 Hello everybody and welcome back to Tomorrow News. China's been busy, so has Virgin Galactic and SpaceX has got another contract or two. If you like what you see, why not consider hitting that subscribe button and hitting the bell so you don't miss another episode of the show. Without further ado, stay tuned as this is your episode of Tomorrow News for the week of May 24th, 2021. The first company you'd probably expect me to talk about in the SpaceX update is SpaceX, but this week is Firefly Aerospace. Their Blue Ghost Lander is aiming to make it to the moon by 2023, to carry 10 payloads on a mission which is a part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Programme. All this detail is old however, as it was agreed within a contract Firefly One in February of this year. Now because of that you may remember who they are or their name may just ring a bell in your head. They are currently working on a small sat launcher named Firefly Alpha and you can pretty much see it as a rival to RocketLabs Electron. Now while the first iteration of this vehicle is expected to fly soon, it's not really capable at this stage to boost Blue Ghost off to the moon. They also have plans for a larger vehicle named Firefly Beta, but that isn't expected to be operational anytime soon as well. Therefore the company has had to look outside their own family of vehicles and the family they've set their sights on is SpaceX. The Falcon 9 has been chosen to launch the Lander as well as 150kg of additional payload on board Blue Ghost. With this contract for SpaceX, they now hold five of the six launches awarded within the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Programme. They're launching Mastin Space Systems, Mastin Mission One Lander, Intuitive Machines, two landers as well as Astrobotics, Griffin Lander which hold NASA's Viper Rover. Something else SpaceX are good at flying as humans and the fourth and final crew member has been selected for Crew 3. Introducing Kegah Barron, who has been assigned as one of the mission specialists. She'll be serving alongside the other mission specialist who is ESA's Mattias Mora. NASA's Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn will also serve as the commander and pilot of the mission respectively. Crew 2 didn't even launch that long ago and I'm already so excited to see Crew 3 leave the Earth because these are literally the stepping stones to get us humans to Mars, well at least in SpaceX's case. And one group that is not worried about stepping stones to Mars is China because their rover Zhurong has taken its proverbial first step onto the surface of Mars. Sitting atop its landing platform since its successful entry descent and landing on May 14th, the first thing that needed to occur was Tianwen-1, China's first and current Mars orbiter, needed to enter into a different orbit to act as a data relay. Then the low data rates meant that the packets of pixels trickled it. This explains why pictures were not received initially, but we have gotten some photos back now. And they show a typical Martian surface where Zhurong will begin its exploration. Checkouts of the rover and instrumentation aboard occurred over the next few days. The landing site of Utopia Planatia is a pretty interesting one even by Mars standards. There's instrumentation on board of Zhurong that may actually be able to detect if there is water ice just below the surface. And that would have massive implications not just for crews landing on Mars, but also for astrobiology that may happen there as well. Zhurong rolled off of its lander and onto the surface of Mars. The China National Space Administration has said that the expected mission duration is 90 salts, but there's been no word on the possibility of an extended mission, how Tianwen-1 would play into that, ground station operations, or how other factors would play into that. And we'll probably not really hear much either. I'm really looking forward to the data that we get back from Zhurong and seeing what its instrumentation onboard says about the Martian subsurface that's really a place that's not been explored particularly well. So I hope those investigations turn up something very interesting. And speaking of investigations, we unfortunately have a not so happy one to talk about, and that would be Rocket Lab with their recent launch failure on their 20th flight. An initial statement from Rocket Lab has said that preliminary reviews from data received point to an engine computer finding an issue right after the single Rutherford vacuum engine on the second stage started. The computer then issued a shutdown command to save the vehicle as design. Rocket Lab said that they hadn't seen that issue even during testing of the stage. As you can imagine, with the second stage not working as planned, Electron's 20th flight did not deliver its intended payload. And in addition to that, this is the second Electron failure in 10 months. So that's not exactly good for your launch success record. But if there is a silver lining to this, it is in regards to first stage recovery. On that first stage recovery front, everything looked excellent and does not appear to have been a contributing factor to the failure of Electron's upper stage. With the parachute recovery, the stage splashed down and will be taken back to the factory for evaluation as Rocket Lab continues to work towards making recovery a