NASA decides to bring Crew-11 home early.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is January 9th, 2026. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 22nd to LOS, T-dress. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] Five. GOM Space Luxembourg says it has been selected by an unnamed North American space company for a mission focused on lunar exploration. Four. InnoSpace has selected the Atlantic Space Port Consortium's Space Port on the island of Santa Maria, Azores, as its European launch partner. Three. Ursa Major has been selected as a partner for Teledyne Brown Engineering's prime contract under the US Army Space and Missile Defense Commands, Design Development, Demonstration, and Integration Domain 1 contract. Two. Satellogic has designed a seven-figure contract with an unnamed customer for satellite imagery. One. NASA has made the decision to bring crew 11, home early, from the International Space Station due to a medical concern. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Lift off. [MUSIC PLAYING] And it is Friday, my friends, which can only mean one thing here on T-minus. Our partners at nasaspaceflight.com are back with the weekly Space Traffic Report. They're going to be bringing us the latest launch news from the last seven days and taking a look at what's on the schedule for the coming week. You don't want to miss it. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Friday, everybody. Let's get into it. We're kicking off today's show with an update on yesterday's top story. On Wednesday, NASA postponed a space walk due to a medical situation with a member of crew 11 on the International Space Station. And now they have made the decision to bring the crew home ahead of schedule due to that same medical condition. Here is what NASA administrator Jared Isaacman had to say. For over 60 years, NASA has set the standard for safety and security in crewed spaceflight. In these endeavors, including the 25 years of continuous human presence on board the International Space Station, the health and the well-being of our astronauts is always and will be our highest priority. Yesterday, January 7, a single crew member on board the station experienced a medical situation and is now stable. After discussions with Chief Health and Medical Officer, Dr. JD Polk, and leadership across the agency, I've come to the decision that it's in the best interest of our astronauts to return crew 11 ahead of their planned departure. Within the coming days, the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft will depart the International Space Station with Commander Zena Cardman, Pilot Mike Fink, Kimya Yui from JAXA, and Oleg Plotanov of Roscosmos, and safely return them to Earth. We expect to provide a further update within the next 48 hours as to the expected anticipated undock and reentry timeline. NASA is currently reviewing crew 11 return dates. The agency has also said that it's working with SpaceX and its international partners to review the options available to advance launch opportunities for the crew 12 mission. The agency anticipates a decision on a target crew 11 return date in the coming days. And by the way, if space medicine is an area you are interested in learning more about, make sure to join me tomorrow for our Deep Space Special Edition with Charles Doran from Solamed. Next story now, Satelogic has just signed a seven figure contract with an unnamed customer for satellite imagery. Satelogic will support high frequency site monitoring and has agreed to provide daily revisit high resolution coverage. The agreement is structured to provide satellite imagery for ongoing visibility and predictable data availability versus tasking based on specific events. Satelogic did not specify the customer or the region, but said that this type of consistent coverage has use cases for defense and security, civil and environmental monitoring, infrastructure protection and commercial operations. Ursa Major has been selected as a partner for Teledyne Brown Engineering's prime contract under US Army space and missile defense commands, design, development, demonstration and integration domain one contract. The D3I ID IQ contract vehicle funds threat representative ballistic and hypersonic target vehicles that are integral for missile defense testing. With this partnership Ursa Major increases Teledyne's propulsion solutions and expands their product offerings for the missile defense community. South Korean company InnoSpace has selected the Atlantic Space Port Consortium's Space Port on the island of Santa Maria Azores as its European launch partner. The contract enables InnoSpace priority access to a launch pad on the Portuguese islands. InnoSpace's Hunbit launch vehicle series plans to be launched to orbit from the Azores in the coming years. InnoSpace already has space port agreements already in place with Brazil and Australia showcasing the company's global launch ambitions. GOM Space Luxembourg says that it has been selected by an unnamed North American space company for a mission that is focused on lunar exploration. GOM Space says that the mission marks a major step forward in the understanding of the solar system and in the capabilities of small satellite platforms for deep space exploration. The contract covers the initial design of two spacecraft and the company will use its experience with advanced technologies from previous interplanetary missions such as the European Space Agency, Hera, Juventus and Ramsey's missions. The contract for this initial design is valued at 2.9 million euros which is approximately 3.4 million US dollars and will be executed during the first half of 2026. And that wraps up today's Friday Intelligence Briefing. You made it to the weekend my friends, congratulations. And as always, you will find links to further reading on all of the stories that I've mentioned in today's show in the selected reading section of our show notes. 