← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
It’s raining Chinese rockets in Australia.
00:27:03
Suspected space debris found in WA. KASA gives Innospace Korea's first commercial launch permit. China launched Pakistan’s hyperspectral satellite. And more.
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You're listening to the N2K space network. Are you ready for AI in cybersecurity? Demand for these skills is growing exponentially for cybersecurity professionals. It's why CompTIA, the largest vendor neutral certification authority, is developing SEC AI. It's their first ever AI certification for focused on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity and is designed to help mid career cybersecurity professionals demonstrate their competencies with AI tools. And that's why N2K's SEC AI practice exam is coming out this year to help you prepare for the certification release in 2026. To find out more about this new credential and how N2K can help you prepare today, check out our blog@certify.cyber vista.net blog and thanks.
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A.com cyber today is October 20th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T minus.
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T minus 20 seconds.
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Go for dep. Ice is coming from a satellite five four ESA astronauts have completed a helicopter training course with Germany's federal defense forces. 4 I Space Europe has signed a payload services agreement with lunar resources company Magna Petra Corp. Pakistan has sent its first ever hyperspectral satellite into orbit. Innospace has received Korea's first private commercial launch permit from the K Aerospace Administration. Suspected space debris has been discovered in Western Australia. Today's guest is retired USAF Col. William A. Wolf, president, CEO and founder of the Space Force Association. We're going to be talking about all things Space Force association and how you can get involved in the organization later in the show, so stick around after today's headlines. Thank you for joining me on this Monday. Let's get into it now. Space debris, be it natural or man made, is known to return to Earth on a regular basis. For the most part, it lands in the ocean and doesn't cause major damage. But more frequently nowadays we're hearing of stories where large chunks of spacecraft have crash landed on Earth and have as yet narrowly avoided causing major harm and destruction. And that does seem to be the case in Western Australia this weekend where authorities are investigating a chunk of metal and carbon fiber spotted near Newman, Western Australia. Mine site personnel found the burning object near a remote access road and called emergency services. Local police are leading the investigation and a police spokesperson said initial assessments indicate that the item was made of carbon fiber and may be a composite overwrapped pressure vessel or rocket tank consistent with aerospace components. The object remains under investigation, though its characteristics are consistent with known space re entry debris. Further technical assessment will be undertaken by engineers from the Australian Space Agency to assist in identifying its nature and source, and experts are saying it looks to be a part of the fourth stage of a Chinese Jielong rocket. And it is not the only story of possible space debris making the rounds over the weekend. A United Airlines flight from Denver to Los Angeles was around 200 miles southeast of Salt Lake City at an altitude of 36,000ft when the pilots made the decision to divert, and the cause of the diversion was a broken windshield. Not that unusual. It's kind of terrifying, but I guess it's not that unusual. But in this case it seemed to be quite an unusual break. Unconfirmed images of the incident have appeared online that show that the pilot seemed to have been injured by the incident. And although it's not confirmed, experts are saying that the break was caused by either a meteorite or space junk, and we will of course update you when we have more information. Moving on now. Innospace has received Korea's first private commercial launch permit from the Korea Aerospace Administration, better known as casa. Innospace has now completed all approval procedures for the first launch of Hunvit Nano and has begun preparations for the actual launch. The launch window for the Hanbit Nano Spaceward mission is expected from October 28 to November 28. When conducted, it'll be the first commercial launch by a civilian company from the Brazilian space launch Site at the Alcantara Space Center. The launch site is operated by the Brazilian Air Force and the launch will be conducted from a launch platform built by Innospace. The company's Hunvit Nano Spaceward mission is aiming to conduct a launch demonstration that will deploy a customer's satellite and payload into low earth orbit at an altitude of 300 km. InnoSpace plans to transport a total of eight regular payloads, including small satellites for orbital insertion for five domestic and foreign customers, including Brazil, India and South Korea. Pakistan has sent its first ever hyperspectral satellite into orbit. The