 Commercial crew arriving at station, commercial crew leaving station, China launching parts of their own space station. It's all been quite hectic over the past few days and low earth orbit, but don't worry as we're here to help decipher it all for you. To make sure you don't miss any future episodes of the news, make sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell and also I'd recommend you grab a drink or a snack or both as we get ready for this week's edition of Tomorrow News, which is the week of May 4th, 2021. Getting straight over to Cape Canaveral in Florida, we have the launch of the second non-experimental crewed flight of the commercial crew program. Taking off out of historic launch complex 39A at 0949 UTC on the 23rd of April, the first flight of a reused vehicle with a human on board since the final flight of Space Shuttle Atlantis went off without a hitch. Dragon Endeavour, which carried Doug Hurley and Bob Benkin to the ISS during the DM2 mission and the B1061 Booster, which carried crew 1 to the ISS, were both used for this mission. Bob Seat also stayed within the family. His wife, Megan McArthur, is the pilot of Crew 2, meaning she gets Bob's old seat. This mission also saw the first flight of an ESA astronaut aboard a commercial crew vehicle, being Tomar Poske. Jax got themselves another seat, this time being Akihiko Hoshais as mission specialist 1. And last but not least, Shane Kimbrough of NASA is the commander of the spacecraft. These astronauts also aren't new guys, each having at least one or two space flights under their belts already. Shane has previously flown on STS-126 and MS-02, Megan has previously flown on STS-125, Akihiko has previously flown on STS-124 and Soyuz TMA-03M. And Tomar, the only person in the group not to fly on a Space Shuttle, has only flown on Soyuz MS-03. I do find it slightly amusing that none of the crew have ever flown together, but every member has at least one flight directly before or after someone else's flight. We have STS-126, 125, 124 as well as Soyuz MS-02 and MS-03. I mean, it isn't really significant anyway, I just thought it was a fun fact. We're going to jump ahead about 23 hours now as the crew of Endeavour and the crew of the ISS got ready for the first docking of the mission. Slowly manoeuvring towards the Harmony module, soft capture officially occurred at 0908 UTC on the 24th of April, with the crew of four meeting the crew of Expedition 65 already aboard the station, being Crew 1's Shannon Walker, Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Switchy Noguchi, as well as MS-18's Oleg Novitsky, Piotr Dubrov and Mark van der Heij. We've got another ISS departure, but to keep everything a bit more organized, it's going to be in our Space Traffic Report at the end of the show. So don't go anywhere, instead, we're going to hop over down to the south of Texas, where some very, very exciting big rocket stuff is happening. SN-15 was set to fly the other day after some static fire tests that were so successful. This is the first time a Raptor engine hasn't had to be changed, and I would have hoped it went that way, because SpaceX have now installed three of their next generation improved Raptor engines, going along with the hundreds of design updates to SN-15. But sadly, SN-15 didn't leave the pad. An area a bit more busy was the land surrounding the brand new integration tower, which has already grown by three segments and a block of foundations. This is the tower, which will stand alongside a fully-stanked orbital-capable Starship, providing all the technical bits and bobs it all needs, and it will hold the big arms that could catch Super Heavy by its grid fins unless another wacky idea is thought up. SpaceX have also received permission to connect a Starlink from the Starship vehicle, meaning they are already preparing for the on-board Wi-Fi, which you will have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for, to use for 30 minutes at a time. Or it will be free, they don't usually follow in the footsteps of other businesses. In the meantime, however, SN-16 has been getting itself stacked up. In preparation to go into some testing right after its older sibling is done playing with the launch pad. On the 2nd of May, the pre-assembled nose cone and all of the larger ring sections holding the fuel tanks were brought into the high bay, where, you guessed it, they were stacked on top of each other. Now, here's a question for the average space flight fan. Do you remember Stratto launch? The carrier vehicle, Rock, has only flown once, and that was two years ago. Or has it? April 29th saw the second test flight of the aircraft, spending three hours and 13 minutes flying around the skies over the Mojave Desert. Reaching a maximum altitude of around 14,000 feet, it didn't exactly go very high in terms of normal aviation, but this was a test flight of the largest plane in the world in terms of wingspan. A top speed of 178 knots was reached, just slightly higher than the average VR or rotation speed of a Boeing 747, which again isn't very high in terms of other large planes, but again, this was a test flight and this is the largest vehicle in the world by terms of wingspan. No matter what altitude or speed was reached, it is always exciting to see this bird in the air, especially after a two-year hiatus out of the skies. Last episode, I was talking about SpaceX winning NASA's human landing system contract with their lunar variant of Starship. However, that