← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Global deals driving the space economy.
00:23:30
CNES awards €31M to UNIVITY for satellite-based 5G connectivity. Astrobotic to launch from Andøya. Apogeo expands IoT services to Latin America. And more.
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Foreign you're listening to the N2K space network.
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Today is September 5th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazes and this is T/T/22nd. Satelogic has entered into a seven figure multi year partnership with Suhora 4 ispace has announced a partnership with Indian space situational awareness company Digantra. Italy's Apogeo Space has announced a strategic agreement with Telespasio Brazil to expand its Pico satellite IoT services into the Latin American market. Astrobotic has signed a launch site agreement with Andoia Space in Norway. CNES has awarded 31 million euros in funding to Univiti to accelerate the development of satellite based 5G connectivity. Welcome. Stay with us for the weekly Space Traffic report. After today's intel briefing, our colleagues@nasaspaceflight.com will be wrapping up the launch news from the week that was and taking a look at what's to come this week. Happy Friday everybody. Thank you for joining me. We should probably rename today Partnership Friday as we have a lot of international collaboration announcements to get through and we're kicking off the intel briefing for you today in France. French space agency CNES has awarded 31 million euros in funding to Univiti to accelerate the development of satellite based 5G connectivity in the contract forms part of the France 2030 program, bringing the project's total budget to 44 million euros with additional industrial CO financing. France 2030 supports the development of critical technologies for France's economy and Europe's technological independence. This initiative is viewed as a decisive step towards establishing sovereign, hybrid and resilient connectivity in France which combines very low earth orbit satellites with terrestrial infrastructure and Univiti together with TDF will deliver a demonstration of satellite enabled 5G connectivity and the project aims to validate a fully integrated non terrestrial network solution that's designed and manufactured in France. TDF will host, install, operate and maintain three gateway stations, two in mainland France and one overseas. These will ensure interoperability between the satellite system and telecom operators ground based networks and the project will unfold in two phases. Phase one, which has already started and will run through April 2026, will see the completion of technical specifications and use case studies. Phase two, which is planned to start in April 2026 and run through February 2028, will see the assembly, integration, testing, launch and in orbit operation of two Veleo 5G satellites communicating with gateways and ground terminals to demonstrate high throughput low latency services. Astrobotic has signed a launch site agreement with Andoia Space in Norway. Through this agreement, Astrobotic will use Andoia Space as a launch and landing site for its Zodiac reusable rocket campaigns. Zodiac simulates lunar and planetary landings, tests flight systems and hardware in the loop reduces risk and advances technology readiness for terrestrial and space applications. The collaboration aims to provide increased responsiveness and faster deployment of new capabilities, benefiting both commercial and governmental stakeholders. Astrobotic will perform their initial European Zodiac launch campaign operations from Andoia space starting in 2026. Italy's Apogeo Space has announced a strategic agreement with Telespasio Brazil to expand its Pico satellite IoT services into the Latin American market. The aim of the partnership is to leverage Telespasio's local expertise to deliver satellite connectivity in areas with low coverage. Guido Parisenti, CEO and founder of Apogeospace, said of the agreement that the company's satellite IoT services can offer concrete solutions in remote contexts supporting sectors such as the environment, agriculture, energy and infrastructure. Let's head on over to Japan now and Ispace has announced a partnership with Indian space situational awareness company Digantra. The companies are discussing a joint lunar mission focusing on cislunar situational awareness. The mission will combine digiantra's expertise in space situational awareness with Ispace's lunar landing capabilities to deliver a private lunar landing, enable payload delivery and data acquisition and integrate cislunar situational awareness into operations. Together, the companies aim to create a sustainable lunar ecosystem laying the foundation for long term infrastructure, logistics and resource utilization on and around the moon. The announcement coincides with the meeting of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru ishiba during the 15th India Japan Annual Summit in Tokyo. Satellogic has entered into a seven figure multi year partnership with suhora. The agreement grants SUHORA exclusive rights to provide Satelogic's data and services in India and Nepal, significantly expanding market access to high resolution satellite imagery in the region. Through this partnership, Satelogic's advanced satellite constellation will offer critical geospatial intelligence to address environmental challenges and serve broader national interest. This includes more efficient urban and infrastructure development, improved management of natural resources, enhanced sectoral operations, robust disaster response and climate change mitigation and other strategic applications. SUHORA will leverage its in country expertise to deliver these powerful capabilities tailored to the specific needs of Indian market and in the spirit of partnership Friday this is where I bring in my T minus partner in crime N2K senior producer Alice Carruth now with a roundup of the other stories that we are watching today. Alice, what do you have for us?