country's space agency Suparko announced the successful launch of the H1 satellite from Northwestern China's Juchuan Satellite Launch center on Sunday. HS1 is equipped with advanced hyperspectral imaging technology that's capable of capturing data across hundreds of narrow spectral bands. The satellite technology is expected to significantly enhance national capacities in fields like precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, urban planning and disaster management. HS1 is also expected to contribute to development initiatives including the China Pakistan Economic Corridor by identifying geohazard risks and promoting sustainable infrastructure development. The Luxembourg based subsidiary of ISPACE Europe has signed a payload services agreement with lunar resources company Magna Petracorp. Under the agreement that's worth a total of $22 million, ispace Europe will integrate a NASA developed mass spectrometer observing Lunar Operations instrument into its upcoming Mission 3 Lunar Micro Rover platform as part of Magna Petra's helium availability of Lunar Origin Reconnaissance Mission. The engineering and mission operations of the Micro rover will be led by I Space Europe in Luxembourg. And speaking of Europe, four ESA astronauts have completed a helicopter training course with Germany's Federal Defense Forces. The training is part of Europe's preparations for future missions to the moon and operations on the lunar surface. The astronauts participated in a three week program at the International Helicopter Training center in Bucheborg, Germany. The course included one week of simulator instruction followed by two weeks of practical flying in EC135 helicopters, with operations conducted over central Germany and the Alps. The training offers a realistic analog for the dynamics of planetary landings, requiring capabilities such as vertical takeoff and landing, terrain based decision making and high levels of coordination and situational awareness. ESA says that these skills are essential for future human spaceflight missions, including lunar landings, where astronauts will descend to the surface using a human landing system and later launch back to orbit. And that, my friends, is our intel briefing for you on this Monday and a reminder that you can find links detailing all of today's headlines in our show Notes, which are both in your podcast app and on space.n2k.com which is our show's official website. Hey T Minus Crew. In case you didn't know, we post links to every episode of T Minus Space Daily along with the major headlines on our LinkedIn page. Just look for N2K T minus space daily on LinkedIn and click follow to get our episodes and headlines directly in your feed and every weekday and Saturday. Now, a lot of us are spending quite a bit of time on LinkedIn nowadays and surely a space intel briefing from us would be a nice break from posts about how the AWS outage relates to AI quantum something or other. Right? Right. N2K T minus space daily on LinkedIn tap that follow button and thank you.
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Our guest today is retired USAF Colonel William A. Wolf and he is the President, CEO and founder of the Space Force Association. Bill started by telling me more about his background and why he started the Space Force association.
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My background 24 years as a Air Force Space weapons officer and a lot of people don't understand, you know, what is a space weapons officer? Does that mean you you deployed weapons in space? No, that's not the job at all. The Space weapons school was devised and created at the end of the 90s and they realized the Air Force realized that we needed to create experts who understood all the capabilities we had in the space domain and then take that understanding and educate folks about what those capabilities were and the impact to war fighting then and in the future. So 24 years doing that, you know, a lot of the job was in fact doing that, educating folks about the space capabilities that are up in orbit and even on the ground and educating combatant commands around the globe. I deployed to Afghanistan in 2002 where I was embedded with the Special Operations forces, educating them about critical the space domain was. And what I did specifically was looked at the Blue Force trackers that we hosted on the special operators so that we could see where they were and really if they got into trouble they could ask for help using space capability. So a really highlight and then worked on multi domain operations which is a whole separate discussion but honored to be here. And that's just a little bit about my background.
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I appreciate it so much Bill. And it sounds like what you're working on now is in wonderful alignment with what you've been doing, increasing people's awareness and helping people understand the importance of the space domain. And without further ado, we're going to talk about the Space Force Association. That's my very awkward segue into that, Bill. Since we're here to talk about the Space Force Association, I'd love to hear sort of your elevator pitch for what it is and what it does.