decision has not been received lightly by Dynetics as the company has filed a protest against the U.S. government agency who has suspended work with SpaceX on the HLS contract. In Dynetic Size, once it became clear that NASA just didn't have the funding to support two landing systems, they should have revised the program or withdrawn the entire thing. The company argued that choosing only SpaceX was, and I quote, the most anti-competitive and high-risk option available. However, NASA did ask for $3.3 billion for the program and they did only receive 25% of that, meaning they couldn't afford multiple options. Dynetics have also argued that NASA could have asked everyone to try and make their proposals a bit cheaper, instead only asking SpaceX. Personally, I think Dynetics are just a little bit upset they weren't chosen for the contract. SpaceX are the only company out of the three chosen for the final round being SpaceX Dynetics and the national team that are actually flying hardware to do with the contract and proving that they can make this work. And doing it is always going to be a lot more impactful than just saying that you can do it. And doing isn't just a matter of having the right technology at the right time with the right amount of funding. No, you also need the right people working together. And although covering space policy isn't necessarily as glitzy or flashy or explodey as SpaceX or a whole host of other stories, it's still something that's very very important. And there has been a lot to talk about in space policy since our last tomorrow news episode. First and foremost, the doozy. On April 29th, former Florida Senator Bill Nelson was confirmed to the position of NASA administrator and not just confirmed either but confirmed by something called unanimous consent. Nelson was sworn in and became NASA's 14th administrator on May 3rd. His nomination was heralded widely across the space industry but the new space world has kept a healthy skepticism alive and we'll have to see what administrator Nelson does as he begins to take the reins at NASA. Personally with administrator Nelson's long experience on Florida's Space Coast, having flown as an astronaut on a space shuttle mission and his wide contacts not just in the United States Congress but all throughout the government of the United States, I think he's going to essentially be a little bit of do no harm but of course I could be wrong. I didn't really think administrator Jim Bridenstine was going to be very good and well he kind of blew me out of the water with that. And in our previous tomorrow news episode we confirmed that the Biden administration is giving the go ahead for the National Space Council to continue and in this episode of tomorrow news we can confirm Vice President Harris has officially taken up the mantle of having the National Space Council from former Vice President Pence. What Vice President Harris will do is yet to be seen. We're literally only a few days into her official acceptance of the role but reports are that there's actual excitement from her for the role so hopefully that bodes well for the future. The last space policy story of this week comes to us from NASA's Johnson Space Center where its director Mark Geyer is stepping down. After three years as the director of Johnson Space Center, director Geyer announced in a video that his reason for leaving his position was a need to focus on continued treatments for cancer that he has. He will retain a position in an advisory capacity for Johnson Space Center which Vanessa Weisch is now the director of Johnson Space Center. And we wish director Geyer all the best in his fight. Now let's go ahead and head over to Mars where history is being made right now. Last episode Dr. Tamethaskov covered the lead-up to Mars helicopter Ingenuity's first flight and we can now happily confirm on April 19th this happened. Touchdown and spin down. An ultimator data confirmed that Ingenuity has performed its first flight, the first flight of a powered aircraft in another planet. The first powered flight of a vehicle on another planet only took us 118 years to make it happen. Ingenuity rose to an altitude of three meters, hovered for 40 seconds and then came back down to a perfect landing. The team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory did not sit back and take a breather. No, they continued to push Ingenuity with further flight tests. Ingenuity's second flight saw the helicopter expand its flight envelope. It rose to an altitude of five meters, moved two meters from its starting point, returned to its starting point and then landed 52 seconds after takeoff. The third flight saw Ingenuity push even further, lifting off to an altitude of five meters, flying downrange 50 meters and then returning, touching back down after 80 seconds of flight. Its fourth venture into the Martian skies lasted for nearly two minutes, once again heading up to an altitude of five meters and then traversing 133 meters away from the landing site before returning. It's amazing to think that this project had humble beginnings in the question of what would it take to get something to fly on Mars. And now here it is because of the hard work and dedication that a team put into making the impossible happen. That's the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for you. Ingenuity is set to perform another test flight in just a few days where it will lift off from its initial area and then fly somewhere else and not return to