[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is January 15, 2026. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus, 22nd to LOS T-dred. Open aboard. [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] Five. Aleria has been selected to take part in the new Airbus Up Next Space RAN Demonstrator. Four. AxlSpace has signed a memorandum of understanding with Ethiopia's Jethi software development. Three. Chinese commercial company CAS Space debuted its suborbital two-stage research rocket. Two. Slingshot Aerospace has been awarded a $27 million US Space Force contract to modernize scenario training activities. One. NASA's SpaceX Crew 11 has returned to Earth, concluding a more than five-month mission aboard the International Space Station. [MUSIC PLAYING] And our guest today is Sheree Matthew, architect and project manager at Jacobs. Sheree and Jacobs will be participating in Commercial Space Week in Florida, which is coming up shortly from January 27 through the 30th. We will, of course, be there in Orlando for the Global Space Port Alliance annual summit, Space Mobility, and SpaceCom Conferences. Sheree will be sharing a bit about what she will be talking about at the conference later in today's program. Stay tuned. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Thursday, everybody. Thank you for joining me. We're kicking off today's Intel Briefing with a welcome home to NASA's SpaceX Crew 11. The crew has faced a turbulent week, starting with postponing a spacewalk and then dealing with the decision to return to Earth earlier than scheduled due to a medical concern with the crew. The crew capsule safely splashed down early this morning in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, concluding a more than five-month mission aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Dina Cardman and Mike Finke, JAXA astronaut Kimia Yuwi and Roscosmos Kosmonaut Oleg Platonov returned home about a month earlier than planned because of what NASA described as a medical situation. NASA says that its teams are monitoring one of the crew members who does remain stable. Prior to return, NASA previously coordinated for all four crew members to be transported to a local hospital for additional evaluation, taking advantage of medical resources on Earth to provide the best care possible. Following the planned overnight hospital stay, the crew members will return to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and undergo standard post-flight reconditioning and evaluations. It is sad that we do have to remind folks, but due to medical privacy, it is not appropriate for NASA to share more details about the crew member. HIPAA laws, remember people? They deserve privacy too. We are just glad that they're safely back on Terraferma and can receive the medical attention that they need. It's not known yet when NASA will send a replacement crew to the ISS. Crew 12 is scheduled tentatively to launch on February 15th, but NASA is coordinating with partners to see if that launch can be moved up a bit. In the meantime, the ISS is down to just three crewmates on board. Moving on now, Slingshot Aerospace has been awarded a $27 million contract to modernize scenario training activities. Under the contract, Slingshot will advance the US Space Force's operational test and training infrastructure program towards integrating existing training enterprise capabilities with AI-native technology that realistically mirror today's rapidly evolving orbital threat landscape. The 18-month contract, awarded through a commercial solutions opening in alignment with the Secretary of War's Warfighting Acquisition System, Transformation Directive-- say that five times fast-- builds on earlier spaceworks and space force investments in 2022 under a $25 million stratify contact award. Slingshot says that its TALOS AI platform is a force multiplier in training. TALOS simulates adaptive machine speed threat behaviors, enabling faster scenario development, larger-scale simulations, and more realistic missions. StarCom has also used TALOS to collaborate with Slingshot in refining scenarios and planning for deeper AI integration into future exercises. Let's head on over to China now. And the commercial space company CAS Space has debuted its suborbital two-stage research rocket called Leihang-1 this week. The spacecraft lifted off from the Juchang Satellite Launch Center before reaching a peak altitude of about 120 meters. Leihang-1 was initially carried by its first-stage solid rocket motor before its solid second stage ignited to carry the experiment return capsule higher into orbit and above the Kármán line. Once in space, payloads inside the capsule were provided with 300 seconds of microgravity before reentering into the atmosphere and later touching down under parachute. That sounds familiar, right? The company shared this. This flight verified the reentry and deceleration processes for the returning capsule, as well as the precise landing zone control of the booster stage. By achieving a precise landing zone for the booster stage, the constraints and algorithms for vehicle reentry have been rigorously tested. What we have learned will be crucial for reusable orbital vehicles. CAS Space says that several experiments were on