is a Portuguese physiologist. He has already supported several Axiom crew members as their physiologist both before and immediately after their missions aboard the International Space Station. He now seeks to apply his expertise in optimizing human performance that's been honed through years of working with elite athletes to a new pilot program aimed at testing a rigorous six-month astronaut training protocol. His goal is to participate in a future mission and explore how the human body adapts to microgravity, contributing his own fresh insights to the current body of research in space physiology. And additionally, Axiom Space and the Maldives Space Research Organization have officially signed a memorandum of understanding to create a world-class astronaut training program, commercial spaceflight facility, and collaborative space projects. This strategic partnership will use Axiom Space expertise in commercial human spaceflight missions and the Maldives Space Research Organization's position in space science, research, and technology, leveraging the Maldives' unique geographical and environmental advantages. Telespacio and iSpace are collaborating to support the growth of the lunar economy and exploiting the capabilities of Moonlight Communication and Navigation Services. Telespacio is a joint venture between Leonardo and Tullis and is the prime contractor of the European Moonlight Lunar Communications and Navigation Services program promoted by the European Space Agency, and Telespacio is leading the development of a constellation of satellites that are designed to provide navigation and communication services that will support moon exploration. Telespacio is looking to evaluate iSpace's technologies to provide transportation services for Moonlight satellites into lunar orbit. The companies have signed a letter of intent that also includes exploring potential services in connectivity, navigation, and lunar data utilization with the aim of identifying models and synergies that could boost the commercialization of lunar communication and navigation services. Beyond Gravity has been contracted to deliver thruster pointing mechanisms for SWIS-12. Beyond Gravity will develop and build electric propulsion pointing mechanisms for five SWIS-12 Hummingsat satellites. The small geostationary Hummingsat telecommunications satellites will use Beyond Gravity's pointing mechanisms in the form of a multi-axis robotic arm to control the satellites' electric thrusters to keep them exactly on track 35,786 kilometers above the Earth exactly. The pointing mechanisms are being developed and built at the company's site in Vienna, Austria with deliveries expected to begin between 2026 and 2027. [Music] And that wraps up today's Top 5 Stories, but as always there is a lot going on in the space industry. N2K Senior Producer Alice Carruth joins us now to share the other stories that we're all keeping an eye on. Indeed, Maria, there's always plenty to keep us busy. We've included four additional links in today's selected reading section of our show notes on stories from across the space industry. Sierra Space has completed a critical design review for the Space Development Agency's Tranche 2 tracking layer. K-Hand Space has launched a free satellite propagation tool for real-time visualization. Canada's University of Alberta has contracted SFL to develop a small satellite to study space radiation. And NASA has awarded a supercontract to my old company, Solestar Space, to develop a lunar Wi-Fi system. Congratulations to Brian and the team on that announcement. And in addition to finding those links on the podcast platform that you listen to us through, you can find them on our website, which is space.n2k.com. Just click on today's episode title. We here at T-Minus ask a lot of questions, and we bet you do too. Is there something you've been wondering about lately that you just need some answers to? Maybe a particularly confounding new technology concept or a hard-to-decipher bit of governmental regulation that could use some context? Or just like, what's the deal with it? But you filled that part in, dear listener. I'm sure there's something on your mind, and we want to know, what are you mulling over? What's the workplace debate of the day? Could be a great topic for us to cover on T-Minus, so tell us about it. Space@n2k.com, and thank you. [music] I caught up with Greg Gillinger from Integrity ISR just yesterday for our monthly Space Intel check. So, let's check in on what we're seeing in orbit. [music] So, September apparently for whatever reason has been a month of weird orbits, right? Actually, the launches went fine, but the payloads they sent went into very strange orbits. Two in particular that I'm tracking. One was Yaggan-45, and then another was a Shion-29. Both of them launched in early part of September. So, the Yaggan-45 went up, and it was actually kind of difficult to track from our sensors. And that it was initially tracked at being a 7500 kilometer orbit by about 206 kilometers. So, very elliptical orbit, right? So, it's the greatest point away from the Earth that was 7500 kilometers, and at its closest point is about 206. At some point it did a circularization burn, and it is now pretty much at its lowest point, it's just under 7500 kilometers. So, it's nearly a circular orbit, 20 degrees inclined, but is extremely high for an ISR satellite. So, Yaggan is the Chinese term that they use for what we associate with their military-related intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance satellites. Gotcha. Okay. And the statement that China released at the launch of Yaggan-45 was very identical to other satellites that they've launched in the past that had imagery missions. So, the closer you are to the Earth, the better resolution your imagery typically can have, right? It's just physics. Cancer is it? Yep. So, having something at 7500 kilometers above the Earth's surface with an imagery mission is interesting. Now, China is unique in that they have imagery satellites in geostationary orbit as well, or geosynchronous orbit in some cases, and they've done that since 2015. So, as everyone recalls, geostationary is about 36,000 kilometers above the equator. Since 2015, China has operated satellites with large telescopes that are able to collect imagery of varying resolutions. We think the latest one they