where it took off at. No, it's actually going to fly down range somewhere and then find a place to land and figure that all out on its own. Now Ingenuity has been approved for a mission extension and they're expecting it to last all the way to August and they plan to fly it every other week. So I'm very excited to see the results that they're going to get from that and I'm more excited about the photos that we could get from Ingenuity because I kind of want to see perseverance in that beautiful Martian landscape. Sort of like an Ansel Adams image of the surface of Mars with a rover that just so happens to be in it. I think that would be absolutely astounding. Now in order for me to wrap up we unfortunately do have to talk about some sad news and that is the passing of astronaut Michael Collins. Born October 31st 1930 Michael Collins joined the United States Air Force and became a fighter pilot initially flying the F-86 Sabre before touring the world to eventually return after an accepted application to the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. He applied to be an astronaut in 1962 but was initially rejected. He applied again in 1963 and was accepted. After years of training in 1966 he was assigned to be the pilot of Gemini 10 performing two extra vehicular activities. Collins' candid nature and cool demeanor led to him being initially assigned to the originally planned Apollo 9 mission the one that would eventually morph into what we now know as Apollo 8 but surgery for a herniated disc kept him off of the schedule and he was reassigned to be the command module pilot of Apollo 11. His job as the command module pilot was to set about making sure that every single aspect of the mission occurred as flawlessly as he could deliver to Commander Armstrong. He was extremely proud of the work that he did and he showed little jealousy for Neil and Buzz's moonwalk nor did he seek fame after the mission's return keeping to himself for the rest of his life. He resigned from NASA shortly after Apollo 11 and would eventually become the director of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. He'd also move into the commercial sector and retire in 1985. Ever the master of words his autobiography carrying the fire is considered one of the best if not the best autobiographical book by an astronaut and he left more than just a legacy of his works. He also left a moment of himself on Apollo 11's command module Columbia having written a note in the equipment bay that will stay with humanity's greatest accomplishment. Spacecraft 107, alias Apollo 11, alias Columbia the best ship to come down the line. God bless her. Michael Collins command module pilot. For me growing up I almost felt somewhat bad for Collins considering he never landed on the moon and his fellow crewmates did. If I was in his situation I'd be gutted that I wasn't selected to be the first or second guy to walk on the lunar surface and instead keep the mothership alive orbiting around the moon. But that's the thing Collins was selected for that role because of his attitude. He was so relaxed you can see that in what he went on to do to be a museum director and a painter and a poet and Collins was just that tiny pinch of gold dust you find in astronauts and test pilots. He was made of the exact right stuff but was also super chilled about everything he did and that is why he's going to be missed so much and I don't believe there will ever be anyone else like him and on that note let's look at some of the space traffic from the past week. Site 1S at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia played host to the launch of OneWeb6 at 2214 UTC on April 25th. All 5,310 kilograms of future internet communication satellites successfully made their way to the initial 450 kilometer orbit with the final 1,200 kilometer orbit expected to be reached soon. Hoping to the opposite side of the world to the location this time being Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California United Launch Alliance's 143rd mission started at 2047 UTC the next day April 26th. This beautiful Delta IV heavy lifted into the sky for the 13th time carrying the National Reconnaissance Officer's payload too well somewhere. Because this is a national security mission we only got to see the launch. It doesn't get much better viewing wise with this launch out of China however but at least we did actually get footage of the launch. April 27th at 0320 UTC played host to the launch of this Long March 6 rocket out of LA-16 at the Taiyan Satellite Launch Center. The payload of Kiru-1, Kiru-4 and some rideshare satellites can have a maximum mass of 1,080 kilograms and they are all headed for some synchronous orbit. April 29th at 0150 UTC saw the Earth departure of this Vega rocket carrying the Pay-D's NEO-3 payload to a 620 kilometer circular orbit. Taking off from ELV-1 at the Guyana Space Center in Coral French Guyana the first flight for Vega in 2021 looked spectacular lighting up the night time South American skies. Next up we had a Long March 5 B launch but it wasn't just any Long March 5 B launch it was a special one as well. The core module for China's Taiyan space station was aboard. Lifting off at 0323 UTC on April 29th out of LC-1 at the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Henan Island, just one and a half hours after the Vega launch the first stage of the rocket did a fantastic job to carry the module to its intended orbit. In fact it did too well of a job as