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Today is January 5th, 2026. Happy New Year! I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. NASA confirms that the Russian segment of the International Space Station is no longer leaking. SpaceX was the first U.S. company to launch in 2026 from both Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral Space Force bases. The United States Space Force has issued requests for launch provider interest in launch pads at both Cape Canaveral Space Force Base and Vandenberg Space Force Base. L3Harris Technologies has agreed to sell a majority part of its space propulsion and power systems business to private equity firm AE Industrial Partners. The European Space Agency has confirmed that some of its systems have been breached after a hacker offered to sell data allegedly stolen from the organization. Happy 2026, everybody! It is good to be back on the mic today, and we're bringing you the latest news from across the space industry. After today's headlines, though, our colleagues Bailey Reichelt and Matthew Linton will be bringing us the Space Law FAQs. And they're going to be discussing what big things they see happening in space law for 2026. So stick around to find out more. Now, it's not the best way to kick off an intelligence briefing for a new year, but we are hoping that the story of a cybersecurity breach at a space agency will be a bit of a motivator to start 2026 with the right security procedures in place. That's because the European Space Agency has confirmed that some of its systems have been breached after a hacker offered to sell data allegedly stolen from the organization. Although it is unclear at this stage which data has been compromised, it's understood that the attack has not impacted any classified or highly sensitive mission systems. Threat actors have claimed a total of 200 gigabytes of data has been compromised. On December 30, 2025, ESA shared on X the following statement about this breach. ESA is aware of a recent cybersecurity issue involving servers located outside the ESA corporate network. We have initiated a forensic security analysis currently in progress and implemented measures to secure any potentially affected devices. Our analysis so far indicates that only a very small number of external servers may have been impacted. All servers support unclassified collaborative engineering activities within the scientific community. All relevant stakeholders have been informed and we will provide further updates as soon as additional information becomes available. Reports have suggested that the attackers had systems access for potentially up to a week, possibly mapping continuous integration, continuous deployment pipelines and uncovering hard-coded credentials. This could leave the potential, at least for adversaries, to better understand ESA's infrastructure, to identify potential vulnerabilities and even execute further supply chain attacks in the future. Here is hoping that the damage is contained and that this is the extent of the breach. Let's turn our focus over to some business news now. L3Harris Technologies has agreed to sell a controlling interest in its space propulsion and power systems business at a total enterprise value of $845 million to private equity firm AE Industrial Partners. The deal sees the defense company shed some NASA business lines to sharpen focus on national security. The deal also represents one of the larger space industry transactions in recent months. L3Harris Technologies will retain a 40% stake of the space propulsion and power systems business. Transaction closing is expected in the second half of this year, subject of course to obtaining regulatory approvals and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. L3Harris's RS-25 rocket engine business is excluded from the sale. The United States Space Force ended 2025 issuing requests for launch provider interest in launch pads at both Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first request for information was issued for Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Florida's Space Coast. Most recently, the site served NASA's Orion Ascent Abort II test in 2018 and it has been a key venue for military missile demonstrations over the Atlantic. The RFI emphasizes increasing launch diversity on the Eastern Range, explicitly stating that the goal is to introduce new launch vehicles rather than provide additional pads for existing ones. And as for Vandenberg, Space Launch Delta 30 announced a request for information to develop heavy or super heavy vertical space launch vehicle capabilities at Space Launch Complex 14, which is located near VSFB's southernmost point. Both of the RFIs, if you are interested, can be viewed by following the link to SAM.gov in our selected reading section of the show notes. And since we are talking about launch, what have launched in 2026? And I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that SpaceX was the very first company in the United States to lift off this year. SpaceX's Falcon 9 launched Italy's Cosmos SkyMed 2nd Generation mission on January 2nd from Vandenberg Space Force Base. The Cosmos SkyMed 2nd Generation satellite was built for the Italian Space Agency and the Italian Ministry of Defense to study Earth using synthetic aperture radar, gathering data at all times of day and in all weather conditions from an altitude of 385 miles. It aims to monitor the Earth for the sake of emergency prevention, strategy, scientific and commercial purposes, providing data on a global scale to support a variety of applications, all of this according to ESA. And in case you were wondering about the East Coast as well, well, the first launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2026 was also a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It carried the Starlink 688 mission, taking off at 1.48 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday, January 4th, 2026 of course, carrying 29 Starlink satellites and successfully landing its booster back on a drone ship. And after years of persistent leaks, it seems that the Russian segment of the International Space Station is finally sealed. NASA spokesman Josh Finch told Ars Technica, following additional inspections and sealing activities, the pressure in the transfer tunnel attached to the Zvezda service module of the ISS, known as the PRK, is holding steady in a stable configuration. NASA and Roscosmos continue to monitor and investigate the previously observed cracks for any future changes that may occur. So, after years of applying sealant to fix the problems, what finally worked? Well, that's not quite clear, but