Alicia Siegel (7:57)

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Maria Varmazes (9:16)

On Fridays, our partners@nasaspaceflight.com bring us the Space Traffic Report.

Alice Carruth (9:25)

I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T minus Space. The first launch of the year took flight on January 4th at 1:27 UTC, a Falcon 9 lifted off from Florida carrying a communications satellite for the United Arab emirates based company Space 42. Falcon delivered the satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit and from there it'll take several months to reach its operational geostationary orbit. Once operational, the satellite is set to provide communications across Africa, Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. The booster for this mission was B1073, which flew for the 20th time. It ended its mission by successfully touching down on the deck of SpaceX's drone ship, a shortfall of gravitas. For the next mission we go to China, where a Changzheng 3B launched on January 6 at 20 UTC. This was the 555th flight of the Chongjung, or Long March, series of rockets. The payload on this mission, Xijian 25, was placed into a geostationary transfer orbit. This satellite's main mission is to test technology for refueling other satellites and extending their lives. Back In Florida, another Falcon 9 launched less than an hour later, and this time it was for a Starlink mission. The rocket's fairing was packed with 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites which were all delivered to low Earth orbit. This mission was flown by Booster B1077 on its 17th mission and it touched down successfully on Droneship. Just read the instructions. The next space traffic event took place elsewhere in the solar system as BepiColombo performed its sixth flyby of mercury this week. BepiColombo is a joint mission between the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency that will eventually deploy two spacecraft in orbit around Mercury. These orbiters are currently traveling together and they performed a series of flybys to get on the right trajectory for it to arrive in orbit around the planet. During these flybys, BepiColombo swung by Mercury, allowing the planet's gravitational pull to change its path. This maneuver is therefore also known as a gravity assist. On January 8 at 05:59 UTC, BepiColombo screamed past Mercury at an altitude of only 295 km above the planet's surface. A few minutes later, it flew directly over the planet's north pole, at which point ESA took the opportunity to point BepiColombo's monitoring cameras, or MCAMs, at the planet. Now, these cameras were never meant for scientific observations, as their purpose was to check whether the spacecraft's systems had deployed correctly. But nevertheless, they took some impressive images of Mercury. This flyby was BepiColombo's sixth and final. The next time the spacecraft meets Mercury will be in late 2026 when it will enter orbit around the planet. Both orbiters will start their science missions shortly thereafter, so there's much more to come from the planet closest to the sun. Back on Earth, we had another StarLink mission on January 8th. Falcon 9 took to the Floridian skies at 15:27 Universal Time, adding 21 more Starlink satellites to the constellation. Of these, 13 had direct to cell capability and the other eight were regular Starlink V2 mini satel. This was the third mission of Booster B1086, which landed successfully on the deck of a shortfall of Gravitas with its Starlink missions this week. SpaceX has now launched a total of 7,677 Starlink satellites. Of these, 765 satellites have re entered and 6,227 have moved into their operational orbit. The next mission took place on January 10th. Falcon 9 lifted off from California for the seventh launch of the National Reconnaissance Office's proliferated architecture, also known as Starshield. Some of the previous launches have carried some Starlink satellites as rideshare payloads, but we don't know if that also happened this time. This mission was flown by booster B1071. It became the fifth booster to fly 22 times and landed successfully on Droneship. Of Course I Still Love youe Next week promises to be a very exciting week in spaceflight. Starting off the week, New Glenn's maiden flight is currently scheduled for January 12th. We've followed Blue Origin's preparations for this important mission in previous episodes and this week. New Glenn rolled out of its hangar back to the launch pad after received its Blue Ring payload. The launch was Originally scheduled for January 10, but delayed because of rough seas in the landing zone, approximately 620km downrange in the Atlantic. While recovering a rocket booster on the very first flight is very ambitious, Blue wants to try anyway and give it a chance of succeeding. The window for New Glenn's first flight opens on January 12th at 6:00 UTC and it lasts for three hours. If the weather or the rocket don't cooperate for some reason, backup opportunities are available on the following days. On January 13th we'll have a Starlink mission from Florida. Falcon 9 is set to deliver another batch of direct to cell satellites into low Earth orbit. T0 is expected during a roughly four and a half hour window starting at 14:59 Universal Time. Next week definitely looks to be the week of massive rockets as Starship is set to fly on its seventh flight test on January 13th. This will be the first flight of Starship Block 2, which is even taller than its predecessor and features many, many upgrades and redesigns. What's more, SpaceX wants to test if Starship is ready to fly Starlink missions and plans to deploy 10 Starlink simulators while the ship is on its almost but not quite orbital trajectory. The window for this launch is scheduled to open on January 13th at 22:00 o'clock UTC with backup windows available in the following days just in case. The next mission is SpaceX's 12th transporter mission. This flight is expected to lift off from California on January 14th with T0 set during a nearly one hour window starting at 18:49 UTC. Onboard are a number of rideshare payloads and among them is a satellite for YouTuber Mark Rober's company. And if two massive rockets weren't exciting enough, we'll also have a mission to the moon next week, or actually two missions in a single launch. Falcon 9 is set to take off from Florida on January 15th with two lunar landers on board. The first passenger is Firefly's first Blue Ghost lander and the other is the second Hakuto R lander from the Japanese company ispace. T0 for this mission is expected on January 15th. Around 06:11 Universal Time and closing out the week, have a Spacewalk on the ISS on January 16th. NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Sunita Williams. Yes, one of the starliner astronauts. I mean, why not? She's up there already. Are set to step outside of the station at 12:00 UTC. During this extravehicular activity, the astronauts will service two science experiments. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T minus Space.

Maria Varmazes (16:00)

We'll be right back. Welcome back. Turning our focus today to the raging wildfires devastating the Los Angeles area at the moment, satellite data has been a shining example of risk mitigation at work as data from open source and even private sector satellites showed growing fire hotspots to get people to safety faster and help firefighters understand where the fires were moving. And the satellite imagery often spoke for itself the power of these fires and their heartbreaking and unfathomable scope. We do applaud the Earth observation data providers who made their imagery of the LA area freely available and hope even more companies will do the same so people can know the status of their homes as quickly as possible. Keeping things in perspective. People have been killed by these fires. Many, many people have lost their homes and the fires are still, as of the time of this recording, raging largely out of control. The scope of the damage from these fires is truly hard to believe. And one of the fires, the Eaton Fire, has been raging in the communities of Altadena and Pasadena, home to many astrophysics and space organizations, including Caltech, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Carnegie Observatories and others. So far it seems like these facilities are still safe from fire damage. But no doubt, as you have heard, as we have, many of our friends and colleagues working in the space sciences and industry have lost their homes. I hope when we do our intel briefing on Monday that I'll be reporting that the fires have been brought under control or better yet, extinguished. But in the Meantime, to our listeners affected by this catastrophe, you are all in our thoughts and we hope you, your loved ones and your homes will all be safe. That's it for T minus for January 10, 2025 brought to you by N2K Cyberwire for additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes@spare.n2k.com 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 spacen2k.com we're privileged 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 makes it easy for companies to optimize your biggest investment your people. We make you smarter about your teams while making your team smarter. Learn how@n2k.com this episode was produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president, Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday.

Alice Carruth (19:14)

T minus.