 Hello citizens of Earth and welcome to tomorrow news. Very glad to have you here because this week Ryan is going to be talking about SpaceX sending up its next batch of satellites that make people like me, astronomers, quite nervous and I'll talk a little bit about why we're nervous with that and additional satellites going up as well. We're also going to cover NASA's lunar ambitions gaining a contract and projects. Projects are starting up again. Yay, projects. Before we officially get started just want to remind you of course that if you really like what we do here tomorrow don't forget to subscribe to us, like our videos, hit the notification bell, share our videos everywhere that you can because every little bit does help and we're here to try to get the cosmos out to as many people as possible. So let's go right into it because this is your tomorrow news for June 10th, 2020 and Ryan what have you got for us this week? The future for reusable capsules is bright as NASA and SpaceX have changed their contract to allow previously flown Dragon spacecraft to now carry humans into space. This is going to say SpaceX money as for every crew launch they won't have to build a whole new spacecraft although it does make me wonder will the name given by the previous crew stick around or will a new crew pick a new name? It's not only talks around Dragon reuse at the moment as the Falcon 9 has now flown for a record-breaking fifth time twice. This is getting us closer to Elon Musk's goal of 10 reflights of a Block 5 booster with little to no refurbishment which is very very exciting. The styling satellites for this flight have been equipped with sunshades to reduce the visible brightness here on Earth. In my opinion this is a good move by SpaceX to keep the astronomical community happy and not restrict their work whilst also not affecting the logical cadence of the satellites. The B1049 booster landed on what would usually be known as the West Coast Drone Ship Just Read the Instructions which was moved from the port of Los Angeles to Port Canaveral late last year although the drone ship named Just Read the Instructions wasn't actually the original Just Read the Instructions. Marmac 300, better known as Just Read the Instructions 1 was first announced to the world in October 2014 after SpaceX announced that they had contracted a shipyard in Louisiana to build it. On the 10th of January 2015 the first attempted landing occurred as part of the CRS-5 mission however this landing failed. 13 days after the launch Musk announced that the ship would to be named Just Read the Instructions after one of the general contact units found in Ian Banks the Player of Games. A sister ship was also announced and following the same name and convention it was to be named of course I still love you and it was planned for West Coast operations. If you're now confused on why everything is flipped don't worry because it's about to make sense. After the other failed landing attempt of CRS-6 Just Read the Instructions was retired and a lot of the parts were removed in order to make a new upgraded version. During this time of course I still love you was put in place to serve as the Atlantic drone ship where it still remains today. The remains of Just Read the Instructions were then placed onto a hull which would eventually bear the same name which would then be sent over to the West Coast to support launches from Slick 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base. In January of 2018 SpaceX announced a fourth drone ship to be named a shortfall of Gravitus. It was planned to enter service in mid 2019 however as we can see that hasn't happened. It is planned to go alongside of course I still love you supporting launches from both Launch Complex 39A and Slick 40 as there is a lot of planned launches from the Space Coast. Because this drone ship has not been constructed and SpaceX knew that they needed an extra drone ship for their hectic schedule they decided to bring around Just Read the Instructions to Florida where some of the drone ship had sort of helped with a not successful landing a few years earlier. Starship has now become SpaceX's largest priority and it is no question why it has as the production down in Boca Chica is absolutely shocking. Only two weeks after we lost SN4 SN7 is now under construction with the launch pad being prepared for SN5 testing. Another nose cone has also made its appearance and these things appear to be popping out of thin air at this point because the team is so quick producing these massive rocket parts. It's really good to see SpaceX addressing the problem with the Starlink brightness however one of their competitors has recently asked the FCC for approval for their own satellites so Jared take it away. Indeed Ryan and the bankrupt one web actually did put in a license to the FCC for 48,000 additional satellites in their constellation. Now if you take that and you add that to the number of satellites that are proposed by everyone all together that means that there would be over a hundred thousand satellites orbiting the earth and that would be a tremendous problem for ground-based astronomy. Credit where credit is due though SpaceX they are working closely with the American Astronomical Society to determine how to minimize the impact of their specific contributions to mega constellations with Starlink. Also Amazon's Project Kuiper is doing so as well but those other groups like OneWeb, Telesat and Boeing who all now have proposals for mega constellations they're as silent as space itself. This is an immensely complex subject for me and quite messy. As an astronomer myself I really want