← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
California votes to block SpaceX from increased launches.
00:25:42
California rejects SpaceX plans to increase launch cadence. $2.3B in spending cuts hidden in the FY2026 budget. NASA releases a lunar power RFI. And more.
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- [00:02]
Maria Varmazis
You're listening to the N2K space network. Today is August 15, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T minus.
- [00:19]
Ben Yellen
T minus 20 seconds to los speed resemble.
- [00:31]
Maria Varmazis
The Shenzhou 20 CRE aboard China's Tiangong Space Station is planning a spacewalk this coming week in new spacesuits. CITA space has released second quarter 2025 financial results. NASA has released a call for industry input for developing efficient power supplies on the moon's surface. Air and space forces say that there are calls for nearly $2.3 billion in spending cuts hidden in the 2026 fiscal year budget. The California Coastal Commission has voted against a plan to nearly double the number of Falcon 9 rocket launches that SpaceX is permitted to conduct each year from Vandenberg Space Force Base. After today's headlines, our colleagues@nasaspaceflight.com will be bringing us the weekly space traffic report, wrapping up launch news from the last seven days, and taking a look at what's to come this coming week. Stay with us. Happy Friday, everybody. It's over. The week's over. You made it. Let's dive into our intel briefing. It's not such a Happy day for SpaceX, who are once again facing an application rejection. The California Coastal Commission has voted against a plan to nearly double the number of Falcon 9 rocket launches that SpaceX is permitted to conduct each year from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Last October, the commission voted to oppose a previous SpaceX launch expansion from 36 to 50. At the installation, 51 rockets launched last year from Vandenberg. SpaceX Falcon 9s accounted for 46 of them. So SpaceX is looking to almost double the launch cadence again from 50 to 95. The commission said that military officials failed to provide data on potential impacts on local wildlife and neighboring towns. Will this actually stop SpaceX? Though the answer is maybe not. The US government can merely override the objections of California regulators and approve the latest plan as they did following last year's rejection. The U.S. department of the Air Force has taken the position that the proposed launch expansion at Vandenberg is is a federal activity exempt from further state oversight. SpaceX already sued the agency after its first rejection in October when commissioners voted 6 to 4 to reject the Space Force's proposal to increase launches. It would not be a surprise if they take the same stance with this latest rejection. And regardless, we will keep you updated should anything change. Moving on now, the Air and Space Forces magazine is reporting that hidden in the 2026 fiscal year budget are calls for nearly $2.3 billion in spending cuts. Budget documents referencing proposed reductions cite a pair of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump in February that directed federal agency leaders to work with Doge staffers to reshape the workforce and rein in spending. Yes, we also thought we'd doged all the bullets. Har har har. The bulk of the cuts impact Air Force programs totaling nearly $2 billion, while about $289 million would affect the space force. NASA has released a call for industry input for developing a safe, reliable and efficient power supply on the lunar surface. NASA recently declared its intent to put a nuclear reactor on the moon by the mid-2030s to support lunar exploration, provide power generation on Mars and strengthen national security in space. The fission surface power effort is part of the US Space Agency's effort to engage the commercial space industry, empowering the lunar economy and enabling future human exploration on Mars. NASA plans to work with industry to design a fission surface power system that would provide at least 100 kilowatts of electrical power, have a mass allocation of less than 15 metric tons and use a closed Brayton cycle power conversion system, which converts heat to electricity. More details about the request for information can be found by following the link in our show notes. Moving on to business news now, Insider Space has released second quarter 2025 financial results. The satellite company reported revenue of $1.3 million, up 36% compared to $928,000 in Q2 2024. The company completed a capital raise during the quarter to fund key technology initiatives, including the dual use multi domain Fortis VPX product line, which supports applications across air, land, sea and space. They also released details about their Liszi Lunar to address the moon's unique operational challenges. We're glad to see them among the space companies making progress this year, and we'll finish up today's intel briefing with news from China's manned space agency. The Shenzhou 20 crew aboard China's Tiangong Space Station is planning a spacewalk this coming week. It'll be the third extravehicular activity for the crew during their stay on China's orbiting lab, but the first with newly arrived spacesuits. The new extravehicular spacesuits arrived last week as part of the Tianzhou 9 cargo delivery to the orbiting lab. China's Manned Space Agency says the astronauts are in good physical and mental health and are fully prepared for their next eva. And that wraps up today's Friday headlines. NSF has the latest launch news coming up, but before we get to that, I'm going to turn to N2K senior producer Alice Carruth now. And Alice, do you have any extra stories for us today?
