 Hello everyone, Tomorrow News is back yet again for some more juicy space updates. What happened to Starship SN11? Who else is going on inspiration for and how is Perseverance doing up on the surface of Mars? All these will be answered in only a short amount of time so make sure to subscribe and ring that bell if you like the content you are seeing from us and get ready as this is your episode of Tomorrow News for the week of April 18th 2021. If you caught the broadcast of SN11's little hop you'll know that we couldn't really see anything due to extremely heavy fog like that's in Vandenberg. From every single angle within or outside the exclusion zone you just couldn't see anything. The only place we could get some good-ish high quality footage was the official SpaceX livestream which themselves could only sometimes get streams from the onboard cameras. Everything was going well from what we could see the launch was smooth and the flip was correct and even got the ignition of one raptor engine where the feed froze and that was because this happened. Speculation has brought us all to hopefully accurately assume that the flight termination system was activated and that SN11 was off its planned trajectory. This footage from cosmic perspective clearly shows the sky lighting up orange and then debris falling quite heavily kicking up mud and dirt from the ground surrounding their camera equipment. That's nearly 1,950 square meters worth of steel hurtling towards the ground. I think we can all now see why all the content creators down in Texas were so scared about their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment getting chopped up by this falling wreckage. The biggest thing that sucks about this failed attempt is of course the fog as we couldn't see what happened. We obviously could see the result, the vehicle was literally all over the landscape but we couldn't see what happened to cause the speculated flight termination. Our best guess is that the vehicle was too off course and would have hit the ground no matter what and I guess several little hunks of steel hurt less than the 70 meter tall tube of it. No worries though SN15 is right round the corner quite literally as it was rolled out just a few days after the SN11 wreckage had been cleared up. And if you're wondering where SN12, 13 and 14 went, SpaceX built too many starships too quickly so by the time they got to fly SN11 newer technology which was in SN15 needed to be tested which made the missed out vehicles redundant. One of the parts which received development was the Raptor engines as three arrived the other day and a noticeable change to the plumbing could be seen. Something else new with Starship is this brand new version of the Lunavarian which has now been officially selected by NASA to land the first crew on the moon as a part of their Artemis program. Ever since proposals for this contract have been created SpaceX is always going to be the wackiest considering that Starship is larger than the gateway itself so it was suspected that they wouldn't get the job as Dynetics and the national team's entries looked a lot more fitting but alas SpaceX was the only company shooting stuff into the air so they were selected to be the recipient of the $2.89 billion contract. The updates to the design include some new landing engines which could be a new engine entirely or a compacted version of the Super Draco found on Dragon. They also include some new solar panels and some new windows as well as a revised crane system to lower the crew and cargo down to the lunar surface. Now if the standard variant of Starship wasn't enough to satisfy your Kerbal itch then this certainly will. Just look at the size of the astronauts down here at the bottom vehicle and now look at the size of them compared to the only ever operational lunar lander in human history. They're tiny. Inspiration 4, the mission slated to be the first ever fully civilian private spaceflight has just got a unique upgrade to the Dragon spacecraft that will be used. As the vehicle will not be docking with any other craft such as the International Space Station they don't need a docking port so instead they get an extra window. How nice is that? But that isn't the only new addition to the mission as we have two brand new crew members completing the total four. Taking the seat generosity this man is Chris Sembroski. He is a US Space Camp councillor, he has conducted simulated shuttle missions and he has volunteered for ProSpace which was an effort to persuade the government to change legislation allowing private companies such as SpaceX to exist and operate. He has also served in the US Air Force. And last but not least Dr. Sion Proctor is taking the seat prosperity. Sion is a geoscientist and a science communication specialist. Spaceflight was literally in her life since the day she was born as she was actually born in the US territory of Guam whilst her father was working at a NASA tracking station there during the Apollo missions. She was also a finalist in the 2009 NASA astronaut program. For a very long time SpaceX have been attempting to recover their ferrings directly from the air using the boat's mistree and mischief but it was made clear to them that direct recovery from the air was not necessary as the ferrings fished out of the ocean that had missed performed just fine in flight. Issues with nets being damaged have also led to a simpler solution. Introducing the newest member of the SpaceX fleet, Shilia Bordalon. Sporting a large platform and crane this is the perfect vehicle to go fishing for ferrings with. Crew 2 will be heading up to the international space station in a couple weeks so Dragon Resilience and also take the Crew 1 crew home needs to be relocated so the station actually had enough room for Crew 2 to arrive. Undocking from the Harmony modules forward port the spacecraft automatically relocated itself with no crew on board unlike the Soyage relocation that occurred last month. 