 In this week's news, Astra announces a new smallsat competitor and a UK launch pad, Starship 20 has been retired to the Rocket Garden and ISS resupply missions may not be impacted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This is Tomorrow Space News. Firstly, Ship 16 was moved from the Rocket Garden to High Bay 2, the newer bigger one as it serves no other purpose than a mass simulator for the new crane. After serving that purpose, it was rewarded by being chopped in half. On a serious note though, there isn't anything left for Ship 16 to do and scrapping it makes the most sense. It's sad but you can't keep these outdated ships here forever. Ship 20 has also been moving about being rolled back from the launch site to the production site to replace S16's place at the Rocket Garden. Personally, I really hope that this vehicle ends up in a museum like the way Atlantis is presented at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex as it has been the backbone of Starship testing for nearly a year, the longest of any vehicle. It may not have flown, but without the experience gained testing with S20, the Starship program would not be where it is today. New parts have also been showing up for Ship 26. Here is the aft dome sleeve being flipped over. Booster 7 has been getting frosty again, performing it another cryogenic proof test on the orbital launch mount. Not much is to be noted from the outside as it looked pretty similar to the previous Booster Cryo tests. This test was followed with removal from the launch mount and the placement onto the transport stand. The following day, during the early hours, Booster 7 was rolled down the highway back to the production site with the Texan Sun glinting off the stainless steel. After arriving at the production site, it was rolled into High Bait 2, which means that this building is now actually in service, holding a booster for actual maintenance, not destroying a ship. What is B7 doing in there? Well, it is quite hard to see, but I'd speculate some Raptor engine installations and other upgrades slash repairs. This view will also go soon as the factory is still being constructed around the booster. In the other high bay, Booster 8's stacking has resumed and here you can see the liquid oxygen tank being stuck together. Star Factory is the new factory being constructed down at Starbase by SpaceX and it'll eventually replace the tents which are currently at the production site. It's starting to look less like a massive frame and now more like a building, as siding is now being added to the side of the building. To celebrate two weeks on orbit, Crew 4's mission specialist once, Samantha Cristoforetti, posted several photos of her and her fellow crewmates ride to the ISS onto Twitter, but this one especially stood out to me. It's the second stage of Falcon 9 floating away from Dragon Freedom back towards Earth over Turkey. There are two photos in particular which this image reminds me of. The first one is the iconic shot of the space shuttle external tank floating away from the orbiter after separation and the other is the photo of Command Module Odyssey's service module which, as we all know, was ripped open during the stir of an oxygen tank during Apollo 13. Luckily however, Crew 4 did indeed reach its designed destination. On the 12th of May, Smallsat launch provider Astra held its Space Tech Day event. One of the biggest talking points after the event was what they revealed on their next rocket, which is intuitively being named Rocket 4. The main facts that we're interested in are its payload to orbit stats, which are currently at 300 kilos to low Earth orbit and 200 to a sun-synchronous orbit. Comparing that to their current vehicle, Rocket 3, the increase is dramatic from a listed 25 to 150 kilo mass to SSO on the Wikipedia page. Those were the only numbers I could find and they don't have a citation so do take that The number I was most interested in however was the payload to Leo, 300 kilograms. That so happens to be the exact amount of payload which Rocket Lambs Electron can carry to Leo, one of Astra's direct competitors. The similarities don't end there either. Electron stands at 18 meters tall, has a diameter of 1.2 meters and is fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene. Rocket 4 stands at 19.4 meters tall, 1.8 meters in diameter and is also fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene. So I think it's pretty safe to bet your money that this is a direct competitor to Electron. Anyone who tries to deny that is ignoring the obvious. So in those metrics the vehicles are quite similar but there are some areas where the two designs diverge. The first thing to note are the different engine configurations. Electron uses nine of Rocket Lambs Rutherford engines, however Rocket 4 will use just two larger engines currently under development by Astra. What are those engines you ask? Well, we don't know. Very little details were shared and nothing can be found on their website. However reports last year were saying that Astra and Firefly had signed a 30 million US dollar deal for the former to manufacture the Liata's Ruther engines in-house, which have a similar performance to the engines talked about during the event. This engine is also moving from batteries to turbo pumps. One of the biggest selling points Astra likes to emphasize is the company's ability to literally pack all of its stuff into shipping containers and launch from anywhere in the world. That capability has also been showcased with their launch from Cape Canaveral and it's a capability they'll be keeping around for Rocket 4. Personnel are also expected to shrink for the new rocket, moving from an eight-person mission control to a two-person mission control, which Astra CEO Chris Kemp says is based off a commercial airline pilot and co-pilot with the inaugural launch scheduled for this year. Alongside details on Rocket 4, Astra have announced that they will be adding Saksavod spaceport to their roster of available launch facilities. Saksavod is on the island of Ants, the most northern of the Shackland Islands and the most northernly point of the United Kingdom and it's already been officially linked with Skyrora's XL, ABL Space Systems RS-1 and Venture Orbital Systems Zephyr. As you may not be surprised by, I'm very excited seeing another flight-proven rocket be linked to another UK spaceport as rocket launches are something that the British Isles have historically been lacking in. Astra has said that the ability to launch from the UK is mainly down to the fact that their ground