- [06:19]
Alice Carruth
Just a brief one from CBS on York's preparations for Golden Dome. I feel like that's every space company right now. You can read more about all the stories mentioned throughout the episode by following the links in our show notes. Those links are also included on today's episode page on our website, space.n2k.com hey.
- [06:35]
Maria Varmazis
T minus crew, Tune in tomorrow for T Minus Deep Space. It's our show for extended interviews, special editions and deep dives with some of the most influential professionals in the space industry. And tomorrow we have SIFT CEO Kartik Ghulapudi talking about solving the hardware software problem in aerospace. It is a really fascinating chat. Definitely tune in and check it out. While you're enjoying what I hope will be a lovely weekend, don't miss it.
- [07:23]
Ben Yellen
I'm Ben Yellen, co host of the Caveat Podcast. Each Thursday we sit down and talk about the biggest legal and policy developments affecting technology that are shaping our world. Whether it be sitting down with experts or government officials, or breaking down the latest political developments, we talk about the stories that will have tangible impacts on businesses and people around the world. If you are looking to stay informed on what is happening and how it could impact you, make sure to listen to the Caveat podcast.
- [07:55]
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- [08:00]
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- [08:02]
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- [08:12]
Maria Varmazis
You're right about that. They're coming after our family. Go fix this.
- [08:19]
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- [08:28]
Maria Varmazis
Let me hand you over now to our partners@nasaspaceflight.com.
- [08:35]
Alicia Siegel
I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and this is your weekly space traffic report for T Minus Space. We kicked off the week right where we left off on the last traffic report with the return from space. With the launch of SpaceX's 11th Crew Rotation Mission to the International Space Station, it was time for the crew of Crew 10 to return home. Crew Dragon Endurance and its crew of four undocked from the station's front docking port on August 8th at 22:15 UTC. After roughly 17 hours in orbit around Earth, the spacecraft deorbited and Splashed down on August 9th at 15:00am 1933 UTC off the coast of San Diego in California. Onboard Endurance were Commander and NASA astronaut Anne McClain, pilot and NASA astronaut Nicole Ayers, Mission Specialist and JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and mission specialist and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskoff. With this mission, McClane and Onishi get to add another spaceflight to their careers, with McClane now having spent a total of about 351 days in space, while Onishi's total in space is now roughly 262 days. This was Ayers and Peskov's first trips to space space, so they get to log the 147 days of the mission. This was the shortest SpaceX crew rotation mission to the station to date. At just five months in duration, this shorter crew rotation mission allows for the launch later this month of the CRS 33 Cargo Dragon, which will be using the same docking port on the station that Crew 10 used. This cargo mission includes a trunk outfitted with extra propellant tanks and thrusters in order to perform reboosts of the ISS and will stay docked to the station until December. Since There are only two docking ports on the US operating segment of the station, this meant that either crew 10 would have had to stay at the station for nearly a year until January, or there wouldn't have been a docking port available for a direct handover between crews. As is customary, Crew 10 has also now become the first crew Dragon mission for NASA to splash down off the coast of California following the transition of Dragon recovery operations from Florida to California. The previous crew rotation mission for NASA Crew 9 had been the last to splash down off the coast of Florida back in March. Since then, SpaceX has flown two private spaceflight missions from to and Axis, which have both splashed down off the coast of California, but this was the first for NASA coming back to Earth this weekend. Launches started with a Falcon 9 with more Internet satellites, but this time they were Kuiper satellites from Amazon. Falcon 9 took off from Space Launch Complex 40 on August 11th at 12:35 UTC following a series of scrubs and delays, the first due to vehicle side issues and later for launch and then recovery weather. The rocket was carrying 24 Kuiper satellites for Amazon into low earth orbit. With this mission there are now a total of one operational Kuiper satellites in orbit. Just over 1500 more to go. Amazon Good job. This mission, just like the previous Falcon Kuiper flight, made use of a brand new booster B1091. However, this one was special because it technically wasn't a proper Falcon 9 booster, but rather a Falcon Heavy center core flying in Falcon 9 configuration. Falcon Heavy center cores are specially made with thicker tank walls and reinforcements in order to take the loads from the Falcon Heavy side boosters during flight. This makes them a bit heavier than the regular Falcon 9 boosters, but if the rocke plenty of margins it should be just as good to use in Falcon 9 configuration for this to happen. Instead of installing the specific Falcon Heavy interstage