 We have a SpaceX update, ESA, looking at human spaceflight, Blue Origin's increased cadence and a whole lot more. So stay tuned as this is your episode of tomorrow's space news, which is for the week of 22-22. As always, the SpaceX update comes first and this week we're kicking it off with Starship S20 getting a little bit frosty down at Starbase. Last Wednesday, Ship 20 underwent another cryogenic proof test as the SpaceX team gathered more data on the vehicle. Nothing seemed noticeably new, apart from the fact that this test took place next to the orbital launch mount and booster 4. This could be an attempt to make sure that the internal plumbing models are broken from a methane fill up, but that's just speculation. Ship 20 is testing and there are two other vehicles currently in development, Ship 21 and this vehicle, Ship 22, which was stacked in the high bay on Thursday. Ship 24 is also under construction with Nick and Suini catching a glimpse of the Starbrick thermal protection tiles being applied in tent 3 before Ship 20 underwent another cryogenic proof test. With so much testing with S20, booster 4 must have got a little jealous as it has also been getting frosty. The entire liquid oxygen tank was filled up with cryogenic liquid nitrogen with the frost line on the booster going higher than we have ever seen before. Booster 8 has begun stacking in the high bay and it's one of the first boosters believed to be compatible with SpaceX's next generation Raptor 2 engine, which isn't compatible with Raptor 1 designed vehicles. Here it's being constructed alongside Ship 22. Another tank section was also lifted up and that's about all I can say about these four rings. New construction is exciting, but you can only say the same thing in so many different ways. A common dome section was spotted outside of the high bay, also intended for Booster 8. The chopsticks were used last week to lower Ship 20 back to the ground, but testing isn't over for this insane piece of engineering. They were caught moving left and right during the evening at Starbase and the following day they were lowered down the orbital launch tower. Ship 22's construction continued into the week with it receiving its aft flaps, which are mostly covered with Starbricks, but as you can tell there are still a few gaps that need to be patched up. This was followed up with Ship 22 being moved to the storage facility the next day affectionately known as the Rocket Garden, which currently holds Booster 5, Ship 16 and SN15. The wide bay has had continuous work over the past week with the most recent video out of Starbase showing the third section of the top level being lifted and fixed into place. The wide bay is currently one section taller than the high bay and we think this is where SpaceX are stopping, but as the bays are made with prefabricated ponds, if they want to go taller theoretically, they could. There wasn't really anything to note from SpaceX this week other than everything down at Starbase, apart from the fact that they released some more awesome footage on their Twitter account. One of the many drones we saw flying around Ship 20 as it was being lowered has had its footage shared with the world, and to be honest this is a very cool shot. I don't think there are many things cooler than this that you can film with a drone. It is a shame that Twitter compression is so, well, compressive though. ESA, the European Space Agency, is forming a committee which is going to develop options for a European human space exploration program. Containing representatives from both within the space industry and from outside the industry, the committee was one of the outcomes from a space summit which was held in Toulouse in France last Wednesday. French President Emmanuel Macron made it clear during a speech that he has a desire for a European human spaceflight program and a draft mandate for the new committee will be presented during the March meeting of the ESA council with the aim being the committee's starting work straight after. This is a logical route for ESA to take as preparing for human exploration of far away bodies is now the general trend in spaceflight with companies like SpaceX aiming for the moon and Mars with variants of its Starship vehicle and government agencies most notably from the United States and China and now heading for the moon and Mars as well. Sometimes it's hard to realise just how much ESA is doing in space and personally I believe that's because they've been doing so many important missions that are just deemed less substantial for whatever reason and their collaborations don't normally result in their name being put first and we just don't immediately realise that they were involved. For example ESA have helped to develop Orion but because it's a spacecraft largely built in the USA and launched on an American rocket it's largely recognised as an American vehicle. They launched the James Webb space telescope but it's still widely seen as an American mission. I'm hoping that the results of this proposed committee are exciting and that ESA will be recognised more for their efforts with spaceflight. They've sent humans to the ISS so the next step is going further to the low earth orbit. Blue Origin saw three crewed flights in 2021 carrying the likes of Jeff Bezos, William Shatner and Wally Funk to about 105 kilometres in altitude but that cadence is expected to increase in 2022 following a trend we're seeing in pretty much the entire space industry. SpaceX, Ariane Space and the CNSA have all come out and said that they're aiming for a high number of launches this year and Blue are no different. According to CEO Bob Smith there is a robust demand for new shepherd flights and the number of people the vehicle flies this year is expected to easily double from 14 to 28. We didn't get any official word on the amount of flights scheduled so far but each crewed flight would have six people on board so there are going to be at least five crewed flights plus whatever cargo flights they operate as well. Another new new shepherd vehicle is going to be brought into service this year which will aid that increase in launches. So how does Blue Origin know there is demand for these flights? Well it's actually quite a clever method of finding out. Last year they ran an auction for a seat on the first crewed flight which was won by Justin Lin, a Chinese entrepreneur for the sum of 28 million US dollars but as we all know they were unable to go on that flight. The