 Can I count on just my fingers the number of days until Starship's orbital flight? Astra and ESA both publish anomaly reviews, the number of toilets in space has reached 11 and much more is coming up in this month's first Tomorrow Space News. Ship 24 has had its aft flaps tied down, which on the surface doesn't seem like a huge development, however this usually only occurs when a roll down the highway is imminent. We know that the testing checklist is complete for Super Heavy Boost to 7, so could the orbital flight be just around the corner? If this is the case and S24 is soon on the move, then the timeline for the orbital flight test has just got a whole lot closer and much could, for once, actually be a viable launch month. Only time will tell if Elon Time has aligned with real time. Ship 28 has been getting its lift points attached, which are now the nose cone section and the full vehicle when it's mated to be lifted by a regular crane. The Flapless Ship 26 has been rolled back to the production site following its stay on one of the suborbital pads, which saw it conducting cryogenic proof testing. In production site development news, this drilling rig has been spotted, which could suggest that a new massive building is in the works, considering that sometimes it's a bit close for comfort in High Base 1 and 2 and that SpaceX wants to increase their current Starship and booster development race, I wouldn't be shocked if a new Megabay is starting to rise soon. And finally, the panelling around the orbital launch mount has been completed. The last two ISS crew missions on SpaceX's Dragon, Crew 5 and Crew 6 have both carried one Russian cosmonaut to the orbiting laboratory in exchange for flying an American astronaut on the respective Soyuz flights. For redundancy, NASA is interested in extending out this seat bar to a deal and they've been negotiating with their counterparts in Moscow. Crew 7 is the next flight to be added to the agreement, which is launching at the end of the current crew rotation in about six months' time. If this extra mission is agreed upon, then the opportunity to extend to Crew 8 would become a lot easier to unlock. In future with Starliner coming online, it is also in NASA's interest to fly integrated crews on Boeing's vehicle as well. The reason that NASA is so eager to fly Americans on Russian vehicles is because if for any reason Dragon can no longer fly, for example, if there is an anomaly on a flight that results in an extended investigation, NASA still wants a way of getting their crew to the ISS. And vice versa, if Soyuz for any reason cannot fly, Russia needs a way of getting their crews to the ISS. The American segment and the Russian segment rely on each other in orbit and without their respective crews to operate these modules, it could cause a big issue aboard the ISS. Roscosmos have already announced the crew members that it would fly on Crew 7 and Crew 8 if the agreement is reached, with Konstantin Borisov flying on 7 and Alexander Glebionkin on 8. Astra, the launch provider who have unfortunately become famous for not being very good at launching, has released the results of the investigation into their latest mission anomaly. The mission in question was this launch, Tropics 1, which commenced on the 12th of June from Space Launch Complex 46 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. What Astra have found is that following the separation of the second stage, the propellant burn was unusually high. This led to the propellant being used up at a quicker rate than the oxidizer, which resulted in about 20% of liquid oxygen not being used by the time there was no propellant left to burn. With no more propellant, the single aether engine on the upper stage could no longer produce any thrust and an orbital velocity could not be achieved. So what caused this unusually high rate of prop burn? The aether engine is regeneratively cooled, which essentially means that the cryogenic propellant is run through the engine bell before it is used for thrust to help keep the temperatures low, preventing the engine bell from melting. If this is still confusing, don't worry because there is an excellent video by Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut which I'll leave in the corner for you. After being sent through the regenerative cooling system, the propellant is sent through the fuel injector at the top of the engine where it is mixed with the oxidizer. Astra have concluded that this was partially blocked, which limited the amount of propellant that could get pushed around the engine. This means that there was less prop to absorb the heat, causing the combustion chamber wall to overheat and eventually the propellant started boiling. This led to the combustion chamber wall giving in and burning through. This blockage has been put down to gaseous fuel. After working through some tests with their pneumatic and pressurization systems, a gaseous helium leak was determined to not be the cause of this blockage. So now there's essentially a hole in the combustion chamber, which means that the propellant, instead of being sent around and up into the fuel injector, is being dumped into the stream of ejected fuel. To put the cherry on top of the cake, that wasn't the only issue with the engine. As well as using the propellant as a coolant, there is a thermal barrier coating inside of the combustion chamber. It's been determined that a little piece of this was eroded, which meant that the temperature the propellant was being exposed to was much higher than expected and therefore it couldn't do as good as a job to help cool the engine. Astra have been running many experimental engine tests to try and recreate the issue, preheating the propellant to create the most advanced thermal model they have to date. They found that the margin between a nominal fuel flow and the propellant boiling was very small, which meant that even small weather changes such as launching on a warm Florida day could push the propellant over the edge and into a boiling state. What you're looking at right now is an image from engine testing, and you can see these bright streaks at the end of the flame. That's burned through debris being ejected from the engine. As you may already know, pretty soon after this anomaly, Astra refocused