[MUSIC] Today is February 13th, 2026. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] >> T-minus, 22nd to LOS, T-dris. >> Open aboard. >> Right roll. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Five. >> The NRO announced the first tranche of three awards under its strategic commercial enhancements commercial solutions opening for advanced commercial remote sensing capabilities. >> Four. >> Maxim space has secured an additional $350 million in financing. >> Three. >> NASA and VAST have signed an order for the sixth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. >> Two. >> Arian space successfully launched 32 Amazon Leo satellites from Europe's spaceport in Ghana. >> One. >> A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched NASA's SpaceX Crew 12 to the ISS. [MUSIC] >> Now it is Friday the 13th and in some corners that is considered an unlucky day. Well, it is unlucky for some, but hey, not for you, because we are catching up with Greg Gillinger and all things intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in space later in the show. And we have the Space Traffic Report following that from our partners at NSF. So stay with us after today's intelligence briefing. [MUSIC] >> Happy Friday, everybody. It certainly was not an unlucky start for NASA's SpaceX Crew 12, who finally caught a break this morning with the weather and launched to the ISS from Florida. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted the Dragon spacecraft into orbit carrying NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adeno and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andre Fedyaev. This spacecraft will dock autonomously to the space-facing port of the station's Harmony Module at approximately 315 p.m. eastern time on Valentine's Day, Saturday, February 14th. It will bring the crew back to its standard seven-person capacity on the International Space Station after the early departure of Crew 11. Meir, Hathaway, Adeno and Fedyaev will join the Expedition 74 crew, including NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kudr-Shverkov and Sergey Mikhail, who are already aboard the orbiting laboratory. During its mission, Crew 12 will conduct scientific research to prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and to benefit humanity on Earth. Participating crew members will study pneumonia-causing bacteria to improve cardiovascular treatments, on-demand intravenous fluid generation for future space missions, and research on how physical characteristics may affect blood flow during spaceflight. Other experiments include automated plant health monitoring and investigations of plant and nitrogen-fixing microbe interactions to enhance food production in space. And continuing with news of launches yesterday, Thursday, February 12th, Arian Space successfully launched 32 Amazon Leo satellites from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana. The satellites were delivered to low-Earth orbit at an altitude of approximately 465 km. The mission lasted an hour and 54 minutes from lift-off to separation of all of the satellites. The mission called VA267 is the first of 18 Arian-6 launches that have been booked to support the deployment of the Amazon Leo constellation. It was also the first launch of the Arian-6 in its four-booster configuration and carried the heaviest payload ever placed into orbit by the European launcher. And it marked its first dedicated launch for a commercial customer. For Amazon Leo, it was the first launch for the constellation performed by a European launcher. NASA and VAST have signed an order for the sixth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. The mission is targeted to launch no earlier than summer 2027 from Florida, and is the company's first selection to the orbiting lab. The VAST mission is expected to spend up to 14 days aboard the space station. NASA will submit four proposed crew members to NASA and its international partners for review. Once approved and confirmed, they will train with NASA, international partners, and SpaceX for their flight. The company is contracted with SpaceX as a launch provider for transportation to and from the space station. The company will purchase mission services from NASA including crew consumables, cargo delivery, storage, and other in-orbit resources for daily use. NASA will purchase the capability to return scientific samples that must remain cold during transit back to Earth. And the other company supporting private astronaut missions to the ISS is also making headlines today. Axiom Space has secured an additional $350 million in financing. The company says it plans to use the capital to advance its mission to deliver the successor to the International Space Station and ready its next-generation spacesuits for the United States' return to the Moon. The financing includes both equity and debt components. Type 1 Ventures and the Qatar Investment Authority co-led the round. The National Reconnaissance Office, better known as the NRO, announced the first tronch of three awards under its