 Welcome back everybody to another action-packed week of space news. A big tall shiny thing. Just rolled off the production line in Texas. Some people have been walking in space and an all-civilian space fight now may be coming even sooner than we thought. If that sounds very interesting to you, it's very interesting to me, or you're just interested by anything else on the channel, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss any other episode of the news or any other show we do, even when our live show is returned. So without further ado, this is your episode of tomorrow news for the week of July 6th 2021. We all knew from the concept art that Super Heavy was going to be absolutely massive, but until you see it next to humans, you don't really understand how gigantic it truly is. BN3, as it has become known, has been rolled out of the production facility at Starbase and driven down the road to Suborbital Pad A, which is quite a way to start the second half of the year. Before, it was believed to be the plan that booster 3 would be the first one to go on a flight, but now that is no longer the case. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said on Twitter that this booster will in fact be used for ground tests only, probably cryogenic proof tests and possibly some Raptor fittings too. But you can't fly a rocket without something holding it up beforehand and that is why the 7th section of the integration tower at the orbital launch pad has now been fitted and if it wasn't for those enormous cranes used to lift the sections, it would be the tallest thing for miles. It does look like we are going to be getting some form of Raptor testing as some engines have arrived designated for use on Super Heavy. The plumbing on these beasts is so intricate and interesting, the detail here is incredible. It's also quite funny that the removed before flight sticker is there because if what we've been told is to be true, booster 3 isn't leaving the ground unless it's attached to a crane. And just to keep us really, really confused, the naming scheme for everything has changed yet again. We started off with Starships being named after Marks, Mark 1, Mark 2, then serial numbers SN3, SN4, SN5, all the way now to SN17 I think. And now we've dropped it down to just a single letter. The Starship numbering will now see the dropping of the N, so for example SN15 would now be known as Starship S15 with the S standing for ship. The boosters are getting a B, you can probably guess what that one stands for, so booster 3 can now be simply called B3. The Raptors are also getting a new naming convention which will help to distinguish what type of Raptor they are. The standard Raptor centres are getting the prefix RC, the Raptor boosts are getting the prefix RB and the vacuum optimised Raptor engines are getting the prefix RVAC. The only one in there you probably won't recognise is the new Raptor boost version of the engine. Long story short, these are non-gimbling versions of the Raptor centre engines with less fine control over the throttle but they have the ability to have a higher maximum thrust. The only one in there that some of you probably won't recognise is the new Raptor boost version of the engine. Long story short, these are non-gimbling versions of the Raptor centre engines with less fine control over the throttle but they have the ability to have a higher maximum thrust. These are the engines which would be placed around the outside of the booster with the middle engines being the normal Raptor centre engines. I bet you could see where they got the name for that one though. And if that wasn't a mouthful to explain, email's been on Twitter again. So forget everything I said with Raptor boost getting more power as it turns out SpaceX are wanting to push Raptor centre's maximum thrust to around 230 tonnes. That would bring it in line with Raptor boost's maximum thrust output. Jack Baier then asked a question that everybody had. What's the point of Raptor boost if Raptor centre can do it anyways? So according to Elon, the vacuum Raptors will soon become the only variant of the Raptor but even that could change as there is a possibility that it could be commonised with the rest of the family which would give it more thrust or the throat of the nozzle could be tightened which would give it a higher specific impulse or it could just be kept the same. It also turns out the door is still open for six RVACs to be strapped to the underside of Starship, all of them with the maximum specific impulse that the laws of physics will allow. I'm going to hand it straight over to Jared because after that my brain needs to rest and I need a drink. 2021 appears to be the year that commercial suborbital spaceflight is finally going to become viable. The two major players Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are on the cusp of their first paying flights after decades of work. We had already known that Jeff Bezos was planning to launch aboard New Shepard with his brother Mark Bezos and a still anonymous bidder who dropped $28 million for that seat but the fourth seat was available up until just a few days ago when it was formally announced that Wally Funk had been invited by Jeff to join him on the flight. If you don't know who Wally Funk is, she's a member of the Mercury 13, a group of women who in 1960 took the exact same tests the eventual Mercury 7 astronauts took, with the Mercury 13 being those who had passed the exact same regiment that men had putting NASA's discriminatory exclusion of women under the spotlight. Once finally open for women to apply, Funk did so three times but was rejected. However, Wally Funk is an accomplished pilot in her own right. She has nearly 19,000 flight hours, almost 4,000 pilots trained under