board the suborbital flight, but only two of them were listed. The first was a demo of laser additive manufacturing to prove its feasibility. And the other was a test exposure of rose seeds to space radiation to force desired evolutions. An advertisement was also on board the suborbital mission. And so it begins, folks. We are going to be seeing more advertisements in space. Hooray. Japan's Axle Space has signed a memorandum of understanding with Ethiopian technology company Jethi Software Development. The company's plan to partner on addressing social and development challenges through the use of satellite-based Earth observation data. Axle Space says the expansion of EOData utilization in emerging markets, including Africa, is a key medium to long-term strategic priority. Through this collaboration, Axle Space aims to support locally-driven data-informed solutions. They will provide EOData and know-how for its utilization across priority sectors, including agriculture, environmental-enforced conservation, disaster risk management, and climate resilience, urban planning, and infrastructure development. And Aliria has been selected to take part in the new Airbus Upnext Space RAN demonstrator. Space RAN stands for Space Radio Access Network. And the mission is to test standardized global 5G non-terrestrial network, or NTN, connectivity. It'll combine Airbus' software-defined satellite platform with Aliria's intelligent network orchestration and optimization capabilities to showcase advanced 5G communications from space. The mission will explore next-generation 5G NTN capabilities by using Airbus' software-defined satellite tech, along with advanced tools, for managing and optimizing 5G signals in orbit. The objective is to demonstrate reduced latency, maximized data throughput, and more efficient network management, all paving the way for the next generation of wireless communications, including, if you can believe it, 6G. As part of the in-orbit test platform, Aliria will showcase Spacetime's 5G NTN RAN intelligent controller. And the controller aims to enable dynamic real-time control and optimization of NTN resources to support standardized, high-performance 5G connectivity from space. And we will bring you more when this demonstrator launches. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] And that wraps up today's intelligence briefing. Spoiler alert, you need to stay with us to hear what Rick Astley has to do with space. But before we get into that, I should remind you that you can read more about all of the stories I've mentioned in today's episode by following the links in the selected reading section of our show notes. Just check your podcast app for more. And T-minus crew, if you are going to be at Commercial Space Week in Orlando on January 27 through the 30th, we're going to be there too. So if you would like to speak with us during that event, we have a microphone, and we do travel. So drop us a line at space@ntuk.com so we can set something up. And thanks. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Our guest today is Shere Matthew, architect and project manager at Jacobs. Shere and Jacobs will be participating in Commercial Space Week in Florida, which is running from the 27th through the 30th of January. Shere started by telling me a little bit more about her role and how she got involved in designing space ports. I started out in aviation architecture, some in architect. And then about seven years ago, someone came across an RFP for the Houston spaceport. And the question was, is a spaceport an airport? And not really ever hearing about spaceports. I got real excited about just the idea of something brand new and doing the research. And so I raised my hand and I said, let me prove it in nine months that aviation architects are more than capable of working on a spaceport. And so I started the journey there. And which is interesting because then you have your aviation binoculars on, and you're looking at a spaceport and you're judging it against an airport, which isn't terrible because every spaceport is going to be different, much like an airport. But then when we started to really get into it, it wasn't just about the traveling public like an airport is. We get a lot of our designs towards making everybody comfortable. But it went much more beyond that, where you have psychological impacts. And then outside of tourism, just really what happens within the campus and how the spaceport becomes a city with civic centers or just a landmark destination for people that come and opening it up to the community, which is definitely not when an airport does-- Yeah, right. Although one day, maybe. One day, maybe, yeah. And then the health care that would be involved with health screening and what you would actually need to make sure that everybody was safe. And then the education aspect was just how do you start to develop a workforce. So it went from aviation, which I do like to root in aviation, because I feel like that's the easiest way to educate people about spaceports, but that it just goes to so much beyond on what actually can happen at a spaceport and what will happen at a spaceport. Given what you do, given the work that you have been doing, I wanted to just explore with you the