Alice Cruz (7:19)

Alice hi Maria. We've added two additional links today in the Selected Readings section of our show. Notes 1 is an update on my Nerix laser communication products and the other is on an RTX and Norfolk Grumman Rocket Motor Testing and where else can.

Maria Varmazas (7:34)

We find those links?

Alice Cruz (7:35)

Links to all the original sources of all the stories we mentioned throughout the show should be available on your podcast platform and on our website, space.n2k.com just click on today's episode title.

Maria Varmazas (7:46)

Hey 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. Tomorrow we have Dr. Lucy Lowe talking about the science experiments joining the Axiom 4 crew that's headed to the International Space Station next week. Check it out while you are traveling to Midland, Texas for the 2025 International Rocket Engineering Competition. Like Alice will be along with thousands of other rocket engineering students from around the globe. She'll be joining the live stream of that event from next Wednesday and will be bringing us regular updates on this show next week. You don't want to miss it.

Dave (8:40)

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Maria Varmazas (9:56)

We're handing over to our partners@nasaspaceflight.com right now who have the latest space traffic report for us.

Alicia Segal (10:05)

I'm Alicia Segal for nsf, and this is your weekly space traffic report for T Minus Space. Kicking off the week, we had the 32nd launch of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket. And this one, just like the previous, had six passengers on board. Liftoff took place on May 31st at 13:39 UTC from launch site 1 at Blue's Own spaceport in West Texas. On board were Paul Jarris, Jesse Williams, Amy Medina, Jorge, Dr. Gretchen Green, Jaime Alleman, and Mark Rocket. And yes, his last name is actually Rocket. That's not a joke. For this flight, Blue was flying the older new Shepard capsule, RSS First Step, which made its 13th flight. The new Shepard booster was Tail 4, which flew its 14th flight. And both capsule and booster made it back safely to Earth from Texas. We now go to California, where a Falcon 9 took off on May 31 at 20:10 UTC, carrying a batch of Starlink V2 mini satellites into orbit. The first stage for this mission was B1071, flying for the 25th time, becoming the third booster to fly that many times. It successfully returned to Earth, landing on SpaceX's drone ship, of Course I Still Love youe. And that was the 28th and last orbital launch of the month of May. As usual, SpaceX continues to be the most active launch provider, putting the United States at the top of the list of most launches worldwide. The company launched 16 Falcon 9 missions in May, matching the record for the most Falcon 9 launches in a calendar month. And that's on top of the Starship launch that took place in May as well. And starting off the month of June, we had the launch of Rocket Lab's Electron rocket from New Zealand, carrying out the full Dream Ahead mission. The mission started on June 2nd at 23:57 UTC and carried the second Black sky third generation satellite into low Earth orbit. These satellites are commercial Earth observation satellites built by Blacksky. The third generation of satellites have a higher resolution imaging capability and are able to image in greater wavelengths than the previous generation. Not long after Electron, we had another Starlink launch, but this time from Florida. That launch took place on June 3rd at 4:43 UTC carrying a mixed batch of Starlink V2 Mini and direct to cell satellites into orbit. The first stage for this mission was a veteran one flying for its 21st time, and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship. Just read the instructions. And in another quick turnaround of assets at Vandenberg, SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 rocket carrying another batch of Starlink V2 mini satellites. Liftoff took place on June 4th at 23:40 UTC. And in case you forgot, June 4th was Falcon 9's birthday. It was on June 4th, 2010 that Falcon 9 first took off to the skies. And here we are 15 years later. Now, depending on how you count launches, either this Starlink launch from Vandenberg or the previous one from Florida also represented the 500th launch of the Falcon family of rockets, including Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. The discrepancy is in Falcon 9's one suborbital launch, the crew Dragon in flight abort test back in 2020. So if you're only counting orbital launches, then the Vandenberg StarLink was the 500th launch. But if you count the suborbital one, then it was the previous one. Everyone loves numbers, am I right? Of those 500 launches, 484 were Falcon 9 launches. So in a few weeks, we will likely have the 500th launch of Falcon 9, which is also really impressive to think about. And if you like even more stats, the booster flown on this starLink mission was B1063 and it flew for its 26th time, making it only the second booster to reach that milestone. It also made it back to the deck of Of Course I Still Love youe and we may see it fly again really soon. Wait, what? You want even more numbers? All right, well, with the Starlink launches Of this week, SpaceX has now launched a total of 8,851 Starlink satellites since the first Starlink launch, of which 1,158 have now re entered and 6,715 have moved into their operational orbit. For the past six months, we've been following the second Hakuto R mission from Japanese company Ispace on its journey to the moon. And while we finally saw the culmination of that story this week, it unfortunately did not end the way that we hoped. At this point, it seems likely that the lander added another crater to the moon's surface. So what happened? Well, let's start from the beginning. The Hakuto R lander was launched towards the moon on January 15, together with Firefly's Blue Ghost lander. Blue Ghost touched down on the lunar surface in early March. But Hakuto R went the long way round on a much longer but more fuel efficient route. Trading propellant for time now. This wasn't Ispace's first attempt at landing on the moon. The first Hacudo R mission crashed into the lunar surface in April of 2023. It was later revealed that the lander's computer misinterpreted its sensor data and it tried to touch down 5 km above the lunar surface. It hovered until it ran out of propellant and then plummeted to its demise. With this second mission, Ispace hoped to correct the mistakes and even named the new lander Resilience. Unfortunately, it just wasn't meant to be. After a successful launch and journey towards the moon, Resilience prepared to touch down in mare fragoras on June 5th. And initially all seemed to go well. But just 90 seconds before expected touchdown, telemetry was lost. Now, based on what we the seconds before, it appeared to be descending much faster than it should have been. And the faces of the people in mission Control gave away more than any piece of telemetry ever could. For everyone at Ispace, we feel you landing on the Moon is no easy feat, but Resilience still managed to tick off eight out of its 10 milestones, which is great. Hopefully the next attempt will touch down a bit softer. Ispace later confirmed in a press briefing that Resilience did not successfully touch down on the lunar surface, at least not softly, and that the lander sent its last bit of telemetry at 190 meters above the surface. The company is now investigating the root cause, but they believe it's a different issue than what caused the failure of the first mission. They found that the altitude measurements from the laser rangefinder were delayed and that the lander did not decelerate enough as a result. The company wants to incorporate learnings from this mission into their next vehicles. And to wrap up the week, we had the launch of a Changzheng 6A from China on June 5 at 20:45 UTC. The rocket was carrying a batch of Guo Wang Internet satellites into low earth orbit. These satellites are part of China's own Starlink like Satel Satellite Internet Constellation created and developed by Kasec, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation. This is now the fourth operational launch for the Constellation and brings the total number of these satellites launched to over 30. Going into next week, we'll see a lot more action in space with a number of Falcon 9 launches scheduled. Some of them will be StarLink launches, but two of them will be carrying customer payloads. One is planned to launch the SXM10 satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit for Sirius XM, while the other is slated to launch Axiom's fourth human space spaceflight to the International Space Station. That launch, currently planned for June 10th at 12:22 UTC, will feature the fifth and final Crew Dragon capsule to be manufactured by SpaceX from now on, if they still launch Dragon after all of the drama on social media, SpaceX will just be reusing the already existing capsules until the spacecraft is retired next week. Rocket Lab is also planning another electron launch and China may pop into the schedule as well. United Launch alliance is also working towards another potential launch of Atlas V with Kuiper satellites on board at the end of next week. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and that's your weekly space traffic Report. Now back to T minus Space.

