← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Welcome home, NASA’s SpaceX Crew 11.
00:27:17
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 has returned to Earth. Slingshot awarded $27M for a USSF training contract. CAS Space conducts a suborbital flight. And more.
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Foreign you're listening to the N2K space network.
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Today is January 15th, 2026. I'm Maria Varmazes and this is T. T minus 20 seconds. Elyria has been selected to take part in the new Airbus up next, Space ran demonstrator Axle Space has signed a Memorandum of understanding with Ethiopia's Jethy software development. Chinese commercial company CAS Space debuted its suborbital two stage research rocket Slingshot Aerospace has been awarded a $27 million US Space Force contract to modernize scenario training activities. 1. NASA's SpaceX Crew 11 has returned to Earth, concluding a more than five month mission aboard the International Space Stat. And our guest today is Cheray Matthew, architect and Project Manager at Jacobs. Chere and Jacobs will be participating in Commercial Space Week in Florida which is coming up shortly from January 27th through the 30th. We will of course be there in Orlando for the Global Spaceport alliance annual Summit, Space Mobility and Spacecom Conferences. Shrey will be sharing a bit about what she will be talking about at the conference later in today's program. Stay tuned. Happy Thursday everybody. Thank you for joining me. We're kicking off today's intel briefing with a welcome home to NASA's SpaceX Crew 11. The crew has faced a turbulent week, starting with postponing a spacewalk and then dealing with the decision to return to Earth earlier than scheduled due to a medical concern with the crew. The crew capsule safely splashed down early this morning in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, concluding a more than five month mission aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Finke, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platinov returned home about a month earlier than planned because of what NASA described as a medical situation. NASA says that its teams are monitoring one of the crew members who does remain stable prior to return. NASA previously coordinated for all four crew members to be transported to a local hospital for additional evaluation, taking advantage of medical resources on Earth to provide the best care possible. Following the planned overnight hospital stay, the crew members will return to NASA's Johnson Space center in Houston and undergo standard post flight reconditioning and evaluations. It is sad that we do have to remind folks, but due to medical privacy it is not appropriate for NASA to share more details about the crew member. HIPAA laws Remember people, they deserve privacy too. We are just glad that they're safely back on terra firma and can receive the medical attention that they need. It's not known yet when NASA will send a replacement crew to the ISS. Crew 12 is scheduled tentatively to launch on February 15, but NASA is coordinating with partners to see if that launch can be moved up a bit. In the meantime, the ISS is down to just three crewmates on board. Moving on now. Slingshot Aerospace has been awarded a $27 million contract to modernize scenario training activities. Under the contract, Slingshot will advance the U.S. space Force's operational Test and Training Infrastructure program towards integrating existing training enterprise capabilities with AI native technology that realistically mirror today's rapidly evolving orbital threat landscape. The 18 month contract, awarded through a commercial solutions opening in alignment with the Secretary of War's Warfighting Acquisition System Transformation Direct, say that five times fast builds on earlier spaceworks and Space force investments in 2022 under a $25 million StratFi contact award. Slingshot says that its Talos AI platform is a force multiplier in training. Talos simulates adaptive machine speed threat behaviors, enabling faster scenario development, larger scale simulations and more realistic missions. Starcom has also used TALOS to collaborate with Slingshot and in refining scenarios and planning for deeper AI integration into future exercises. Let's head on over to China now and the commercial space company CAS Space has debuted its suborbital two stage research rocket called Lihong 1. This week. The spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuton satellite launch center before reaching a peak altitude of about 120 meters. Lihong 1 was initially carried by its first stage solid rocket motor before its solid second stage ignited to carry the experiment return capsule higher into orbit and above the Karman Line. Once in space, payloads inside the capsule were provided with 300 seconds of microgravity before re entering into the atmosphere and later touching down under parachute. That sounds familiar, right? The company shared this this flight verified the RE entry and deceleration processes for the returning capsule as well as the precise landing zone control of the booster stage. By achieving a precise landing zone for the booster stage, the constraints and algorithms for vehicle reentry have been rigorously tested. What we have learned will be crucial for reusable orbital vehicles. CAS Space says that several experiments were onboard the suborbital flight, but only two of them were listed. The first was a demo of laser additive manufacturing to prove its feasibility and the other was a test exposure of rose seeds to space radiation