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Today is January 6, 2026. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. Redwire's European Wing has successfully completed payload integrations for the European Space Agency's CINDEO-3 satellite mission. The Spainsat NG-2 communication satellite was apparently struck by a space particle as it was en route to its operational orbit. NASA has selected industry proposals to advance technologies for the agency's habitable world's observatory concept. The library at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is closing after a number of disruptions and reductions by the Trump administration. NASA's Dynamic Test Stand and the Propulsion and Structural Test Facility, known as the T-Tower at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, are due to be demolished. [Music] Happy Tuesday, everybody! We will be catching up with Greg Gillinger later in the show today to find out the latest news on what's going on with Chinese spacecraft in orbit. He always has fascinating insights to share with us all, so make sure to stick around to find out more after today's intelligence briefing. [Music] Let's get into it. We ended 2025 optimistic, should I say, for the new leadership at the US Space Agency, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has hit the ground running, starting with updating old facilities. He's looking to demolish several testing facilities in Alabama. As early as this Saturday, the agency plans to demolish the Dynamic Test Stand and the Propulsion and Structural Test Facility, known as the T-Tower at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Isaacman told Fox News Digital that NASA is embarking on an exciting infrastructure modernization effort to prepare for the future of exploration. The first phase will make way for new facilities by retiring outdated ones, enabling investments in the capabilities that are needed to deliver on our world-changing mission of science and discovery. And funding for those updated facilities at the Marshall Space Flight Center come from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law just last July. NASA is looking to use the funding to bolster its infrastructure, which will include more projects beyond the Alabama location. And staying with NASA for our next story, the reorganization at NASA does include the closure of some facilities that have not been met with positive reception. For example, the library at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is closing after a number of disruptions and reductions by the Trump administration. Staff members say the closure is degrading NASA's mission. The facility houses tens of thousands of books, documents, and journals, many of them not digitized or available anywhere else. A NASA spokesman said the agency would review the library holdings over the next 60 days to decide what to do with them. And we should note that holdings from the library at the Goddard Space Flight Center include unique documents from the early 20th century through to the Soviet space race and are expected to either be warehouseed or thrown out. Shutting down the facilities is said to save the space agency $10 million a year and avoid another $63.8 million in deferred maintenance. And for our final NASA story for today, which thankfully is a little more positive, the space agency has selected industry proposals to advance technologies for the agency's habitable worlds observatory concept. This will be the first mission that would directly image Earth-like planets around stars that are like our sun and study the chemical composition of their atmospheres for signs of life. The habitable worlds observatory space telescope also aims to enable wide-ranging studies of our universe and support future human exploration of Mars, our solar system, and beyond. To achieve its science goals, the habitable worlds observatory is looking for a stable optical system that moves no more than the width of an atom while it conducts observations. The mission would also require a coronagraph to block the light of a star to better see its orbiting planets, but this one needs to be thousands of times more capable than of any current space coronagraph built. The habitable worlds observatory is also aiming to be designed to allow servicing in space to extend its lifetime and bolster its science over time. To further the readiness of these technologies, NASA has selected proposals for three-year fixed-price contracts from Astroscale US, BAE Systems Space and Mission Systems, Busek Corporation, L3 Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grimman, and Z-Cote Company. Let's head on over to Europe now to wrap up the final two stories for today's Intel briefing. Unfortunately, it's not good news for the Spain-Sat-NG2 communications satellite, which was apparently struck by a space particle as it was en route to its operational orbit. A space particle in this case meaning something too small to definitively identify as debris or otherwise. In any case, Spain's Spain-Sat-NG program is intended to provide secure communications for the country's armed forces and government agencies. It is backed by the Spanish government, which has invested more than 2 billion euros in the construction launch and operation of two satellites, which are expected to have an operational lifespan of 15 years. The INDRA Group, which has majority ownership of the satellite, is assessing the extent of the damage. They say that they're implementing a contingency plan to ensure continuity of services for Spain's Ministry of Defense. And Redwire's European Wing has successfully completed payload integrations for the European Space Agency's CINDEO-3 satellite mission. This marks a