It’s raining Chinese rockets in Australia.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is October 20, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 22nd to LOS, T-dris. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] Five. Four Issa astronauts have completed a helicopter training course with Germany's Federal Defense Forces. Four. IceSpace Europe has signed a payload services agreement with Lunar Resources Company Magna Petra Corp. Three. Pakistan has sent its first ever hyperspectral satellite into orbit. Two. Inospace has received Korea's first private commercial launch permit from the Korea Aerospace Administration. One. Suspected space debris has been discovered in Western Australia. [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Lift off. [MUSIC PLAYING] Today's guest is retired USAF Colonel William A. Wolfe, President, CEO, and founder of the Space Force Association. We're going to be talking about all things Space Force Association and how you can get involved in the organization later in the show. So stick around after today's headlines. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you for joining me on this Monday. Let's get into it. Now, space debris, be it natural or manmade, is known to return to Earth on a regular basis. For the most part, it lands in the ocean and doesn't cause major damage. But more frequently nowadays, we're hearing of stories where large chunks of spacecraft have crash-landed on Earth and have, as yet, narrowly avoided causing major harm and destruction. And that does seem to be the case in Western Australia this weekend, where authorities are investigating a chunk of metal and carbon fiber spotted near Newman, Western Australia. Mindsight personnel found the burning object near a remote access road and called emergency services. Local police are leading the investigation, and a police spokesperson said, "Initial assessments indicate that the item was made of carbon fiber and maybe a composite overwrapped pressure vessel or rocket tank, consistent with aerospace components. The object remains under investigation, though its characteristics are consistent with known space reentry debris. Further technical assessment will be undertaken by engineers from the Australian Space Agency to assist in identifying its nature and source. And experts are saying it looks to be a part of the fourth stage of a Chinese J-long rocket." And it is not the only story of possible space debris making the rounds over the weekend. A United Airlines flight from Denver to Los Angeles was around 200 miles southeast of Salt Lake City at an altitude of 36,000 feet when the pilots made the decision to divert. And the cause of the diversion was a broken windshield. Not that unusual, it's kind of terrifying, but I guess it's not that unusual. But in this case, it seemed to be quite an unusual break. Unconfirmed images of the incident have appeared online that show that the pilot seemed to have been injured by the incident. And although it's not confirmed, experts are saying that the break was caused by either a meteorite or space junk. And we will, of course, update you when we have more information. Moving on now, AnnoSpace has received Korea's first private commercial launch permit from the Korea Aerospace Administration, better known as CASA. AnnoSpace has now completed all approval procedures for the first launch of Hanvit Nano and has begun preparations for the actual launch. The launch window for the Hanvit Nano space ward mission is expected from October 28th to November 28th. When conducted, it will be the first commercial launch by a civilian company from the Brazilian space launch site at the Alcantara Space Center. The launch site is operated by the Brazilian Air Force, and the launch will be conducted from a launch platform built by AnnoSpace. The company's Hanvit Nano space ward mission is aiming to conduct a launch demonstration that will deploy a customer's satellite and payload into lower orbit at an altitude of 300 kilometers. AnnoSpace plans to transport a total of eight regular payloads, including small satellites for orbital insertion for five domestic and foreign customers, including Brazil, India, and South Korea. Pakistan has sent its first ever hyperspectral satellite into orbit. The country's space agency, SUPARCO, announced the successful launch of the H1 satellite from Northwestern China's Juchon Satellite Launch Center on Sunday. HS1 is equipped with advanced hyperspectral imaging technology that's capable of capturing data across hundreds of narrow spectral bands. The satellite technology is expected to significantly enhance national capacities in fields like precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, urban planning, and disaster management. HS1 is also expected to contribute to development initiatives, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, by identifying geohazard risks and promoting sustainable infrastructure development. The Luxembourg-based subsidiary of Icebase, Icebase Europe, has signed a payload services agreement with Lunar Resources Company, Magna Petra Corp. Under the agreement that's worth a total of $22 million, Icebase Europe will integrate a NASA-developed mass spectrometer observing Lunar