its efforts on their next rocket, Rocket 4. This design will incorporate numerous upgrades over Rocket 3, including a new upper-stage architecture that will eliminate the issues faced with the Tropics 1 mission. Issues that could have been the cause of the blockage but weren't, such as gaseous helium, are also being worked to ensure that there cannot be a problem with Rocket 4 flights. Personally, I really hope that Astra can push through this difficult time, apply their new company core values and make it out on the other side. They're one of a few launch providers who are working to fly out of the United Kingdom, so I think it's pretty self-explanatory why I really want Rocket 4 to work. The full investigation has been published to Astra's website, you'll be able to find the link in the description down below. It goes into more detail than you'll ever need, so if you've got a few minutes, I'd recommend giving it a read. There's another Rocket failure investigation out, and it's the report on the second flight of the Vega C, Ariane Space's newest medium-lift launch vehicle. The mission, named VV-2-2, failed to deliver the Pleiades Nio 5 and 6 observation satellites following an issue with the vehicle's Tefila 42nd stage. The issue has now been identified as an over erosion with the throat of the nozzle on the solid second stage, which is constructed out of carbon-carbon. This material is extremely strong when faced with extreme thermal conditions, which has led ESA to conclude that the quality of the material used with this specific nozzle's throat was not of the standard required. The criteria that the material needs to meet is obviously not correct, so the restrictions on the carbon-carbon are being refined. Therefore, the manufacturer of Vega C, Avio, is switching the carbon-carbon that is being used in the second stage to that which is already being used in the third stage, which is known as the Severo 9. With these changes in material, the Severo 40 solid rocket motor should become more reliable. ESA expect the Vega C to be flying again before the end of the year, and it is important for the agency's domestic launch services for this vehicle to get operational as soon as it is safe to do so. Without Soyuz available, the only vehicle Ariane Spacer currently flying is the Ariane 5, which is a bit overpowered for many payloads. Just like with Astra's investigation, ESA's is linked down below. SpaceX have been absolutely smashing their launch cadence with three epic launches that you don't want to miss. But quickly, before we get into the week's launches, thank you to the citizens of Tamara, our YouTube members, who help to cover the costs of Station 204 every month. If you want your name at the end of the news and the live shows every week, head over to the join button below and consider joining the System Support, Grand Support, Suborbital, Orbital, Escape Velocity or Plaid Pro Plus ranks today. Of course, if you just want to share the show with your friends, that's also super helpful to grow the community. Right then, let's look at the launches. There's been three launches this week and they've all been from SpaceX, the first of which was Starlink Group 6 Mission 1, the first flight of the brand new Starlink V2 Mini satellites. These are smaller versions of the satellites which will be flying on Starship, however they still do provide a big increase in bandwidth. If you'd like to find out more about them, I did an entire segment on them last week, which you can access at the card in the corner of the screen. This flight commenced at 23.13 universal time on the 27th of February from Slick 40 at the Cape. There are 21 satellites crammed into the fairing, all weighing in at about 750 kilos and they were all successfully delivered to their initial 365x373km 43° low-earth orbit. They'll be raising themselves up to a 530km circular orbit over the next few weeks. In the meantime, the booster supporting this mission, B107-6, concluded its third flight by touching down on the Drain Ship, a shortfall of Govertas which marked SpaceX's 100th consecutive successful landing of an orbital class booster. Next up is Crew 6, the latest crew to flight to the International Space Station. This flight commenced at 0534 UTC on Thursday, March 2 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On board Crew Dragon Endeavour was Commander Stephen Bowen, the only non-rookie of the mission, Pilot Woody Hoberg, Mission Specialist Sultan al-Niyadi and Mission Specialist Andrei Fideov. Booster number B107-8 was supporting this mission and a rarity these days is a brand new booster. Departing the launch pad clean, it arrived on the Drain Ship dirty, touching down on just read the instructions. Following a successful coast up to the station, Endeavour docked to the Zenith port on the Harmony module just over 24 hours later at 0640 Universal on Friday. After hatch opening, the Crew 4 were welcomed to Expedition 68 by the Crew of Crew 5 and the Crew of Soyuz MS-22 and the NAC MS-23. Unfortunately due to the lack of TDRS coverage at the time, no video is available of the docking. Here's another Starlink launch for you, except it's just a boring batch of V1.5 satellites. Launching at 1838 Universal on Friday, 51 satellites were delivered to a 222x330km 70° in a short low-earth orbit. The booster supporting this flight, B1061, is one of the oldest in the fleet as it concluded its 12th flight on Of Course I Still Love You. Coming up over the next seven days, Japan and Mitsubishi are going to try and launch their brand new cost-plating H3 rocket again from Tanagashima. Relativity is attempting their maiden flight with the brand new Terran-1 small satellite launcher on Wednesday from the Cape. SpaceX are helping out one way again on Thursday with an RTLS recovery also from the Cape. A few hours later, China is launching an unknown payload on a long-much 4C from Taiwan and on Sunday the Proton-M is flying once again with the launch of Olympica II from Baikina in Kazakhstan. Coming up on tomorrow over the next week, Dr. Timothy Scove will be updating us on the Sun's activity. Me and Jared will be live on Friday night with our weekly live show and I'll be back next Monday with much more news. Hopefully we'll catch you then, but for now, thank you for watching and goodbye.