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Oh, I like that. Partner in solving crime I hope. On my super Sleuth radar today are three additional stories. Scientists in China have revealed the solid inner core of Mars thanks to analysis of seismic waves from Mars Quaits. NASA Techrise Challenge has announced their latest student competition opportunity and NASA has set a date to launch the I Map, the Carruthers Geo Corona Observatory and NASA's SWFO L1 spacecraft to study the Sun. They should be taking off no earlier than September 23rd.
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That is indeed good sleuthing Alice. Nicely done. If you are interested in learning more about those stories or any of the others mentioned in today's intel briefing, then head on over to the links in the selected reading section of our show. Notes Hi 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 Chris Salvino talking about the business case for returning humanity to the moon. Very interesting chat, so gotta check it out while you're waiting for the weekend sports games to start or getting interesting anyway, running your weekend errands or simply wanting to expand your news to knowledge on the weekend. See what we did there. You don't want to miss it.
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And since it is Friday, I'll hand you over now to NASASpaceflight.com for the weekly Space Traffic Report.
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I'm Ryan Caton for NSF and this is your weekly Space Traffic report for T Minus Space. Starting off the week, we had a starLink launch on August 30th. Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 9:59 UTC, carrying 24 more Starlink V2 mini satellites to add to the Constell installation. SpaceX used B1082 for this mission, which flew for the 15th time, after which it touched down successfully on the deck of droneship. Of course I Still Love youe Over in deep space, the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or juice, flew past Venus, but this flyby got a bit more dicey than expected as ESO lost contact with the spacecraft just a few weeks earlier. These flybys require some precise manoeuvring, so not being able to contact the spacecraft was definitely far from ideal. So what happened? Well, on July 16, the spacecraft didn't contact ESA's ground station in Spain at the planned time. After ruling out ground station issues and failing to reach the spacecraft through other antennas, the engineers confirmed the problem was with the spacecraft itself. Juice is programmed to enter survival mode when multiple things go wrong, but that didn't happen this time. In survival mode, the spacecraft spins slowly, beaming a signal at Earth each hour. But Juice wasn't sending any signals at all, so the engineers expected there might be a problem with the medium gain antenna. There were two possible solutions. Wait for the next automatic reset in 14 days or radio some commands in the general direction of the spacecraft and hope the low gain backup antennas would pick it up. With the Venus flyby coming up soon, waiting wasn't really an option, so the team resorted to blindly sending commands. After 20 hours and six failed attempts, they finally re established contact with Juice. Fortunately, the spacecraft was in good health and the engineers determined the problem was caused by a software square timing bug that meant the signal amplifier wasn't turned on when it was time to communicate with Earth. So Juice tried to phone home, but its signal was just too weak to be detected from the ground. With communications restored, the spacecraft safely flew by Venus on August 31, passing closest to the planet at 0528 Universal Time. The environment around Venus is much hotter than the cold and dark space around Jupiter that Juice is designed for. So the spacecraft used its main high gain antenna as a shield to protect its sensitive instruments. Unfortunately, that means we didn't get get any pictures of the flyby, but ESA did confirm that the manoeuvre successfully helped the spacecraft pick up speed at roughly 6,000kg. Juice is one of the heaviest interplanetary spacecraft ever launched, so it needs all the help it can get. Last year it performed a double flyby of Earth and the Moon. And it will need two more flybys of our home planet in September 2026 and January 2029 to accelerate to the required 11km per second. After that, it will head towards its destination, Jupiter, where it's set to arrive in 20. Next up, we had another Starlink launch. This one took off from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida on August 31 at 11:49 Universal and added 28 more Internet satellites to the Constellation. The booster for this mission was B1077, which ended its 23rd flight by successfully touching down on SpaceX's drone ship. Just read the instructions. With another month wrapped, it's time for some numbers. Throughout August we saw 28 orbital launch attempts, half of which were by SpaceX with its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. As usual, SpaceX was followed by China, which attempted eight launches and unfortunately one of them didn't reach orbit. The Juche 2e launch in August 15th ended in failure. Going into the month of September, we had the launch of an Israeli Sheavit 2. On September 2, the rocket lifted off at 19:30 UTC from the Pamalchim air base, launching a synthetic aperture radar surveillance satellite called ofek19. As usual for the country's launches, this one launched westward over the Mediterranean, lofting its payload into a retrograde low Earth orbit. Now back to California for another StarLink mission. On September 3, at 3 hours 51 seconds, Universal Falcon 9 ignited its engines to deliver 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites into orbit. This launch used a fresh booster, B1097, which ended its first flight by touching down on the deck of drone ship. Of Course I Still Love youe. Later that day we had the 200th orbital launch attempt of the year. And guess what it was A Starlink launch from Florida. At 11:56 UTC, Falcon 9 lifted off from the Cape lofting 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The booster for this flight was B1083, which performed its 14th mission and landed successfully on the deck. And the