we are glad nonetheless to hear that progress has been made. [Music] And that wraps up today's Intelligence Briefing, my friends, and 2K Senior Producer Alice Carruth joins us now with a look at the other stories making today's headlines. Happy New Year Alice, what do you have for us? Happy New Year Maria, it's already setting itself up as a great one. Our good friend Melissa Quinn has been appointed as Vice President of Spaceport Operations at Maritime Launch in Canada. Many will remember Mel as the head of Spaceport Cornwall, so she certainly brings a lot of experience to the role. And I also wanted to mention the retirement of NASA astronaut Nick Hague. As you know, I was at the launch of Crew 9, which included Nick Hague along with Roscosmos Cosmonaut Alexander Gorbanov. That was the controversial flight when only two crew members were sent to the ISS after Sonny and Butch extended their stay. Nick is also the first active guardian to have gone to space, so we wish him the best of luck with his continued service in the Space Force. Absolutely, and Team Ionus Crew, if you're going to be at Commercial Space Week in Florida starting on January 27th with the Global Spaceport Alliance Annual Summit, followed by Space Mobility and Spacecom, we will be there as well. So if you'd like to speak with us during the event, we have microphones and we do travel. So drop us a line at space@n2k.com and we can set something up. And thanks. Let's check in with Bailey Reichelt and Matthew Linton now for Space Law FAQs. Hi guys, this is Bailey Reichelt from Aegis Space Law. I'm here with Matt Linton. Hello Bailey, nice to see you as always. Yeah, great to see you. Well, here we are, 2026. We thought we would pick two very exciting topics that we're both passionate about that we think is going to be big in space law for 2026. So Space Nuclear, and then we're going to talk a little bit about what's coming down the road in telecoms. I'm excited to hear you talk about the Space Nuclear developments, Bailey, and this is a big deal. So tell us what's going on. We heard some very interesting comments from Jared Isaacman on Space Nuclear specifically. He really laid the line down that we're going to do this as a nation. If he's the NASA administrator, we're going to focus on nuclear propulsion and nuclear power in space. What does that mean for us? Well, I don't know how much you guys, all you listeners out there, are following nuclear. So a lot's happened on the terrestrial nuclear side, first of all. I'm not going to get into it. I don't want to get into deep here and all the terrestrial reactor nuclear engineers come after me. But we're seeing a lot of executive orders because nuclear is a big priority for this administration. And it's part of our critical infrastructure you're hearing it talked about in connection with data centers. It's like it's the new darling child of tech. We're seeing executive orders a lot came out in 2025 trying to resolve some issues like fuel for like supply chain issues for fuel manufacturing, getting the NRC to approve licensing, getting their licensing process streamlined and running a little faster so that new reactor designs could be approved more quickly. While some of those EOs weren't directly focused on space, we're seeing that all of this stuff, the streamlining of regulations benefits space as well. And then we're seeing that continued momentum through Isaacman. If you read the Athena project, which I think was leaked a little while back, you might know more about it by the time you hear this recording. But Isaacman's a big proponent of nuclear as well. He thinks it's really important for one, us keeping up in the race with China. But also if we want to survive the lunar night and we know NASA has an emphasis on nuclear and putting some sort of fission reactor on the moon. And then we've got Draco and Jetson. You may not know a lot about Draco and Jetson. It's nuclear thermal propulsion is Draco and nuclear electric propulsion was Jetson. I say was Draco as a was Jetson is a currently still going. It's the nuclear electric propulsion. But Isaacman talks about both as being really critical to the future space, especially if we want to go to Mars without dying of radiation. DOE actually ran a study a little while ago. They crunched some numbers and they said it would reduce the trip to Mars by about 25 percent if we can use some sort of nuclear based energy to do that. Anyway, there's a lot going on with nuclear and I expect we're going to continue to see an uptick in changes in regulations, the regulatory streamlining to allow for more nuclear infrastructure to get approved. And maybe we'll even see the launch of the first commercial nuclear reactor. Maybe 2026 might be ambitious for that. But we're going to see serious conversations start happening about it. And so what is the government role and private industry here? I think for a lot of people that are not close to this issue, they think nuclear, we need regulation, we need safety. Obviously, the government's going to play a role, but can you just provide a little more insight here on what you see as in this year ahead, how an agency like NASA might really be able to lead and bring industry along? NASA has been pretty strategic in trying to organize programs like the Clips program. We saw that we're seeing, you know, survive the lunar night, there's a big focus on putting a fission reactor for energy on the lunar surface. And there's a big focus on how commercial companies are going to do that and not just have everything sponsored by the government. So traditionally, NASA and DOD have been the only ones allowed to touch anything nuclear. Traditionally, we've only ever worked with RHEs, so like heater units, which is not a fission reactor for the purposes of this podcast. We haven't done a fission reactor commercially. In fact, our governments only ever tried it once back in the 1960s and declared it not a success. And we haven't, I guess, to public knowledge done it again. But yeah, NASA is really pushing for us to have a commercial pathway for nuclear fission reactors in space. Very interesting. Yeah. Well, OK, so I could talk about this forever and I think you should go read about it. There's a lot going on, but let's flip and talk about telecoms for just a little bit because I know there's some stuff coming out in the regulations and you were really excited about it. So what's going on there? I may be one of the limited number of people that get very excited about FCC proposed rulemaking for the space industry. And this is a major development came about I think late October that there's a notice proposed rulemaking also known