unfettered access to the skies I mean that's how we get our data that's how we understand the universe that's how we make these breakthroughs in technology and physics but at the same time I really do truly want internet to every single person especially those who can't access it. In a global survey conducted by the American Astronomical Society with 23 observatories a majority responded that yes even a relatively small mega constellation of 1500 satellites would impact their ability to observe and half of those observatories responded that the individual impact to observations alone would be catastrophic. The Vera Rubin telescope which will be one of the most potent telescopes at our disposal when it officially begins study sometime in 2022 is predicted to have up to 500 satellites visible all night long during summer. Yes all night long 500 satellites in its field of view and the argument is always made as well that oh well you know when these satellites are going to be going past so just don't do the observations at that time or prevent the satellite from being seen on the sensor that you're using use those little micro shutters in order to make that happen or use some powerful computer algorithms to get rid of the streak that's there or my personal favorite which shows me that you really don't know about telescopes oh just chuck it right into space those are all tremendously expensive i can't even begin to tell you how expensive a space telescope is if you'd like to just uh look at the james web space telescope now those are all not realistic solutions so right now this is quite a Kobayashi maru of a situation there's really no winning for anybody involved in some good news the lunar gateway continues to build steam nasa has formally issued the contract to northrop grumman to commence design and preliminary design review for the habitation and logistics outpost module for a cool 187 million dollars it's important to note that with this contract it covers the design all the way up to the preliminary design review so uh if they actually want to end up building the module they're probably going to have to do a whole new contract and in addition to that this was sole sourced just to northrop grumman themselves but after all they do have experience in building modules with the sygnus spacecraft which they're looking at basically using an upgraded system for the halo module now there were no launches this week but look at this we have got a lot of upcoming launches with the beginning of the covid 19 pandemic nasa decided to rightfully pull back their workforce on a lot of the projects that they are working on but they are starting to let some people begin to get back to work integration and testing of the james web space telescope were underway when covid 19 began to interfere with that work and personnel was dialed back to low levels northrop grumman was originally running 12 shifts a week at 10 hours of work but during the pandemic they had to scale that back to five shifts a week at eight hours of work that means that web will likely experience another delay to its march 2021 launch date but hopefully with the increasing work on the space telescope starting to ramp up that slip won't be as bad as those that we've had in the past and you know really this isn't a criticism this delay due to the covid 19 pandemic that is one that legitimately can be said to be the fault of no one involved in this project nasa stratospheric observatory for infrared astronomy also known as sofia is resuming operations this month as well it's a 2.5 meter infrared telescope in the back of a 747 sp that's flown to an altitude above most of the water vapor in our atmosphere which allows it to do proper infrared astronomy and it's an invaluable tool for astronomers that's been sorely missed since its grounding back in march and hopefully the upcoming budget for nasa doesn't continue these several previous year's attempts to mothball it near-earth object programs operated as best they could continuing to hunt for things that may one day slam into the earth several teams are now evaluating procedures for how to handle the potential of an impactor being discovered during a pandemic something that they have dubbed disaster layering and work for one of my favorite upcoming missions the neo surveillance mission using a space telescope to hunt for near-earth objects has continued unabated and as was noted in our upcoming launches rocket lab is back to work launching at 0443 tomorrow morning as you found out in my traditions last week i'll bring the donuts you bring the pancakes and to wrap up this week's edition of tomorrow news i just want to thank each and every one of you who helps contribute to the shows of tomorrow we really can't do this without you and each and every one of you who helps us out you are absolutely amazing it's greatly appreciated and if we ever meet in person make sure to get a high five from me now if you'd like to contribute to the shows of tomorrow head on over to youtube.com slash tmro slash join to do so and check out all of the great rewards that we have available to you at different levels of support it's more than just me giving you a high five or at least an iou for a high five you can check out things like our discord server and even get certain levels in our discord to see what's going on now of course watching our shows liking and subscribing setting up notifications and sharing us everywhere that you can is an incredible help as well and that's cco8 for this edition of tomorrow news thank you so much for joining us this week and until the next one remember stay safe stay healthy and keep exploring