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January is Going to be a Moon Twofer as it seems like the January SpaceX Falcon 9 transporter will have two lunar lander missions aboard, both from private space companies. One will be the Blue Ghost from Firefly Aerospace, the company's first lunar landing attempt, and the other will be Mission 2, the descriptive name for the second lunar landing attempt by Ispace of Japan with their upgraded Hakuto R lander named Resilience. T minus 20 seconds to Los Speed Res. Today is December 19th, 2024. I'm Maria Var? Azus and this is T minus SpaceX to launch commercial lunar missions in January for Firefly and ispace. Vast taps SpaceX for ISS astronaut flights China holds its longest EVA and our guests today are Felix Hattwig and Simi Vespi from ETH Zurich Rocket Team. Felix and Simi will be bringing us an update on their projects for launch, guided reentry and their rotating detonation rocket engine testing, so stay with us for that. We're going to be kicking off 2025 with a double moon mission, y'all. Japan's I Space has just announced that it will be using the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch that's planning to launch Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost mission for their own Haku to Our Venture Moon mission 2. Firefly's first Blue Ghost mission, named Ghost Riders in the sky, is planning to deliver scientific instruments and technology demos to the lunar surface as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS initiative. Blue Ghost plans to spend approximately 45 days in transit to the moon, allowing ample time to conduct health checks on each subsystem and begin payload science. The spacecraft then plans to land in Mare Criseum and operate payloads for a complete lunar day. Blue Ghost will also be used to capture imagery of the lunar sunset and provide critical data on how lunar regolith reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions. And the I Space Resilience Lunar Lander will be the second to deploy during the mission, and the Resilience lander will take a low energy orbit as it had also done during Mission one. The plan is for its transit to take several months ahead of a targeted landing, four to five months after launch. ISPACE has released a set of criteria known as Mission two milestones between launch and landing and aims to achieve the success criteria established for each of these milestones. Makes sense. In addition, Tenacious will be operated by I Space Europe once deployed on the lunar surface, and will undertake ventures including delivering the Moonhouse payload to the lunar surface, as well as collecting lunar regolith under a contract with NASA. You might remember that ispace's first lunar landing attempt, Mission 1, was back in April 2023 when the Hakuto R crashed above the lunar surface as it was attempting to land as the instrumentation got confused by the rim of a lunar crater, causing the lander to run out of fuel while attempting to perform its control descent. SpaceX's Falcon 9, carrying both missions, will lift off from Florida's Space coast no earlier than mid January 2025. In addition to the first flight in 2025, Firefly Aerospace has been awarded a nearly $179.6 million by NASA to deliver and operate six NASA instruments in the Great Hyzon Domes on the moon's near side in 2028. The mission will use Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar lander, Elytra Dark orbital Vehicle and a rover from an as yet unname to investigate the unique composition of the Great Heisen Domes, a part of the moon that has yet never been explored. And speaking of the rovers, NASA completed the first round of Human in the loop testing on three commercially owned and developed Lunar Terrain Vehicles, or LTVs, from Intuitive Machines Lunar Outpost and Venturi Astrolabe at NASA's Johnson Space center in Houston. Each company delivered a static mockup of their vehicle to Johnson at the end of September, initiated rover testing in October, and completed the first round of testing in December inside the Active Response Gravity Offload System test Facility, also known as argos. Test teams delivered evaluations to understand the interactions between the crew, the spacesuits, and the LTV mockups. NASA plans to issue a Request for Task order proposals in 2025 to any eligible providers for a demonstration mission to continue developing the ltv, deliver it to the surface of the moon, and validate its performance and safety ahead of Artemis 5 when NASA intends to use the LTV for crewed operations. Vast has contracted SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to launch up to two Dragon missions to the International Space Station in support of Vast's future bid for NASA's private astronaut missions, also known as PAM, while Vast is developing its private space station, the Haven 1 the company plans to leverage additional missions to the ISS in partnership with NASA to draw on the agency's extensive expertise. These missions provide opportunities to collaborate with private individuals and international Space Agency customers through the NASA PAM program and strengthen current partnerships. Vast says this is an important step as the company prepares to compete with its Haven 2 design and NASA's upcoming Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destination Phase 2 program, which is positioned to select a successor to the issuance. The Chinaman Space Agency says the crew onboard the Tiangong Space Station completed a record breaking nine hour spacewalk yesterday. The extravehicular activity was not only the longest by Chinese astronauts, but also included the first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut born Brace yourself for this in 1990. Talk about making me feel old. Taikonauts Tsai Shuze and Song Ling Dong carried out the EVA installing space debris protection devices with assistance from the station's robotic arm and ground based teams. Maxar Intelligence has been awarded a total of $35 million in new tasking contracts from two government customers in the Asia Pacific region. Both contracts allow the customer's use of synthetic aperture radar imagery from Maxar partner Umbra. According to Maxar, Umbra's SAR imagery enables customers to monitor activity at night and in all weather conditions, serving as a powerful complement to Maxar's high resolution electro optical imagery. The European Space Agency has released its annual Space economy report. The 2024 report covers the space economy's full range of activities and the use of resources that create value and benefits to human beings in the course of exploring, researching, understanding, managing and using space. It focuses on the prior year 2023 and found institutional space budgets, both civil and defense reached a new historic high of 106 billion euros in 2023, which is an 11% increase compared to 2022 and continuing their growth path with an 8% compound annual growth rate over the past five years. You can read the full report by following the link in our show notes. Turian Space has been awarded a $32.6 million firm fixed price contract for multi payload satellites and real time command and control by the US Air Force Space Systems Command. The contract provides for the demonstrations of a rapid build of three satellites with rendezvous proximity operations with high resolution satellite to satellite imagery collection capabilities. Work will be performed in California and is expected to be completed by October 31, 2028. Raytheon and Ursa Major have completed an advanced long range solid rocket motor flight test for the US Army. Raytheon selected Ursa Major's advanced propulsion technology as a key enabler to provide affordable solutions for the US army at extended ranges. During the next phase of the program, Raytheon and Ursa Major will incorporate manufacturing improvements leading toward additional flight tests in 2025 and qualification in 2026. Exolaunch says it has successfully integrated its customer satellites for the upcoming Transporter 12 rideshare mission with SpaceX. The Transporter 12 mission is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in early 2025. And that is it for our intel briefing for today. You'll find two additional articles in the Selected Reading section of our show Notes. One's on viasat's sale of their energy services systems integration business and another's from SES with an update on their Astro one P satellite. Hey T minus crew. If your business is looking to grow your voice in the industry, expand the reach of your thought leadership, or recruit talent, T minus can help. We'd like to hear from you. Just send us an email@space2k.com or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your go.