 Hello everybody and welcome to another action packed episode of Tomorrow News. Starship's got hot some rocket has been spinning, the human landing system has been delayed and version galactic might be alright so stay tuned as this is your episode of Tomorrow News which is for the week of November 18th 2021. I think it's only fair to start off with the biggest headline of the week and that is the roar from the Raptors in Boca Chica. For the first time ever all six Raptor engines that are underneath the Starship lit up simultaneously whilst attached to a vehicle. My favourite shot of the event was certainly this slow motion replay from Boca Chica gal, it really just seems to catch the raw power coming from the engines their way I haven't seen from any other angle. I'd recommend that you definitely make sure to head over to the NASA spaceflight channel to see more of their awesome angles of the static fire because their team has more cameras than I can remember. We also got this beautiful shot from SpaceX which allows us to see the reduction in starbrick loss. I can only see 11 blank patches of the thermal protection system but if you can see more then make sure to let us know in the comments. Now although Starship S20 is the one taking all the attention following that static fire, a few more jobs have been done at Starbase. For starters Booster 2.1 test tank and the ground service equipment for tank were moved down the road from the production facility to the launch site where they are currently waiting for their testing regimes to begin. We've seen SpaceX playing around with spot robots from Boston Dynamics before and we have now again with Apollo being spotted going out for a walk last Tuesday. Here's another one for all Ukraine fans out there, a simple crane building has been taking place and whoa, where did that wide bay come from? Construction has really started shifting here as a lot of work has been happening over the last few weeks. Some Booster forward dome sleeving action has also been taking place as Booster 6's forward dome has been sleeved and the sleeve for Booster 7's forward dome has also been spotted which is what you can see here. SpaceX's mission control in Hawthorne has had a bit of a makeover moving from an empty room full of fold up looking tables to an empty room but this time it has a freshly painted floor on new desks that are actually straight and they even treated everyone to some new monitors. How kind. Something that happened on November 15th that wasn't so kind was an anti-satellite test conducted by Russia on a Soviet-era satellite Cosmos 1408. Last tracked intact at a 485 kilometer altitude, the satellite has now been broken up into over 1500 trackable pieces and a predicted large amount of untrackable pieces which has spread into the path of the International Space Station. This forced the crew aboard the station to take shelter for around two hours in their respective Soyuz and Dragon vehicles so if something worked collide with the ISS the crew could evacuate back to Earth quickly. A statement from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson read, with its long and storied history in human spaceflight it is unthinkable that Russia would endanger not only the American and international partner astronauts on their ISS but also their own cosmonauts. Ben Wallace, the Defence Minister of the UK, has said this destructive anti-satellite test by Russia shows a complete disregard for the security, safety and sustainability of space. There was already a meeting scheduled between Nelson and Dmitry Rogozin, Director-General of Roscosmos the following day but the topics discussed over the phone were obviously changed. This tweet from Rogozin says that they are moving on from the incident and that joint plans are being made to ensure crew safety on orbit. There is also a possibility that this debris will cause issues for China's Tiangong-3 space station although they haven't come out and said anything publicly at the time of writing. South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed concerns with them asking that quote, all nations are to act responsibly in space to ensure peaceful and sustainable use of space and to work together to advance related international rules. Something notable is that, unlike the messages from the US and UK governments, Russia's name isn't mentioned, the message isn't at everybody and that may be because it isn't only Russia who has conducted these tests. Most recently China performed an ASAT in 2007 which has been a hazard for both other satellites and the International Space Station. The only difference here is the nation shooting down the satellite is one off if not the largest contributor to the ISS which is what makes this situation so equally scary and baffling. I personally hope things like this stop happening but sadly only time will tell. Artemis III which is going to be the first mission to encompass the use of the human landing system vehicle has been pushed back by a minimum of one year to 2025. Now although the goal set in 2019 was ambitious there has also been a certain lawsuit from a certain Blue Origin which definitely got in the way of the talks between NASA and SpaceX. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has said that the lawsuit was not the only reason for the delay but it was a major factor. Because of US law NASA was only able to restart talks about HLS with SpaceX once the outcome of the lawsuit had been determined, that obviously being that Blue Origin has lost. Another factor was funding as NASA had asked Congress for $3.3 billion dollars towards HLS in the fiscal year 2021 budget proposal but they only provided $850 million. That's just a smidge over 25% the original amount that they asked for. The second Artemis mission and the first to carry humans inside Orion, Artemis II, has also been delayed, shifting from a 2023 launch to a net date of May 2024. There's also been a global pandemic if you haven't noticed which might have something to do with the delays as well. Following that statement, Senior Chinese Lunar Programme Designer and Engineer Yi Pijian told CCTV that this Chinese could be walking on the moon as soon as 2030 so hopefully those words could spur on some US government officials. Even though Virgin Galactic has had to push their next flight to late 2022, the company has still seen plenty of interest from people who have the money to take a joy ride to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere. After reopening ticket sales