and having the connections for the side boosters on the interstage and octaweb, the booster is just outfitted with a regular Falcon 9 interstage and normal Falcon 9 octaweb hardware. Now the whole reason that SpaceX is doing this is because when the center cores fly on Falcon Heavy they rarely get recovered, let alone reused. This means that the bulk cost of building one of these goes away in just one flight, whereas if they instead use it as A Falcon Falcon 9 booster first and fly it a few times, then at least they can recoup some of the expenses of having to build it in the first place before flying it on a Falcon Heavy mission as a center core and most likely expending it From Florida we go to French Guiana where this week we had the third flight of the Ariane 6 rocket. Liftoff happened on August 13th at 37 minutes past midnight UTC with Ariane 6 carrying the Metop SGA1 satellite for the European Space Agency and Umetsat. The Metop SGA1 is a weather observation satellite part of the Meteorological Operational second Generation Satellite system, which is what gives the satellite's METOP SG name. The system consists of two the METOP SG A and METOP SG B series. The A series of satellites carry primarily optical instruments, while the B series of satellites carry primarily microwave imaging instruments. There are three planned satellites per series for a total of six satellites in this constellation, with this being the first of the A instruments onboard the A series of satellites include a visible and infrared imager, a radio occultation instrument, a multi viewing multi channel multipolarization imager, and also ESA's Sentinel 5 Spectrometer. This array of instruments will allow the satellites to gather weather information in greater detail than the previous generation. The data gathered from these satellites will better help scientists on the ground to improve weather forecasts as well as study Earth's ever changing climate patterns. Nineteen minutes after Ariane 6's liftoff from French Guiana, ULA's Vulcan rocket also lifted off on its third flight carrying the USSF 106 mission of the US Space Force into geostationary Earth orbit. This was a mission, a first for ULA and Vulcan. This marked the first launch of Vulcan for the U.S. department of Defense after having been certified to fly on the Department's National Security space launch missions earlier this year. This was a major win for ULA as it demonstrated that its long delayed Vulcan rocket could finally start delivering military payloads into orbit. ULA is in fierce competition with fellow launch company SpaceX, who has already taken several lucrative launch contracts from ULA's hands, both from the military and also from NASA. ULA will now need to demonstrate that it can keep the cadence and continue delivering future payloads with Vulcan, including for Amazon's Kuiper Constellation, which has dozens of launches under contract with this rocket. One of the other firsts for this mission was that it was the first flight of Vulcan on its four solid rocket motor configuration, with the previous two flights carrying only two of them, GEM63XL solid rocket motors and its two BE4 engines. This launch also marked the most powerful rocket ever launched by ULA, surpassing the thrust of the Atlas V in its 5 SRB configuration. From the US we go to China a Changzhong 5V rocket fitted with the Yuanzhong 2 kickstage launched from Wencheng on August 13 at 6:43 UTC, carrying another batch of Guohuang Internet satellites into low earth orbit. This was the eighth dedicated operational launch for this constellation, which now brings the total number Guo Wang satellites launched into orbit up to 67. This week we also had a double header of Starlink missions, with the first taking place from Vandenberg on August 14th at 5:05 UTC. The mission was carrying 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low earth orbit. The booster flown on this mission, B1093, was flying for a fifth time and successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship of Course I Still Love youe. A few Hours later at 12:29 UTC, another Falcon 9 launched from Florida carrying a batch of 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth. The first stage for this mission, B1085, was flying for a tenth time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship. Just read the instructions with these two Starlink missions, SpaceX has now launched a total of 9,394 Starlink satellites into orbit, of which 1,234 have re entered and 7,103 have moved into their operational orbits. Wrapping up the week, we had the third launch of Landspace's Juche 2E rocket from Zhoushan. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like this was a fully successful launch. Unconfirmed reports, Chinese social media indicate a potential failure of the Second stage, thrust vector control system during ascent, leaving the stage unable to control its steering, deviating it from its trajectory. Going into next week, we expect the launch of a Soyuz 21 a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying the BION M2 spacecraft. What's interesting about this launch is that the Bion M spacecraft are based on the Vostok spacecraft that flew way back during the early days of human spaceflight in the early 1960s. Aside from their use with humans on board back in the day, they would also use these to fly film cameras that would then be recovered and analyzed afterwards for reconnaissance. Of course, now with digital