From Presidential Decrees to Tumbling Satellites.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is December 19, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 22nd to LOF T-dred. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Five. SpaceX experienced an anomaly with one of its Starlink satellites, creating debris. Four. Astrobotic has been awarded three contracts, totaling $17.5 million to advance their reusable rocket systems. Three. Hawkeye 360 has completed the acquisition of innovative signal analysis, supported by equity and debt financings, totaling $150 million. Two. Ryan Medall is partnering with ICI to fulfill a 1.7 billion euro, or $2 billion order, from the German armed forces. One. US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order titled Ensuring American Space Priority. [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Friday, everybody. Thank you for joining me today. After today's headlines, we will be sharing more news from our partners at nasaspaceflight.com. Sawyer will be bringing us the space launch updates from the last seven days and taking a look at what's on the schedule for the coming week. But before that, let's dive into today's intelligence briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] First up, US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that's titled Ensuring American Space Superiority. And the purpose of the order is to pursue a space policy that will extend the reach of human discovery, secure the United States' vital economic and security interests, unleash commercial development, and lay the foundation for a new space age. The order laid out a series of priorities, which included returning Americans to the moon by 2028 through the Artemis program, establishing initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030, and enhancing sustainability and cost-effectiveness of launch and exploration architectures. The executive order also touched on more details of the much-anticipated Golden Dome. It said that the United States plans to develop and demonstrate prototype next generation missile defense technologies by 2028 that will form the backbone of the program. The order also talked about ensuring the ability to detect, characterize, and counter threats to United States' space interests from very low Earth orbit and through CIS lunar space, including any placement of nuclear weapons in space. Nuclear was also mentioned with the pursuit of a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030 and the establishment of a national initiative for American space nuclear power expected early in the new year. The order further laid out plans to attract new investment in space to ensure US competitiveness. It also called for NASA to come up with a plan for achieving the policy objectives in the executive order within 90 days, along with a report within 180 days from the Secretary of War in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs of any technology, supply chain, or industrial capacity gaps that are relevant to this order's directive to progressively and materially enhance America's air and missile defenses and plans for mitigating such gaps within available funding. We are sure that we are going to be going over this order a lot in the coming weeks and months, so strap in folks. Let's move on now. German defense company Rheinmetall is partnering with satellite maker ICI to fulfill an order from the German armed forces. The Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology, and In-Service Support has commissioned Rheinmetall ICI space solutions to supply the German armed forces with space-based reconnaissance data via exclusive access to a synthetic aperture radar satellite constellation. Yes, Rheinmetall ICI space, you heard me correctly. The companies are partnering on this new entity to fulfill the order. Rheinmetall ICI space solutions will be based in NUS and the joint venture will provide a high volume of SAR images via its constellation, offering a comprehensive service solution that includes full operations, ground station management, and AI-driven image evaluation. The satellite constellation remains the property of Rheinmetall ICI space solutions and the current contract is valued at approximately 1.7 billion euros, which is around $2 billion on the side of the pond. There's also an extension option as part of the contract. The space-based reconnaissance data will be used primarily to protect the German armed forces Lithuania Brigade and secure NATO's Eastern flank. Hawkeye 360 has completed the acquisition of innovative signal analysis supported by equity and debt financings totaling $150 million. The acquisition of innovative signal analysis or ISA expands Hawkeye 360's signal processing capabilities, bringing advanced algorithms, mission-ready systems, and deep engineering expertise that enhance the company's ability to detect, characterize, and analyze complex RF activity. Hawkeye 360 says ISA's technology and team strengthened their company's end-to-end platform by accelerating data processing, improving performance in challenging RF environments, and supporting more scalable delivery of insights to customers. This series E preferred equity financing round was co-led by existing investor Night Dragon and Center 15 Capital. Astrobotic has been awarded three contracts totaling $17.5 million to advance their reusable rocket systems. The company says that the awards will accelerate development of both its Zodiac and Zogdoor platforms with three distinct vehicles in