 Hello everybody and welcome to this week's episode of Tomorrow News. I'm going to be covering some Starbase updates, what's up with the launch of Crew 3, and some small sat news, and then we'll wrap it up with some space traffic. So stay tuned as this is your episode of Tomorrow News, which is for the week of November 9th, 2021. We're starting off with the SpaceX update, which is very heavily focused this week on cranes, but first let's take a peek at the construction of the new wide bay, which is continuing rapidly with the general frame of the building now taking shape. This nose cone section for ship 22 has been spotted with an interesting note being the new thinner steel that is being used for these rings, which is just 3.6 millimeters thick, compared to the 3.96 millimeters we've been seeing for a while. Following the arrival of some parts of the new LR-11000 crane, our beloved Francon crane has been dismantled, and here you can see some of the parts being trucked down the road from the launch site. This part is especially sad with the cab leaving the launch site. Francon crane, you will be missed. Something to raise our spirits is that the custom SpaceX branded LR-11000 has now had its boom assembled and it tested it out for the first time. You can also see here that there is a second LR-11000 crane in yellow, and when the SpaceX branded one is fully sorted, they will both be in the exact same configuration. But no, is the yellow LR-11000 also being taken away from us? Well, it may look like that, fear not crane fans, as it's just being moved down the road to the production site to help out with the wide bay construction. View. The main body section of ship 21 could be seen here in the early hours of the morning in the mid bay, as it awaited some further construction. Later on out in the open, however, we got to see something a lot more exciting. The actual nose cone part of ship 21 was stacked onto the ring section, making this starship closer to completion before its sibling, S20, has even flown. The seam created will also soon be filled with some star brick-thell protection tiles to make sure none of the ship is melted when re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. SmallSat launch provider Virgin Orbit has been interested in other launching locations for a while now. One I've spoken about before on the channel is Spaceport Cormor, but it isn't just Europe they're looking at, they also want to have a location in Asia. ANA Holdings, the parent company of all-Nippon Airways, has signed a non-binding agreement with Virgin Orbit to fund ground support equipment at an airport in Japan's Oita Prefecture. The airline will also be providing funds and support for 20 envisioned orbital missions, and pending regulatory approval in the US and Japan, the company could be ready to launch missions from Oita by the end of next year. Technically Virgin Orbit has already passed an environmental review from the FAA to launch out of Asia, that being Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, but as that territory is of the United States, I'm still counting this adventure into Japan as its first proper Asian venture. Remember Astra? I hope you do. They're best known for building and developing a small-sat launcher, most recently with Rocket 3, but it turns out their future aspirations aren't just delivering satellites. The company has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to launch 13,620 satellites into low-Earth orbit, providing services at V-band frequencies. The equipment on board is capable of using other frequencies, but those weren't listed in the application. Quote, The Astra constellation will provide global secure high-bandwidth connectivity to enable communication services, environmental and natural resource applications, and national security missions. 40 satellites are going to be launched into a 700-kilometre equatorial orbit for the first phase, with another 2,296 heading to a sun-synchronous and mid-inclination orbit of around the same altitude. This looks like an ambitious plan for Astra. They previously mentioned earlier in the year that they wanted to get into the satellite business, but they never mentioned building their own, yet alone applying for nearly 14,000. They're going to be flying soon from Kodiak, so let's have a look at some space traffic. The first launch this week is this Long March 6th, which launched out of the Taiwan Satellite Launch Center at 0219 UTC on November 5th, carrying the SDG-SAT 1 satellite into orbit. Following this was another launch from China nearly exactly 24 hours later. At 0300 UTC the next day, which was this Long March 2D, from the Zhichang Satellite Launch Center, carrying the first three Yaogan 35 satellites into space. As I mentioned earlier in the headlines, there has been some shuffling about with the launch date of Crew 3 and the return date of Crew 2. But finally, at around 1905 UTC on November 8th, Dragon Endeavour departed the International Space Station for the final time this mission, starting Shane Kimbrass, Megan McArthur's Akiko Hoshide and Tomar Pesquet's journey back home. Now you may know of Dragon's toilet troubles, with urine being sprayed under the floor of the habitable area, so the crew are going to have to use their maximum absorption garments when needing to use the lube, which is quote, suboptimal. Following another 8 hours in low Earth orbit, the capsule re-entered the Earth's atmosphere normally. The parachutes deployed will be at one of them opening a little bit slower than usual, and is around half past three in the morning UTC on November 9th, the spacecraft splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. Coming up over the next seven days, we have Raze 2 on the net, so on the aforementioned Astra Launch, Crew 3, hopefully, and Electron Launch and Starlink Group 4. Before this week's episode ends, we'd like to give a big thank you to the citizens of Tomorrow who contribute monthly for some pretty cool perks. We've also updated our member lists, so if you weren't on the list before, see if you can circle your name now. For example, if you join the escape velocity rank, you get to check out the script when they're written, or if you join the orbital or escape velocity ranks, you get to discuss and vote on the live show's topics. If that interests you, head on over to youtube.com forward slash TMRO forward slash join, or just press the join button below. 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