shortfall of Gravitas later, on September 3, the International Space Station got a little boost. That's not particularly special on its own, as the station regularly gets boosts to maintain its orbit. What was different this time was the spacecraft that boosted the station, a Dragon. The CRS 33 Cargo Dragon, which was launched on August 24, is outfitted with a special boost trunk. This trunk features extra propellant tanks and two Draco engines. Dragon lit these engines on September 3rd at approximately 18:15 UTC, and over the following 5 minutes and 3 seconds, it raised the station's orbit. But wait, didn't Dragon Dr. The station's forward port. Wouldn't that mean it lowers the orbit if it fires from the trunk? Well, yes it would, but the ISS has a trick up its sleeve. In preparation for the manoeuvre, it flipped over 180 degrees to face retrograde, allowing Dragon to fire in the correct direction to raise the orbit. Of course, Dragon isn't the first visiting vehicle to boost the station. Usually a Russian Progress resupply craft gets the job, but in recent years it has also been done by Northrop, Grumman, Cygnus, and last year also by another Dragon, though that one used its regular thrusters and didn't have the special trunk. Now, with this Trunk, Dragon has 3 times more reboost capacity compared to Cygnus and about 1.5x compared to progress. The CRS33 Dragon is set to stay at the orbital outpost until late December or early January. During that time, it will perform a series of longer burns to maintain the station's altitude. We also had a Tungjiang 3C launch from China. On September 5, the rocket lifted off from the Shichang satellite launch Center. No details were announced about the payload at the time of recording. Back in the United States, we had yet another Starlink. This mission lifted off on September 5th from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space center and delivered 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. Booster B1069 flew this mission on its 27th flight, which became the fourth booster to fly this many times. It ended the flight by successfully landing on. Just read the instructions. The successful landing also marked SpaceX's 500th successful recovery since the first successful landing on Falcon 9's 20th mission in December 2015. With the five Starlink missions this week, SpaceX landed a total of 132 Satel satellites to the Constellation, bringing the number of Starlink satellites launched to 9660. Of those, 1288 have re entered and 7551 are currently in their operational orbits. Closing out the week is Ceres 1 from Galactic Energy, launched from China. The rocket lifted off from zhou Chen on September 5, just like the previous launch from China. We don't know anything about the payload at the moment, but more details may be released later, so keep an eye on the next spaceflight app. Next week, Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch three times from California. We'll have a Starlink launch and a mission for the US Space Force's Space Development Agency from Florida. Falcon 9 is set to launch an Indonesian communications satellite into geostationary transfer orbit. There's also a launch from China on the manifest As a Zheangjiang 6A is expected to fly from the Taiyan Satellite launch center on September 11th. The Progress MS.32 resupply mission is set to lift off from Kazakhstan to prepare for the spacecraft's arrival on the 13th. The Progress MS.30 craft is set to undock from the ISS2 September 9th. Finally, we'll also have a total lunar eclipse on September 7th as the Moon passes through Earth's shadow. The full eclipse will be visible over most of Asia and parts of Australia and East Africa. If you're in Europe or most of Africa, you might be able to see a partial eclipse during the moonrise, and if you're west of the Pacific, you might catch it during Moon set. Our American viewers will unfortunately have to miss out as this lunar eclipse won't be visible from that consequence. You did get a total solar eclipse last year though. Anyways, I've been Ryan Caton for NSF and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T minus Space.
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We'll be right back.
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Welcome back. Our last story today likely confirms what I imagine many of you listening already knew, if not at least suspected. Space is hard on our bodies. In fact, a new study in Cell Stem Cell Journal shows that we humans actually age at an accelerated rate while in space. Specifically, our stem cells feel the years significantly faster in space. So researchers tracked the behavior of blood forming stem cells called the human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells or HSPCs for short, in the crew aboard the ISS across four different resupply missions. And what was found was that these HSPCs showed reduced self renewal and dormancy, faster cell cycling, increased DNA damage, shortened telomeres, inflammatory and mitochondrial stress, and activation of usually silent genomic regions. Which is all to say that these are hallmark signs of aging. And these signs of DNA damage and inflammation and the like were seen in as little as 32 days in orbit. That cocktail of microgravity and increased cosmic radiation doesn't take long to do a number on us. All of this points to accelerated biological aging, which is one of the most fundamental risks of long duration spaceflight. But at least there is a twist of hope in this research, for what it's worth. Because it ends up that when the cells came back to Earth and returned to healthy conditions, some of those aging markers reversed. Some. So while deep space travel may push our biology to its limits, it could also help us understand the aging process just, just a little bit better back here on Earth. And that's T Minus Brought to you by N2K CyberWire what do you think about T Minus Space Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. Link is in the show Notes. Thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. 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@nature n2k.com N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We are 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. Thank you for listening. Have a lovely weekend. T.