← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Uncle Sam needs you, space soldier.
00:19:22
The US Army now has an enlisted career track for space operations. Varda’s W-5 returns to Australia. SpaceX may merge with Tesla and/or xAI. And more.
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You're listening to the Cyberwire Network powered by N2K.
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Foreign. Today is January 30th, 2026. I'm Maria Varmazes and this is T minus.
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T minus 20 seconds to Los D Dris.
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Space object zq3rb, the second stage of a launch vehicle that could have dummy payload attached, is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere today and has a strong possibility of crashing on land. L3Harris Technologies reported below Wall street estimates for fourth quarter revenue, blaming the decline in part on prolonged US government shutdown, delayed contract awards. SpaceX is reportedly considering a merger with Tesla and artificial intelligence company X AI. Sparta Space has successful completed the RE entry of its W5 capsule. The US army is now accepting applications for a new enlisted career track focused entirely on space operations. Later in today's program, our partners at NSF will be bringing us the latest space traffic report, looking at the space launch news from the last seven days and taking a look at what's ahead this week. Could we be seeing a wet dress rehearsal in the cold cell that is heading to Florida? Well join us later to find out more. Today, my friends is the very last day of spacecom and at the time of publishing us at the T minus team will all be on our planes heading back to our respective corners of the United States. It has been an amazing week and we've met some truly incredible guests and most humbling was meeting you our dear listeners. And so thank you for coming by the booth and telling us your stories. I really mean it because it really means a lot to myself, to Alice, and to Liz. So thank you and staying with you for our intel briefing today. Uncle Sam says he needs you for space operations roles. Well, maybe not all of you because some of us are a little over the age restrictions, to say nothing of citizenship requirements. The U.S. army is now accepting applications for a new enlisted career track that is focused entirely on space operations, and it formalizes a role that has until now relied on soldiers who are temporarily assigned from other branches. The new position aims to meet the rising threats in missile defense and the space domain. The new military occupational specialty, MOS40D tactical space operations specialist, will be officially established Oct. 1 and is open to soldiers in grades E4 through E9 across the active duty Army, National Guard and Army Reserve. The army is planning to open 1,000 slots for the new specialty, which is expected to swell to 1,500 by 2032. Lt. Gen. Sean Ighainey, U.S. army Space and Missile Defense Command Commanding General, said the new MOs will allow the command to build and retain expertise among its space non commissioned officer cohort through a stable career path. The 40D command Ready professionals will support the warfighter and ensure the success of joint and partner forces in multi domain operations by denying, disrupting and degrading adversary operations through the electromagnetic spectrum and countering space domain threats before and during competition, crisis and conflict. If you're interested, more details can be found by following the link in our show Notes Varda Space has successfully completed the reentry of its W5 capsule. It is the first time that Varda has used its own vertically integrated satellite bus to support the full mission life cycle. From orbital operations to atmospheric reentry, the W5 mission carried a payload for the US Navy and landed safely within the designated recovery zone at Kuniba Test Range in South Australia. Operated by Southern Launch, this is the company's first RE entry of this year, and yeah, we're still only in the first month of 2026 technically. And it underscores Varda's transition towards full stack autonomy and its growing role as a critical partner for national security and defense applications. Congratulations to the team. You know, it's been rumored for months, if not years, that SpaceX is going to go public, and now those rumors are extending to a blockbuster deal. Bloomberg is reporting that SpaceX is considering a merger with Tesla and possibly with artificial intelligence company X AI as well as Reuters reports that Elon Musk wants to bring his rockets Starlink satellites, the X social media platform, and Grok AI chatbot under one roof. Any deal could attract sizable interest from infrastructure funds and Middle Eastern sovereign investors, some of the people close to the negotiations told Bloomberg. Tesla said earlier this week that it will invest $2 billion in Musk's artificial intelligence company Xai, and and production plans for its cybercab Robotaxi were on track for this year. L3Harris Technologies reported below estimates for fourth quarter revenue, blaming the decline in part on prolonged US government shutdown, delayed contract awards thank goodness, it looks like we have avoided the same fate again so soon. The shutdown, which started in late September of last year, was the longest in the country's history, and it lasted 43 days, ending in November. It disrupted procurement activity for the military and hurt defense suppliers like L3Harris. The company took a hit in its space systems business, which was also bogged down by lower volumes in its classified intel and cyber program and the sky is falling. I always wanted to get to say that, but I'm not imitating Chicken Little the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking operations centers have been monitoring the reentry into Earth's atmosphere of the space object ZQ3RB. Don't worry, you don't need to remember that it's the second stage of a launch vehicle that could have a dummy payload attached. The EU SST network of contributing sensors is closely following the object to refine the reentry window, which was estimated to be today at 11:20 UTC with an uncertainty of less than an hour. We recorded early today due to our travel plans to get home, so hopefully it's landed without issue. But you never know. Due to its inclination of approximately 56.94 degrees, the object could have re entered within a latitude band of plus or minus 57 degrees, which covers a vast area of Earth's surface. So stay vigilant folks, and here's hoping nobody was harmed. Really. You never know when a piece of space debris could fall out of the.
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Sky.
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And that wraps up today's top five stories. But please stay with us as there are still more news to come from our colleagues at NASA Spaceflight. You can also dig a little deeper into any of the stories that we've mentioned throughout today's episode by following the links included in our show notes tomorrow. Please be sure to check your podcast feed for 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 topics with brilliant guests. And on T Minus Deep Space tomorrow we have Eric Anderson, who is the CEO of Synmax, talking to me about turning space data into intelligence with AI, and that is on T minus Deep space tomorrow. Don't miss it.
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Let me hand you over now to our friends and colleagues at nsf.
