 After so many test flights, so many crashes, one sort of landing and then the explosion, which all the people moaned at me for as I called it a landing, even though apparently it wasn't, as it was too long and quickly, even though the SpaceX have finally properly taken a starship, sent it to 10km in the sky, flipped it around and landed it. And it didn't even explode afterwards. I will be honest, it was a very cloudy day down inside Texas, however the SpaceX have uploaded the footage they recorded locally so we can actually observe the flight without any connection issues. Featuring over 100 updates according to Elon Musk, the SN15 vehicle with three newly developed Raptor engines lifted off the suborbital pad in Boca Chica. The ascent was smooth, with nothing of normal to be seen. We got a cool view at 4 minutes and 20 seconds, however as a camera had been installed into one of the top fins and we got to see it move as the vehicle flipped over, which was very, very cool. That's probably one of my favourite camera angles I've ever seen from SpaceX to be honest, but it wasn't the flip we were waiting for. It was the landing we all desired so much, so Starship gracefully descended through the clouds, lit the Raptor engines, flipped over and very carefully pointed towards the landing pad until finally, after so many test flights, we had the first soft landing of a full Starship vehicle. And it didn't blow up afterwards either. There was a bit of a little fire, but the team obviously never learnt their lessons, so the little water jets were quickly in action to reduce the risk of a rapid, unscheduled disassembly. Now the question we all have is, will they fly SN15 again? From what I have seen, I know they will perform tests on the vehicle of some sort and if that goes well, I wouldn't put it past them. There isn't space outside their HQ in Hawthorne to put it, so they might as well fly it again in my opinion. SpaceX have also been chatting to the FCC over the past few days as they have released an outline for the first orbital Starship mission. The full stack of super heavy and Starship will take off from an orbital pad at Boca Chica, likely where this is service tower is being constructed. 169 seconds after launch, the booster engines will shut down, the two stages will separate, with the booster then landing 32km offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Because of the specifics, we don't know yet if the booster will perform a soft ocean touchdown, or if it will land on one of SpaceX's new ocean platforms, which are ex-oil rigs. The actual Starship vehicle itself will continue on, shutting its own engines down at 521 seconds into flight, having achieved a good orbit. However, it won't stay in orbit, in fact it won't even complete a full orbit, with the plan being to land the vehicle in the ocean 100km northwest of Kaui, which is one of the Hawaiian islands in the Pacific Ocean. So because we already know that they're landing Starship in the ocean, could this just be some uncertainty from SpaceX with how they want to land super heavy? I find it kind of strange how they point out Starship's landing, but not super heavy, so hopefully we'll get some data on that in the coming weeks. The good thing though is that the company could actually be on track for an orbital launch attempt before the end of the year, which would perfectly match with Gwen Shotwell's timeline. The new Starbase sign has also been erected next to the site where all the Starship vehicles are built, and it looks really small until you zoom in and realise that each letter is literally the height of a human. It also lights up at night. Also quickly, if you're interested in the software side of spaceflight, the SpaceX software team have just finished a very lengthy and detailed AMA on the SpaceX subreddit, so if you're interested I'd recommend you give it a read. If SpaceX doesn't want to keep SN15, I have a perfectly good backyard, and I would love to stick it in it, and I would make it like a multi-tier experience, and I would stuff it full of memorabilia of our exploration of Mars, which, it just so happens, we can finally add a third member to the group of countries that have landed on the surface of Mars, and that would be China. Just a few months ago, China joined the club of nations that have successfully placed a mission into orbit around Mars with their Tianwen-1 orbiter, which will conduct data gathering of Mars surface and subsurface from orbit. However, the cherry on top for many was the rover Churang, which was set to attempt a landing in mid-May after surface mapping by Tianwen-1's instrument suite. Finally, the day of the anticipated landing attempt came. That was May 14th, and Tianwen-1 separated from Churang and continued in its own orbit while the rover began its own nine minutes of terror. The China National Space Administration then announced shortly after that the landing was a success, but, um, yeah, that's it. That's all we've got. NASA's insight lander was operating during Churang's landing using its seismometers to attempt both atmospheric and ground-based detection, so we'll see if insight lucked out and caught it. The China National Space Administration