A pivotal week in spaceflight.

Today is November 25, 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] [MUSIC PLAYING] Five. The European Space Agency has shortlisted Spaceport Cornwall and Macrihanesh in the UK as testing locations for its hypersonic test platform Invictus. Four. Blue Origin has announced an agreement with Optimum Technologies to integrate its carousel optical payload on board the first mission of Blue Ring. Three. The US Space Force has awarded multiple small contracts to develop prototypes for space-based interceptors. Two. NASA has reduced the number of astronaut missions on Boeing's Starliner contract and said the spacecraft's next mission to the International Space Station will fly without a crew. One. China has docked an uncrewed Shenzhou spacecraft with Tiangong Space Station, which will return the crew currently on orbit in April, 2026. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Lift off. [MUSIC PLAYING] And today I have my monthly catch up with Greg Gillinger, SVP for strategy and development at Integrity ISR, to find out the latest news on what's going on in orbit. What movements are we seeing with Chinese spacecraft and what is the latest spacecraft that they have sent to orbit? Find out more along with me after today's intelligence briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you for joining me on this Tuesday. Let's dive into our intel briefing, shall we? And we're kicking off today's updates with good news from China and especially for the three crewmates on Tiangong Space Station. China launched an unmanned Shenzhou-22 spacecraft on a Long March 2F rocket from the Juchuan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 2.11 p.m. local time. According to Chinese media, the spacecraft then docked with China's Tiangong Space Station at 3.50 p.m. It now means that the crew on Tiangong, which were left without a flight-worthy spacecraft for 11 days, now have a safe return vehicle. And it all has been a cause of concern for the international space community after the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft, which was due to return a crew two weeks ago, was deemed unsafe for use. The crew instead used the Shenzhou-21 capsule to return to Earth, leaving the Shenzhou-21 crew without a return vessel. It is still unclear what will happen to the damaged Shenzhou-20 spacecraft, which does remain docked to Tiangong. Shenzhou-22 carried medical supplies, spare parts for Tiangong, and equipment, which they hope can be used to repair the window crack on Shenzhou-20. The Shenzhou-22 spacecraft will remain docked until about April 2026, when it will be used to transport the crew of the Shenzhou-21 back to Earth. And while China celebrates their good news, Boeing is dealing sadly with a new blow. NASA has reduced the number of astronaut missions on Boeing's Starliner contract and said that the spacecraft's next mission to the International Space Station will fly without a crew. Boeing's contract under NASA's commercial crew program, which was awarded back in 2014, included six post-certification operational flights carrying astronauts to and from the ISS. Well, the latest modification reduces the number of Starliner flights to four, including up to three astronaut flights and an uncrewed flight in April next year. The next Starliner flight, known as Starliner 1, will be used by NASA to deliver necessary cargo to the Orbital Lab and allow in-flight validation of the system upgrades that were implemented following the crew flight test mission last year. NASA says two additional flights are optional. The US Space Force has awarded multiple small contracts to develop prototypes for space-based interceptors. The contracts were awarded to unidentified companies and were under $9 million each and fall below defense contract regulation thresholds for detailed disclosure. The awards were issued using a streamlined acquisition tool known as Other Transaction Authority, or good old OTAs. It is believed that they form the initial work for the proposed US Golden Dome space-based defense infrastructure. Blue Origin has announced an agreement with Optimum Technologies, or OPTECH, to integrate its carousel optical payload on board the first mission of Blue Ring. And just a reminder, Blue Ring is Blue Origin's highly maneuverable multi-mission spacecraft for payload delivery, hosting, and infrastructure services. OPTECH's carousel sensor is designed to provide actionable insights on space objects and orbital activity, and includes onboard image storage, object detection algorithms, and passive thermal control. The payload is designed to operate flexibly across dynamic orbits over a year-long mission profile. Carousel will fly with ScoutSpace's OWL sensor, along with internally developed payloads, all demonstrating Blue Ring as the ideal platform for supporting future Geo space domain awareness missions. Blue Ring's first mission is expected to launch in 2026 with initial injection into Geostationary Transfer Orbit and additional services performed in Geostationary Orbit. The European Space Agency has shortlisted Spaceport Cornwall and Scotland's Makra Hanisch as testing locations for Invictus. And Invictus is ESA's research program aimed at developing Europe's new hypersonic test platform. The program is designed to de-risk critical innovations such as advanced propulsion, thermal protection, and guidance systems by testing them under real-world conditions, accelerating Europe's progress towards aircraft-like access to space. Invictus is expected to create hundreds of highly skilled jobs in the final UK region, attract inward investment, and anchor advanced