 In this week's news, Russia is yet to agree to fly a Russian on Crew 5, starting to get to another airline customer. We see the first Dream Chaser space plane and Europe's robotic arm has been activated. This is Tomorrow's Space News. Kicking off the news, we're heading straight down to Starbase, where the final sections of Ship 21 have been sent to the scrapyard for scrapping. The new quick disconnect interface for the Starship ships has arrived at Starbase and it is significantly trimmed down from the previous version. There used to be six arms poking out, now there are only four. It was lifted up to the quick disconnect arm on the service tower, which it was then mounted to. The QD arm has been receiving plenty of updates ever since the old interface was removed. Arguably, however, that wasn't the most exciting GSE event this week as the water daily system at the orbital pad has been tested for the first time. This is another step which SpaceX has taken to show us that they're nearly ready for the orbital flight test, we just need to see a few things for them to finish first before we can truly say that the FAA are holding up the orbital flight test with their month-on-month delays, with the date for the environmental review now scheduled for May 31st. The Structural Test Stand, which is affectionately known as the CanCrusher, is designed to pull down on super heavy boosters to simulate the aerodynamic loads of Mach Q. However, it is being converted, so it will be able to support testing of the Starship ships themselves. As you'd expect from SpaceX, Star Factory is rising rather quickly. The first pillars were placed just a couple of weeks ago, and the frame of the building is quickly materialising. Raptor 2 engines have been arriving at Starbase like crazy over the past few weeks, and SpaceX are getting a good stockpile in one of the tents. Elon Musk shared this photo of at least 15 Raptor 2, so if they can get 14 more in there, then they'll have enough to power a single super heavy booster. Last week, I covered SpaceX's first airline deal with Starlink, which was with the domestic US airline JSX, who provide a more first-class style service on their fleet of Embraer ERJ aircraft. Their second and most recent deal, however, will see an increase to the size of both the aircraft and flight times as Hawaiian airlines are going to adopt the satellite internet service as well. It'll be available for use first on the airline's Airbus A330 and A321neo aircraft before being added onto their incoming fleet of brand new Boeing 787-9s for use on domestic and international trans-Pacific flights to the USA, Asia and Oceania. Starlink, however, will not be available on the airline's fleet of Boeing 717s, which he used for short island hops within the Hawaiian archipelago. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the collaborative spaceflight efforts between themselves and the rest of the world were thrown up into the air. However, NASA is attempting to stick to the same traxid as been on the entire time. The agency is expecting word by June as to whether Russia is willing to send over one of its cosmonauts and a keykiner to fly on Crew 5, something which was initially announced last December. NASA is waiting for the Russian Foreign Ministry to approve an agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, which would allow the two agencies to barter seats, seeing mixed crews of astronauts and cosmonauts on Crew Dragon, Soyuz and Starliner to ensure that there is a continuous presence from both nations on the ISS. NASA's ISS program manager, Joel Montalbano, is expecting Russia to approve of the agreement, as it is in the best interest of both nations in case commercial vehicles or Soyuz aren't able to fly. Another cargo vehicle is currently under construction. It's Sierra Spaces Dream Chaser, the mini-space shuttle which is the second most beautiful spaceplane ever made, and if you disagree with that, then you're wrong. Sierra Spaces shared a few images over the past week, as they confirmed that good progress is being made at their facility in Colorado. Currently being built and what you just saw was Dream Chaser 1, which has been named Tenacity. It will fly the SNC Demo-1 flight sometime in the future to the International Space Station, currently loosely scheduled for net Q1 of 2023, on the second flight of ULA's Vulcan Centaur, demonstrating that the vehicle does actually work. Similar to the commercial crew demo flights, SpaceX's Demo-1 and Boeing's OFT-1 and OFT-2, which is coming up soon. That gives ULA a good seven months to get their new rocket flying, because if they don't, they could be holding up Sierra Space and NASA for cargo resupply missions to the ISS. As you can see, Tenacity is currently nowhere near flying to space, but she does have her wings and the thermal protection tiles are starting to be applied onto the top of the vehicle, where the crew would go if this was the crewed variant. Once Tenacity is fully constructed, she'll be shipped to the Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio, where four months of thermal vacuum testing will take place before being shipped to the Kennedy Space Center to be integrated onto Vulcan with the launch scheduled around February to May. Work on the crewed variant of Dream Chaser is having to be funded internally, as they didn't win the commercial crew contract from NASA. The first launch of that variant is scheduled for 2026, and if Sierra Space can prove that Dream Chaser worked as a crewed vehicle, then the company could offer it to NASA in the future for ISS crew transportation. Their collaboration on the orbital reef project will also utilise this vehicle. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matyev left the Poysk Airlock at 1458 UTC on April 28th to perform a spacewalk to unlock ESA's new robotic arm, which was delivered alongside Russia's new Narco Science Module last summer. This is the second EVA to take place so far, with the first being used by Artemyev and Matyev to connect a control panel, remove protective covers and install handrails, and the second being used to remove thermal blankets and jettison them overboard. A third is expected in late May when more work on the arm will take place. Launch locks which held the arm in place for launch to the ISS were also removed by the pair of cosmonauts which were located at the elbow of the arm and at the end effectors, the grappling hooks, at both ends. Once that had been done, colleague Sergei Korsakov inside the space station commanded the arm to move, with one of the end effectors moving for the first time is around 1800 UTC, just over three hours into the EVA. Already attached to the station are Canada Arm 2 and Japan's robotic arm, however ESA's new arm is far more like the former than the latter. Think of it like an upgraded version of Canada Arm 2. Its reach is lower, only being able to reach 9.7m compared to Canada Arm 2's 17.6m, however the materials are upgraded using carbon fibre instead of titanium and it is 100% pre-programmeable, something which Canada Arm 2 is not. They both however do follow the same inchworm principle where either end effector can be attached onto a base point and then the opposite end removed, allowing the arm to move itself around the station. ESA are probably very very happy to see the arm finally move as before it launched with Nauka it was sat in storage for more than a decade waiting for the Russian module to be constructed. It's so old in fact that it was originally scheduled to fly to the ISS on a space shuttle. I've pulled this out of space traffic because this historic mission deserves a segment of its own. For the first time ever an orbital class rocket booster has been caught in midair by a helicopter. Sporting a new silver and red paint scheme for thermodynamic reasons this electron booster launched the there and back again mission on May 2nd at 22.49 Universal Time which was 10.49 in the morning the following day local time. This wasn't the first time Electron had deployed its chutes and came in for a recovery but it was the first time that the helicopter would be used to catch the booster and place it onto the recovery ship stationed below in the Pacific Ocean. The timings are roughly similar to SpaceX's recoveries with landing at approximately T plus 9 minutes for the Falcon 9 and parachute deployment to around T plus 7 to T plus 8 minutes for Electron. This then gives the helicopter about 10 minutes to find Electron and get a hold of the parachute. So at about 14 minutes into flight in came the helicopter and swooped up Electron to make history. However the pilot was experiencing weird characteristics which they hadn't experienced in the drop test so for everybody's safety they decided to let go of the booster soon afterwards. It still performed a successful splashdown in the ocean so the booster was recovered it's just that the likelihood of this booster being reused now are low. This test was still successful however and it's important to remember that recovering the booster is the secondary mission the primary mission is to get all of the payloads for the customers into space which Electron and Photon did successfully. All that is left to do for Rocket Lab now is to figure out why Electron felt weird to the pilot and then try to attempt another catch and hold onto the booster. Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck shared a couple images after the launch. Firstly here is the recovery vessel in the Pacific Ocean with Electron loaded up and here is a cockpit view from the helicopter as it came in to catch Electron. I think it would be cool if they could integrate a view like this onto the broadcast instead of just having one camera looking down but obviously I'm not very familiar with any of the hurdles with something like that so I'm chair engineering. A big congratulations to everybody at Rocket Lab that was a very exciting flight and now let's get on to the rest of space traffic. It has been a relatively busy week for space traffic and kicking it off with SpaceX's crew formation to the International Space Station. Lifting off at 0752 Coordinated Universal Time from Launch Complex 39A in Florida onboard were two rookies and two experienced astronauts. Pilot Robert Hines and Mission Specialists 2 Jessica Watkins will be venturing into space for the first time in their careers with Commander Chell Lindgren and Mission Specialist 1 Samantha Christopheretti heading back to space for a second time. Christopheretti is also going to be the last European to launch on a Crew Dragon flight for a while at least at Saras County scheduled. The foreign seat on Crew 5 will be going to JAXA who've chosen Koichi Wakata. On Crew 6 it'll be going to an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates and Andreas Mohensen of Denmark will be piloting. Andreas is on the backup crew of Crew 6 however and if they're called up for that flight their replacement for Crew 7 is Tim Peake from the UK. Coming back to Crew 4 the brand new Dragon Freedom capsule docked to the Zenith port on the Harmony module on April 27th at 2337 UTC the same port which Axion 1 had just departed from two days prior. At 0411 UTC on April 29th at the Jiquan Satellite Launch Center in China Superview Neo 101 and 102 launched to top this long march 2C. The satellites are Earth observation satellites designed to capture images at a 0.5 meter resolution. Later the same day at 1955 UTC this Angara 1.2 lifted MKAR also known as Cosmos 2555 to a 279 x 294 km 96.5 degree low Earth orbit. Launching from Site 351 at the Plesets Cosmodrome in Russia not much is known about this top secret Russian military radar satellite. That wasn't the end of the launches on April 29th however as SpaceX also joined the party with a record breaking launch of Starlink Group 4 Mission 16. Launching a couple of hours later at 2127 UTC the flight of booster B1062 marks the fastest booster turnaround time ever of any orbital rocket, the fastest drone ship turnaround time ever and the fastest turnaround time of slick 40 ever. B1062's previous flight was Axion 1 which launched on April 8th marking a record breaking 21.26 day turnaround of the Falcon 9 booster. The drone ship record came from just read the instructions only spending 19 hours in Port Canaveral before heading out to sea yet again to recover this booster which successfully landed roughly 635 kilometers dang range. The previous launch out of Space Launch Complex 40 was Stein Group 414 just eight days prior marking it another record in SpaceX's incredible launch cadence for 2022 and their ability to rapidly reuse a rocket something crucial to the operations of Starship. 0330 UTC on April 30th in the middle of the yellow sea saw multiple Zhilin-1 Gaufen satellite launch atop this Long March A11 the 42nd Chinese launch from sea. Launching over the next week is a Long March 2D, Stunk 417, the Tianzhou 4 resupply mission and Starlink 413 from Brandenburg. 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