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Yeah, you know, not everyone can join the Space Force. The newest branch of our armed services that was found, that was started in 2019, that was signed into law in December of 2019, but everyone can join the Space Force association. And not many people understand or realize, you know, why do we need a Space Force? Well, every economy is underpinned by a strong national security apparatus. You know, the maritime domain. 90% of goods move around the ocean, and we have a strong US Navy to ensure those goods can move. And so that's why we have a Space Force. We have a Space Force to protect us Allied partners interest in from into space. And we're going to have a future space economy that the US partners and allies want to lead. And because we're going to have a future multitrillion dollar space economy, we need a strong underpinning to ensure freedom of action in the domain, which is what the Space Force does. And the Space Force association is here to help educate folks about that important mission.
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What does it look like when you're letting people know about what the Space Force does and why the space domain is so important? I mean, this is a job that I think a lot of us who are listening to what you're saying are 100% on board with the importance of that knowledge getting out there. So I'd be so curious what those interactions are like for you, and maybe things that you've either picked up from people you've spoken to about misperceptions or things that are surprising. I'd be curious to hear what sort of what it's. What it's been like for you.
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It's been interesting to say the least. And the reality is, and this is why SFA is such a unique platform, is a single person can talk to everybody about everything that needs to be discussed. And so when I founded the Space Force association, it simply was to establish a platform and then do collect folks around me who shared a similar passion. And that's what happened. You know, I remember Volunteers 1 and 2 showed up and they said, how can I help? And I said, well, this is how you can help. And so now we're to over 200 volunteers in the organization, over 4,000 members. And that's how we scale to get the information out there. So day in the life of. It's really interesting. It's me working with the six paid staff that we have here at sfa, phenomenal staff members, to ensure the volunteers are empowered to do their job and to get the word out. So, for example, really exciting things that just happened recently. The Boston chapter stood up. And what's interesting about the chapter, the Boston chapter, is it was stood up by a guardian, a Space Force guardian, said, I want to do something in a volunteer capacity, in a philanthropic capacity, and help get the word out outside of my role as a Space Force guardian. And so he just hosted a Space Innovation Summit last week in the middle of a government shutdown. So what that tells you is you have a non government entity, the sfa, helping get the word out about the criticality of the Space Force and doing so, using tremendous volunteers, quite honestly, around the globe that are as excited and passionate about this mission as I am.
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What are the events like? You know, what are the. What is the kind of information that's out there? And.
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Well, first we have to talk about the domain of space. Yeah, and so you got the space domain. And you know, when folks think of space, yeah, it's outer space. Now. We're not talking about aliens, we're simply talking about, right now, orbits around the globe that ensure we can do things in the space domain that we need to do. So you have the commercial sector doing what it does. You have the civil sector, represented by NASA doing what it does. But both of those are supported by the Space Force. So the way I describe it is an inverse pyramid. And so that's the sectors that we're reaching out to. Commercial wants to help. They're investing $700 billion this year into creating capabilities on orbit. NASA's budget is around 40 billion, and then the Space Force's budget is around 40 billion. And so those are the sectors that we're reaching out to and describing the interactions between the three. But when folks show up to the events, that's what they're showing up to discuss. They're discussing what is each sector doing and what is the Space Force doing and what does the Space Force need from each of the other sectors, and vice versa. And so it's really a relational discussion and dialog that just keeps going and going. And then the objective is to have an outbreak and help inform policy that we know we're going to need.
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A lot of folks who listen to our show, they're in the space industry and, and I know the Space Force's mission is very much in alignment with, with what they want to, you know, it's key to their success, obviously. So I'm sure many people want to know how they can support the SFA and maybe help that mission grow.
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Yeah, great question. That's what I love about the 90 corporate members and partners. I call them partners because that's really what they are. The 90 corporate partners that we have right now, roughly, they're informing and providing the resources for the programming that we know we're going to need as an organization. So they're the ones helping us scale. These corporate partners realize that by contributing to the Space Force association, they contribute to this platform. And the byproduct of their contributions are them getting recognized by the Space Force to contributing to private nonprofit that supports them. And so it's one of those, again, it's a really good way for our corporate partners to be philanthropic without having to donate to other causes. They can donate to the Space Force association to be part of what I call this global movement that's happening. And really what we see is every organization like ours, we host events. And the big event that we're hosting at the end of this year is the Space Power Conference. And so our corporate partners aren't only partners because they want to be partners and help us with our programming, but they're all descending on the Space Power Conference to interact with what I call the largest gathering of guardians in the galaxy. And so that's happening December 10th through the 12th in Orlando. And, and we're really excited about that event. And this is where the corporate partners come and they say, hey, how can we help? And they, we all discuss how they can help. And then we create the programming for 2026. So any corporation who's interested, and I suspect, you know, this is what I say to everybody, any corporation who's not thinking about their space economy is missing out on a tremendous opportunity. And so if your corporation doesn't have a space portfolio right now, you should probably think about creating one.
