← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
The FAA imposes a launch curfew on space flight.
00:23:25
The FAA sets limits for space flight hours of operations. ULA’s Atlas 5 scrubs for a second time. Canada’s budget includes $130M for space launch. And more.
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- [00:00]
Maria Varmazas
Foreign you're listening to the N2K space network.
- [00:11]
Thales Representative
At Thales. They know cybersecurity can be tough and you can't protect everything. But with Thales, you can secure what matters most. With Thales industry leading platforms, you can protect critical applications, data and identities anywhere and at scale with the highest roi. That's why the most trusted brands and largest banks, retailers and healthcare companies in the world rely on Thales to protect what matters most applications, data and identity. That's Talas T H A L E S learn more@thalesgroup.com Cyber.
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Alicia Siegel
Foreign.
- [00:58]
Maria Varmazas
Today is November 7, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T -T -20 seconds. Planet has announced an eight figure contract renewal with an international defense and intelligence custom. KBR has selected Craig Technologies as a subcontractor in support of NASA's Human Health and Performance Contract. 2 Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has introduced his first federal budget which includes $182.6 million Canadian of course over three years for the Defense Ministry to establish capability for space launches. The launch of a United Launch Alliance Atlas v carrying the Viasat 3F mission is scrubbed for a second night in a row. The US Federal Aviation Administration has issued an emergency order that prohibits commercial space launches and reentries during peak daytime hours. Happy Friday everyone. Well, after today's intel briefing, our colleagues from NASASpaceflight.com will be bringing us Space Traffic Report rounding up the launch news from the last week and spoiler, there have been a lot and taking a look at what is on the schedule for the next seven days and spoiler, that also may be all up in the air. But still, let's dive into the why on that first, shall we? Yes, indeed. So the US Federal Aviation Administration has issued an emergency order that prohibits commercial space launches and reentries during peak daytime hours, limiting them to overnight only. This measure is part of a broader action to reduce the strain on the US National Airspace system due to an ongoing US Government shutdown and associated air traffic controller staffing issues. So let's break this whole complicated issue down as easily as we possibly can. This order is effective starting at 6:00am EST on Monday, November 10, 2025 and will remain in effect until the order is canceled. Commercial space launches and reentries are only permitted between the hours of 10pm and 6am local time at the relevant launch site, meaning operations are banned during 6am and 10pm The FAA stated that the actions are proactive measures to alleviate building risk in the system as air traffic controllers continue to work without pay during the government shutdown. Space launches require, of course, the closing of large areas of aerospace, which in turn increases the workload for the already very busy air traffic controllers. This launch curfew is expected to significantly impact launch providers like SpaceX, which frequently conduct launches during various times of the day. Launches that require specific instantaneous launch windows for proper trajectory, such as missions to the International Space Station or interplanetary missions, and may, as you might imagine, face delays or require rescheduling. And we are sure that there are quite a few launch providers and payload operators right now who are scrambling to rethink their schedules while this temporary measure is in place. And so we are sure also that the folks at ULA are scrambling to resolve a vent valve issue that's caused delays to their launch over the last few days to avoid this new measure. ULA's Atlas V was due to lift off on Wednesday, got pushed to Thursday and then scrubbed for a second time. The company released a statement saying that, quote, the launch of a United Launch Alliance Atlas v carrying the Viasat 3F2 mission for Viasat is scrubbed for tonight's launch attempt due to a reoccurrence of the issue with the Atlas V booster liquid oxygen tank vent valve. The team will evaluate the hardware and we will release a new launch date when available, end quote. It's always a valve, isn't it? Viasat has been waiting for the second satellite in the Viasat 3 series after the Viasat 3 F1 launched by SpaceX in 2023 suffered an issue with its antenna which both delayed the start of service and resulted in a significantly reduced capacity. And hopefully we will have an update for you on the launch next week. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has introduced his first federal budget which includes 1.82.6 million Canadian DOL. Three years for the Defense Ministry to establish capability for space launches and that is 130 million US dollars for those of us on this side of the border. Details were slim on what the money would be used for exactly, but it does send a clear signal that Canada wants to grow its sovereign capabilities. Canada will also have a new defence investment agency known as the dia, and the government says the DIA will overhaul and streamline Canada's defence procurement which may include new space assets in the coming years. And we will share more details on what this all looks like when more details are available. Earth observation company Planet has announced an eight figure contract renewal with an unnamed international defense and intelligence customer for high resolution imagery. This is a renewed agreement that will provide the customer with access to Planet's Pelican and SkySat assured tasking capabilities, which Planet says will enable critical timely monitoring and intelligence gathering in key areas of interest. And KBR has selected Craig Technologies as a subcontractor in support of NASA's Human Health and Performance Contract 2, also known as HHPC 2. Under this contract, Craig Technologies will provide support across the full spectrum of contract requirements, helping to ensure the health, safety and performance of NASA's astronauts and workforce. NASA awarded the HHPC2 to KBR to provide services to the Human Health and Performance Directorate at Johnson Space center in Houston, Texas. The contract, which begins on November 1st, includes a five year base period with two potential option periods extending through 2035, with a total estimated value of $3.6 billion.