to force desired evolutions. An advertisement was also on board the suborbital mission and so it begins folks. We are going to be seeing more advertisements in space. Hooray. Japan's Axle Space has signed a Memorandum of understanding with Ethiopian technology company Jethi Software Development. The company's plan to partner on addressing social and development challenges through the use of satellite based Earth observation data. Axle Space says the expansion of EO data utilization in emerging markets including Africa is a key medium to long term strategic priority. Through this collaboration, Axel Space aims to support locally driven data informed solutions. They will provide EO data and know how for its utilization across priority sectors including agriculture, environmental and forest conservation, disaster risk management and climate resilience, urban planning and infrastructure development and Elyria has been selected to take part in the new Airbus Up Next Space RAN demonstrator. Space RAN stands for Space Radio Access Network and the mission is to test standardized global 5G non terrestrial network or NTN connectivity. It'll combine Airbus software defined satellite platform with Elyria's intelligent network orchestration and optimization capabilities to showcase advanced 5G communications from space. The mission will explore next generation 5G NTN capabilities by using Airbus software defined satellite tech along with advanced tools for managing and optimizing 5G signals in orbit. The objective is to demonstrate reduced latency, maximized data throughput and more efficient network management. All paving the way for the next generation of wireless communications including, if you can believe it, 6G. As part of the in orbit test platform, olyria will showcase spacetime's 5G NTN ran intelligent controller and the controller aims to enable dynamic real time control and optimization of NTN resources to support standardized high performance 5G connectivity from space. And we will bring you more when this demonstrator launches. And that wraps up today's intelligence briefing. Spoiler alert. You need to stay with us to hear what Rick Astley has to do with space. Ho Ho Ho. But before we get into that, I should remind you that you can read more about all of the stories I've mentioned in today's episode by following the links in the selected reading section of our show. Notes. Just check your podcast app for more T minus Crew if you are going to be at Commercial Space Week in Orlando on January 27th through the 30th, we're going to be there too. So if you would like to speak with us during that event, we have a microphone and we do travel, so drop us a line@space2k.com so we can set something up. And thanks.
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Hard to install?
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No, it's easy. I installed these and then got some from my mom. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install hall of Fame Son. They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world. Blinds.com is the goat. Visit blinds.com now for up to 45%.
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Off site wide plus a free professional measure. Rules and restrictions apply. Our guest today is Sheree Matthew, architect and project manager at Jacobs. Shiree and Jacobs will be participating in Commercial Space Week in Florida, which is running from the 27th through the 30th of January. Sheree started by telling me a little bit more about her role and how she got involved in designing spaceports.
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I started out in aviation architecture, so I'm an architect. And then about seven years ago, someone came across an RFP for the Houston spaceport and the question was, is a spaceport an airport? And not really ever hearing about spaceports. I got real excited about just the idea of something brand new and doing the research. And so I raised my hand and I said let me prove it in nine months that aviation architects are more than capable of working on a spaceport. And so I started the journey there, which is interesting because then you have your aviation binocular binoculars on and you're looking at a spaceport and you're judging it against an airport, which isn't terrible because every spaceport is going to be different, much like an airport. Yeah, but then when we started to really get into it, it wasn't just about the traveling public like an airport is. We gear a lot of our designs towards making everybody comfortable, but it went much more beyond that, where you have psychological impacts and then outside of tourism, just really what happens within the campus and how the spaceport becomes a city with, you know, civic centers or, you know, just. Just a landmark destination for people that come and opening it up to the community, which is definitely not what an airport does.
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Yeah, right.
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One day.
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One day maybe. Yeah, yeah.
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And then the healthcare that would be involved with like health screening and what you would actually need to make sure that everybody was safe. And then the education aspect was just. How do you start to develop a workforce? So it went from aviation, which I do like to root in aviation, because I feel like that's the easiest way to educate people about spaceports, but that it just goes to so much beyond on what actually can happen at a spaceport and what will happen at a.