service equipment is fully mobile. It can all be shipped with the rocket in only a few shipping containers. This launch provider coming to the UK really does show that the launch opportunities from the northernmost points of the country aren't that bad after all, especially for those dedicated small sat launch providers which is the only market the UK is currently looking to serve. Saksavod is getting Astra, ABL and Skyrora, Sutherland is getting Orbex and spaceport Cornwall is getting Virgin Orbit. The race really is now on for the first orbital launch originating in the United Kingdom and at the moment Virgin Orbit are definitely the favorites, however an unexpected delay could change that. The fact that their rockets are air launched will also most certainly give the first ground launch rocket the bragging rights for being the first vertical launch, the more conventional launching style. I'll also just mention that from what I understand this will be just for rocket 3 launches at the moment. Rocket 4 is the next step up for Astra and as a new vehicle it will need to go through a lot of testing first. I'd guess that rocket 4 won't be leaving the United States for a while. Northrop Grumran resupplies the ISS with their Cygnus spacecraft which is launched on their Antares 230 plus rocket but soon issues are going to crop up with supplying components for the rocket due to their manufacturing origins and locations. The engines on the first stage are RD 181s from Russia and the first stage is assembled in Ukraine, two countries which currently are embroiled in the big international conflict we've all been watching on with horror. Northrop Grumran has stated that they have enough components to launch two more Antares rockets but after that they're out of components. The CEO and President of Northrop Grumran, Kathy Warden, has said that they have a plan in place if they can't make any more Antares vehicles once their current supply is up but they didn't elaborate any more on that so they have a plan which is great but what is that plan? Well that's still speculation. Will it launch on Vulcan? Will it launch on Falcon? Will it be flown into space with spin launch? Only time will tell but it probably won't be the latter. Something I just wanted to add in before we head into this week's launches, whilst looking for an image to use in the Astra segment, I stumbled across this footage which Rocket Lab released of the helicopter catch during the there and back again mission. This view from inside the interstage is so cool, I think we'd all love this to be included on the broadcast so Rocket Lab, if you can do that, the entire spaceflight community would be greatly appreciative. Anyways, side tracking is for the live show, let's get into traffic. Firstly, it's an arrival to China's Tiangong space station as the Tiangong-4 cargo resupply mission docked to the Tian'e aft port at 0054 Coordinated Universal Time on the 10th of May. This spacecraft is planned to stay at the station for a few months before the orbiting in 2023. If you're not that familiar with China's space program, there are currently no Tyconauts on Tiangong so Tiangong-4 will be patiently waiting for the next crew to arrive, which will be Shenzhou-14 in approximately a month or so. We've had the first launch failure for a little while with Icebase's Hyperbola-1 failing to reach orbit after launching at 0730 UTC on May 13th from Site-95 at the Zhiyunquan Satellite Launch Center in China with Zhiyun-1 Mofang-01AR on board. This is the fourth launch attempt of the Hyperbola-1, with the three previous attempts all resulting in a failure and loss of payload. The exact time and cause of the latest failure has not been confirmed by the launch provider, however the fact that the mission did fail to reach orbit has been confirmed. The next launch was the start of the Starlink speedrun, the first of two Starlink missions within just two days. Firstly, it was crewed for mission 13 for the Space Launch Complex 4 East at Weidenberg Space Force Base in California, heading to a 53.22 degree inclination orbit with an apogee of 350km and a perigee of 305km. This launched at 2207 UTC on May 13th and about eight minutes later was another textbook recovery with Booster B1063 landing for its fifth time, in this case being on Of Course I Still Love You. This booster previously supported Sensible 6, Dart, Starlink 411 and Starlink Version 1 Mission 28. As well as the booster, the fairings were recovered by NRCQuest. The day after that flight was Starlink Group 4 Mission 15, launching from the other coast more specifically Skick 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. If the booster looks rather clean, that's because this was the first flight of B1073, adding another Falcon 9 to the fleet, taking the current total of operational Block 5 boosters to 12. This also made history by becoming the first new booster to carry a Starlink mission ever, which is probably the most exciting thing about this routine flight. The only difference between Mission 15 and Mission 13 is the fact that the initial apogee of the satellite is 318km instead of 315km. B1073 landed on Just Read The Instructions and the fairings were picked up by support ship Bob. Because of the delay with the production of this week's episode, it means that we have a third Starlink flight to cover in a row. Gifting off from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Centre at 1020 UTC on the 18th of May, this mission, Group 418, was the exact same as 415, except the perigee of the initial orbit is 1km lower and the booster used was B1052, which successfully touched down on the shortfall of Gravitas. This also marks the first time that I've covered three Starlink flights in a row on the news, as well as the first time that I've covered flights from all three Falcon 9 pads in one episode in a row, which is kind of crazy. And why don't we wrap it up with Soyuz? Lifting off from Site-43-4 at the Plesets Cosmodrome in Russia at 0803 UTC on May 19th, this Soyuz 2.1A rocket carried the military surveillance satellite BAS-M No. 3 to a Sun Synchronous Orbit. As this is a military mission, that's all we know. This week's departures are, you guessed it, another Falcon flight from SpaceX, as well as Boeing's second orbital test of Starliner, which should be coming right after this episode's release, with a Chinese flight sprinkled in there as well. If you haven't noticed already, the blue join button is next to the subscribe button, and these are the people who have clicked it. 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