30 minutes later the capsule redocked to the station at Harmony's space facing port. Just because the international space station crew took a break from moving the spacecraft and you may have taken a spring break and we tomorrow have taken a break from tomorrow news does not mean that nothing has happened in space. No space it never ever ever takes a break and have there been enough things for us to have a bonanza? Finally after weeks of waiting a successful green run of the space launch system core stage for Artemis 1 occurred on March 18th at 2037 Universal Time. Look at those absolutely beautiful specimens of hydrolox stage combustion and dang those engines sure do dance well. You guys want to do a dance with it? Let's do a dance with it. Green Run Part 2 went for the full plan duration of 8 minutes 20 seconds and NASA has confirmed that all data that was desired to be gathered was captured and that the test was a success declaring the NA Plus. NASA officials expect this core stage to arrive at Kennedy Space Center within the next month and even with a tight timeline NASA officials did mention that they're looking at opportunities to launch by the end of 2021. Will Artemis 1 happen this year? I don't know and I'm not going to be taking any bets because I still owe eating an RS 25 with mustard so I think I'm out of the betting pool for this one but that is quite an aggressive schedule for NASA to be trying to pull that off especially when you consider the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on NASA as a whole which a report recently released by them has shown that it's not just been scheduled that's taken a hit but it's also been the budget of NASA that's taken a hit from this pandemic as well. The Nancy Grace Roman telescope was hit particularly hard simply because of the pandemic's timing. March 2020 was its key decision point review which meant that one of the most critical times in development work for the mission as a whole was disrupted by the pandemic and it's not a cheap hit either it's likely going to cost the mission an extra 400 million dollars but that is spread across its lifetime. The space launch system burned into 360 million dollars due to the pandemic the Orion spacecraft bumped up 150 million dollars the James Webb Space Telescope increased by 100 million commercial crew slipped up five million dollars for the agency as a whole all of this together is roughly three billion dollars so the cost of a pandemic on a current space program's missions as a whole is roughly three billion dollars of which it is currently unknown how NASA will cover these additional costs. NASA did receive aid from the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act called the CARES Act which was passed in March of 2020 but that was a paltry sum of 60 million dollars shades of commercial crew funding if you ask me but that's budgets it's really hard to account for something like a major global level disruptive event like the COVID-19 pandemic has been in addition to that it's also very hard to work with your budget when it's locked especially when that law doesn't provide enough for you to handle those problems that may be occurring in the world after all it's a little inflexible in order to make that happen but let's add some happy news into this a really good idea is going to continue the National Space Council returned to existence in 2017 after the Trump administration issued an executive order and it became a useful tool for allowing industry and policy makers to come together and discuss the present issues in industry however with the election loss and the end of the Trump administration in January of 2021 the new biden administration came in and there was much speculation and even some doom and gloom with regards to the continued existence of this office of policy development to myself and others who actually pay attention to space policy all of that doom and gloom and running around with the sky falling was uh not really necessary when you look at the two major political parties here in the united states their positions on space flight were basically stay the course whatever was occurring at that time was going to continue to occur if they came in so when the biden administration just last week announced that the national space council would be renewed it came as well no surprise for us who you know pay attention the national space council is chaired by the vice president so previously that would have been former vice president mike pence but now with the biden administration in that means current vice president kamala harris will be in the seat now there is some friction about vice president kamala harris being put into that position and the people who are doing so say that it's because she lacks the experience in space flight and uh if you really want to talk about this realistically you also have to look at former vice president mike pence when he was put in as the head of the