has said that over the next couple of days, they will release a photo from the surface, so I'm very excited to see what that landing site looks like and, you know, more photos from Mars. That's just good stuff to have. So congratulations to China for becoming the third country to successfully land something intact on the surface of Mars. That wasn't just a new vehicle arriving at the surface of Mars that was making news this week. No, we've also got a new old vehicle doing so, and you're going to want to buckle up for this because we're going to go fly in for a little bit. Mars helicopter Ingenuity made its fifth flight, setting a Mars altitude record of 10 meters, while traveling a distance of 129 meters. The flight lasted approximately 108 seconds. This was also the first time Ingenuity made a one-way flight, leaving right field and landing elsewhere at a site that's currently designated Airfield B. This was the final flight of the technology demonstration phase. All flights from here on out will be considered operational. And a very cool thing, Perseverance's microphone on board caught the sound of Ingenuity's fourth flight. So let's go ahead and take a listen to what a helicopter on Mars sounds like. It's not just Mars that's been getting a lot of attention this week. No, it's also space tourism. It was just announced that two sets of mere mortals have officially been given approval to start their training to fly on Russian Soyuz before the end of the year to the International Space Station. The first step is a little bit of a surprise. Yusaku Meizawa, an assistant Yozo Hirano, will be the latter mission launched this year on December 8th. You probably remember Meizawa as being the client who's purchased a starship flight from SpaceX on a lunar free return trajectory, a project called Dear Moon. Speculation is running rampant that delays to the Dear Moon flight, or why Meizawa is flying on a Soyuz. But to me, it makes sense that you'd like some training first before taking that slingshot around the moon, and if you've got the money, Russia has got you some seats. The former of the two flights to be launched on October 5th will carry Russian actress Julia Parasilt and filmmaker Klim Schopenko with plans to shoot a film while aboard the International Space Station. All four of these folks are being considered spaceflight participants, and they'll spend 12 days aboard the International Space Station before returning to Earth. Interesting to note, in order to accommodate the transporting of Parasilt and Schopenko, NASA astronaut Mark Vandehi may have his current stay extended, reaching 353 days aboard the International Space Station. That would officially beat Scott Kelly's NASA record breaking stay of 340 days back in 2015 to 2016 aboard the International Space Station. And it's not just Roscosmos jumping in with a hotbed of human spaceflight action. A couple familiar names are also starting to come down the pipeline. Blue Origin has announced that they will be flying their suborbital New Shepard vehicle on its first crewed flight this July 20th, the 52nd anniversary of Apollo 11's landing. Subtle blue, real subtle there. Six seats are available in a New Shepard capsule, and Blue Origin has noted that one of them will be auctioned off, which if you'd like, June 12th is the day for a live auction for that seat. So if you'd really like to get it, make sure to mark your calendars. Let's head on over to Commercial Crew, where we have a positive for Boeing, which is that Starliner's make-up mission, Orbital Flight Test 2, is now scheduled to launch at 2153 Universal Time on July 30th. And this is a positive because, finally, Starliner will hopefully have a chance to prove itself. And Boeing came through to have Starliner launch a few weeks before their initial expectations. This is a kind of momentum that I hope they can catch and keep going with. More of this, please. A high-fidelity end-to-end ground test of software, something called an integrated mission dress rehearsal, was conducted over the course of five days that put all of Starliner's mission phases through its paces, and all appears to be well. So here's hoping Orbital Flight Test 2 goes smoothly, as assured access is not accomplished by flying with a single company. And let's trade one long-delayed mission for another, and I'm specifically talking about the James Webb Space Telescope. Yes, another possible delay to the James Webb Space Telescope, although this time, it is not the telescope's fault. The Ariane 5, which is noted for its reliability, has had a few hiccups in some previous launches, and that may end up delaying J-Dub heading to space. You may have noticed that the last Ariane 5 launch was back in August of 2020, and that's because two of the most recent launches, one in February 2020 and the aforementioned Flight in August, have uncovered an issue involving the separation of the payload fairing, involving vibrating the payloads above accepted limits. None of these issues damaged either payload. But the James Webb Space Telescope is incredibly sensitive, so extra care needs to be taken in its launch. The current Ariane 5 manifest shows two commercial satellite launches ahead of