at the end of August, the company is reporting that they have sold around 100 tickets at the price of $450,000. Now the customers don't pay all that figure straight away, it's lower 150,000 deposit, 25,000 of which is non-refundable so I do hope the 700 odd people who still have tickets still want to keep them. And just because they've only sold 100 tickets doesn't mean that there isn't more interest as over 60,000 people have contacted Virgin Galactic with an interest in buying one. VSS Imagine, the first Spaceship 3 vehicle, will also be coming online through Act 2023 which will be able to assist with the demand from the customers. That's all the main news this week, so let's have a look at some space traffic. Launching at 02.03 UTC on November 11th from Historic Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the third commercial crew mission got off to a fantastic start, carrying the crew of Rajachari, the first rookie commander of a NASA mission in 48 years. The last rookie-to-commander mission was Gerald Carr, who commanded Skylab 4 back in 1973. Chai was joined by pilot Thomas Marshburn, as well as mission specialist Caleb Barron and Metias Marra. Even though on the webcast we got Blue Screen, B1067 did successfully land for the second time on a shortfall of Gravitas. Dragon Endurance attempted to impersonate a Soyuz speedrun, but they missed by 18 hours and 26 minutes, as the 21 hours and 29 minute launch to docking time didn't really compete with the world record of three hours and three minutes, which was set by Soyuz MS-17. Crew 3 docked to the ISS's Harmony Module at 23.32 the same day, and a couple hours later, the hatch opened and the crew on board the station welcomed Crew 3 to their home for the next five months. The next launch to cover is the first launch of Starlink Shell 4, which on any normal day would be a pretty mundane launch to cover. But for the first time that I can think of, the Florida weather was on our side and gave us one of the most spectacular launches we have ever seen. Launching at 12.19 UTC on November the 13th from Slick 40, B1058 broke the fog and started its ninth mission to space, carrying 53 Starlink satellites to a 540 km low Earth orbit. The vehicle successfully touched down on just read the instructions as it awaits its tenth assignment from SpaceX. Launching its own 927 Coordinated Universal Time on November 16th, this Vega rocket lifted off from ELV-1 at the Guyana Space Center in French Guyana, carrying 1,548 kilos worth of Ceres-1, Ceres-2 and Ceres-3 to a 75 degree inclination low Earth orbit. Next up, we're heading to the Southern Hemisphere, more specifically Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1A, which is on the Mejia Peninsula in New Zealand, where at 01.38 UTC on November the 18th, this electron rocket carried two 60 kg micro-satellites to a 430 km low Earth orbit for the Seattle-based company Black Sky. Even though we did get this awesome onboard shot from the helicopter, we couldn't see the first stage come back to Earth on the broadcast, but we did get Twitter confirmation from Rocket Lab CEO Peter Begg that the first stage had splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Coming up over the next seven days, we have Astra's next flight attempt along much 4B launch and along much 2C launch. And here is your space weather with Dr. Tonya Peskov. Space weather this week is definitely quieted down compared to all the fireworks we had last week, with all the solar flares and that big solar storm that was Earth directed. As we take a look at the Earth-facing disc, we still see four regions on the Earth-facing disc, including region 2891 that's beginning to rotate off of the Sun's west limb. This is the region that launched that massive solar storm that gave us that big G3 level impact at Earth and brought Aurora clear down to places like Wyoming and Utah and Nevada and Joshua Tree California for goodness sake. It was amazing to see all that Aurora, but really the region that we're looking at right now is region 2895 and that's showing a little bit of activity. We've got about a 5% chance of M-class flares, but look at this back on the ninth, WAMO! That's region 2891 giving us one more kind of kiss goodbye with an M2-class flare and a big solar storm. Luckily this solar storm is not Earth directed. In fact, this region is actually occulted so likely that flare was much larger than an M2, could even have been an X-class, especially when we look at the coronagraph observations that show how fast that big solar storm is being launched. So it definitely could be a much bigger game on the Sun's far side and we'll have to wait for another two weeks for that region to rotate back into view, but we're definitely going to be anticipating it. Meanwhile, outside of that we don't have all that much going on. We do have a bit of a coronal hole that's going to be rotating into the Earth strike zone over the next couple days. It's going to give us just a little bit of fast solar wind, but probably only enough to give us some storming, small amount of storming over the weekend at high latitudes. Outside of that we're really not looking too good. In fact, as we switch to the far side of the Sun, this is Stereo A and it's looking at the Sun pretty much from the side. You can see those regions are really the only players on the disk right now. In the south we do have a coronal hole that's going to be rotating into Earth view. It's not quite showing up much yet in Earth view, but that could give us some more storming in about 10 days or so and then we might have a couple regions that are going to rotate into Earth view here in a few more days and those could boost that solar flux because we're actually sitting in the mid 80s for solar flux, which means marginal radio propagation on Earth's day side. For more details on this week's Space Weather, including how it might affect you, come check out my channel or see me at space weatherwoman.com. And just before the end of the show, thank you to all the citizens of tomorrow. Their continued support allows us to stay on your screens and if you'd like to join the escape velocity, orbital, suborbital, or ground support citizens then head on over to youtube.com forward slash tmro forward slash join or just press the join button below. Next to the join button there's also a subscribe button so if you want to feed the algorithm keep it happy you can press that as well. Thank you for watching the news, hopefully we'll see you on Friday for the live show and goodbye.