launched was Yaggan-41, which was launched in late 2023. And there's been some unclassified reporting that it has a resolution capability of anywhere from five meters to two and a half meters, which from that distance is actually incredible. Yeah. Yeah, my goodness. China does have some experience doing conducting imagery missions beyond LEO, certainly. So, putting this into 7500 kilometers is considered to be in medium Earth orbit, right? So, low Earth orbit extends from about 300 kilometers to about 2,000 kilometers. It's kind of an arbitrary thing, but that's generally the generally accepted location where you go from from LEO to LEO. And then medium Earth orbit is huge, right? It goes from 2,000 kilometers all the way up to that geostationary orbit of 35,800 kilometers or so. So, this is firmly in LEO. And in an altitude, an inclination that is not very widely used, there are some communication satellites at about 8,000 kilometers, operated by SES and their other 3 billion network. So, that's an equatorial orbit at 8,000 kilometers. They've got about 29 satellites. And I think one of the reasons that very few satellites operate in this region is it's right in the middle of the inner Van Allen belts, which is highly energetic. I'll just say that, right? So, there's a lot of proton and electron energy concentrated in that region. It's usually between 1,000 kilometers to about 12,000 kilometers over the Earth, right? So, this is where the Earth's magnetosphere captures a lot of radiation. It protects us down here, which is great. But for anything operating in the inner Van Allen belt, it's really challenging. It's like being on the bumpiest road, I would imagine, and probably does all sorts of fun things to your instrumentation. Yeah, your electronics need to be hardened for sure, right? There was a great deal of concern about how we could get people to the moon if they had to go through these inner Van Allen belts because of the level of energy that's there. So, now they've got a satellite that's operating perpetually inside that regime. So, it'll be interesting to see how long it lasts, right? It did go up on a Long March 7A, and in China's press release, they did note that the 7A had been improved to carry an additional 1,000 kilograms. So, they mentioned that it was capable of carrying over 8,000 kilograms to orbit. So, maybe part of that reasoning was they knew it was going to be going to this hostile environment, and they put a great deal of shielding in place there. The question I don't know the answer to is, okay, so it's an imagery satellite, we assume. Could it be a synthetic aperture radar satellite operating in that environment, or is the energy level such that that would interfere with any sort of synthetic aperture radar return that you may want to operate? And synthetic aperture radars have large antennas that are associated with them. How would they work and survive in that sort of an environment? So, that's kind of an open question that I'm hoping to get some clarification on, but really not sure. So, we don't really know the mission of it. Either optical or synthetic aperture radar imagery, we think. Operating at 7,500 kilometers does present some challenges in terms of getting high resolution. However, we've seen them do this from higher orbits as well, and they seem to be pleased with it. They keep putting more up. Operating at that high altitude, while it does have a trade-off with resolution, you do gain in terms of your field of view, right, in field of regard. So, what could your sensor actually look at? Another interesting thing about this launch is that it's inclined 20 degrees, which gives it really good coverage over the -- it basically is from northern Australia to the northern part of the Philippines, and south of the southernmost point of Taiwan by about 200 kilometers. So, but at that altitude, be able to image large areas of the Earth if you desire to. Or you could have the capability to image portions of the Earth, did some calculations, basically be able to see a third of the Earth, not at the same time. But if you were to point your sensor in one direction or another, you would have that in your field of view. So, it would be possible to collect some information from pretty much anywhere. Would there be any potential significance to that sort of large swing out before the orbit was corrected and circularized, if that's the right word for it? Oh, yeah. Or is that just a course correction? No, I think that's probably planned, right? So, that's not uncommon with the spacecraft going out to Geo, as well as do a geosynchronous transfer orbit. So, you'll have it go way beyond Geo with a pair of G fairly close to the Earth. It's just a fuel-efficient way to get to your higher energy orbits. Right, you fall towards the Earth and then just sort of -- Right, so, yes. You adjust a pair of G to increase your apogee, and you're able to -- I don't know, the astronauts know more about it than I do -- Yes, that's way on my latex. It allows you to conserve fuel and get to your desired orbit in the most efficient manner possible. I was just wondering for imagery purposes specifically, would you give you even a wider field of view potentially if there's something that you were -- my brain's going, could they be looking at other satellites? Obviously, we don't know. But if you're swinging way, way out, you could look at stuff in Leo, maybe, or is that not even -- Well, that's a great point. Looking at other satellites, you could, that's theoretically possible, but you're going to have the same resolution problems there, right? So, and I was thinking about it from our perspective as well. So, if some of our commercial, non-Earth imaging or other non-Earth imaging satellites want to try and characterize Yalgan 45 to see actually what is it? What does it look like? Actually, all the imagery satellites I know of are operating below 600 kilometers. So, to try and take an image of Yalgan 45, now that is at 7,500 kilometers, that's an image from -- do the math -- over 6,000 kilometers away. Almost 7,000 kilometers away, right? So, you're going to get a dot, right? You're not going to be able to tell, hey, that's a telescope, right? That's a SAR radar or anything like that. So, doing a characterization of whatever Yalgan 45 is is going to be pretty challenging. Given where it's at in orbit