interesting part isn't the winner though it's the data that they've collected from the auction itself. The auction pretty much guaranteed a high price for the ticket. It was the first flight after all and the winner got to spend 10 minutes with Jeff Bezos and they had the opportunity to get their picture taken with them. All the figures that were bid though will have been stored somewhere so Blue Origin now has a log of what prices are the most popular prices. They also have a log of who bid and for what price so the company automatically has a list of people who would like to fly on New Sheppard and the price they're willing to pay. That is quite a genius ticket strategy and it's something I never even didn't even cross my mind when they ran that auction. It's also a strategy that's in stark contrast to the company who launched their founder before them Virgin Galactic. Last week they announced that they're opening up ticket sales for $450,000 so if you want to learn more about that and get my rather strong opinion I'll say on their new logo then go check out last week's episode of Tomorrow's Space News. Blue Origin only flies suborbital but our next segment is dedicated to orbital launches and on orbit activity so let's get into some space traffic. Only two launches to cover this week but we do have some ISS activity which came as a result of the launch of this Antares 230 plus carrying a Cygnus spacecraft as a part of the NG-17 mission. It launched at 1740 Coordinated Universal Time on February 19th through launch Pad 08 at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. On board Cygnus was 3,723 kilograms of payload ranging from the Colgate Skin Aging Experiment to the Micro Queen 3D Tumor Experiment. Cygnus then spent a couple days orbiting Earth before being captured by the Canadarm at 0944 UTC on February 21st and then being drawn in for a birthing at 1130. It's also interesting to note that Cygnus is going to perform its first ever operational re-boost of the International Space Station, something that has been done by Russian vehicles since the retirement of the Space Shuttle. The second and final launch to cover is Silent Group 4 Mission 8 which launched at 1444 UTC on February 21st following a one-day delay after a shortfall of Gravitas and Support Ship Doug couldn't get to the booster recovery zone in time. Launching for a record 11th time, B1058 and the second stage successfully delivered all 46 Starlink satellites to their initial 337 by 325 kilometer 53.22 degree orbits before the booster returned to Earth and smoothly touched down on ASOG adding to the ever-groming tally of successful orbital launch recoveries by SpaceX. Hopefully this batch of satellites will have a little bit of a better fate than the last but that's up to the sun to decide. Coming up over the next seven days we have another Starlink mission, LSAR-1B on a Long March 4C, Henan-1, 2, 3 and 4 on a single call on March 8 and the hour's night continues on an electron but there's also a possible launch that requires out 1A. Speaking of the sun, here's your space weather with Dr. Tanafoskov. Space weather this week is kicking into high gear and we have some eye candy to prove it. As we take a look at our Earth-facing disc, look up at the East Limb right on the 15th. BAM! Did you see that? Now it may not look like much but that was a massive eruption on the sun's far side and I'll get to that more in a minute. Meanwhile we also have two coronal holes, you can see them there. They are now rotating in through the Earth strike zone and they've been sending us some fast solar wind and this is going to bump us up to storm levels if it hasn't already. Switching to our far-sided monitor, this is Stereo A and it's looking at the sun just a little bit from the side. Now take a look at the East Limb in Stereo's view on the 15th. Wait for it. WAM! Oh right there! Did you see that? That was a massive solar storm launch. This is the launch that we had a hard time seeing Earth side but Stereo captures it just beautifully. In fact, as we look further out we can see in Suvi's imagery, you can see that big solar storm launch out like that and then if we pull out even more, look at what solar orbiter catches. It's amazing how well we can image the middle corona and look how massive this solar storm is. It's a hint of what is to come in some of the spectacular imagery we're going to see from the EUI instrument. Anyway, getting back to the disk and the region responsible, this is old region 2936. Anybody remember that region? It's the one that I think last time I checked took out a few Starlink satellites. Oh yeah, well it's been busy on the sun's far side, I'll tell you, and it doesn't look like it's quite done. In fact, as it's rotating into view, we're seeing that it and its cousin, region 2938, they're still alive and well. In fact, when we use helioseismology and we take a look at how these regions have kind of evolved over the course of moving through the sun's far side and back around Earth side, you can see those dark shadows are telling you that those regions actually might have grown a little bit on the sun's far side but that's probably why it launched that massive solar storm along with a massive solar flare and a radiation storm that we actually felt here at Earth. So we'll see if this thing just kind of lost all its gusto now, now that it's kind of, you know, launched the biggie and maybe it'll be all tired by the time it comes back around. So don't fret too much. This isn't going to be a planet killer, don't worry about that. So we'll see what happens when it rotates back into view but guaranteed it's going to boost that solar flux for amateur radio operators and emergency responders and I know you need it because we've actually dropped out of the triple digits and we need to get boosted back in the triple digits so we have some good radio propagation again on Earth's day side for you. For more details on this week's space weather including how those big solar storms may end up affecting you as these new regions rotate into view, come check out my channel or see me at spaceweatherwoman.com. If you haven't noticed already there is a join button next to the subscribe button and these are the people who have clicked it, the citizens of tomorrow. They donate to us every month in varying levels which range from the escape velocity citizens to the orbital citizens, suborbital citizens and ground support citizens. 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