idea of what the future of spaceports can look like. Because that's something you're studying and working on all the time. So I just wanted to pick your brain a little bit about that and get your thoughts. Well, every spaceport's a little bit different. A big difference is just once you go from the vertical to the horizontal, how does that change the layout of the campus? Because there's just a different function. Usually, if you're on a vertical site, you'll be next to the sea, where Houston is in the city. So it's just very different on how-- basically, really how the community interacts. Houston is much more-- there's a neighborhood that's not far from the spaceport. So it's very city-centric, as when you're working on the coastline, but it's not as urban, I would say, on that one. So that's what I've been learning a lot lately, just visiting different spaceports on. Really, how does that campus evolve? And a lot of what I talk about when I go to conferences is thinking about what you have your launch pad. And really, everybody's at this grassroots stage where they're trying to generate their revenue, grow the campus, grow the business, which is exactly what everybody needs to be doing. But what happens when you start to get beyond the launch pad and the manufacturing facilities? And what happens when you do start to invite the tourism aspect? And does it become sort of like a Disneyland of first space? First space nerds. I mean, honestly, yeah. And that's one thing that we've talked about a lot, because I actually got to interview some civilian astronauts who went on Blue Origin. That was just amazing, because really what they're doing is pioneering their pruning that you can go into a training facility for three days, pass your health test, and then go up into space. So then if we start to think about just tourism alone, lodging, health screening, because really when I was doing my research and kind of equating it to the airport, a person buys a ticket. And these tickets are very expensive, right? So what happens if you probably buy it seven months ahead of time? And a lot of things can happen in a person's life. Then you can't probably change your weight. You can't have a start a family. You have to have that whole screening that happens right before you go just to make sure you're safe. So then that starts to introduce this huge health care industry for a spaceport. And so then we start talking about the workforce, right? So we're starting to talk about how not only you don't have to be trained as an astronaut anymore, so that means that more people will be going to space. What does that mean for jobs? We're creating 50 jobs we created today that we didn't even know existed yesterday. And so that means education is going to be a huge part of the spaceport. And how do we start to develop that workforce for something that will happen very quickly, but you just don't know what that is. And so what does that mean for a spaceport? Well, then you have this really this multimodal mix at a spaceport. Yeah, no, it makes sense, though. I mean, because where I know for me, I think of an airport nowadays with some exceptions around the world. But for a lot of airports, it's the place you go to go somewhere else. And it needs to do that well. But it is very much like you're not really thinking about as a passenger, how am I going to be spending my hours there aside from maybe get some food and get to where I'm going. But for a spaceport, it really would be a campus, a community center, but also a place for me as a person who loves space, like almost a pilgrimage spot. Maybe I'm not going to be going to space, but if I had a spaceport near me, if I was visiting or I happened to live near one, I would go to see a launch if I could. And I would certainly be like, I'm going to make a day of it. And that totally changes the paradigm. And that's actually-- that's got to be fun for you to think about like a totally different paradigm like that. Yeah, well, that's where it starts to become a city in itself, right? Like you have like the retail, you can center everything around the spaceport. There was a conversation I had with the folks who are working on Saxaverd spaceport in Scotland. And the whole conversation I had with them was about it is being built in a very remote place, but how much the community around there, it represents an opportunity for a whole set of new jobs for people there that maybe thought that they had to leave home to get those kinds of jobs. That now those jobs, even in this remote place, could be coming there. And again, that opportunity is really, truly transformative for these very remote communities. Well, that's really well said because-- and that's something that we talk about with the education, because I don't know if you're familiar, at least in Texas, with the public education system. They have career technology schools. Have you heard of those? Yes, yes. And so that's something we talk about with the spaceport, because as you're building these campuses, I start to think about how the education system works, at least with career technology, in these remote areas. They build these high schools, and they have labs within the high school. Any type of manufacturer can come in, build their