Strategic Commercial Enhancements Commercial Solutions Opening for advanced commercial remote sensing capabilities. Companies receiving awards include HEO for non-Earth imagery, SAP VU for medium-wave infrared imagery, and Sierra Nevada Corporation for RF capabilities. That wraps up today's top five stories. But while I still have you here, friends, we are not publishing on Monday because it's a federal holiday here in the United States. It is President's Day on Monday, and we have not one, but two great programs that are dropping in the feed for you. The first one up is a special Nexus episode on Orbital Data Centers, dropping with special guests from Axiom and Sophia Space. And the second great program that we're debuting is the very first episode of our brand-new series called Cyber Beyond Borders, and it will be dropping in your T-minus feed starting on Monday. And it's a three-part series that I'm hosting, where I got to put my cyber hat back on for a little bit, based on a recent trip that I took to the NATO Cyber Range in Tallinn, Estonia. So what is this major military alliance doing to train its cyber defenders for attacks in the cyber realm? And what kind of threats are they preparing for? Well, we will take a look at those questions and more in this new series. Part 1 drops on Monday. It's Cyber Beyond Borders, and I really hope you'll check it out. Today we have our monthly update from Greg Gillinger from Integrity ISR on the latest satellite movements in orbit, and I asked Greg to recap the start of this year. China actually had a couple of launch failures at the beginning of the year, one with a pair of significant ones with the SJ32 onboard, I believe. A very rare failure of a Long March 3 Bravo from a Chinese standpoint. They've got some things to figure out as to what may have gone wrong with that particular launch. But before that, so on December 30th, they did launch a Long March 7 Alpha with a couple of interesting satellites on there. So they call them the Shizhan or SJ29 Alpha and Bravo. And China doesn't release a heck of a lot of information on these. Well, they don't release a heck of a lot of information on anything, but particularly Spartan in terms of what they release regarding these SJ or satellites. So in the launch notification for the SJ29 Alpha Bravo, they used some interesting language saying that these satellites were for, I believe it was, target, they used the word target in there. I don't think we've seen that ever before. So it's obviously for some sort of space domain awareness capability, testing out new technologies, but they dropped the term target in there. So they got a lot of folks' attention of, okay, maybe this is some sort of target identification system, or does it have other capabilities on there? Who knows? So it went up into a geosynchronous orbit. So it's over 73 degrees east longitude and has about a three degree inclination. So it's geosynchronous, not geostationary. And so a lot of attention being paid to it. Some ground-based observers were quick to notice that after a couple of days, you could actually make out two different objects. So confirming what China had stated that there were actually two spacecraft on board. But they did notice that one spacecraft was significantly brighter than the other. So what that means, we don't know anything about the size or shape, but that is a good indicator that they are not identical. So one of the things, when I first seen the launch go up, it reminded me back in 2021, China used the Long March 7 to launch the Xi Yan 12 satellites. So there's 1201 and 1202. And those are the kind of their geostationary wanderers, right? So they're primarily for going back and forth across the geo belts and observing other satellites as they go. So I thought maybe that was kind of the next step for that program. But turns out that's not the case. These satellites apparently are not identical, unlike the Xi Yan pair that was launched in 2021. So we don't know exactly what's going on here. We've seen some maneuvers from the SJ29 Bravo satellite. So the one that's on the dimmer side, or not as bright. And it looks like it's maintaining a position about 30 kilometers away from the SJ29 Alpha satellite. So they're in some sort of rendezvous proximity operation currently. Not incredibly close, but 30 kilometers at geo is relatively close. Seems pretty close. Yeah. And the visual magnitude, I mean, I would imagine you don't want to infer necessarily too much from that because it could be a lot of different variables that contribute to why something has less magnitude. It could be the way it's angled. It's not necessarily a distance thing. Right, right. It's more likely a size or vehicle composition, or probably both, right? So you could also get some glinting. But if you look at things over time, those things should even out. So what we do know is that both spacecraft are stable and operating and now maneuvering. And that one is, and they're not the same shapes or sizes, I think is probably a safe bet. Okay. All right. So what else is