Operations Instrument into its upcoming Mission 3 Lunar Micro rover platform as part of Magna Petra's helium availability of Lunar Origin Reconnaissance Mission. The engineering and mission operations of the Micro rover will be led by Icebase Europe in Luxembourg. And speaking of Europe, four ESA astronauts have completed a helicopter training course with Germany's Federal Defense Forces. The training is part of Europe's preparations for future missions to the moon and operations on the lunar surface. The astronauts participated in a three-week program at the International Helicopter Training Center in Bukkeborg, Germany. The course included one week of simulator instruction, followed by two weeks of practical flying in EC-135 helicopters with operations conducted over central Germany and the Alps. The training offers a realistic analog for the dynamics of planetary landings, requiring capabilities such as vertical takeoff and landing, terrain-based decision-making, and high levels of coordination and situational awareness. ESA says that these skills are essential for future human spaceflight missions, including lunar landings where astronauts will descend to the surface using a human landing system and later launch back to orbit. [Music] And that, my friends, is our intel briefing for you on this Monday and a reminder that you can find links detailing all of today's headlines in our show notes, which are both in your podcast app and on space.n2k.com, which is our show's official website. Hey, T-minus crew. In case you didn't know, we post links to every episode of T-minus Space Daily, along with the major headlines on our LinkedIn page. Just look for N2K T-minus Space Daily on LinkedIn and click follow to get our episodes and headlines directly in your feed every weekday and Saturday. Now, a lot of us are spending quite a bit of time on LinkedIn nowadays, and surely a space intel briefing from us would be a nice break from posts about how the AWS outage relates to AI, quantum, something or other, right? Right. N2K T-minus Space Daily on LinkedIn. Tap that follow button and thanks. [Music] [Music] [Music] Our guest today is retired USAF Colonel William A. Wolfe, and he is the president, CEO and founder of the Space Force Association. Bill started by telling me more about his background and why he started the Space Force Association. [Music] My background, 24 years as a Air Force Space Weapons Officer, and a lot of people don't understand, you know, what is a Space Weapons Officer? Does that mean you deployed weapons in space? No, that's not the job at all. The Space Weapons School was devised and created at the end of the '90s, and they realized, the Air Force realized that we needed to create experts who understood all the capabilities we had in the space domain, and then take that understanding and educate folks about what those capabilities were and the impact to war fighting then and in the future. So, 24 years doing that, you know, a lot of the job was in fact doing that, educating folks about the space capabilities that are up in orbit and even on the ground, and educating combatant commands around the globe. I deployed to Afghanistan in 2002, where I was embedded with the Special Operations Forces, educating them about how critical the space domain was, and what I did specifically was looked at the Blue Force trackers that we hosted on the Special Operators so that we could see where they were, and really if they got into trouble, they could ask for help using space capabilities. So, really a highlight and then worked on multi-domain operations, which is a whole separate discussion. But, honored to be here, and that's just a little bit about my background. I appreciate it so much, Bill, and it sounds like what you're working on now is in wonderful alignment with what you've been doing, increasing people's awareness and helping people understand the importance of the space domain. And without further ado, we're going to talk about the Space Force Association. That's my very awkward segue into that. Bill, since we're here to talk about the Space Force Association, I'd love to hear sort of your elevator pitch for what it is and what it does. Yeah, you know, not everyone can join the Space Force. It's the newest branch of our armed services that was founded in 2019, that was signed into law in December of 2019. But everyone can join the Space Force Association. And not many people understand or realize, you know, why do we need a Space Force? Well, every economy is underpinned by a strong national security apparatus. You know, the maritime domain, 90% of goods move around the ocean, and we have a strong U.S. Navy to ensure those goods can move. And so that's why we have a Space Force. We have a Space Force to protect U.S. Allied partners interest in, from, into space. And we're going to have a future space economy that the U.S. partners and allies want to lead. And because we're going to have a future, you know, multi-trillion dollar space economy, we need a strong underpinning to ensure for innovation in the domain, which is what the Space Force does. And the Space Force Association is here to help educate folks about that important mission. What does it look like when you're letting people know