aerospace capability. And we will, of course, let you know when a final site is selected. [Music] And that is it for today's Intelligence Briefing, my friends. As always, you can find more about all of the stories that I've mentioned for you today in our show notes. It's in your podcast app and on our website, space.ntuk.com. Hi there! Whether you have been listening to T-minus from the start or whether this is your first episode tuning in, I wanted to thank you for listening. If you like what we're doing here at T-minus, your support will help us grow and bring you more of the insights and guest interviews that you enjoy. So if you could take a moment and leave us a five-star rating and short review in whatever podcast app you are using, I would appreciate it so much. Tell us about how much you learn from Greg Gillinger's monthly Space Intelligence reports, piercing a bit of the veil about what China's space program is up to. It's fascinating, isn't it? Yeah, let us know. It really does help. And I wouldn't be much of a podcast host if I didn't drop an obligatory like and subscribe now and then after all. So please do. And thank you. [Music] I recently caught up with Greg Gillinger, SVP for strategy and development at Integrity ISR to find out the latest news on what's going on in orbit. [Music] A couple of stories I wanted to dive into for this month, and they both relate to China, and they're both actually fairly recent over the last week, week and a half or so. So the first one was a launch of a TGS-21 satellite. This happened on November 21st, which is a few days ago. It's going to what we call a highly elliptical orbit, or a hyal orbit. So it's still in some sort of geosynchronous transfer orbit, we believe, but the inclination that it's kind of trajectory points to it going to HEO, which is significantly different than a geostationary orbit. So for some of you listeners, they may not be familiar with all of the different types of orbits that we have. So geosynchronous orbit is at about 36,000 kilometers above the equator and has an orbital period of roughly 24 hours. So that's what synchronizes it with the ephtho, so geosynchronous, right? So one orbit per day, so it keeps that satellite over kind of the same point of view. Contrast that with a highly eccentric orbit, or highly elliptical orbit, or HEO, is what we call it. You may also really determine a mulled NIA orbit. The Russians first started using this type of orbit in the '60s. I'd like to say they kind of discovered it, but it's really a natural phenomenon that's been around forever. They were the first ones to actually use it, and they named it the Mulled NIA orbit. And it's an interesting one. So if you think back to where Russia is on the globe, I know we're talking about a Chinese satellite, but just by the way, it's background. Providing communications or missile warning over the northern hemisphere is important for a nation like Russia that has much of its land masses in the northern latitudes, right? And very difficult to provide communication support to a lot of these northern latitudes just because of the nature of the shape of the Earth, and it's had the Earth kind of blocks connectivity with some of your geosynchronous satellites, right? So if you're able to have a satellite in orbit with an extremely high altitude, you think like 36,000 to 40,000 kilometers above the Earth, and then you incline it at about 63 and a half degrees, you'll have a long loiter time over the northern hemisphere and a very short loiter time over the southern hemisphere. So we get into the orbital mechanics, Alimio, right? So aphage is over the northern hemisphere, and perigee is over the southern hemisphere. And I mentioned that you use an inclination that's very specific. So a 63 and a half degrees inclination or 116.5 degrees inclination, there's this weird phenomenon that happens in that you basically, the shape of the Earth and what's called the J2 effect kind of nulls out any sort of movement of your perigee location. Your hardly even a perigee stays in the fifth spot, which isn't the case for a lot of different orbits where your point of perigee is actually continuously moving from day to day. At these inclinations, because of the shape of the Earth, you maintain that argument of perigee over the same spot of the Earth, in the southern hemisphere. So what this does, it allows you basically 12 hours of loiter time as you get out to apogee or spacecrafts and let me slow a relative to do. So it gives you really 12 hours of coverage per satellite over that northern hemisphere. So it's really good then for providing communication support, no such effects. I had to Google it while you were talking about it also, because I'm very visual admittedly, but as you were describing it, it's a huge swing, just like a huge swing out and then a really close pass under is sort of... Think of X and Tristis measured on a scale from zero to just a little bit less than one. Now, zero being a perfect circle, nine being an extremely narrow oval. The X and Tristis for these orbits is around 0.7 or so. Very elongated as you're seeing on Google there. So why do I bring this up? So TGS 21 looks like it's heading out to one of these Moldaya orbits. And China only has with TGS 21. Now, this will be the fourth satellite that they have in HEO. The first one that they launched in HEO is a test satellite that they call Shian 10-01, which was launched in 2021. And then in 2022, I believe they launched Shian 10-02. And then just last year, they launched another TGS satellite, TGS 13, into these highly elliptical orbits. And what we saw with those three is very interesting