major milestone as the mission readies for launch in Q4 of fiscal year 2026. The spacecraft was built and integrated at Redwire's facility in Belgium. Redwire integrated 10 technology demo payloads funded by the European Commission and developed by government and commercial partners in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and Luxembourg. The mission is funded by the European Union and will support several innovative technology demonstrations as part of the in-orbit demonstration and in-orbit validation program, which aims to accelerate the deployment of new technologies and stimulate the European space ecosystem. [Music] And that wraps up today's Top 5 Stories for You, my friends. And 2K Senior Producer Alice Carruth joins me now with a look at the other stories that are making the headlines in the space industry today. Alice? Maria, I forgot to mention with all the excitement of our first day back yesterday, the biggest career update news from the space industry over the holiday period. Tori Bruno, former ULA CEO, has jumped spaceship over to Blue Origin. Bruno is now the president of Blue's newly formed national security group. I see very promising things on the horizon for Blue Origin in 2026. Hello, T-minus listeners. Whether you are tuning in to T-minus for the very first time or the 500s, we want to know what you think of our show. So, yeah, friends, how are we doing? You can tell us with our listener survey as a matter of fact. It only takes a few minutes to fill out and you can rest assured that we will be pouring over your feedback. Link to the survey is in the show notes for you and thanks. [Music] Our guest today is Greg Gillinger, SVP for Strategy and Development at Integrity ISR. [Music] Greg, it is always a pleasure to see you. Thank you for joining me yet again. Thanks. Great to be with you. Thank you so much. So, let's dive in. I imagine things have been busy for you lately. So, where do you want to start? They have been. They have been. So, really on the China launch side, they've been incredibly busy recently. Some of the folks may recall that we've talked a little bit about a Chinese attempt to refuel one of their satellites in geosynchronous orbit. And this involved two satellites called SJ21, which folks may recall was launched in 2021 and did a debris removal experiment. Successfully did a debris removal experiment in geosynchronous orbit. It's actually the SJ21 is the first satellite to actually do a non-cooperative docking in geosynchronous orbit. And they was able to haul out this piece of debris to a graveyard orbit and dispose of it for the good of everyone in the geosynchronous belt. Also sends kind of a message that if I can do this to a piece of debris, I can do it to something else if I wanted to. Yeah, it's quite a message, isn't it? Non-cooperative is doing some heavy lifting in that sense. Yes, exactly. So very interesting. So that was way back in 2022, January of 2025, China launches SJ25 and is nice enough to announce, hey, this is a satellite services experiment. And we're going to focus on orbit refueling. And they launched it into a kind of a crazy geosynchronous orbit about 10.2 degrees inclination. And just happened to notice that crazy inclination plus its RAN value matched up perfectly with SJ21 at the time. So for listeners, changing your plane is a big deal. So if your inclination and your RAN match, then that's a choice that the Chinese operators made to actually place it in that orbit. That was in January. These two things actually looked like they docked. They made several attempts to kind of run in and check each other out and then finally came together. And what this means is when we were able to see from the ground two dots before, after the second of July, we only saw one dot from the ground. So we assume that they docked with one another. And they remain so up until very recently. They actually, in mid-August together, made one of, I think it's one of the largest plane change maneuvers in geosynchronous orbit ever seen. They'd both drop six degrees of inclination, which is a pretty significant expenditure of fuel. And then on the 29th of November, observers noticed that what was one dot had become two. And they were separated by about 30 kilometers at one point. So it looks like they had finally completed whatever test or experiment that they wanted to do. And China, I don't believe, has come out with any sort of public release statement on whether this was successful or not, or we really haven't heard much from them since the actual launch in January of SJ25. Right after those two dots, or that one dot became two dots, we saw SJ25 conduct what we call natural motion circumnavigation. So an RPO of SJ21, so they actually came back together, not as close as before, but significantly close. So they may have been checking each other out, so to speak. And then most recently, we've seen both satellites begin to do some minor maneuvers. So both satellites, they're now separated. Oh gosh, it's been a while since I've checked. They had gotten down to like one to seven kilometer separation. Now they're at the 60 to 65 kilometer separation. They haven't made it, like I said, they haven't made any major maneuvers. So if they wanted to bring them back together again, they certainly could. But we're starting to see now maneuvers from both satellites, both SJ25 and SJ21. Nothing really definitive yet that would tell me that this was a success or not. What I'm looking for is SJ21 to make some pretty significant maneuvers. Maybe prepare to conduct another debris removal experiment. Those sorts of things would be really good indicators for us to look at to see if they were actually successful in passing propellant from SJ25 to SJ21 and SJ21 