 In this week's news, the first ever fully private flight to the ISS, we've got the latest on the Artemis One wet dress rehearsal and Amazon just bought a whole bunch of launches. This is tomorrow's Space News. Inspiration for may have been the first fully private crewed mission into orbit, however Axion-1 beats that by actually having a destination, being the first ever fully private crewed mission to rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station. Starting at 1517 and 12 seconds UTC on April 8th from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, the four-man crew of Michael Lopez-Ilegria, Nari Connor, Aityn Stibby and Mark Pathy began their 21-hour journey to the ISS. This was SpaceX's 13th launch of the year, in the 14th week of the year, keeping close to their average target of hitting approximately 60 launches before 2023. Unlike the NASA missions to the International Space Station, there was no continuous 24-7 coverage of the journey. However, the crew did hold an event informing us peasants back here on Earth of their current status of their voyage. At 12.29 UTC on April 9th, Dragon Endeavour docked to the Zenith port on the Harmony module, its third-time docking to the ISS. When the crew entered the station and met up with the crew already aboard, they held the official welcoming ceremony where Commander Lopez-Ilegria awarded the three paying customers with their astronaut pins. The Axion-1 crew will be conducting several scientific experiments and doing steam outreach, so be assured they're not just on the station to do backflips and frontflips in zero G, although I wouldn't be surprised if Connor, Stibby and Pathy did have a bit of fun for a few minutes. Not doing that on your first space flight would just be disappointing. The current plan is for the crew of Axion-1 to enter Dragon at the weekend and leave the International Space Station on Sunday before splashing down at the Atlantic Ocean on Monday, the 18th of April. Aityn Stibby is only the second person from Israel to enter orbit around the Earth, the first Israeli astronaut being Ilyan Ramon, who sadly died along with their six fellow crewmates during the last re-entry of Columbia. Because of this, Aityn's mission segment has been named Laquia, the title of the book which published recovered fragments of Ilyan's diary following STS-107. Heading down to Starbase for the first time this week, the team in the high base stacked the aft section of Ship 24 onto the top of Booster 8, presumably to make sure that the booster and ship fit each other, and everything is how it should be. This also fuels the Ship 24 and Booster 8 going orbital theory and shortly afterwards, the section was removed. Ship 24's liquid oxygen tank section has been moved into the high bay, where all the different sections of the ship will be stacked together. One of NASA's space flight's robotic cameras caught some welding happening, but you can only really see the top section being rotated. Ship 24's nose cone was rolled over to the high bay, which was followed by Ship 24's payload bay section, which were then stuck together in the high bay. The ship which Ship 24 is replacing, Ship 20, has been moved from beside the orbital launch mount to suborbital pad B. We don't know why, but it's probably safe to make the assumption that they just want to make some space as this hardware is now outdated. Booster 7 has been removed from the orbital launch pad and placed onto the structural test stand, also known as the can crusher. This has straps which hook onto the top of whatever it's testing, which then pulls down to simulate the structural loads during max Q. The orbital launch tower is receiving upgrades with these GSE pipes being lifted up and the contraptions hanging off the side have also been testing. The quick disconnect arm was rotated away whilst the chopsticks were lifted up and rotated as well. One and a half domes have been taken to the scrapyard, interestingly one of them being the newer design we saw in the production facility just a couple of weeks ago, which has been replaced by this similar looking dome. The work on the wide bay has continued as the building is now nearly fully covered in the grey panning. Before we move on I just want to share this footage of the Boca Chica tracking station during Axion 1, it's just very fascinating to me watching the dishes move. France is currently going through their latest presidential election and the country has also just removed SpaceX's license to provide Staling internet services in the nation. The French telecommunications regulator RCEP should have launched a public consultation before authorising Staling in February last year, according to a ruling from the Consa de Ta. This ruling comes after two different French environmental activist organisations submitted an appeal to challenge RCEP's decision on frequency rights with the managing director of one of the activist groups calling for better protection of the night sky with stronger regulations on mega constellations like Staling. They might need to keep their eyes peeled however as another constellation has just purchased a lot of launches or on that in a moment. South Korea may be developing their first domestic rocket called Nuri, however they're still purchasing rides on other vehicles such as the Falcon 9 which has just received a contract for five launches by 2025 and at least one launch before the end of next year. That first launch will be at 800 kilo, a electro-optical infrared military satellite with four other synthetic aperture radar military satellites following on in the other missions. These satellites are involved with the 425 project which is a space-based reconnaissance project which South Korea's Ministry for Defence created in 2018 in order to take a closer look at what their neighbours to the North were up to. This isn't the first mission SpaceX has sold to South Korea, that