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Amen to that. That absolutely, yes. And Bill, given your extensive expertise in the space domain over the course of your career, I'm very curious. What are things that you're excited about in the space domain and maybe what challenges and opportunities you see coming up in the space domain.
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Here's what's really exciting. That people aren't tracking the Space Force more than any other service, is going to be using capabilities that are triple use technologies. Triple use, triple use, Commercial, civil and national security. And so think about this. So sometimes and Again, Starlink is a perfect example of this where you have a contract called Star Shield, where bandwidth is set aside to support national security needs. Supporting a Space Force, I think we're going to see that with NASA as well in exploration, especially under this administration. You're going to see policies that are going to allow Space Force to work with NASA, to work with commercial to create triple use technologies that are going to help, you know, ensure exploration in the domain while ensuring freedom of action in the domain, while also allowing the economy to grow within the domain. This more than any other service, the Space Force is going to need those technologies and capabilities. In other words, you don't see a lot of private aircraft carriers being built. You know, so the Navy builds aircraft carriers and that's, that's what they build and we need those. I'm not saying we don't need those. But in the Space Force, you're going to see a lot of triple use technologies I think being developed and established.
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That's fascinating. We often hear the phrase dual use, not so much triple use. But I love that and I'm going to keep a pin in that mentally because I love that. That's great, Bill. Appreciate that and appreciate your insight so much. I want to make sure I give you the final word. Anything at all that you want to leave our audience with. The floor is yours.
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Yeah. Thanks so much, Maria. Again, thank you for hosting talks like this because the more we talk about it, the more impact that we can have. So I really do appreciate it. For those who want to learn more about the Space Force in general and understand and potentially join the Space Force Association, I just ask you to go over to ussfa.org and learn more about what we're doing. It's $35 a year to join and so you're becoming again part of a very large movement to ensure we have freedom of action in the space domain. And Maria, I would like to invite you down to Space Power in December.
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Thank you for the invitation. I will check my calendar and get back to you. Appreciate that. And coming up on tomorrow's show is our monthly ISS National Labs Update with Patrick o'. Neal. Be sure to listen in to hear the latest on upcoming research going to the International Space Station. We'll be right back.
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Welcome back. How many satellites are in orbit around Earth, exactly? I don't know about you, but I hear wildly different estimates on this one quite a lot. And with the launch cadence of SpaceX's Starlink alone, estimates very quickly get outdated. And some of the claims are kind of wild. We're gonna have 100,000 of them up there by 2030. Exponential growth line goes up and to the right always. Well, hang on, maybe that exuberance isn't so irrational. Time will tell anyway. But in terms of actual realistic numbers, we do have a solid metric to report on today that should help maybe reset some people's mental models. Yesterday, October 19th, SpaceX officially launched their 10,000th Starlink spacecraft. Ever soak that one in for a second, just Starlink 10K. Of course, not all of that 10K are still in orbit, attrition due to the physics of orbital decay and all. But even with Starlink forming the bulk of what's in orbit, if we're talking about pure numbers, several thousand other satellites from other nations and businesses are also up there doing their thing. And it's well within living memory for a lot of us. When we measured satellites on orbit in the low thousands, if not just the hundreds, and depending on your years, the tens and a lot sooner than many of us might have expected. We are now measuring numbers of satellites not in the tens, but in the tens of thousands. Good thing. As Douglas Adams once wisely noted, that space is big. Really big. Orbits, on the other hand, do have a finite holding capacity. So here's hoping that we never hit that upper limit. 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 our 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 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 Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ivan. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
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T minus.
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It.