- [07:46]
Alicia Siegel
Foreign.
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Maria Varmazas
And that, my friends, wraps up today's top five stories. And we're gonna dive deeper into the launch news with our partners at NSF shortly, of course, but before that, N2K senior producer Alice Carruth joins us now with a look at the other stories that we're keeping an eye on today. What do you have for us, Alice?
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Alice Carruth
We've reached that time of year again, Maria, when financial updates are reported. Check out the latest updates from Black Sky, SES and Redwire in today's selected reading section of our show Notes. You'll also find links in there covering hyperspace and Atmos, Space Cargo's MOU and Sky's funding announcement from NASA for climate monitoring in the stratosphere. Those links can also be found on.
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Maria Varmazas
Our website, space.n2k.com tomorrow T - listeners, be sure to check your podcast feed for TV T Minus Deep Space. It's our special edition Saturday show where we share an in depth interview and dive a bit deeper into fascinating and timely topics with brilliant guests. And on T Minus Deep Space tomorrow we have Jacob Horne discussing the new CMMC requirements that come into effect next week. And what's that?
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Alicia Siegel
I hear you ask.
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Maria Varmazas
Yeah, what is the CMMC requirement list? Well, if you work with the Department of of Defense or if you are looking to work with them or the federal government in the United States in the future, well, this is a must listen for all of you that is on T minus Deep Space tomorrow. Do not miss it.
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Trevor Hilligoss
What happens when cybercrime becomes as easy as shopping online? Spy Cloud's Trevor Hilligoss joined Dave Buettner on the Cyberwire Daily to explain how a wave of cybercrime enablement services are lowering the barrier to entry and making sophisticated attacks available to anyone.
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Dave Buettner
I think it's a pretty good general term that describes kind of an umbrella of tools and services that I would kind of tag as criminal or criminal adjacent. Instead of having sort of the smaller pool of high sophistication actors that are able to kind of carry out these really vast and costly cyber attacks, we see that being given to much lower sophistication, lower tech folks that are a much lower barrier to entry. To get into this field, the person that's buying access to this, they basically need a phone and a bitcoin wallet.
- [10:42]
Trevor Hilligoss
Make sure you hear this full conversation and learn how the underground economy is reshaping Cyber risk. Visit explore.thecyberwire.com spycloud that's explore.thecyberwire.Com spycloud.
- [11:11]
Maria Varmazas
And now, since it's Friday, it is time for you to hear the Space Traffic Report from our friends and partners@nasaspaceflight.com I'm.
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Alicia Siegel
Alicia Siegel for NSF, and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T Minus Space. It was a busy week in spaceflight, with launches from all around the world, starting with the launch of a Starlink miss on October 31, Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2041 UTC, carrying 29 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this flight was Booster B1063, which became the third booster to complete 29 flights as it touched down on the deck of SpaceX's drone ship of Course I Still Love youe. And with that, we've wrapped up the month of October, during which we had 25 launches. Unsurprisingly, SpaceX dominated the schedule with 15 launches, followed by the country of China, which launched eight missions. Looking at all of 2025 thus far, we ended October with 253 launches worldwide, close to the record 259 launches from last year, although that record has already been broken after the first few launches of November. The world is on track to hit over 300 launches by the end of the year, and it could be in fact as many as 310 launches. SpaceX has already launched 139 Falcon 9 missions through the end of October, and they're currently on track for 167 launches by the end of the year, very close to the company's target of 170 launch launches moving into November, we had the launch of SpaceX's Bandwagon 4 mission on November 2, lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 05:09 UTC. This was the fourth mission for the Bandwagon rideshare program for which Falcon 9 lofted 18 payloads. On this flight, as with most of SpaceX's rideshare missions, a number of satellites were contracted through a third party, in this case Exolaunch, which provided 13 payloads. Another satellite was provided by Starcloud, which put Nvidia GPUs into space to test space based data centers. But probably anticipated passenger on this flight was Vast's Haven demo satellite, built to test several systems and technologies for the company's upcoming space stations. Vast has already declared the mission successful. The booster supporting this mission was B1091, which flew for a third time following stage separation, it returned to Florida for a landing at Landing Zone 2 at the Cape. With no more landing scheduled before SpaceX's lease of Launch Complex 13 expires, which encompasses the landing zone, we suspect that this may have marked the final landing at the site, but don't worry, return to launch site landings will continue as the company is still constructing new landing pads at the Cape. Later that day we had a launch from India. At 11:56 Universal Time, an LVM3 took to the skies above the Satishtivan Space center to launch a communications satellite for the Indian Navy. The medium lift rocket delivered the GSAT 7R into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. The satellite will replace the existing GSAT 7 which launched in 2013 and has well surpassed its planned seven year mission over in China. A Changzhong 7 a lift off from Wenchong. On November 3, the rocket ignited its engines at 347 UTC to deliver an Earth Observation Satellite to medium Earth orbit. Due to the classified nature of the payload, we don't know much about it, but official reports describe its purpose as surveying