being able to use that propellant effectively. Yeah, I was going to say, we're assuming that's what they did, but very likely that's what they did. So we're trying to wait and see what happens with SJ21 next. And we're also waiting to see what happens with SJ25 next. Is this a one and done sort of a scenario or how much gas has gone on board? So are there other satellites that, you know, built by China that may benefit from a visit by SJ25? So we'll see if this is, again, a one of one or maybe it's the first of many to follow. It's a bit of a fuel tanker up there. That would be interesting if that's what that would be interesting. Huh, just taking a look around. The big indicator would be to do any sort of refueling. Obviously you need to do some docking, at least the way that they have this thing set up. So to do that, you would need to do some plane matching, which will be observable. Right. So what we're trying to take a look at is what sort of plane, well, what other satellites are near the same orbital plane as SJ25? We assume that that matters. We don't really know how much fuel SJ25 has on board. Maybe it's not as important as what it has been in the past. And that China is much more flexible now in the orbits that they're able to get to with SJ25. So which is important for a lot of reasons, right? Yeah. It's everyone operates up until now as you operate a satellite. The first thing on your mind is how do I maximize my fuel efficiency? Because I can't, once it's gone, it's gone. Yeah. And now maybe we're seeing that paradigm begin to change, which opens up a whole lot of capabilities. And now you're maneuvering to best accomplish the mission, not best preserve your fuel. Very interesting to watch what's happening there and seeing what nations are actually capable of doing these things too, is always... One thing we did notice in the last couple of weeks was a couple of experimental launches out of China with some of their Xi Yan experimental spacecraft and some of their Xi Yan experimental spacecraft. And the interesting thing I noted from both of these launches is that those satellites went into coplanar orbits with Starlink satellites. So they're both operating lower than Starlink, so they're going to be their orbital period will be shorter, so they'll be passing under Starlink satellites nearly continuously. But yeah, so they were both... One was launched into a 53-degree orbit, the other was launched into a 51.8-degree orbit, and the RANDs... I mean, there's a lot of Starlink satellites out there. Yeah. And they tend to be in this inclination range. There's some polar orbit ones as well. But Starlink's at 550 kilometers over the surface of the Earth. The Xi Yan 32s that I'm talking about, about 435. And the Xi Yan 30 satellites, there's three of these, are at about 520 kilometers. So again, orbital planes don't happen by accident. That is a definite choice. So China has decided to launch some experimental satellites into coplanar orbits with a lot of Starlink, and even some Kuiper. Or I guess it's not Kuiper anymore. It's Amazon Leo. Leo, yeah, okay. I have so many thoughts on that, but I'm going to put a pin in that because I have a feeling by the next time we talk, we might know a bit more about that, what's going on there. That is also very fascinating. So... We'll give it a shot. Greg, thank you so much, and all the best to you. Thank you. We'll be right back. [Music] Welcome back. Rodent research is a key cornerstone of medical science, both on the ground and in space. It's been happening aboard the International Space Station and Tiangong Space Station for quite some time. Yes, indeed, there are some very well-traveled mice out there who have seen more space than you and I. Try not to be jealous. Just keep in mind that they're not getting a couple of you. They're in little housing boxes that keep them safe. Yeah, rodent biology is similar enough to human biology that these mice and other rodents can help us understand the effects of space on our muscles, our bones, our brain, our eyes. You name it, really. And a recent member of a mouse crew that had a two-week stay on Tiangong is giving us some new insights into an area of biology in the space realm that really has not been studied much until now. And that would be the reproductive system. Four mice on Tiangong were there from October 31st to November 14th, 2025. About a month after their return to Earth on December 10th, one of the females of the mouse crew gave birth to a whole litter of nine pups, little baby mice. The internet tells me that mouse gestation is 19 to 21 days, so chances of these pups being space mice conceived on orbit does not look likely, and I know you are all wondering. In any case, six of the nine pups are still alive, as sadly it's not unusual to lose a few pups per litter. And according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology, the surviving little babies are all developing well and mom is doing great. So it seems that at least from a two-week stay in space that nothing significant was damaged enough to prevent reproduction. And researchers will continue to keep an eye on how the babies grow up. If there are any long-term effects of space exposure that will show up anywhere, and if the baby mice themselves will also be able to have babies when they become adults. Undoubtedly, we will see some experiments in the future where mice become proud mommas and papas on orbit. That's going to make for some very interesting, tiny, likely cheese-based birth certificates. [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 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 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 Kilpe 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]