in that they really synchronized the orbit of TGS 13 and the first Shian satellite. So both of those satellites, they're not co-claimer. They're offset from one another, but they're both loitering over the northern hemisphere at about the same time. And then they're basically exactly out of phase with the remaining Shian 10-02. So as they're descending, Shian 10-02 is rising. So between the three of them, you have really 24/7 coverage of that northern hemisphere. And so with TGS 21, what we're looking for now is to see if they do the same thing that they do with TGS 13. Will they synchronize TGS 21's orbit with Shian 10-02 so that both of those are now over the northern hemisphere at the same time? And we don't know for sure what the missions are for these. If they are for some sort of missile warning, which would be important to China, China doesn't have a whole lot of landmass that's in the higher latitudes. I actually don't think that's any. But they are concerned about missiles perhaps coming over the polar regions. And having satellites in these orbits would be extremely helpful for that. And if you're able to have two sensors looking at the same place on Earth, it improves your ability to conduct that missile warning mission. It improves your accuracy in terms of engaging what azimuth the ballistic missile might be on, the trajectory it might be on. And it also helps to increase your confidence level. If you're seeing the same thing from different satellites, then you're more confident in what that might be telling you. Which for that mission, as you can imagine, is extraordinarily important. So in the past, for Chinese satellites to get out to HEO is a couple of weeks or so in terms of maneuvering. So we'll be watching this, like I said, it just launched a few days ago on November 21st. So we'll be watching here over the next several days, maybe a couple of weeks to see if it actually does fall into that pattern or not. So that's one that caught my eye. And something we've been kind of waiting on for quite some time just because after TGS-13 launched and you got two satellites in that one pattern, it would only make sense to add a fourth satellite to have dual satellites providing that coverage 24% but we'll see that actually happen. There were two other launches that were of interest in the last couple of weeks and they're both of the test and experiment variety. So China launched three satellites that are part of the Xi'an 32 formation. And they also launched three satellites that are part of the Xi'an formation. So they all went to the lower earth orbit. They've got both types of satellites in multiple orbital regimes. What was particularly interesting about these two launches is I noticed that the satellites all went into orbital planes that are very popular with either Starlink or Kuiper or both. So you choose the plane that you put your satellites in by, that's not something that happens by accident. That is definitely a planned choice because it's very difficult and expensive to change. Actually in Leo, it's also impossible to change. It's very much impossible. So the fact that they have them orbiting with Starlink and Kuiper satellites is interesting. In the past, China has stated that Starlink we consider to be kind of a threat to us and we want to be able to figure out ways that we can counteract it. So I think these test satellites go up and be coplanar with these commercial proliferated Leo constellations. It's certainly something to keep an eye on. We'll be right back. Welcome back. NASA's Mars bound Escapade mission just added a little cosmic flare to its to-do list. Take-n selfies. Yes, even spacecraft headed for the red planet do need a good profile pic. Relatable. The twin Escapade probes named Blue and Gold captured their first images using their star tracking cameras, giving the mission teams a charming glimpse of each spacecraft's solar panels and bus as they cruise towards the red planet. It's part engineering check, part morale boost, and part NASA does Instagram, but 50 million miles from home. So what makes this especially cool is what Escapade will do once it gets to where it's going. The mission's twin orbiters are supposed to help map Mars's magnetosphere in stereo, helping us better understand how energy and charged particles move between the sun, the Martian atmosphere, and space. And that's the kind of science that improves long-term planning for communications, navigation, and even one day, crewed systems on and around Mars. Understanding that space weather environment is, as you might imagine, critical for future digital infrastructure far from Earth. And while these early selfies from Escapade are not going to win any photography awards, I mean, you can go take a look at them, we'll link them for you in our show notes. They do tell the teams back home that everything is on track. The power systems are stable, attitude control looks great, and both spacecraft are healthy as they continue their multi-month trek across the stars. So maybe next time you snap a selfie, remember that you are participating in a proud tradition shared by explorers from Earth all the way to Mars. And that is T-minus, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. We'd love to know what you think of our podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like this show, please share a 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 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 next is 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 Kilpe is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. T-minus. 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