Maria Varmazas (17:41)

We'll be right back.

Unknown (17:44)

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Maria Varmazas (18:18)

Welcome back. There's a lot of positive space news coming out of India this week. They are ramping up for Group Captain Shubanshu Shukla of the Indian Air Force's launch to the ISS. He's among a four person AX4 crew traveling no earlier than Tuesday. Shukla will be only the second Indian ever to travel to space and the first to visit the International Space Station. Also in the news is Amity University Chhattisgarh in Raipur, which has become the first academic institution in the state to partner with NASA to establish a NASA Aeronet atmospheric monitoring station on its campus. The Aeronet, which stands for Aerosol Robotic Network, is part of over 600 stations across more than 80 countries. This also makes Amity University Chhattisgarh the second Amity campus in India after Amity University Haryana in Gurugram to join this international network. And finally, four teams from India were accepted to compete in the International Rocket Engineering Competition in Midland, Texas next week. Those teams should be arriving this weekend in preparation for registration day on Monday, conference day on Tuesday and then launch days Wednesday through Saturday in West Texas. And a little reminder, we will be catching up with them and all the other teams competing in the competition next week. So go and check out more about that competition@soundingrocket.org and I'm sure that those that are marking Eid Al Adha have a lot to celebrate this week. And that's it. Update for T minus for June 6, 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 this 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 space2k.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 teams smarter. Learn how@n2k.com N2K Senior Producer is Alice Carruthers. Our 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. Peter Kilby is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

Alicia Segal (21:06)

T minus.

Dave (21:20)

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