development. And together, these vehicles aim to strengthen suborbital flight test capabilities and expand access to high-frequency, low-cost, reusable rocket testing. The US Space Force and the Air Force Research Laboratory awarded Astrobotic a $1.9 million cyber contract to design and build Zodiac B to flight test for rotating detonation rocket engines and other small rocket engines. A NASA Phase III cyber award valued at $1.6 million will fund development, integration, and flight qualification of an upgraded variant of Astrobotic's Zodiac rocket for entry, descent, and landing testing. Astrobotic's largest award totaling $14 million under a NASA Sibirphase III contract will fund upgrades to the Zogdoor reusable rocket, advancing it to the block 1B suborbital variant. And finally, it's not very often that we hear about a mishap happening with SpaceX and their Starlink constellation, but given the amount of satellites in orbit and the frequency of launch, this next story can hardly come as a surprise. On December 17th, Starlink experienced an anomaly on satellite 35956, resulting in loss of communications with the vehicle at 418 kilometers. SpaceX said in a statement on social media that the anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about four kilometers, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects. SpaceX is coordinating with the US Space Force and NASA to monitor the objects, and they say that the satellite is largely intact, but it is tumbling and will reenter the Earth's atmosphere and is expected to fully demise within weeks. Space tracking company Leo Labs says that it detected tens of what were likely pieces of debris from the mishap, and that additional fragments could be detected as it continues to analyze the event. For its part, SpaceX says it is deeply committed to space safety and that it takes such events seriously. The company's engineers are working to root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to other spacecraft that increase protections against this type of event. And that wraps up today's top five stories. My friends stay with us for more on launch news from our partners at nasaspaceflight.com. And tomorrow be sure to check your podcast feed for T-Minus Deep Space. It's our special edition Saturday show where we share an in-depth interview and dive a bit deeper into fascinating topics with brilliant guests. And on T-Minus Deep Space tomorrow, we have Ralph Grundler from AI Tech, joining me to discuss AI in orbit, from radiation hardened hardware to edge computing, and why space is the ultimate proving ground for autonomous systems. That is on T-Minus Deep Space tomorrow. Don't miss it. I'll hand you over now to our partners at nasaspaceflight.com. I'm Sawyer Rosenstied for NSF, and this is your weekly space traffic report for T-Minus Space. As has been happening a lot lately, this past week was a rather active one, and it all started from China with the launch of the Kuizhou-11 on December 13th at 108 UTC. The rocket was carrying the DEAR-5 spacecraft into a low Earth orbit. DEAR, which stands for Discovery Exploration Advanced Recovery, is a spacecraft built and developed by AZSpace. It consists of a small pressurized capsule attached to a service module for on-orbit maneuvering. The capsule can carry experiments that can then be recovered once the capsule returns back to Earth, which usually happens several months after launch. After that, we had the first of two Rocket Lab launches this week with an electron launching from New Zealand on December 14th at 309 UTC on the RAISE and SHINE mission. The launch was carrying the RAISE-4 spacecraft for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency into Sunsynchronous orbit. It is the fourth in a series of demonstration satellites carrying several experimental technologies and materials testing. The previous one, RAISE-3, was launched on a Japanese Epsilon rocket, but it was destroyed during the launch's failure during the mission. As a result of several delays trying to fix the Epsilon rocket, JAXA decided to instead launch the RAISE-4 spacecraft on Rocket Lab's Electron rocket. Just a few hours after that, we also had the first of four Falcon 9 launches this week, lifting off at 549 UTC on the same day from Vandenberg. The rocket was carrying a batch of Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit as part of the Starlink Group 15-12 mission. The first stage of this flight, B1093, was flying for a ninth time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, of course, I still love you. Then, on December 15th at 525 UTC, we had another Falcon 9 launch from Florida, taking 29 Starlink V-2 mini-satellites into orbit. The first stage for this mission, B1092, was flying for a ninth time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, a shortfall of Gravitas. After that, we had another launch from China with the Chongzhong 4B lifting off on December 16th at 317 UTC. The launch was carrying the Zayun-3-04 satellite into a Sun synchronous orbit. The satellite is the fourth in the series of Zayun-3 high-resolution civil survey satellites by the Chinese government. And from the United States, we had the fifth and final launch of the year of United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket. Lift-off happened on December 16th at 828 UTC from Florida with the mission carrying a batch of 27 Amazon Leo satellites. With this launch, Amazon now has a total of 180 operational satellites in their constellation. In this very varied week of launches, we