being a NACIS-2 in July 2020, but it is their largest order to date. The SLS wet dress rehearsal has been taken a little bit of time to boot up and get going. The delays we saw last week were with the pressurisation of the mobile launcher platform, the platform which SLS sits on and what is rolled out to and from the launch pad. And the delays have also come from a helium valve problem which halted the rehearsal just before the ground team started to load hydrogen. Because NASA isn't providing us with any countdown net, the only way we know what's going on with the SLS rocket is through the NASA Exploration Ground Systems Twitter account which has been providing us with daily updates. Firstly, they informed us that the wet dress was delayed until April 9th with T0 being planned for 1440 local time on April 11th. However, on April 9th the official NASA Twitter account announced that SLS is going to conduct a quote unquote modified wet dress rehearsal in preparation for Artemis 1 with tanking operations no earlier than April 14th. If it does occur on Thursday then we'll definitely talk about it on the live show on Friday so make sure you're subscribed for that. Amazon has signed multiple contracts with three launch providers for a combined total of 83 launches. Yes, 83 launches for their Kuiper satellite constellation from ULA, Ariane Space. I can just imagine the board meeting where this was decided, someone just showing the person in charge of choosing the vehicle three rocket pictures asking what rocket do you want and then the person choosing just replied with yes. That 83 number is also in addition to 9 Atlas 5 launches Amazon have already purchased as well as the prototype launch this year on ABL Space Systems RS1. The Ariane 6 Vulcan and New Glenn are all vehicles which has hardware which actually exists in some way or another so it was a safe bet to go with these vehicles from Amazon's perspective. Blue Origin also obviously has relations with Amazon both being founded by the same person. Ariane Space has a contract for 18 Ariane 6 launches the largest contract in their history according to their CEO. ULA has a contract for 38 Vulcan flights and Blue Origin has currently sold 12 New Glenn flights with an option for 15 more. Notably absent is SpaceX because Starlink is a direct competitor with Kuiper. We have seen one web now jump ship over to Falcon but Amazon obviously have decided to go their own way with a choice of three vehicles which in fairness it does come with built-in redundancy. Whichever of the three vehicles is ready to fly first Amazon can get going with and then when the other two come online it's just an added bonus. These launches will need to come soon however as half of the 3,236 planned satellites need to be launched by July 2026 and the rest of the constellation has to be in orbit by 2029 due to Amazon's FCC license. Antonov aircraft are some of the most popular when it comes to transporting big satellites as it's the quickest way to move them without needing to put it on a boat or a truck but with the current ongoing war in Ukraine some of these aircraft have either been destroyed or they're preoccupied for military use. The AN-124 has a cargo cabin size of 1040 meters cubed making it the largest cargo plane available for commercial use following the destruction of the AN-225 Maria. Even the Queen of the Skies the 747 has a smaller capacity with the largest freight variant the Dash 8F at 693 meters cubed and those aircraft just aren't suitable for the role as well. SES has said they're going to be transporting their SES-22 satellite over the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to North America by boat and the MESAT 3D satellite will most probably have to do the same. An Antonov aircraft also won't be used to transport the Viasat 3 to the Capefoot launch on a Falcon Heavy later this year as Viasat has opted to truck it across the country from California. They haven't confirmed whether their original intention was to fly it however so that could just be a coincidence. I haven't mentioned one of the obvious cargo aircraft yet and that's intentional. The Airbus Beluga has carried spaceflight hardware before carrying the Columbus module from Bremen Airport in Germany to the KSC for launch on Atlantis for STS-122. That however was with the original Beluga, not the new Beluga XL which entered service in 2019 with a 6 ton increase in payload capacity and with that let's head into some space traffic. 2347 Coordinated Universal Time on April 6th saw Gauphin 3 Gaunt 3 commence on a Long Light 4C, lots of these, from Site 9401 SES-2 at the Jiquan Satellite Launch Centre in China. The Gauphin constellation is a constellation of Earth observation satellites used for subjects such as geographical mapping, environmental research and a climate change monitoring. The next day, April 7th, at 1120 UTC saw Lotus S1 launch 6 launch atop a Soyuz 2.1B from Site 433 at the Plesets Cosmodrome in Russia to a sun-synchronous orbit. The Lotus S1 series runs alongside the Pion NKS series of satellites which together make the Lana military surveillance constellation. There isn't any footage of this launch as of yet, so what you're seeing here is a previous Lotus S1 launch during a blizzard back in 2017. I've already covered AX1, so here's what's coming up this week. We have China sat 16 on a Long March 3B and Roll 85 on a Falcon 9 and a Long March 4C launch and there and back again on an AX1 launch. If you wish to financially help the show and contribute monthly, then becoming a citizen of tomorrow is the best way to do it. If you want to get access to space news scripts as they're being written and the pre-imposed show tomorrow live broadcasts and then consider joining the Escape Velocity, Orbital, Suborbital or Ground Support Citizens at youtube.com slash tmro slash join or the join button below. 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