lab. They're training the students specifically on that type of equipment. And they're watching these students grow. So they get to actually pick the three superstars that are graduating. And if they choose to, they can go into the company. But what happens in these remote areas is a lot of the people that weren't able to afford to go to college are now being able to go directly into the business. And so they don't have that college debt. A lot of the nice stories that you hear is about basically where they build up the economy of these remote locations, because now they're earning money. And so they're buying a house or a home, and then they buy their parents a home, and then they're feeding it back into the community, which I think is what's going to really help out with remote areas. It's when we start to have this workforce and start to train specifically in jobs that you're looking to build with that workforce. And then what happens with those economies when they really didn't have that opportunity before? Now they can just go straight to space technology. Like you can probably learn on the job. Yeah, honestly, that is a wonderful thing. So I wanted to make sure I gave you the last word. If there's anything I missed that you wanted to make sure that you share with our audience, anything at all. Any kind of final thoughts? I wanted to hand that over to you. So like I said about seven years ago, I discovered spaceports, and it became a huge passion. So I'm a big advocate for spaceports. I like to come in and help spaceports. It's not just thinking about the launch site, which is very important. You have to have your year one plan. But what happens in 10 years? And so really starting to build that master planning of the spaceport and then figuring out what those future scenarios will be so that they have that plan in place. And you start to build the infrastructure. And it helps too just to get-- you start to win the hearts and minds of the community. Like you start to get everybody excited about spaceports instead of thinking, why are we having this conversation now? [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] We'll be right back. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome back. The phrase, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Absolutely does not apply when it comes to playing the classic first person shooter game Doom on unexpected objects. Printers, cameras, ATMs, pregnancy tests-- yes, you heard me. Can they play Doom? Someone wondered. Someone tried it and found that the answer is yes. But if you've ever thought, surely, no one has ever played Doom in space-- first of all, don't call me surely. And second of all, congratulations. You underestimated engineers. Don't do that. Government-funded teams from NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab just turned low Earth orbit into a retro land party, kind of blasting Doom, maybe a little bit of Mountain Dew. And yeah, Rick Astley is never going to give you up through NASA and commercial communication satellites. You knew there was a Rick roll in this one. You just knew. And all this wasn't just for fun, though. I'm sure there was fun to be had. They say they were doing all this to test a new wideband communications terminal with a very serious name-- the polylingual experimental terminal, or PECST. That's what they say anyway. Now here's the clever part. PECST works a lot like your smartphone. It prefers its home network. But if your signal drops, it roams seamlessly across other satellite networks to keep the data flowing. And during this test, engineers hopped between NASA's tracking and data relay satellites and multiple commercial systems, proving that they could move big chunks of data smoothly across a hybrid space network-- big chunks of data like a computer game or a music video. As APL's Chris Haskins put it, this kind of multilingual access could untether future missions from any single provider-- translation, more resilience for space missions, more bandwidth, and fewer dropped calls, even in orbit. And honestly, yeah, there's a long tradition here. Since Johnny B. Good hitched a ride on Voyager's Golden Record in 1977, engineers have leaned on pop culture to test space tech. Why not? Engineers like to have fun too, right? Taters the NASA cat chasing laser pointers, the Mona Lisa via laser comms. And now Doom and Rick Astley joined their rightful place in the cannon. It is funny, sure, but it's also a glimpse of the future-- flexible, high-capacity space networks that could support missions around Earth, the moon, and beyond. Never going to give up on that signal. Never going to say goodbye. Never going to tell a lie. And that's you. 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 our show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. We don't apologize for the Rick rolls, though. Those were necessary. I just want to tell you how I'm feeling. Also, please fill out the survey and the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. 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, 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, technology, and 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. Here, Kilpie is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]