part of Electron's repertoire. And best of luck to Rocket Lab for resolving that issue and a safe return to flight as soon as they configured that out. Now it isn't just Electron that's going to be dealing with a little bit of a delay. United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket has a particularly interesting delay, one that I've never actually really heard of coming up. And it's not the fact that it's not going to be flying this year. No, it actually has to do with something else, but is also very, very important to the rocket itself. If you want to loft a payload for the United States government, you need certifications, where it be launch services, crew rating, or in this case, national security launch certification. Until you've flown a certain number of flights with your launch vehicle, you don't have it. And an upcoming mission intended to be covered by that, USSF 51, will no longer be launched by a Vulcan Centaur, but be transferred to an Atlas 5. Being a launch for the National Reconnaissance Office, there's not much known about who or why the switch is occurring. Typically three flights are needed for official certification, but United Launch Alliance agreed to give the United States government complete access to its research and development for Vulcan Centaur. So it will only need two. So what's the issue here? Is it Blue Origin's BE4 engine? The first stage of Vulcan Centaur is set to use two of Blue's BE4 Methylox engines that they've been developing. A statement a few days ago from Blue Origin said that the development of their BE4 engine is on track to deliver it specifically for Vulcan Centaur by the end of this year. And then United Launch Alliance put out a statement that said Vulcan Centaur will launch when the customers are ready to launch. So what's up? I don't know, but the switching of a payload from Vulcan Centaur to the Atlas 5 will have some repercussions. There is of course, as mentioned earlier, the matter of enough launches for official certification. The longer that takes, the greater the possibility of Vulcan Centaur losing out on government launch contracts. And let's face it, those are some pretty tasty contracts. In addition, the United States Department of Defense can only allow the Atlas 5 to win in launch on contracts that occur before December 31st, 2020. And this is due to sanctions on purchases of the Russian RD-180 engine it uses in its first stage in the continuing aftermath of 2014's annexation of Crimea. Most painful though is that the contract's payout price remains the same as that for Vulcan Centaur, which is supposed to be cheaper and was big cheaper than an Atlas 5 would have been. That means that United Launch Alliance eats any and all additional costs and it may require to launch USS F-51 on an Atlas 5. So a little bit of pain involved in that there, ouch! And I guess a very necessary ouch! And you know, I don't really want to talk about pain for very often, so why don't we talk about a really cool story that's coming out of the European Space Agency. And it's going to be involving the future of telecommunications, not of this Earth. Two contracts from the European Space Agency have been doled out. One is going to Surrey Satellite Technology Limited and the other to a company called Telespazio. And they are for studies for a program called Moonlight. And this is to develop a network of communication spacecraft around the Moon. The idea of a telecommunications system or constellation at the Moon, specifically for missions at the Moon, is not new. NASA has their own idea called Lunanet. But what is new is that the European Space Agency is actually pushing those contracts forward to try to get it going. NASA's Lunanet is still in the formulation stage. And there's an incredibly cool mission coming out of the collaboration between the European Space Agency, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, and the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station. It's called Lunar Pathfinder. And this spacecraft will operate civil and commercial payloads and will provide data relay services and perform an experiment that I have never heard of before. And that is using the positioning signals being broadcast from the Galileo Navigation Satellite Constellation to determine its precise location. But of course, not on the Earth, but in orbit around the Moon. So yes, using navigation satellites for the Earth, but at the Moon, in an orbit around the Moon. Not on the Moon, around the Moon. Proposed to launch in 2024, the trio that are going to run Lunar Pathfinder are already thinking big in terms of sending it to other places besides the Moon. Yes, that's right. They're thinking about sending it to Mars to help provide telecommunication services there. So who knows what's going to happen in the future with that? Elon, you might want to get on Mars link as fast as you can. Now I want to jump back, still talk about the Moon, because the Moon is about to do something really, really cool. And I want to make sure that all of you who have a chance to actually go out and see this, do go out and see what the Moon is about to do. A total lunar eclipse is set to occur late Wednesday evening for Central and Western Asia, along with Oceania, and early Wednesday morning for North and South America on May 26th. The eclipse officially begins at 0847, coordinated universal time with the Moon