her instruction, multiple air racing awards, the first woman to be a federal aviation administration inspector and she will become the oldest human to fly in space at the age of 82. So many people responded to this announcement by writing it off as just some kind of PR stunt for Blue Origin but personally I don't care. Someone who should have gone to space but didn't get a chance because of the sexism during the time that she was attempting to, getting that chance finally 60 years later that is an absolute dream come true. I just cannot be cynical about that at all. Now speaking of the Mercury 13, unfortunately only one other member besides Wally Funk is still alive so maybe Blue Origin will step in and also fly her but it's not just one billionaire that's focusing on his upcoming flight. No, there was another billionaire involved in suborbital spaceflight and kind of stepping in to steal a little bit of that spotlight. So Richard Branson the founder of Virgin Galactic will be flying to space aboard his own company Spaceplane VSS Unity. The suborbital flight is scheduled to occur on July 11th, nine days before Jeff Bezos takes his suborbital new Shepard flight. Pilots Dave McKay and Michael Masucci will be at the controls for their respective returns to space and Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor will once again ride aboard. They'll be joined by founder Sir Richard Branson, vice president for government affairs and research operations, Sarisha Brandla and operations engineer Colin Bennett. And of course we wish good luck to both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. Tomorrow we are super excited about these flights finally happening so awesome here we go a new era of suborbital spaceflight. Now we're also excited about Mars because there are some things happening there such as sights flights and sounds. The China National Space Administration has released video from the landing of their Mars rover Zhurong performing entry descent and landing on May 14th. Views show the supersonic parachute deployment, the detachment from the back shell and final descent with a hover for hazard avoidance on the surface of Mars. A week later sound was recorded during the rollout of Zhurong to the surface of Mars. Let's go ahead and take a listen. Zhurong also deployed a very cool small camera to the surface of Mars to take one heck of a selfie and it took video of Zhurong heading away. This is so cool actually seeing a Mars rover driving on the surface of Mars which so far it's clocked in just under 250 meters of distance driven. If that wasn't enough for you Mars helicopter ingenuity has also been on the move performing its longest flight yet traversing 625 meters on July 5th. Ingenuity also hit its highest speed so far as well moving at five meters per second during that flight. The navigation system was put to the test as it flew over an area of uneven dune filled terrain but it aced the flight successfully adjusting for the surface below. Now I don't know if you knew this but ingenuity actually has a flight logbook. No seriously it does and having a flight logbook for your Mars helicopter is a very JPL thing to do. Back here on Earth it seems that a lot of people are very interested in leaving this planet especially if you ask the astronaut office of the European Space Agency. ESA has announced that more than 22,000 applicants applied for their 2021 call for astronauts. Now the process for astronaut selection will be completed by the end of 2022 but 22,000 is nearly three times the amount of people that applied for the 2018 round of astronaut applications. Now four to six will make it through where training will begin and they'll become full-time astronauts while up to 20 will be designated reserve astronauts getting the call when chances allow and that's not all the French Space Agency CNES is looking at the possibility of developing indigenous space flight capability for Europe by the end of the 2020s with a European capsule riding atop an Ariane 6. Costs and schedule are now currently iffy and CNES is looking into the possibility of collaborating with the Indian Space Research Organization on their crewed spacecraft ambitions as well. Now I'll wrap up how I wrapped up my last bit on the last episode of Tomorrow News by talking about space telescopes both the good and the bad. Doing things my way I'm going to give you the bad news first which is that Hubble is still presently not taking science data. Very careful analysis of Hubble's systems has narrowed it down to both an electronics unit that formats and then transmits commands and data and a power regulator on board. Now both do have backups but switching over to those backups is an incredibly elaborate and delicate process. NASA is working the problem but they have also said that they're not interested in making the problem worse so an accurate fix takes priority over speed. Good call. The good news is that the European Space Agency in conjunction with Ariane Space has announced that the final mission review for the launching of the James Webb Space Telescope has been completed. For those unaware the payload fairing of the Ariane 5 required modifications to provide the needed acoustic protection to J-Dub during launch and deliver a lower shock load to the telescope when the fairing deploys. Now between the present and the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope the Ariane 5 will be flying to commercial satellites to space. So what's going to likely happen? NASA will want to look over the data that they can get from Ariane Space about the payload fairing separation that occurs on both of those flights. They'll take a very close look at it and then when they are happy with what they see they will give the clearance for James Webb