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. You know, recently we have held a series of chats on this show with Solamed Solutions about their organization and what they hope to bring to commercial companies who are exploring the future of human space travel. And tomorrow's Deep Space Chat is with Charles Doran, Solamed's chief operating officer who shares his insights from his experience with NASA to how he's approaching the problems that need to be solved with ethics for the future of space travel. That's on T-minus Deep Space tomorrow, don't miss it. (upbeat music) - Let me hand you over now to our colleagues at nasaspaceflight.com. - I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and this is your weekly space traffic report for T-minus Space. Starting off the week, we had the first launch of the year on January 3rd, and it was of course, a Falcon 9. The rocket lifts it off at 209 UTC from SpaceX's Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg in California. Encapsulated in its fairing was the Cosmos SkyMed FM3 or CSG3 for the Italian Space Agency. It's the latest addition to a constellation of small Earth observation satellites which specifically focus on the Mediterranean. The satellite on this launch was the third of four to make up the constellation second generation, replacing the first generation, which launched between 2007 and 2010. Both generations used synthetic aperture radar to study our planet from a sun synchronous dawn dusk orbit which passes the equator around sunset and sunrise. Falcon 9 booster B1081 lofted the satellite into space on its 21st flight, after which it returned to Vandenberg for a landing on SpaceX's landing zone four where it successfully touched down. Next, we had a Starlink launch lifting off from Florida on January 4th at 648 Universal Time. Falcon 9 lofted 29 Starlink V2 mini satellites which will be added to SpaceX's internet constellation. SpaceX used a brand new booster for this mission, booster B1101, which successfully made its way back to Earth and touched down softly on the deck of SpaceX's drone ship, Just Read the Instructions. And closing out the week, we should have had another Starlink mission from Florida shortly before this episode was published. We'll cover that one next week. Going into next week, SpaceX has two more Starlink missions scheduled, both from Florida. On January 11th, we'll also have a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg, which is set to loft a small space telescope for NASA. The telescope called Pandora will study exoplanet atmospheres during its one year mission. Pandora will be accompanied during its launch by the 39 payloads of SpaceX's Twilight rideshare mission. In addition to the Falcon 9 launches on the schedule, it looks like we might also get a launch from India next week. The country's PSLV rocket will loft the EOS N1 Earth observation satellite into orbit alongside several rideshare payloads. We might also get a couple of launches from China next week, as well as the early return of crew 11, but the details on those missions are sparse at this time. As always, we recommend checking in with the next Spaceflight app and website to stay updated with the latest schedule changes. I'm Elysia Segal for NSF, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. We'll be right back. Welcome back. How many lithium-ion batteries do you have in your life? When you sit and really think about it, they really are everywhere. Our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and power banks to start, and electric vehicles, earbuds, vape pens, toothbrushes, robot vacuums, power tools, heated vest jackets, and pet GPS collars. I mean, the list goes on and on, and I won't bore you but point made, right? Lithium-ion batteries, very important in modern life. They are everywhere. Okay. But class, what's the major dangerous downside of lithium-ion batteries? I'm sure some of you got it, and I'm sure some of you have experienced it. It's the dreaded swollen battery, which is a major, major safety hazard. It can cause an extremely hot fire or an explosion, and the potential for a swollen battery is the reason you absolutely cannot put any kind of lithium-ion battery in a plane's cargo hold, for example. So this is the place where I need to mention we have been using lithium-ion batteries in space missions for quite a while now, but especially in human-inhabited floating labs like the ISS and Tiangong, those are certainly places where we do not want anything exploding accidentally. So it's not a surprise to anyone that China has launched a new series of battery experiments aboard Tiangong Space Station with the aim to make space power systems safer, more efficient, and longer-lasting. And this work is being led by Zhang Hongzhang, and he is a battery scientist from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, and is China's second civilian astronaut, by the way. Zhang is the perfect person to be studying how lithium-ion batteries behave in microgravity with a focus on how dangerous lithium-ion dendrites form and grow. And those dendrites, don't worry if you've never heard of this, I'll explain. They're basically tiny needles that can pierce a key part of the battery called a separator. And when that happens, the battery's lifespan is significantly shortened, and you can end up with a swollen battery, and yeah, that serious fire hazard again. On Earth, gravity does interfere with the battery's internal processes, so that makes it difficult to isolate dendrites' true behavior. But microgravity removes gravity as a variable, kind of makes sense, so researchers can then get a rare, clean look at what is really happening inside the battery. So by directly observing how dendrites grow in space on purpose, in a controlled environment, of course, scientists hope to identify ways to suppress those dendrites, improving both lithium-ion battery safety and durability. And this is good for space missions, of course, but selfishly for us. A better understanding of battery physics in microgravity could lead to more reliable energy systems, reduced fire risk, and longer operational lifetimes for our much more mundane battery needs. (upbeat 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 the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send us an email. Space@N2K.com is that email address. 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 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 Trey 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 lovely weekend. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]