national space council in 2017 he also had oh right not very much experience in space flight either but he grew into that role and he did a very good job he became an excellent asset to the national space council so nothing says that kamala harris can't come in and do the exact same thing so hopefully that's what will happen and i'm really looking forward to seeing the continued efforts of the national space council working out space policy here in the united states it really has been a very big asset over the past four years so it's definitely a good idea and i'm very glad to see that this good idea is continuing now if i had any advice that i would give to kamala harris it would simply be pay attention to mars and uh that's it that's my segue into the uh the next bit virgin galactic was in the news last month because of some delays around the first public flight of spaceship two however in the meantime the company have revealed their brand new class on vehicle called spaceship three and before i show you the photo virgin what on earth are you doing with your brand you spell spaceship one with the word one spaceship two with the word two but now for some unknown reason spaceship three is with roman numerals like what on earth is that for that makes no sense featuring structural improvements and a shiny new livery this is vs s imagine virgin galactic's president of space missions and safety mug moses has said that it looks no different from the outside well i mean he isn't wrong the differences instead come from the vehicle's construction the design is the same but the insides are very different spaceship three was built in different sections and then slotted together like a big lego set compared to spaceship two which was mostly built as one whole piece because of a more efficient construction process there is less vehicle mass meaning there is more payload space making imagine a more useful and efficient vehicle we've got a lot of launches to cover so let's pop on over to some space traffic this saw used 2.1 a launched the ces 500 one satellite and some other rideshare payloads out of site 316 at the biker nor cosmodrome in kazakhstan at 0607 utc on march 22nd gk launch services is now sending all 800 kilograms of cargo to its intended 310 mile some synchronous orbit later the same day at 20 to 30 utc rocket lab was launching out of new zealand once again specifically launch complex 1a at the mahir peninsula all of the cargo was made up of a rideshare payload consisting of around 230 kilograms worth of satellites these small sats will soon find their home somewhere between 280 and 340 miles above the earth two days later on march the 24th at 08 28 coordinated universal time the b106o booster carried the 22nd batch of 60 styling satellites to low earth orbit successfully landing eight minutes later on the drone ship of course i still love you this was the sixth successful launch and landing of this booster march 25th at 0247 utc saw one of styling's main competitors launch another piece of their constellation it was the launch of one web 5 going off without a hitch the second Soyuz launch of the week successfully placed all 34 satellites into low earth orbit the fourth launch of the week is from site 9401 at the gkwan satellite launch center in china or at least it was until it took off garafan 12 lifted to the skies on march 30th atop this long march 4c at 2245 utc as what has become the standard with chinese launches we don't know much about the remote sensing satellite apart from it's on track for a sun synchronous orbit next up is another launch of styling the 23rd of the version one satellites launching out of slick 40 at the kate canaveral space force station in florida at 1634 utc on april the 7th the b1058 booster commenced its seventh flight and by doing so it set the second fastest turnaround time for a booster ever just four hours shy of the fastest which is now 27 days four hours and four minutes of course i still love you was also used on this mission in order to receive yet another spacex booster shillier borderline attempted to recover both fairings however only the passive half the side without all the expensive equipment that they actually need could be recovered back to china we go to catch the third launch of a shayan 6 classified satellite lifting off out of launch complex nine at the gene show satellite launch centre at 2301 utc on april the 8th this long march 4b lifted the payload which has a mass of a number somewhere between one and 2800 kilograms towards a sun synchronous orbit that is literally all we know about the launch moving on to the last launch to cover this week we have the most exciting as it was the launch of oleg novitski piota dubrov and mark van der haai to the international space station atop this so used 2.1 a rocket launch on april 9th at 0742 utc out of site 3016 at the biker nor cosmodrome commenced oleg's third mark second and piota's first spaceflight the docking took place on the rasvet module at 1105 utc the exact same day showing off store uses excellent speed to the station but we're not done yet for the first time in a while we had an iss departure and an earth arrival at ms 17 headed home after 185 days in space surgae rizakov surgae kud spurchkov and kate rubin's then prepared themselves for the re-entry back into earth's atmosphere and only a short while later at 0456 utc the soya's capsule touched down with its usual hard landing in kazakhstan ending the ms 