on your radar? Well, so this is something that's still playing out. I did find it interesting that, so the United States operates, I think it's up to four, synchronous space situational awareness program satellites. So these are the GSAP vehicles to kind of keep tabs on what everybody's doing up in, you know, they conduct the characterization mission. So really taking images at safe distances of interesting objects. Right. So what some folks noticed right away was that as SJ29 Alpha and Bravo got into position that USA325, which is a GSAP satellite, also showed up in that area. Right. So they're not coplanar. USA325 has a different inclination, different ran, but it is certainly in the vicinity now. And it looks like, I mean, if you go and look at publicly available data on USA325's location, the last time it was updated was in late December. That placed the satellite way over towards Indonesia in that area there. It looks like in early January, it made some pretty significant maneuvers to get into place to be the welcome wagon for SJ29 and kind of check things out. So now as you've got these SJ29 pair of satellites kind of doing their thing, you've got USA325 in the area as well to occasionally keep tabs of what's going on. So that'll be an interesting to watch here as things unfold over the next, who knows, couple weeks, three weeks, maybe longer. We saw with the SJ21 and SJ25 refueling effort that these things can go on for months at a time. So we'll see. Okay. Is there anything else that we want to add about the Chinese satellites? Are there any other Chinese satellites that you've been keeping an eye on lately? There are a couple other satellites we can talk about as well. I just kind of mentioned SJ21 and SJ25. So folks might recall that those are the two satellites that have been engaged in a refueling operation. The first of its kind in geos since going back to the summer, they looked to dock on the 2nd of July of 2025 and remained docked for several months. And then we saw them begin to separate in the fall of this year. I think it was in October, November timeframe. And since that time, so we did see them separate, but we didn't see any large maneuvers where SJ25 went to go refuel. Another satellite or SJ21 went off to go do perhaps more of its mission. They kind of remained in the same area. And that continued really through the first couple of weeks of January of 2026, where we saw depending on the data sources you look at, SJ21 and SJ25, on a couple of occasions got within close enough range. So that range may be less than five kilometers, maybe it's less than one kilometer, depending on what data you look at. There were some conjecture that perhaps they had redocked at one point. But there were several instances where we were unable to resolve the two different satellites from ground-based telescopes. So we're not exactly sure what was going on there. It's difficult to tell one satellite from another once they do get within those closer ranges. So depending on who you look, what data you're using, from the first through the 15th of January, the two satellites seem to get within five kilometers of one another four times, eight times. I've seen some reporting of that nature. We're not really sure. But it looks like they were actually practicing these operations, these rendezvous proximity operations in Geo. So they have a couple of test vehicles. It looks like they're comfortable with them. And we saw a lot of activity similar to that leading up to the January timeframe. So a lot of practice going on with those two satellites for Chinese space operators. I assume I seek to get more comfortable with running these kinds of operations. Interesting. Yeah. And then in the middle of January, you saw a couple of small maneuvers from both satellites. And as I'm talking to you today, it looks like they're about 600 kilometers apart and drifting further apart. So maybe they moved on to another phase of their mission. It's worth noting that they are still plane matched. So if they wanted to come back to the other new Moor RPO for whatever reason, they could do so with fairly minor maneuvers in terms of the amount of fuel it would take. So we'll see how that plays out over the coming weeks. That should be interesting to see what happens. Got anything else in the tanker? Yeah. So I guess really quickly, a little closer to the earth, we had a Yau Gan 50 attack 01 launch from China. And the interesting thing, so Yau Gan satellites, we believe, are used for national defense, for intelligence surveillance, for reconnaissance, for the Chinese defense forces. And the interesting thing about Yau Gan 50 is it went into a retrograde orbit, which a retrograde orbit in and of itself is not unusual, most of your imagery satellites are in slight retrograde. That is like 97 degrees or greater. So a retrograde orbit is any orbit greater with an inclination greater than 90 degrees. So your imagery satellites typically are in sunsingers orbit, which is 97 to 98 degrees somewhere in that, depending on their altitude. Yau Gan 50 