as an NPRM. And this is by the FCC with respect to space authorizations and licensing for spacecraft that the FCC really takes the lead on as the spectrum entity in the US and also with respect to orbital debris. And here's what's happening. Bottom line is for, I don't know, as long as I can remember, as long as I've been involved in the space industry, people have been asking for proposing, suggesting any way they could. How can we improve the way in which we license spacecraft in the United States through the FCC spectrum is very hard. It's very important, right? The use key, this is the FCC's primary job is to make sure that there's an allocation and adjudication of spectrum. The problem is for the rapidly expanding private space industry, they've been dealing with rules that have their roots in large semi-government type systems that go for years and years in development. And the process simply as it currently stands is not designed to enable broad spectrum input, no pun intended, broad spectrum innovation, that private companies really, when you're just getting started, the idea that you'd have to spend a million bucks on regulatory counsel to deal with trying to get a spacecraft licensed is somewhat of a non-starter. And so great news here that the FCC under the new space bureau leadership of J. Schwartz has proposed this significant reform. Traditionally, the section would be called part 25 of the regulations. Now we're going to call it part 100 if this moves through. At the end of the day, the FCC, one of the really, I think key points here is they want to create their words and a symbol line of review and approval. There's a built in presumption of approval in these regs and these proposed regs that focus on rather than specific requirements that either the US government identifies or frankly the way it's been, which is a very case by case basis of review. Companies really didn't even know necessarily what the requirements were for them to get a license. Now this approach would look at what are called performance based standards and essentially saying, OK, if you've got a satellite platform that meets certain characteristics from a performance perspective and you can show your orbital debris characteristics, your ability to burn up in the atmosphere safely over a period of time that is set currently at five years post mission completion, that there would be essentially a presumption of approval, which is amazing, right? That's never happened before. So if you can establish a satellite or maybe you're going to use an existing micro satellite bus or another company's bus that's been space qualified, you're using the same thing, the same spectrum, the same type of operational characteristics. Maybe if this works, if this goes through, you'll be able to get a presumption of approval even within a particular timeframe. We're talking ideally weeks, not months, and this would be a great thing for the space industry. And I think there's a lot of complexity that has to happen here still, but this is a good thing. If you have an eye on it, pay attention to it, engage with the agency even after comments have come through. I think we have currently within this space bureau, frankly, we've had it for a while, people within the space bureau that really wanted to do something, but we have a moment that we might actually get some change through here that would be really great for the industry. Yeah, that sounds amazing. Frankly, it sounds like timelines could go way down, and I think I'm also hearing that costs could go way down, like especially your spend on lawyers to help you do this. Is that right? That would probably be the case, which is great news for anyone that is just looking to do experiments in space, looking to build their company, right? Maybe not as good a news for lawyers, but there will be plenty of things for those of us in this profession to help with. I think it'd be hard to find a lawyer that does space regulatory work that won't tell you this is very needed and a great thing for our clients if this moves through. When the government does something that makes life easier like this and still keeps public safety in mind and critical public goals in mind to ensure that we don't have spectrum interference or debris incidents, everybody wins. That's awesome. Thanks for giving that overview, Matt. Yeah, so it sounds like there's a lot going on for 2026, we think, the space nuclear and the new rules and the FCC, we think those are things that you should pay attention to if you're in the space industry. That's right. Well, thanks for joining me. Thank you as always. [Music] We will be right back. Welcome back. Our last story today comes from our, it's definitely just science and nothing more desk. And it's about SpaceX's Starlink satellites. According to Michael Nichols, who is the vice president of Starlink engineering at SpaceX, about half of the Starlink's currently on orbit are going down. Not all the way, just a bit. Of course, of this year, 4,400 Starlink satellites will be dropping their altitude from the current 550 kilometers to 480 kilometers. And now I cannot help but wonder if there's more to this story somehow and time will indeed tell whether or not my tinfoil hat is on a bit too tight. Michael said that the explanation for this drop is perfectly simple. It's the sun because we just, just finished experiencing a solar maximum. And that is the time when solar activity hits a peak on an approximately 11 year cycle. And that solar maximum was why we had so many Aurora viewing opportunities over the past year or so, by the way. Flip side of the maximum is the solar minimum, which we are now slowly heading towards over the next four years thereabouts. So when solar activity is high, our atmosphere toughens up. And when solar activity drops, our atmosphere becomes to a satellite essentially thinner and easier to move through. Less drag for the satellites to fight against. So lowering a whole lot of the Starlink constellation kind of clears the air, makes those satellites stay up longer on orbit. And really, I'm sure the move is for their own safety and for the safety of all the other satellites. And definitely not for any other, hmm, golden domey kind of reason, I'm sure. Tinfoil hat on. And that is T-minus, brought to you by NTK 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 the 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@ntuk.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. NTK 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 NTK.com. NTK 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 Kilpey is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