about what the Space Force does and why the space domain is so important? I mean, this is a job that I think a lot of us who are listening to what you're saying are 100% on board with the importance of that knowledge getting out there. So I'd be so curious what those interactions are like for you and maybe things that you've either picked up from people you've spoken to about misperceptions or things that are surprising. I'd be curious to hear what sort of what it's been like for you. It's been interesting to say the least. And the reality is, and this is why SFA is such a unique platform, is a single person can't talk to everybody about everything that needs to be discussed. And so when I founded the Space Force Association, it simply was to establish a platform and then do collect folks around me who shared a similar passion. And that's what happened. I remember volunteers one and two showed up and they said, how can I help? And I said, well, this is how you can help. And so now we're to over 200 volunteers in the organization, over 4,000 members. And that's how we scale to get the information out there. So Day in the Life of is really interesting. It's me working with the six paid staff that we have here at SFA, phenomenal staff members to ensure the volunteers are empowered to do their job and to get the word out. So for example, really exciting things that just happened recently, the Boston chapter stood up. What's interesting about the Boston chapter is it was stood up by a guardian. A Space Force Guardian said, I want to do something in a volunteer capacity and a philanthropic capacity and help get the word out. Outside of my role as a Space Force Guardian. And so he just hosted a space innovation summit last week in the middle of a government shutdown. So what that tells you is you have a non-government entity, the SFA, helping get the word out about the criticality of the Space Force and doing so using tremendous volunteers, quite honestly around the globe that are as excited and passionate about this mission as I am. What are the events like? What are the, what is the kind of information that's out there and... Well, first we have to talk about the domain of space. Yeah. And so you got the space domain and, you know, when folks think of space, yeah, it's outer space. Now we're not talking about aliens. We're simply talking about right now orbits around the globe that ensure we can do things in the space domain that we need to do. So you have the commercial sector doing what it does. Yeah. The civil sector represented by NASA doing what it does, but both of those are supported by the Space Force. So the way I describe it is an inverse pyramid. And so that's the sectors that we're reaching out to. Commercial wants to help. They're investing, you know, $700 billion this year into creating capabilities on orbit. NASA's budget is around $40 billion and then the Space Force's budget is around $40 billion. And so those are the sectors that we're reaching out to and describing the interactions between the three. But when folks show up to the events, that's what they're, that's what they're showing up to discuss. They're discussing what is each sector doing and what is the Space Force doing and what does the Space Force need for me to the other sectors and vice versa. And so it's really a relational discussion and dialogue that just keeps going and going. And then the objective is to have an outbrief and help inform policy that we know we're going to need. A lot of folks who listen to our show, they're in the space industry and I know the Space Force's mission is very much in alignment with what they want to, you know, it's key to their success, obviously. So I'm sure many people want to know how they can support the SFA and maybe help that mission grow. Yeah, great question. That's what I love about the 90 corporate members and partners. I call them partners because that's really what they are. The 90 corporate partners that we have right now, roughly, they're informing and providing the resources for the programming that we know we're going to need as an organization. So they're the ones helping us scale. Yeah. These corporate partners realize that by contributing to the Space Force Association, they contribute to this platform. And the byproduct of their contributions are them getting recognized by the Space Force to contributing to a private nonprofit that supports them. And so it's one of those, again, it's a really good way for our corporate partners to be philanthropic without having to donate to other causes. They can donate to the Space Force Association to be part of what I call this global movement that's happening. And really what we see is the, you know, every organization like ours, we host events. And the big event that we're hosting at the end of this year is the Space Power Conference. And so our corporate partners aren't only, you know, partners because they want to be partners and help us with our programming, but they're all descending on the Space Power Conference to interact with what I call the largest gathering of Guardians in the galaxy. And so that's happening December 10th through the 12th in Orlando. And we're really excited about that event. And this is where the corporate