national resources, hydrology and meteorology as well as disaster management. We even had a European launch this week. On November 4th at 21:02 universal time, Ariane 6 lifted off from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana to insert the Sentinel one D satellite into a sun synchronous orbit. Addition to the Sentinel family will operate in tandem with its Twin Sentinel 1C to observe our planet with its Synthetic Aperture Radar or SAR instrument. With this, it can peer through weather to study what's below in all conditions, day and night. It'll be able to measure how the ground deforms from volcanic activity in earthquakes, map forests and monitor sea ice and glaciers, among many other things. Sentinel 1D was launched to replace the Sentinel 1A satellite which has now logged 11 years in its planned seven year mission. The day after another Synthetic Aperture radar mission started off from New Zealand. Yeah, we really had launches from all around the world. This week, Rocket Labs Electron lifted off from the company's own launch complex on the Mejia Peninsula, carrying another SAR satellite from Japanese company iqps. This was Rocket Lab's sixth mission for the company and it has six more contracted at this time. Rocket Lab dubbed the mission the Nation God Navigates as a nod to the Japanese God of nation building, Yachihoko. Back In Florida, Falcon 9 ignited its engines to loft yet another batch of Starlinks lifting off at 01:31 UTC on November 6th. This mission delivered 29 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The booster for this mission was B1094, which ended its fifth flight by successfully touching down on the deck of droneship. Just read the instructions. The next Starlink mission took off from Vandenberg at 21:13 Universal Time. That same day, encapsulated in Falcon 9's fairing were 28 more Starlink V2 mini satellites. SpaceX used booster B1093 for this mission. On its eighth flight, it landed successfully on the deck of Of Course I Still Love youe, which was stationed in the Pacific. This week's three Starlink missions brought the total number of Starlink satellites launched up to 10,270. Of these, 1,381 have deorbited and 7,559 are now in their operational orbit going into next week. The schedule is now highly uncertain due to the FAA limiting commercial launches as a result of the government shutdown, but there's a chance that we'll still get to see some exciting launches anyway. If all goes well, Blue Origin will launch its second New Glenn on November 9th before the FAA's rules go into effect. This launch will carry the two satellites for NASA's Escapade mission into space, where they'll be staged at Lagrange.2 ahead of their journey to Mars. Blue will attempt another booster landing on this mission, and the company's landing barge Jaclyn is already on its way to the landing location in the Atlantic. SpaceX had planned to launch its Transporter 15 rideshare mission from Vandenberg this week, as well as a few Starlink Ms. Florida. Some of these missions may still happen, but we don't know anything for sure at this moment. There's also a chance that ULA might sneak in the Atlas 5 launch of Viasat 3 F2, which scrubbed a few times last week. We may also get a few launches from China, which obviously won't be subjected to the FAA rules. But if you want to keep an eye on the latest schedule, your best bet will be our next spaceflight app and website. It's a great way to stay up to date and it's completely free. I'm Alicia Siegel for nsf and that's your weekly space traffic report. Now back to T minus space.
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Maria Varmazas
We will be right back. Welcome back for our last story. It is Friday, so going into the weekend I am going to be shamelessly geeky and say that yesterday I saw something that I have been waiting to see since September 28, 1987. Lego finally unveiled pictures of their official Star the Next Generation Enterprise D ship model, complete with nine minifigs of the main cast. And I geeked out like no Trekkie has ever geeked out before. Because for 399.99 of our American dollars, my fellow millen extras, you too can fulfill your youthful fantasies of finally having an official LEGO version of the iconic Enterprise D.3600 pieces in all, with its 80s cruise ship room fever dream wood paneled bridge, carpeted floor and fake plants throughout. Although you'll have to provide those in your imagination because it's just the exterior. But that's good enough, isn't it? Because you too can imagine having thrilling conferences with your hyper competent team captain. Picard with his cup of Earl Grey tea, Riker with his trombone, Data with his cat spot, Worf with his prune juice. It's probably a phaser, but I'm going to go with prune juice. And yes, the set also includes Geordi with his engineering kit, Crusher with a medical tricorder, Deanna with her purple jumpsuit guy, Nan with a drink that is green, and Wesley with his iconic striped sweater and something that I'm going to assume is an exocomp in tiny Lego Y form. The free gift with purchase also gives you a minifig of the first spicy Bajoran in Star Trek. That would be Rolarin. And the shuttlecraft Onizuka, named after real life hero and NASA astronaut Ellison Onizuka, who perished in the Challenger disaster just a few years before Star the Next Generation went to air. And did I mention that when fully assembled, the saucer section does actually separate from the ship body if you so desire. It's the little things, isn't it? Now if you don't know what the heck I am talking about, please don't worry. Other Trekkies definitely do. So if you are shopping for them in your life, remember that this is actually, if you can believe it, the very first time an official Star Trek set has ever been made by lego. Yeah, weird right? So this set, available for sale on November 28th at 12:00am EST. Yes, later this month is gonna go like hotcakes. In the meantime, to paraph a certain favorite Klingon of mine, perhaps today is a good day to die of excitement over this Lego set. Figuratively speaking, of course. And that is 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 and 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 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 Ibin. Peter Kilby is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. Have a lovely weekend.
- [22:09]
Trevor Hilligoss
T minus.