the first stage managed to put itself into orbit as well. Originally destined for the South China Sea we now don't know where the booster will end up. A lot of stuff at the moment is ending up over the Indian and Pacific oceans but this re-entry is uncontrolled so we'll just have to wait and see. And after that launch we had the third launch of the day and it hadn't even raised 4am UTC yet. At 0344 UTC just a smooth 21 minutes after the Chinese launch 60 more styling satellites launched for low Earth orbit from Slick 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Atop this B-1060 booster. Successfully landing or just read the instruction 633 km downrange the booster completed its seventh flight to date. The next launch of the week came from China again being the launch of this long march 4C out of the Jiquan satellite launch center carrying the Yangan 34 remote sensing satellite. But wait there's more. The crew of crew 1 boarded Dragon resilience and undocked themselves at 035 UTC on May 2nd finishing the longest U.S. launched crewed presence in orbit ever in history at 168 days. That's the longest since Skylab 4 back in the 70s. Seven hours and a re-entry phase later the vehicle was absolutely pelting its way across the sky until at last the drogue shoots were deployed. A few minutes later the drogues pulled out the mains slowing resilience down to a safe speed and a few minutes after that the vehicle splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico ending the first ever fully operational commercial space mission in history. Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Soichi Naguchi were also the only astronauts to take part in a U.S. night splashdown since the crew of Apollo 8 did over 50 years ago. That is our only Earth arrival so let's have a look at the final launch of the week. Guess what it's another starlit launch SpaceX absolutely blasting through launchers this year 12 in total and so far being the sole launcher from Florida. The B1049 booster started its 9th flight at 1901 UTC on May 4th carrying 60 starlit satellites to low Earth orbit just like the styling 24 mission. After a very smooth lift off from LC39A 8 minutes later we were treated to another as expected smooth touchdown on the Droneship of course I still love you with this very very very very very cool camera angle I absolutely love it. Anyway that's it for space traffic so let's have a look at some upcoming departures. And here is your space weather with Dr. Tan with a scope. Space weather this week dies down just a little bit but the lull isn't going to last. As we take a look at our front-sided disk you can see the Sunspot Trio region 28, 18, 20 and 21 it's finally rotating off of the Earth-facing disk onto the Sun's far side and that means that flare activity is beginning to die down a little bit as well as the solar flux is dropping but amateur radio operators and emergency responders don't worry about it the solar flux not going to stay dead for very long. It will rise again because we do have some more bright regions that are going to be rotating into Earthview over the next few days or so. Also on top of that we do have a few small coronal holes that are going to be rotating in through the Earth strike zone and these will be sending us some tiny pockets of fast solar wind and we should see maybe a bump up in aurora activity especially at high latitudes but it's not going to last all that long before things begin to calm back down and then across the Earth-facing disk there isn't all that much but you do see on the east limb a few bright regions beginning to rotate into view those are those new regions and I tell you on the Sun's far side they're getting pretty busy. In fact as we switch to our far-sided Sun now this is Stereo A and it's looking at the Sun a little bit from the side you can see those bright regions in the south as they rotate into Stereo's view and you can see them kind of getting a little puff here and there in fact pow right there that is a solar storm launch in fact that solar storm was launched toward Mars now luckily there isn't a radiation storm associated with this solar storm and it looks like that solar storm is going to go off to the east of Mars instead of hitting Mars directly so Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Helicopter are all in the clear but it does mean that as these regions rotate into Earth view we do have another solar storm player so aurora photographers we could get some more chance for aurora here over the next week or so but thankfully the radio noise from these region is not that big a deal so space traffic and the radio comms look like they're all good for more details on this week's space weather including when and where you can see aurora and how those new incoming bright regions are going to affect you come check out my channel or see me at spaceweatherwoman.com and before we leave for another week I want to make sure we thank all the incredible support of the citizens of tomorrow the escape velocity orbital sub orbital and ground support citizens all contribute to the show and help keep it running if you'd like to contribute financially as well you can head on over to youtube.com forward slash tmro forward slash join and join as a youtube member for just as little as $1 a month that's it for the first show of May and I hope you have enjoyed we'll be back soon with some more spaceflight action but until then stay safe add astro michael and may the fourth be with you