partners come and they say, "Hey, how can we help?" And they, we all discuss how they can help. And then we create a programming for 2026. So any corporation who's interested, and I suspect, you know, this is what I say to everybody, any corporation who's not thinking about their space economy is missing out on a tremendous opportunity. And so if your corporation doesn't have a space portfolio right now, you should probably think about creating one. Amen to that. Absolutely yes. And Bill, given your extensive expertise in the space domain over the course of your career, I'm very curious, what are things that you're excited about in the space domain and maybe what challenges and opportunities do you see coming up in the space domain? Here's what's really exciting that people aren't tracking. The Space Force, more than any other service, is going to be using capabilities that are triple use technologies. Triple use. Triple use, commercial, civil, and national security. And so think about this. So sometimes, and again, Starlink is a perfect example of this where you have a contract called StarShield where bandwidth is set aside to support national security needs. Supporting the Space Force. I think we're going to see that with NASA as well in exploration. Especially under this administration, you're going to see policies that are going to allow Space Force to work with NASA, to work with commercial, to create triple use technologies that are going to help, you know, ensure exploration in the domain while ensuring freedom of action in the domain, while also allowing the economy to grow within the domain. This more than any other service, the Space Force is going to need those technologies and capabilities. In other words, you don't see a lot of private aircraft carriers being built. You know, so the Navy builds aircraft carriers, and that's what they build, and we need those. I'm not saying we don't need those, but in the Space Force, you're going to see a lot of triple use technologies, I think, being developed and established. That's fascinating. We often hear the phrase dual use. Not so much triple use, but I love that, and I'm going to keep a pin in that mentally because I love that. That's great. Bill, appreciate that and appreciate your insight so much. I want to make sure I give you the final word. Anything at all that you want to leave our audience with, the floor is yours. Yeah, thanks so much, Maria, again. Thank you for hosting talks like this because the more we talk about it, the more impact that we can have. So we really do appreciate it. For those who want to learn more about the Space Force in general and understand and potentially join the Space Force Association, I just ask you to go over to ussfa.org and learn more about what we're doing. It's $35 a year to join, and so you're becoming, well, again, part of a very large movement to ensure we have freedom of action in the space domain. And Maria, I would like to invite you down to Space Power in December. Thank you for the invitation. I will check my calendar and we'll get back to you. I appreciate that. And coming up on tomorrow's show is our monthly ISS National Labs update with Patrick O'Neill. Be sure to listen in to hear the latest on upcoming research going to the International Space Station. [MUSIC PLAYING] We'll be right back. Welcome back. How many satellites are in orbit around Earth exactly? I don't know about you, but I hear wildly different estimates on this one quite a lot. And with the launch cadence of SpaceX's Starlink alone, estimates very quickly get outdated. And some of the claims are kind of wild. We're going to have 100,000 of them up there by 2030. Exponential growth. Line goes up and to the right always. Well, hang on. Maybe that exuberance isn't so irrational. Time will tell anyway, but in terms of actual realistic numbers, we do have a solid metric to report on today that should help maybe reset some people's mental models. Yesterday, October 19th, SpaceX officially launched their 10,000th Starlink spacecraft ever. Soak that one in for a second. Just Starlink, 10K. Of course, not all of that 10K are still in orbit, attrition due to the physics of orbital decay and all. But even with Starlink forming the bulk of what's in orbit, if we're talking about pure numbers, several thousand other satellites from other nations and businesses are also up there doing their thing. And it's well within living memory for a lot of us when we measured satellites on orbit in the low thousands, if not just the hundreds, and depending on your years, the tens. And a lot sooner than many of us might have expected, we are now measuring numbers of satellites, not in the tens, but in the tens of thousands. Good thing as Douglas Adams once wisely noted that space is big. Really big. Orbits, on the other hand, do have a finite holding capacity. So here's hoping that we never hit that upper limit. [music] And that's T-minus, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. 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 our rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. 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're 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. [Explosion] [Music ends] [BLANK_AUDIO]