the James Webb Space Telescope, so that should provide ample examination and resolution of the issue. NASA expects the delay to only be roughly several weeks from the currently planned October 31 date. And just to make it entirely clear to people who may try to make this argument down in the comments, you cannot take the James Webb Space Telescope from the Ariane 5 and stick it on top of another rocket. That is not how engineering works whatsoever. There is a completely different environment on the Ariane 5 than there is, say, Falcon Heavy, including the fact that the payload fairings on Falcon Heavy aren't big enough for Ariane 5, same with Atlas V, same with Delta IV, so you just can't grab and go with whatever rocket you feel like your payload should go on. You would have to redesign which would cost billions of dollars and further delays to an already delayed telescope. So we've come this far, let's just take a nice deep breath and await its launch. Success for some? Well, except for the James Webb Space Telescope, but that's not surprising. But this figure is. Rocket Lab's 20th launch in their history, named Running Out of Toes, was meant to carry two imaging satellites for the company Black Sky, however it didn't end that way. The first stage performed without a hitch, doing exactly what it needed to do to aid the second stage's path to orbit, however right after second engine start, it's where the problems began. On the webcast, the camera feed from the second stage showed it veering off course pretty quickly and then spinning out of control. The single rutherford engine then shut down. Telemetry on the broadcast was also peculiar as the velocity was moving up and down, however understandably, that was taken off air pretty quickly. Comparing this to the previous launch, the noddle of the second stage was actually gimbled all the way over to the right, indicating that something very wrong had happened and that, at the moment, is what we can assume was the reason for the spin. This is the third failure of the Electron rocket to get its payload to orbit, with flight 1 triggering a false abort and a launch on the 4th of July 2020, having a 6 minute premature second stage engine shutdown. Spaceflight isn't easily. SpaceX had a 60% failure rate of the Falcon 1, and so far, Rocket Lap has only had a 15% failure rate of Electron. Admittedly, SpaceX did cut the Falcon 1 program short in favour of Falcon 9, but it does prove the point that this stuff isn't easy and failures are going to happen. Moral of the story, always get some good launch insurance. Some people who haven't had to use theirs in the past week are about to come up, so let's pop on over to some space traffic. Nifting off at 1807 UTC on May 6th, the 8th batch of Yarragan 30 satellites headed to orbit atop this long-much 2C rocket. Taking to the skies out of LC3, SLS2 at the Zhikang satellite launch centre in China, the 55th launch of this vehicle type was headed for low Earth orbit. What feels like a very long time ago at this point, Elon Musk said he wanted to be able to fly a Falcon 9 booster 10 times without, you know, it dying. It only took 1094 days, that's the time between the launch of the first Falcon 9 Block 5 vehicle and B1051, the first ever orbital-class booster to be flown and recovered for the 10th time. Launching off at 0642 UTC on May 9th out of select 40 to take 60-styling satellites to low Earth orbit, everything went as scheduled, marking another successful flight in the SpaceX history books. When the booster returned to port, it was absolutely covered in carbon soot, and if SpaceX plans to push this booster any more, I wouldn't be surprised if this booster turns completely black because it's almost at that point already. The ferries used for this mission were also used on the GPS3 Space Vehicle 4 mission. The next launch and final launch of the week also came from SpaceX, also came from Florida, and also flew some styling satellites, but only 52 this time as hitching a ride was also a propeller spacecraft and Tyvek 0130. Taking off at 2256 on May 15th, the 14,000kg payload successfully made its way to low Earth before deploying roughly one hour into flight. Simultaneously, the B1058 booster touched down, and of course I still love you, and the ferries made their way down to studio borderline. That's all the traffic from the past week, so let's have a look at some upcoming Earth departures. Before we head out for yet another exciting week, I want to thank all of the citizens of Tomorrow for their continued support of the show. This wouldn't be possible without the support of the escape velocity, orbital, suborbital, and ground support citizens who all helped contribute to the show monthly. Access to the escape velocity channel in the Discord server gives you a lot of perks, including the ability to interact with us as we build the shows and read the script as they are being written. If that sort of stuff interests you, I'd recommend you think about joining for as little as just one dollar a month at youtube.com forward slash tmro forward slash join. That's another week of space flight covered, and I hope you'll join us for the next one. Thank you for watching and goodbye.