 Hello everybody and welcome to this new edition of Tomorrow News. The mechazilla chopsticks are starting to be assembled. Beppi Colombo just stopped by Mercury and then we'll be wrapping it up with some space traffic. So stay tuned as this is your episode of Tomorrow News for the week of October 13th, 2021. We're starting off this week with the shuffling about of some NASA astronauts within the commercial crew program as the age with Boeing's Starliner has created uncertainty over when the next launch of that vehicle is. Nicole Mann and Josh Casada were originally scheduled for launch on the crew test flight mission and Starliner 1 respectively, but now, because of the delays with the CST-100 vehicle, they have been shifted over to become SpaceX's crew 5 commander and pilot respectively. According to NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stish, to us, it seemed like the right time. We really wanted to get Nicole and Josh some experience and get them into space as soon as we can. All the other crew members are currently set to remain in their respective positions with Mann and Casada seats hopefully being filled again in the near future. NASA also really wants to get a so-called crew swap strategy in place where they would fly a Russian cosmonaut on a commercial vehicle, most likely Dragon with crew 5 and Roscosmos would fly a NASA astronaut on a Soyuz. NASA's scientifically calibrated in-flight imagery team wants to demonstrate, quote, enhanced remote observation instrumentation technology, unquote, on a commercial spacecraft returning to Earth from Leo. The team is going to develop a multi-spectral imaging system on a high altitude WB-57F research aircraft to have a look at Starship re-entry around March 2022. This will then create a temperature map and allow them to see how SpaceX's thermal protection system differs from others, such as the space shuttles. Here you can see the difference in temperatures from the STS-134 mission. Falcon 9 has just got itself a new customer, this time in the form of the startup Vada Space. Scheduled to launch in the first half of 2023, a space manufacturing smallsat will be carried to orbit on a rideshare mission where it will detach and spend three months in orbit to test out the manufacturing kit it has on board. Once this has been completed, the materials will be stored in a re-entry capsule and sent back down to Earth. The company also has said that they haven't ruled out Rocket Labs Electron for future launches. After all, in August, they did purchase three photon satellite buses from them, but their co-founder and current chief executive Will Brewey has worked at SpaceX for over five years before they moved to Vada. It's time for a weekly trip to Texas, starting with a tank that isn't meant to leave the ground, but it is important to the tanks that do leave the ground. GSE tank number eight was brought down to the orbital tank farm at the end of last week and then lifted into place, giving SpaceX even more room to store some lovely starship propellant. Raptor Vacuum 6 has been seen peeking around the door of one of the production tents, giving us a fantastic view at some of the plumbing, but saggy, we can't see a lot of the bell because there's a lot of stuff in the way. The mechazela chopsticks have been lifted up and reorientated for assembly on the carriage itself, and here you can see both of them sitting next to the orbital launch tower. Once it's all been properly stuck together, the entire structure will be lifted up and connected onto the tower and probably tested very vigorously before they trust it with a super heavy booster. And the final piece of news to bring you this week from Starbase is the first movement of the quick disconnect arm after it was installed on the tower at the orbital launch pad. It was moving very, very slowly. This footage here is actually at 12x speed, but of course the team doesn't want to break anything on their first run. Launching all the way back in October of 2018, Beppi Colombo, the joint mission between ESA and JAXA, decided to swing by Mercury about a week ago because why not? Passing just over 120 miles above the surface, we now have access to some fantastic photos. Sadly, the spacecraft itself does cover a lot of the frame, but we can still see plenty of detail as the satellite flew over Astrolabe Rupees, one of the most prominent features of this sunrise. A few minutes later, this shot was taken of Hayden Crater and Pampu Facula, which are one of the most many lava field bright spots on the surface of the planet. And while that camera was focusing on the southern hemisphere, this camera was focusing on the northern, bringing us some spectacular views of Covino Crater, which holds some great data on what is within the layers of the planet's crust. I mean, the crater itself doesn't know, it's a landform, but if we can get some instruments flying over it, then it'll be very helpful. The next Mercury rendezvous for Beppi Colombo is slap bang in the middle of next year on June 23rd, and after five more rendezvous with the planet the spacecraft should have burned off enough velocity to fall into a stable orbit near the end of 2025. Remember Astra and their unintentional power slide? Well, their executive VP and chief engineer Benjamin Leon has said on a blog post that the reason for the power slide and the reduction in power was because of leaking propellant, which was trapped between the rocket and the pad, which was then ignited by the engines, which then created an overpressure event that knocked the electronic connection to the fuel pump, which then shut down the engine less than one second after liftoff. The company is confident this mistake won't happen again, with solutions including moving the rocket to launcher interfaces so that two propellants can't mix if they do leak, as well as improving the design of the propellant supply mechanism to minimize fuel leakage. The next launch LV0007 is scheduled for the end of the month, but for the time being, let's have a look at some space traffic. Soyuz MS-19 launched atop a Soyuz 2.1a from Launch Complex 316 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0855 Coordinated Universal Time on October 5th, with commander Anton Shkaplerov, film director Klim Shopenko and actress Yulia Parasild all on board. Screw you Apollo 13 and you're set on the vomit comet, screw you every other film with a zero G scene in your wires. The challenge has actually sent their director and the actress who plays their main character to an actual orbital outpost. Manually docking to the International Space Station just over three hours later at 1222 UTC the same day, it took pretty much the same amount of time to open up the hatch which opened at 1500 UTC, starting Shkaplerov's fourth stay at the station as well as Shopenko and Parasild's first. Shkaplerov will also star in the film alongside fellow cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Peter Dubrov. Coming within the next seven days we have one Web 11 on a Soyuz, Chase on a Long March 2D, Shenzhou 13 on a Long March 2S and Lucy on an Atlas V. Before the show ends, let's thank the citizens of tomorrow. They support us financially every month and if you want to as well, you can join the escape velocity orbital sub orbital and ground support citizens at youtube.com forward slash TMRO forward slash join. Helpfully, there's a bright blue join button that's right next to the bright red subscribe button which will obviously go grey if you just give it a click. Thank you for watching, hopefully we'll see you next week and goodbye.