to finally, finally, finally launch into space. Ryan, hope you're done with that sip. Well I said I was going to need to get a drink. Two of the three Tycoonauts apart of the Shenzhou 12 mission have been in a stroll outside the Tyankor module last Sunday with Liu Bo-ming commencing the EVA at 11 past midnight UTC. Drawing shortly after by Tang Hongbo the second ever spacewalk from China was used to install foot restraints and a working platform on the mechanical arm attached to the station. A panoramic camera was also added. This was also a prime opportunity to test out the new generation of Feitian spacesuits. It's good to see China progressing into space again as the other and only previous EVA from them came in 2008 apart of the Shenzhou 7 mission. A second spacewalk of this mission is planned within the next couple of months so this definitely won't be the last time we see the Chinese having some people floating outside in low-earth orbit. Some other things that are now floating around in low-earth orbit have just been launched in the past week. 1950 UTC on June 25th saw the launch of Pion NKS number one from the Pleasitesk Cosmodrome in Russia launched atop a Soyuz 2.1b or 6,500 kilos of Russian military surveillance satellites ahead for a 500 kilometer sun synchronous orbit. Another day and another launch of a Soyuz this time it was the Progress MS-17 mission to the International Space Station. Lifting off from launch complex 31.6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 23.27 on June 29th, the launch looked pretty smooth as it headed up to the ISS. We'll get to the docking in a second but three launches came between the launch and docking of the Progress vehicle. Chubia Bell's part one had the honor of being the first operational mission in Launcher One's lifetime with Cosmic Girl taking off from the Mahavi Air and Space Port at 1447 UTC on June 30th. For the first time we got a stream of the dropping of Launcher One from under the wing of the 747-400 aircraft which means that I can even show you it and even though the quality isn't incredible at least we have something to look at. The payload consisted of satellites from three different organizations being the US Department of Defense, the company Sat Revolution and the Royal Netherlands Air Force. If you're wondering where the name of the mission came from, Chubia Bell's, well that was actually the name of the album that Richard Branson the founder of Virgin Orbit helped Mike Oldfield get made all the way back in 1973. During the process of making that record a rather small record label which you might have not heard of or founded and it was called Virgin Records. And of course what would a space traffic report be without the mention of SpaceX? Five and a half hours after the launch of Chubia Bell's Transporter Two took off from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida carrying a whopping 88 satellites into a synchronic orbit around the earth. This mission didn't set the record for the most satellites launched on a single mission which was broken by SpaceX on the last Transporter Mission. As always around eight minutes after launch the booster returned safely to Earth but not on a drone ship this time the B1060 booster performed its first career return to launch site landing touching down at landing zone one just down the road from where the launch occurred. Also I just want to mention quickly SpaceX have had a total of 26 Falcon 9 launches last year and we're only halfway through this year and we've already seen 19. That means that if SpaceX keep this stride up we could be seeing just shy of 40 launches from them this year which is absolutely insane. They also have the highest launch cadence of anyone in Cape Canaveral the only non-falcon 9 launch so far this year has been an atlas from ULA. Once again another day and another launch of a Soyuz 2.1b rocket. Site 1S at the Stochny Cosmodrome in Russia was host to the launch of one Web 8 which launched at 1248 UTC on July 1st. Successfully being clipped into their parking orbit all 36 internet communication satellites will slowly raise themselves to a 1200 kilometer polar orbit around the Earth. I said I'd get onto the docking of Progress MS-17 and I am a man of my word as on July 2nd at 0059 UTC the vehicle docked itself with the International Space Station. The astronauts aboard the station will now have access to 470 kilograms of fuel, 420 litres of drinking water, 40 kilograms of air and oxygen as well as 1,509 kilograms of equipment and materials. For the first time this week we're hopping over to China and this launch of the Long March 2D. Taking off at 02.50 from Launch Complex 9 at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center a set of observation satellites have now been placed into orbit around the Earth capable of 4K ultra-high definition imagery of the ground below. And finally this week another launch from China this time being the launch of the FengYang 3E mission atop a Long March 4C. Taking to the skies on July 4th at 2328 UTC from the Zhiquan Satellite Launch Center the Meteorology Satellite is on its way to its 836 kilometer sun synchronous orbit. With the launch done let's see what's launching from Earth in the next week. Just before we head out for another exciting week in space let's give a thanks to all of our citizens at tomorrow. From the escape velocity to the orbital suborbital and ground support citizens they all ate the show financially. If you want to sneak peak into the behind the scenes of the show make sure to check out the levels to see what suits your fancy as you can support the show from as little as a dollar a month. With nothing else to talk about we're done for the second show of July thank you so much for watching stay safe and goodbye.