even had an Ariane 6 from French Guiana lifting off on December 17th at 501 UTC. The rocket was carrying a pair of European Galileo global navigation satellites into medium Earth orbit. This was the first such launch for Ariane 6 following two previous pairs that had been launched on SpaceX's Falcon 9 due to Ariane 6's development delays. And speaking of Falcon 9, near the end of the week, we had a double header of Starlink launches by SpaceX. The first of these occurred on December 17th at 1342 UTC from historic Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission was carrying a batch of 29 Starlink V2 mini satellites into orbit supported by B1094 on its sixth flight. The mission was also supported by the fleet leader for Faringhouse, serial number 185, which was flying for a 36th time on this launch. The second launch of the double header took place from a foggy Vandenberg that same day at 1527 UTC, a mere one hour and 45 minutes after the previous mission. The launch was carrying 27 Starlink V2 mini satellites on board and was supported by Falcon 9 first stage B1063, the oldest in the fleet. With this flight, it also became the third one to reach 30 flights trailing fellow boosters B1071 and B1067. The two missions marked SpaceX's 164th and 165th Falcon launches of the year, reaching SpaceX's goal of launches for 2025. According to Vice President of Launch Kiko Donchev, in the summer, the company had revised the goal from 170 down to 165 launches this year based on "business and manifest needs." He also stated that the launch from LC 39A was going to be the last one with Falcon 9 from the launch site for a while, as SpaceX focuses on upcoming Falcon Heavy missions in 2026 and developing the Starship infrastructure at the Cape. And to wrap things up, we had the second launch of Electron this week, but this time it was from Wallops. NSF was out there in Virginia covering the launch, which took place on December 18th at 503 UTC. The mission, called Don't Be Such a Square, carried four small flat-packed experimental satellites called disk sets, which were developed by the Aerospace Corporation with NASA's funding. The name of the mission is a play on words with the fact that most small satellites these days are cube sets, which have square faces. The flat-packed design of the disk sets aims to reduce the amount of volume taken up by small satellites inside a rocket's payload fairing, allowing more of them to be loaded without compromising on the satellite's capabilities. Or in other words, a similar approach to SpaceX's own Starlink satellites. To wrap up the year, we have quite a great deal of launches. Ironically, SpaceX will only launch twice in what remains of the year, with one of those being a Starlink mission from Florida and another one carrying the third Cosmos SkyMed satellite into orbit for the Italian space agency. Rocket Lab is also looking at adding at least an extra electron launch this weekend from New Zealand, although details about the mission haven't come out yet. Two Soyuz rockets are also expected to launch from Russia in the next couple of weeks, one from Plessex and another one from Bostokni. India is planning to launch AST SpaceMobile's first Bluebird Block II satellite on board a launch vehicle Mark III rocket during the last week of the year. And possibly while we were editing this report, the South Korean company InnoSpace may have already debuted their Hanbit Nano rocket from Brazil. Whether it did or not, we'll cover that in the new year. Also during the editing of this report, Blue Origin may have also launched New Shepard's 37th mission to the edge of space. But like I just said, we'll cover that in the next year. From China, we'll have a handful more launches as well close out 2025, perhaps finally including the debut launch of the Series II rocket and the Cheong Cheong 12A. As we always say, we recommend you visit nextspaceflight.com or download the next Spaceflight app on your phone so you can keep track of when these Spaceflight events may happen. I'm Sory Rosentine for NSF and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. - And an update on the NS37 mission by Blue Origin since that report was recorded. It's now scheduled for lift off no earlier than Saturday, December 20th. Their window opens at 8 a.m. central time. We'll be right back. Welcome back. On this day in space history, the first human voice was broadcast directly from Earth's orbit. It was December 19th, 1958, a Christmas message of global peace during the early days of the first space race. And the voice was that of then US President Dwight Eisenhower. Here's the message. This is the President of the United States speaking. Through the marvels of scientific advance, my voice is coming to you from a satellite circling in our space. Through this unique means, I convey to you into all mankind American way for deep waters to move wheels towards this, everywhere. - Maybe you recognize a bit of that vintage space audio from our show's opening. My voice is coming to you from a satellite does make its daily appearance at the top of T-Minus. We do like Ike, don't we? And hey, depending on how you listen to our show, my voice is coming from a satellite too. (upbeat music) And that's 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 our show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey and 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 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. Have a great weekend. - T-Minus. - T-Minus. (fire crackling) [BLANK_AUDIO]