17 mission it's been busy up on the international space station but luckily the spaceflight world can take a breather as there are only two launches scheduled for the next seven days and for those who are going to be going in person to nrol 82 i'm going to be there and i may have some tomorrow patches to hand out if you find me space weather this week is definitely taking off we've had a lot of activity in fact as we take a look at our earth-facing disc you can see this big chrono hole in the south along with what kind of an extension that moves up to the equator that region has been sending us some fast solar wind and has brought aurora down to many parts of the world over the past day or two and it looks like we're going to get this storm intensifying as the larger part of this coronal hole rotates in through the earth strike zone so we're going to continue to have more aurora views over the next day or two but that's not the only story if you notice look at all of the bright regions in the south and the bright regions in the north you've got those two bands building that is an indicator that solar cycle 25 is picking up because we're getting more active regions emerging on the earth-facing disc in fact we've got a sunspot cluster this is region 2816 and if you look at the east limb right on the 17th you can actually see a bit of wiggle and like whoosh that is a sunspot region that's going to be rotating into earth view here over the next day or two and it launched not only a very large flare but it also launched a solar storm and it looks like it's headed toward mars in fact as we take a look at our far-sighted sun this is stereo a and it's looking at the sun pretty much from the side you can see as we get to again you can see that a lot of regions in the south and as we get to the 17th whammo right there that was the big flare you can see almost like a little bit of a blast wave coming out and sure enough that region is actually launched a big solar storm and it is definitely mars directed so we're going to hang on to our hats as we continue to see these regions rotate into earth view and it looks like they're going to be boosting the solar flux and it looks like we're going to get a bit more noise when it comes to radio comms for space traffic and now for your martian minute it's sol 55 on the red planet where perseverance rover and ingenuity helicopter are sitting in jezero crater poised to make that historic first flight on mars and luck has been in our path thus far with ingenuity in fact the deployment of ingenuity went pretty seamlessly away from the protection of mama perseverance this little helicopter that could has managed to survive the cold martian nights multiple times and is even done spin tests to show that its rotor blades are functioning normally now there's been a little bit of a hiccup and that's just in a mode change to go from a low rotation speed to a high rotation speed with the rotors but the jpl team is incredibly savvy and they have they have found multiple ways of getting past this particular hiccup one has only been changing a few commands and adding a couple extra commands that have already shown that it could successfully work for ingenuity to get that mode change to be successful the other path is taking a little bit longer because it requires a full software implementation that to that to upgrade the flight software and that may be a little bit more of a risk but hey having multiple paths to success is definitely the right way to go in fact as luck would have it the atmospheric weather on mars has also been cooperating with us as we take a look at the thymus imagery of the dust storms on mars you can see things have been dying down especially in the northern hemisphere because it is the northern spring you see a few dust ups near the meridiani planum you also see a little bit going on near gale crater in the south that's where curiosity is looking at a lot of cirrus clouds in the sky right now but in jezero crater at the location of perseverance it looks like things are very calm and are continuing to be exactly that the weather has been just beautiful for flight now of course when the weather seems to be beautiful and everything is ready for perseverance and ingenuity's historic event something has to go wrong doesn't it and that is the space weather sadly mother nature has conspired to launch a solar storm toward mars and we're checking to see whether or not perseverance and ingenuity are in for a radiation storm if that's the case perseverance will be just fine but ingenuity doesn't have the protection that mama perseverance has so we shall see whether or not jpl and the team are going to assess whether how big of a flight risk this is to ingenuity this particular solar storm is expected to hit mars on the 22nd and if there is a radiation storm involved it could be hitting mars momentarily so we shall see if this makes any difference to ingenuity but we're all going to keep our fingers crossed that everything's in the green we're nearly done but not quite yet we of course need to thank all the escape velocity orbital sub orbital and ground support citizens who have all ended the show to make this very episode possible starting off at just one dollar a month you can sign up to our youtube.com forward slash tmro forward slash join we're done for another week make sure to return next week though a space flight never stops take even a global pandemic and get in this way goodbye