now. That's interesting. I guess we'll keep a metaphorical or maybe literal eye on that. That's really, really interesting. All right. So, we were talking about unusual orbits and listeners. I get a little preview of the talking notes. So, I'm not telepathic. I just -- I know where Greg's going next. There's a weird orbit, a really weird orbit, or at least weird to me with this next one, Greg. Can you tell us about this one? All right. So, they launched Sheon 29. I know what I think the term you're looking for is -- we call it SuperGEO. So, any orbit -- Which is new to me. Yes. Right. So, GEO referring to geosynchronous orbit. So, any orbit that has a period of about 24 hours. So, basically, one orbit takes the equivalent of one Earth Day, right? One rotation of the Earth. SuperGEO is anything within orbital period greater than 24 hours. Right. So, and Sheon 29 went out to just such an orbit. So, currently, its apogee is about 400 kilometers greater than the geobelt and its perigee is about 14 kilometers greater than the geobelt. And what happens is the Earth is now -- because it's further away, it's got a longer orbital period. The Earth is spinning faster than the satellite is orbiting. So, relative to your surface, Sheon 29 is moving to the west about five -- as of the 27th of September, about five and a half degrees west per day. And it's also has a pretty high -- actually, for geo objects, an extraordinarily high inclination. Most geostation -- actually, all geostationary objects, by definition, are inclined around zero. Geosynchronous orbits have various inclinations, but 28 and a half degrees is what Sheon 29 is inclined at. And that is unusual. So, the purpose of it is unknown as well. In their statement, China released saying it was therefore space environmental monitoring, which could mean a number of different things, an experimentation. So, who knows? What I'm looking to see is, does Sheon 29 remain in this super synchronous orbit and continue this westward drift? And kind of, if it were to do so, does that suggest more of some sort of inspection mission where you were -- because they're going to be passing everything in the geo bill, right? Right. As they go from west, right? They're going to eventually circle the globe every 67 days or so at their current drift rate. Yeah, it sort of suggests that they're not interested in what's going on on Earth. If it's going to be that slow, that is interesting, isn't it? No, it is swinging way to the north, way to the south. That doesn't really support an inspection mission to my knowledge, the way I'm thinking about it. Yeah. So, it's just kind of strange. Now, it is possible lowering a satellite's semi-major axis or altitude is not extraordinarily fuel-expensive, right? So, they may park this thing over the middle of China and leave it there for a known period of time. So, that's still in the realm of possible. Where they actually placed it into its current orbit, it's been drifting west now for a couple of weeks. It just ended up over Mainland China starting on the 25th of September and will remain so up until early part of October, assuming they don't change any of the current orbital parameters. So, we're watching to see if this thing lowers its average altitude and kind of joins the ground belt or if it continues to kind of march and circle the globe every couple of months. And depending on the behavior it exhibits, that's what we'll have to use, honestly, to try and figure out what the mission of this thing might be. Similar to Yalgan-45, this is going to be difficult to characterize as well. So, the US operates the geostationary space situation orders program satellites in Geo, which are there to take images of all sorts of objects in that orbital regime. But they are also close to the Geo belts as well. So, trying to collect on Xi on 29, I think it will be possible, more possible than I think with the Yalgan-45 example, but still quite challenging given the inclination and the drift rate for the Xi on 29 satellite. It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of that or not. Our thanks to Reg Gillinger for joining us for our monthly Space Intel check-in. And if you have a question you'd like him to answer, send it on over to us. Space@N2K.com is our email, and we will share your question, or thought, or idea with him. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Speaking of check-ins, let's do a quick check-in on the latest in space health advances with NASA's Space Health Partner, Trish. The Translational Research Institute for Space Health, or Trish, is teaming up with the eye-tracking platform, Harmonize, to test an AI-powered eye-tracking system that is designed to detect cognitive load and fatigue before they become safety risks. And the tool in testing is called H-Smart, and will be deployed later this year in Antarctica as a proving ground for deep space missions. And the idea here is that by measuring subtle changes in eye movements, the H-Smart tool can provide real-time monitoring and feedback to help astronauts maintain focus during long-duration flights. And the system is unobtrusive, adaptive, and designed to deliver immediate insights. All that, of course, is critical for missions where even small performance lapses could have major consequences in space that makes sense for sure, but also potentially for other high stakes and high-stress fields on Earth, like aviation and healthcare. And we're looking forward to hearing more about how this validation testing in Antarctica turns out. In the meantime, as we wait, you can listen to my interviews with Dr. D'Arrit De Noviel, who is the executive director of the Translational Research Institute for Space Health, or TRISH. It was such a fascinating conversation that we actually ran it across two shows, and they are on July 8th and 10th of 2025. And in those interviews, she tells me all about the work that TRISH does, and also what translational research in space health really means. It's a good question, right? We'll have links to those interviews for you in the show notes so you can sate your curiosity. 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. 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 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. We'll see you tomorrow. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. T-minus. [BLANK_AUDIO]