inclination is 142, which is really in retrograde. So that means it's going counter to the earth's rotation. And the effect of that is for Yau Gan 50, it'll go, that inclination will take it as far north as 38 degrees north latitude and 38 degrees south latitude. But orbiting against the rotation or counter to the rotation of the earth actually increases its relative speed or relative velocity to the earth's surface. And that relative velocity is an important component for radar imaging satellites, right? So the greater your relative velocity with your target, then the better potential you have for radar resolution. So based off of that orbit, which we had not seen before for Yau Gan satellites, we surmise that this thing is actually a synthetic aperture radar imaging system. And we'll wait to see how many more of those actually go up. The name seems to indicate that there will be more than one in the not too distant future. And up next, we have the space traffic report from our partners at nasaspaceflight.com. You see a seagull for NSF and this is your weekly space traffic report for T-space. Starting off the week on February 7th, China launched a space plane. Lifting off from the Jochuan satellite launch center at 358 UTC, a Cheong-Jung-2F carried the Cheong-Fu-Sheol-Yong-Shi-Yong-Hang-Tian-Chi, or CSSHQ, into space. It's a reusable experimental spacecraft, a kind of Boeing's X-37B, which has been flying missions for the U.S. Air Force and later the Space Force since 2010 and is currently on its eighth flight across two vehicles. The Chinese space plane flew for the first time in 2020 and is now on its fourth mission, although we don't know whether it's been the same vehicle every time or not. Like the X-37B, CSSHQ's missions are very secretive, so we don't know what it plans to do on its flight. It'll likely conduct experiments or release some satellites like it did on all three of its earlier missions. We'll just have to wait and see. Later that day, SpaceX launched a Starlink mission from California, marking Falcon 9's return to flight after the failed de-orbit on the Starlink Group 1732 mission five days earlier. The rocket took to the skies above the Vandenberg Space Force Base at 2058 Universal Time on February 7th, carrying 25 Starlink V-2 mini-satellites into a Sun synchronous orbit. SpaceX used booster B-1088 for this mission, which flew for the 13th time and touched down on the deck of "Of course I still love you," capping off another successful flight. Later in the week, Falcon 9 launched another batch of Starlinks from Vandenberg. Lift-off occurred on February 11th at 1711 UTC. The mission's first stage, B-1100, successfully touched down on "Of course I still love you," completing its third flight. With 24 more Starlink V-2 mini-s delivered to Sun synchronous orbit, SpaceX has now launched 11,162 satellites for the constellation. Of these, 1,492 have returned to Earth, and 8,377 are now in their operational orbits. Thursday was a busy day in spaceflight, with no fewer than four flights lifting off from all around our planet, starting with another launch from China. At 637 UTC on February 12th, a Zhe long 3 rocket lifted off from the Dongfang Hong Tiangong launch platform stationed in the South China Sea. The rocket carried an Earth observation satellite for Pakistan, which is equipped with optical sensors to aid in land mapping, environmental monitoring, and natural disaster management, among other things. On its way up to Sun synchronous orbit, the satellite was accompanied by six rideshare payloads, one of which was for the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Next, we had the first launch of Russia's proton rocket in almost three years. Lifting off from Baikonur at 852 UTC that same day, the rocket carried Russia's fifth electro-L-weather satellite into a geostationary orbit. Proton also carried an additional payload that we don't know much about, but its name suggests that its purpose is likely to occupy some communications frequencies as a placeholder so that Russia won't lose its rights to use them. Half an hour later, the United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 in Florida, carrying two satellites for the US Space Force's Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program. Number seven and eight, these are the latest in a series designed to track satellite activity near geosynchronous orbit to protect space-based national security assets. Vulcan released a third satellite called ESPA-RING into geosynchronous orbit, which the Space Force plans to use for research, development, and training purposes. On the way up, Vulcan experienced an anomaly, or an observation, as ULA calls it, one of its four solid rocket boosters. It appeared to have burned through its nozzle, which later threw some debris into the rocket's exhaust plume. Regardless, the rocket seems to have been able to deliver its satellites into their destination orbits, which the Space Force later confirmed. The issue bears resemblance to a similar anomaly that occurred on Vulcan's second