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I'm Alicia Siegel for nsf, and this is your weekly Space Traffic report for T Minus Space. This week was dominated by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket with some Starlink missions and also the launch of a GPS satellite. The first of the Starlink missions occurred on January 25th at 17:30 UTC from Vandenberg. This launch was carrying a batch of 25 Starlink V2 mini satellites into sun synchronous orbit. Also on this flight were what appeared to be a patch of heat shield tiles from Starship on the active fairing half. This fairing half is the one facing away from the strongback when the rocket's vertical on the pad. Additionally, the rocket did not perform its traditional post liftoff role, which meant that the patch of tiles were flying uphill facing the wind. This may have been a test to gather data on the ability of these tiles to stay attached to Starship while on its way up, as it's been seen in the past that this hasn't been an easy task at SpaceX's McGregor facility. We at NSF also found a test area that appears to do similar testing of this but on the ground, so it really does look like they're trying to solve this problem in whatever way possible. For this mission, SpaceX flew one of the more rookie boosters on the West coast, with B1097 completing its sixth launch and landing successfully. Another Falcon 9 launch took place a few days after on January 28th at 4:53 UTC, but this time from the Florida Space Coast. The mission was carrying the GPS 3 Space Vehicle 9 satellite into a medium Earth orbit for the US Space Force. The satellite is the ninth of the GPS third generation satellite constellation and it's named after Ellison Onizuka, a NASA astronaut and one of the crew members who lost their lives onboard Challenger during the STS51L mission just 40 years before this launch took place. This mission marks the third time that the US Space Force switched rides for a GPS satellite From Vulcan to Falcon 9 due to Vulcan's initial development because of the SRB nozzle issue during its second flight. On each occasion, the Space Force is compensated for this by moving around future GPS missions between a SpaceX rocket and a ULA rocket to the point that, to be honest, it's actually becoming a bit complicated to keep track of now. SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 from Vandenberg the next day on January 29th at 17:53 UTC, carrying another batch of Starlink V2 mini satellites into orbit. This mission once again carried a patch of Starship heat shield tiles on the active fairing half and also lacked the traditional post liftoff role that we've seen in previous missions. The booster for this launch, B1082, was flying for a 19th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship of Course I Still Love youe. To wrap up the week, we had the launch of an Electron from New Zealand on the Bridging the Swarm mission. The rocket was carrying the Neonsat 1A satellite for KAIST into Sun synchronous orbit. KAIST stands for Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and is the entity that conceived of the mission and ordered the launch From Rocket Lab. Miansat1a is just the second of a multi satellite Earth Observation Satellite constellation in low Earth orbit. The first satellite, which also launched on a previous Electron mission, was used as a prototype for this satellite Constellation. Following that mission, KAIST decided to launch a second prototype on this mission in order to verify and validate what was found the first time. And right after Electron we also had another Starlink launch by SpaceX, this time from Florida. The first stage for this mission, B1095 was flying for a fifth time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship. Just read the instructions. Next week we'll have up to three more starlinks in the schedule, two from Vandenberg and one from Florida. We may also have a Soyuz launch with a classified satellite from Plisetsk. Notices have also started to appear for the deorbit and reentry of Vast Haven demo spacecraft, which is nearing the end of its mission. And in the really lucky event that the Artemis II wet dress rehearsal goes well in the next few days, the earliest launch opportunity for that mission could be right after next week's episode. That's just another reason to always check nextspaceflight.com or download the Nextbaseflight app on your phone to keep track of when launches might happen or to see if they end up delaying. I'm Alicia Segal 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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When it comes to mobile application security, good enough is a risk. A recent Survey shows that 72% of organizations reported at least one mobile application security incident last year and 92% of responders reported threat levels have increased in the past two years. Guard Square delivers the highest level of security for your mobile apps without compromising performance, time to market or user experience. Discover how Guard Square provides industry leading security for your Android and iOS apps at www.guardsquare.com.
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Welcome back in ground processing environments, those Ubiquitous Remove Before Flight tags They are ubiquitous. They're really everywhere. They're attached to plugs, covers, pins, anything that should not be on board when a vehicle takes off. They are bright red and truly impossible to miss. And they're part of a last minute checklist that saves lives and hardware. And also, I'm sure many of you, like us, have them as keychains, their very beloved aerospace swag. And that is exactly what one buyer thought when he decided to buy some in 2010 off of eBay. They were 18 tags sold as generic shuttle memorabilia. An enthusiast bought them cheaply, thinking they'd be great giveaways at talks and space events. Only later did he actually notice the small stamped codes and then begin to piece together what they were. And it actually turns out that the space collector had bought tags from the ill fated Challenger mission. And this week marked 40 years since that Challenger disaster. And there is something meaningful in these tags. Not because they caused or predicted any tragedy, but they were there during that mission. And they do represent the mundane, repetitive acts of careful preparation that always happen before every flight. And then when something does go wrong, it's those routines that we do revisit, remember and preserve. So the hope now is to place these tags in museums and archives. And of course, it's not to glorify the loss, but to anchor the stories of exploration, diligence and memory and the objects that once lived at the margins of spaceflight. And that's T minus brought to you all this week by N2K CyberWire at Commercial Space Week in Orlando, Florida. We'd love to know what you think of our podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights 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 are proud that N2NQ 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 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 Ivan. Peter Kilby is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful weekend.
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T minus.
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If you only attend one cybersecurity conference this year, make it RSAC 2026. It's happening March 23rd through the 26th in San Francisco, bringing together the global security community for four days of expert insights, hands on learning and real innovation. I'll say this plainly, I never miss this conference. The ideas and conversations stay with me all year. Join thousands of practitioners and leaders tackling today's toughest challenges and shaping what comes next. Register today@rsaconference.com cyberwire26 I'll see you in San Francisco.