cameras, this is no longer needed, but they're still being used to carry certain experiments into orbit that they can then recover afterwards for inspection. You know the saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, in this case, they've been carrying that out now for over 60 years, hence why they're still using a modernized version of the Vostok capsule. From the United States, we also expect a couple of Starlink launches from Vandenberg, both of which will be heading southwest. So if you're in Southern California, you may be able to see them. But be mindful that this isn't the kind that hugs the coast and they will be going away from you. These will also happen a few hours after sunrise, so the viewing conditions may not be perfect. Also next week we'll have the USS F36 mission from Florida. This will be the eighth launch of the secretive X37B space plane from the US Space Force, and it'll be the third time it's launched on a SpaceX rocket. The first time it was on a Falcon 9 back in September 2017, and the second was just a few years ago in December 2023, on board a Fal and Heavy, which sent the spaceplane out into a highly elliptical orbit. This mission will see the first stage booster attempting a landing back on landing zone two. You may recall that SpaceX recently retired landing zone one. So with this return to land, it also means we should expect sonic booms across the eastern coast of Central Florida next week. We may also potentially have an electron launch from New Zealand, but that's yet to be confirmed by Rocket Lab. As of recording, though notices have started to be published. Once that's confirmed, I'm sure our next spaceflight teams will add it to our database. So if you want to stay up to date about that and any more upcoming launches and events, be sure to download the next spaceflight app on your Phone or visit the website@nextbaseflight.com I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and that's your weekly space traffic report. Now back to T minus space.
- [19:02]
Maria Varmazis
We will be right back.
- [19:05]
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- [19:23]
Maria Varmazis
Welcome back. One of the many questions the James Webb Space Telescope was created to help us answer is one of the all time are we alone in the universe? Webb has instrumentation that helps us get a closer look at exoplanets, especially ones that are in the Goldilocks zone or the habitable zone. Just the right distance from a star, just the right temperature range for maybe an Earth like environment that, that maybe might harbor good conditions for life. So yeah, not too hot, not too cold, just maybe, just right. And there are a decent number of exoplanets out there in the universe in that Goldilocks zone. So we do have some contenders to examine in hopes that maybe we'll find some positive signs in the whole is there anyone else out there question. One such exoplanet I know I had some high hopes for was Trappist1D, which is part of the Trappist1 system that has, as far as we have seen anyway, the most Earth like rocky planets orbiting a single star. Anthrapist1d is again a rocky planet in that Goldilocks zone. From its cool red dwarf star. Like us, it's the third rock from the Sun. Unlike us though, it completes its orbit around the sun in a mere four days because it is 2% the distance to its star that we are to ours. So not the same, but some similarities. But according to a new study using data from Webb, unfortunately we got a strike trappist1d from the list of potential Earthy planets. That is a bummer. Caroline Piola Gorab from the University of Chicago and Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets at the University de Montreal, who is the lead author of the study published in the Astrophysical journal, says sadly Trappist1d does not have an Earth like atmosphere. And she added this There are a few potential reasons why we don't detect an atmosphere around Trappist 1D. It could have an extremely thin atmosphere that is difficult to detect, somewhat like Mars. Alternatively, it could have very thick high altitude clouds that are blocking our detection of specific atmospheric signatures, something more like Venus. Or it could be a barren rock with no atmosphere at all. Cue the sad trombone from folks like me who are so looking forward to some promising news. But. But don't give up yet on the Trappist 1 system. Piol E. Goreyeb added, all hope is not lost for atmospheres around the Trappist 1 planets. While we didn't find a big, bold atmospheric signature at Planet D, there is still potential for the outer planets to be holding onto a lot of water and other atmospheric components. I am keeping my fingers crossed.
- [22:15]
Alicia Siegel
And.
- [22:15]
Maria Varmazis
That'S T minus Brought to you by N2K CyberWire we'd love to know what you think of our podcast. We're conducting our annual audience survey to learn more about our listeners. That's you. We're collecting your insights until August 31, 2025. There's a link in the show Notes for you. We would love to hear your feedback. 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 nexus for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, the technology and the ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how@n2k.com N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is the Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. Have a wonderful weekend.
- [23:28]
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