flight. The impact on the rocket's upcoming launches remains unclear at this time. Later that day, a rocket lifted off from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana, lofting a batch of internet satellites for Amazon's Leo constellation. The mission marked several firsts, as it was the first to fly on Arian-6's four booster variant, which lifted off from Kuru at 1645 UTC on February 12th. The 32 Leo satellites were encapsulated in Arian-6's 20-meter-long fairing, which also flew for the first time on this mission. The five previous Arian-6 missions all used the 14-meter version. And for the final two firsts on this mission, it was the first Arian-6 to launch for a commercial customer, and the first of 18 missions on a contract to deliver Amazon Leo satellites to low Earth orbit. Wrapping up the week, SpaceX launched its Crew 12 mission to the International Space Station on Friday. The Crew of four consists of Commander Jessica Meir and Pilot Jack Hathaway, both NASA astronauts, accompanied by mission specialist ESA astronaut Sophie Adano and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andre Fedyaev. After the crew boarded Dragon Freedom, Falcon 9 was loaded with propellants and lifted off at 10.15 universal time on February 13th. The capsule and its passengers are set to arrive at the orbital outpost on February 14th with docking scheduled for 2015 UTC. This marked the fifth flight for freedom and the second for Falcon 9 booster B1101, which touched down successfully on the brand new landing zone LZ-40. SpaceX constructed this pad at the Slick-40 complex to replace LZ-1, which was decommissioned last year after the company's lease of the launch complex 13 site expired. Going into next week, SpaceX plans to launch four Starlink missions, two from California and two from Florida. Last week, Firefly announced that the launch window for the seventh flight of its Alpha rocket opens on February 18th or early February 19th if you set your clocks to UTC. The mission will be the return to flight after the failure on Alpha's sixth flight in late April of last year. During that mission, the first stage disintegrated after stage separation, and the resulting explosion damaged the upper stage engine, preventing it from reaching orbit. Firefly plans to use this next flight, called "Stairway to 7", to test technology for Alpha's Block 2 configuration, which will fly from Flight 8 onward. Hopefully, the unfortunate lessons learned paid off, and this one will perform without any issues. As always, some other launches may pop up in the schedule after we publish this episode, so we recommend that you check out nextspaceflight.com or download the app on your phone to stay up to date. And that's your weekly Update of Spaceflight news. I'm Alicia Segal for NSF, and we'll see you all again next week to recap this week in Spaceflight. I'm Alicia Segal for NSF, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T-Minus Space. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. Friends, it is Friday the 13th in February, which aside from the whole unlucky superstition thing, that can only mean one thing. Tomorrow is a rare conjunction event. It'll be Valentine's Day on a Saturday. Whoa, that is a 10 out of 10 difficulty level. If you have cause to observe the occasion, I hope you planned ahead, because a Saturday Valentine's Day is an all-hands-on-deck situation, isn't it? Restaurant reservations are going to be booked solid. You know that one bouquet at the grocery store that's still left is looking real sad and picked over. And chocolates, you want some of those? Try two weeks ago, buddy. Blah, blah. But if you need a message of love and affection, and would rather not try to pen some poetry yourself, I understand. Worry not, my friends, because the sereno-debergerak of space has got you covered. And that would be none other than, drum roll please, the space systems command. Oh yeah, baby. Nothing gets romance afloat, and then words of love from your favorite military field command. And they even posted their sweet, sweet Valentine's on LinkedIn, because you know that is the very first place everyone goes for getting their ego fluffed. So, what tantalizing sentiments from SSE await your beloved? Let me walk you through some of their selections. I'm tracking your trajectory and you're headed straight for my heart. Are you a satellite? Because I'm picking up a strong signal between us. You launch my heart into a whole new orbit. Now, if you really, really, really think the apple of your eye will go for a space systems command Valentine's Day e-card on LinkedIn, and it won't get you in trouble with HR, we've got the link for you. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. [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 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’s senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We’re mixed by Elliott Peltzman and Tré Hester, with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher, and I’m Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