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Spaceport, given what you do, given the work that you have been doing. I wanted to just explore with you the idea of what the future of spaceports can look like, because that's something you're studying and working on all the time. So I just kind of wanted to pick your brain a little bit about that and get your thoughts.
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Well, every spaceport's a little bit different. A big difference is just, you know, once you go from the vertical to the horizontal, how does that change the layout of the campus? Because. Because there's just such a different function. Like usually if you're on a vertical site, you'll be next to the sea, where like Houston is in the city. So it's just very different on how basically really how the community interacts. Like, Houston is much more, you know, there's like a neighborhood that's not far from the spaceport and like, so it's very city centric as when you're working on the coastline, but it's not as urban, I would say, on that one. So that's what I've been learning a lot lately, just visiting different spaceports on really how does that campus evolve? And a lot of what I talk about when I go to conferences is thinking about what, you know, you have your launch pad and really everybody's kind of at this grassroots stage where they're trying to generate the revenue, grow the campus, grow the business, which is exactly what everybody needs to be doing. But what happens when you start to get beyond the launch pad and in the manufacturing facilities? And what happens when you do start to invite the tourism aspect and, you know, does it become sort of like a Disneyland of first space? Right. First space nerds?
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You know, I mean, honestly. Yeah.
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And that's one thing that we've talked about a lot because I actually got to Interview some civilian astronauts who went on Blue Origin. And that was just amazing because really what they're doing is pioneering. They're proving that you can go into a training facility for three days, pass your health test, and then go up into space. So then if we start to think about just tourism alone, lodging, health screening. Because really, you know, when I was doing my research and kind of equating it to the airport, a person buys a ticket and these tickets are very expensive. Right. So what happens if you're, you know, you probably buy it seven months ahead of time and, you know, and a lot of things can happen in a person's life. Like then you can't probably change your weight. You can't have it start a family. Yeah. Like, you have to have that whole screening that happens right before you go just to make sure you're safe. So then that starts to introduce this huge healthcare industry for a spaceport. And so then we start talking about like, the workforce. Right. So we're starting to talk about how not only, you know, you don't have to be trained as an astronaut anymore. So that means that more people will be going to space. What does that mean for jobs? We're creating jobs. You know, 50 jobs were created today that we didn't even know existed yesterday. And so that means education is going to be a huge part of the spaceport. And how do we start to develop that workforce for something that will happen very quickly, but, you know, you just don't know what that is. And so what does that mean for a spaceport? Well, then you have this really, this multimodal mix at a spaceport.
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Yeah, no, it makes sense though.
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I mean.
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Cause like, where. I know for me, I think of an airport nowadays with some exceptions around the world, but for a lot of airports, it's sort of like the place you go to go somewhere else and it's. And it needs to do that well, but it's like, it is very much like you're not really thinking about as a passenger. Like, you know, how am I going to be spending my hours there, aside from maybe get some food and get to where I'm going. But for a spaceport, it really would be a campus, a community center, but also a place for me as a person who loves space, like almost a pilgrimage spot. Like, maybe I'm not going to be going to space, but if I had a spaceport near me, if I was visiting or I happened to live near one, I would go to see a launch if I could. And I would certainly be Like, I'm gonna make a day of it. And that totally changes the paradigm. And that's actually. That's gotta be fun for you to think about, like, a totally different paradigm like that.
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Yeah, well, and that's where it starts to become a city in itself. Right? Like, you have, like, the retail. You can center everything around the spaceport.
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There was a conversation I had with the. The folks who are working on Saxavird Spaceport in Scotland, and the whole conversation I had with them was about, it is being built in a very remote place, but how much the community around there, you know, it represents an opportunity for a whole set of new jobs for people there that maybe thought that they had to leave home to get those kinds of jobs, that now those jobs, even in this remote place, could be coming there. And again, that opportunity is really truly transformative for these very remote communities.