touching the outside of the Earth's shadow called the penumbra. But this is an extremely subtle change, nearly impossible to catch with the naked eye. For most observers, 0945 universal time is when the real show begins, as the Moon begins to enter the deep interior of the Earth's shadow called the umbra. For nearly an hour and a half, it will slide into the shadow until it's entirely in the shadow at 1111 coordinated universal. This is the beginning of totality, when the Moon will be fully bathed in the red glow of light traveling through the Earth's atmosphere, but missing the surface of the Earth, only to land behind the planet and on the Moon. Truly, the light of all of the Earth's sunrises and sunsets appearing all at once. This total lunar eclipse's totality doesn't really last all that long, though, as the Moon just barely grazes through the umbra, reaching maximum eclipse just seven minutes later at 1118, and then beginning its exit out of the umbra at 1125 coordinated universal, a paltry 14 minutes. But I still recommend getting out and seeing. It's very cool to watch it slide into the umbra and then get red for the time that it will be there. The Moon will then gain itself back, fully exiting the umbra at 1252 universal, with a complete exit of the shadow of the Earth occurring at 1349 universal time. And you will have had a total lunar eclipse, or what we also consider a flat Earther's nightmare. Viewing a lunar eclipse requires no special equipment whatsoever. All you have to be able to do is somehow get your eyeballs looking up into the sky. And you also do have to be at the right place at the right time, but a very cool thing unlike a solar eclipse, where it's a very narrow window of time and a very narrow place on the Earth where you can actually see totality. With a lunar eclipse, it's literally more than half of a hemisphere of the Earth that gets to see it. And if unfortunately you're on a part of the Earth that doesn't get to see it, where I work at Griffith Observatory, we will be live streaming it. And I'm going to go ahead and make sure that we have a link to the live stream down in our description. So if you really want to watch it as it's going on, you can either step outside and take a look at it or watch Griffith Observatory's live stream. And if you do watch the live stream and you come on in, make sure to give a shout out. Say hello, let me know that you came in and just be respectful about it and be really, really cool about it. So let's go ahead and throw it back over to Ryan, who's going to tell us a little bit about a vehicle that I actually would love to ride one day. What've we got, Ryan? A few weeks back, Virgin Galactic unveiled their brand new shiny vehicle, Spaceship 3. However, it's older sibling is still getting all the action. The first flight to space in over two years commenced at 1634 UTC on March 22nd for Spaceship 2, aka VSS Unity, and the release from White Knight 2 occurred around an hour later. 60 seconds of a hybrid engine burn and the space plane was headed for space. Of course, this was a suborbital flight, but the vehicle didn't reach 100 kilometers, so technically it didn't make it to space in my books, but pretty much everyone disagreed with the border of space. You can squabble about it in the comments, I don't really mind, but for the purpose of simplicity, Unity went to space. On the first episode of the year, I did a story on the attempted version of this flight all the way back in December of last year, which failed to reach space due to some electromagnetic interference to do with the new flight computer system that Virgin had installed, and according to the company, the problem has been sorted, which is very good news indeed. This story has been slid in here because we only cover orbital flights in space traffic, which we're going to have a look at now. Only a couple to talk about this week, starting with ULA's second launch of the year, and their first of the Atlas V this year. Taking off from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 1737 UTC on May 18th, this four-metre wide-faringed, two-solid rocket motored and one engine on the Centaur-staged rocket lifted the Spurs Geo 5 payload to a geostationary orbit, where it will then orientate itself into a full geostationary orbit to serve its purpose as a missile warning system in the Spurs network. One whole day later on May 19th, China was back at it again for another launch, this time being a Long March 4B rocket carrying the Haiyang 2D payload, lifting off around 0403UT3 from Sight 9401 at the G-Quan Satellite Launch Center, 1,575kg of payload is currently headed for a sun-synchronous orbit. I think this is the first space-traffic report of the year without a hint of SpaceX to be seen, but they do have an upcoming launch. Before we head out for yet another exciting week of spaceflight, let's take some time to thank the citizens of tomorrow. The continued support from the escape velocity orbital, suborbital and ground support citizens makes this show possible, and if you'd like to join them and cash in on some of the available perks, such as watching us script these shows in front of your very eyes, I'd recommend you pop on over to youtube.com forward slash tomorrow forward slash join to join us as a member for just as little as a dollar a month. Thanks for watching everybody and until the next show stay safe and goodbye.