 Hey, what's up everybody? So NASA is still doing amazing things in space. For example, they have begun post-flight analysis of the Orion capsule. NASA has invested over $47 million in the small businesses. And as one planetary probe ends its mission, another probe is just reaching its mission's climax. This is your space pod for May 5th, Revenge of the Fifth, 2015. So first off, NASA has begun its analysis of the first Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle which flew unmanned for the first time on December 5th of 2014, and it launched aboard a Delta Heavy rocket. What they're looking for are any micrometeorite or even orbital debris impacts and did find some slight possible damage on the thermal protection tiles, as well as several tiny pits on the windows. They are still assessing the data and damage and will take what they learn and make improvements on the next uncrewed flight of Orion, which will launch on the space launch system for the first time and make a trip around the moon to test out its multiple systems. The second uncrewed flight test of Orion isn't scheduled to happen until at least 2017, so they have plenty of time to assess the damage and see what changes if any are needed to make the Orion capsule even safer. In other news, NASA has an office called the Space Technology Mission Directorate, which gives investment money, data, support, and sometimes even contracts to small businesses who are developing innovative technology that will enhance, enable, and even accelerate NASA's exploration program. The way that it works is that NASA selects proposals through the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs, and it progresses in several phases. The program has been ongoing since 2004, but for this year's Phase 1 solicitations, NASA chose 381 proposals that altogether amount $47.7 million and will no doubt bring about a lot of success in different innovative and enabling technology, not only in space but also on the ground as well. There are so many applications, and if you guys would like me to delve into what a lot of these different proposals are, I would be happy to do so, but if I were to do so now in this video, it would probably be well over three hours, so I won't bore you with those details this time. Finally, NASA's Messenger spacecraft, which launched on August 3rd of 2004, was the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury and discovered a lot of cool stuff about the planet, like for example that it's been completely stripped of its mantle and that it does have water ice and organic compounds in permanently shadowed craters near Mercury's North Pole. After 10 years in space and 4 years at Mercury, the probe has run out of propellant, suffered from orbital decay and crashed into the planet's surface on April 3rd of 2015. But as Messenger's mission was ending, NASA's New Horizons mission is getting closer to Pluto and returning even better pictures. New Horizons was launched on January 19th of 2006 and will make its closest approach to Pluto on July 14th of 2015. Some of its primary goals is to take not only high definition pictures of the planet and its system of moons, but also find out temperatures, map geographic features and also study Pluto's mysterious atmosphere. We still don't know what it's made out of exactly and what its level of escape is. It is escaping, if it's all being held in then Pluto might just be a much more interesting place than any of us thought. So I'm very excited about all of these programs and NASA is doing a lot more. NASA is not over, contrary to popular belief that NASA shut its doors after the space shell retired, NASA is still doing amazing things. So please, of these programs that I did talk about, which of these different programs is your guys' favorite? And I would love to hear any comments or even criticisms about these particular programs. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and if you're interested in helping us to bring you space news like this, then please visit patreon.com slash spacepod to find out more information about how you can crowdfund this show. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far. I am just amazed and very grateful to everyone who is supporting this show. Thank you very much and thank you for watching this video. My name is Michael Clark and I will see you guys next time. Oh yeah, next time is going to be freaking epic because hopefully tomorrow SpaceX is going to be having their pad abort test of the Dragon 2 capsule so that's going to be awesome!