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Well, that's really well said because. And that's something that we talk about with the education, because I don't know if you're familiar, at least in Texas, with the public education system. They have career technology schools. Have you heard of those?
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Yes, yes.
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And so that's something we talk about with the spaceport, because as you're building these campuses, you know, start to think about, you know, how the education system works is at least with career technology in these remote areas, they build these high schools, and they have labs within the high school. Any type of manufacturer can come in, build their lab. There's some training the students specifically on that type of equipment. And they're watching these students grow. So they get to actually pick, like, the three superstars that are graduating. And if they want, if they choose to, they can go into the company. But what happens in these remote areas is a lot of the people that weren't able to afford to go to college are now being able to go directly into the business. And so they don't have that college debt. A lot of the, like, nice stories that you hear is about basically where they build up the economy of these remote locations, because now they're earning money, and so they're buying, like, a house or a home, and then they buy their parents a home, and then they're like, feeding it back into the community, which I think is what's going to really help out with remote areas is when we start to have this workforce and start to train specifically in jobs that you're looking to build with that workforce. And then what happens with those economies when they really didn't have that opportunity before, now they can just go Straight to space technology. Right. Like you can probably learn on the job.
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Yeah. Honestly, that, that is a wonderful thing. So I wanted to make sure I gave you the last word. If there's anything I missed that you wanted to make sure that you share with our audience, anything at all, any kind of final thoughts, I wanted to hand that over to you.
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So like I said, about seven years ago I discovered spaceports and it became a huge passion. So I'm a big advocate for spaceports. I like to come in and help spaceports. It's not just thinking about the launch site, which is very important. You have to have your year one plan, but what happens in 10 years. And so really starting to build that, this master planning of the spaceport and then figuring out what those future scenarios will be so that they have that plan in place and you start to build the infrastructure. And it helps too, just to get, you know, you start to win the hearts and minds of the community. Like you start to get everybody excited about spaceports instead of thinking, why are we having this conversation now?
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We'll be right back. Welcome back. Different the phrase just because you can doesn't mean you should. Absolutely does not apply when it comes to playing the classic first person shooter game Doom on unexpected objects. Printers, cameras, ATMs, pregnancy tests. Yes, you heard me. Can they play Doom? Someone wondered. Someone tried it and found that the answer is yes. But if you've ever thought, surely no one has ever played Doom in space. First of all, don't call me surely. And second of all, congratulations. You underestimated engineers. Don't do that. Government funded teams from NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab just turned low Earth orbit into a retro land party, kinda blasting Doom. Maybe a little bit of Mountain Dew. And yeah, Rick Astley's never going to give you up. Through NASA and commercial communication satellites. You knew there was a Rick roll in this one. You just knew. And all this wasn't just for fun, though I'm sure there was fun to be had. They say they were doing all this to test a new wideband communications terminal with a very serious name. The Polylingual Experimental Terminal, or pext. That's what they say anyway. Now here's the clever part. PEXT works a lot like your smartphone. It prefers its home network, but if your signal drops, it roams seamlessly across other satellite networks to keep the data flowing. And during this test, engineers hopped between NASA's tracking and data relay satellites and multiple commercial systems, proving that they could move big chunks of data smoothly across a hybrid space network. Big chunks of data like a computer game or a music video, you know. As APL's Chris Haskins put it, this kind of multilingual access could untether future missions from any single provider. Translation. More resilience for space missions, more bandwidth, and fewer dropped calls, even in orbit. And honestly, yeah, there's a long tradition here. Since Johnny B. Goode hitched a ride on Voyager's golden record in 1977, engineers have leaned on pop culture to test space tech. Why not? Engineers like to have fun too, right? Taters? The NASA cat chasing laser pointers, the Mona Lisa via laser comms. And now Doom and Rick Astley joined their rightful place in the canon. It is funny, sure, but it's also a glimpse of the future. Flexible, high capacity space networks that could support missions around Earth, the moon and beyond. Never gonna give up on that. Say ignore. 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. We don't apologize for the Rickrolls, though those were necessary. Also, please 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 all operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500, 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, technology and 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 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. T minus. Foreign.
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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.