 A new month and a new week of some very exciting space news, we've got the Firefly launch Starship update, so stay tuned everybody, as this is your episode of Tomorrow News for the week of September 6th, 2021. Firefly Aerospace are one of the upcoming small sat launch providers along with Astra and Launcher to name a few. Their rocket, named Alpha, is actually one of the largest small sat-designated launch vehicles currently being developed and tested, designed to carry up to 1,000 kilograms to Leo and 630 kilos to a sun-synchronous orbit. Here you can see compared to Rocket Lab's Electron, it's actually massive. At 0200 UTC on September 3rd, the first ever launch of an Alpha rocket occurred from Slick 2 at Vandenberg Space Force Base on the west coast of the USA, and getting off the pad it actually went pretty smoothly. You can see here that the rocket ascends into the sky with nothing abnormal to be seen. On the stage of the flight, the second stage and all six payloads on board were heading for orbit. However, at some point in time from launch to 1 minute and 16 seconds into flight, something happened to engine 2 as it flamed out entirely, causing a lot of acceleration speed, resulting in a delay to reaching Max-Q as the vehicle was travelling at a much lower than expected speed. No, Tim Dodd, it wouldn't turn out to be great at all. A little while after the call-out was expected, it was said that the vehicle had reached Max-Q, but sadly, as soon as that happened, the vehicle violently veered off course, causing the fan to break off due to the aerodynamic forces, and then the flight termination system was activated, creating a giant fireball over the skies of California. I really think the reaction from the crowd at this point explains the emotions everyone was feeling in the moment. Also just a word of advice, I never thought I would need to give out. If you're watching a rocket launch and the flight is terminated or the vehicle breaks apart or whatever happens, please do not allow your children to run out into a field where a piece of rocket has just fallen from the sky because for one, they could and probably would injure themselves handling it and two, if a piece of rocket has just fallen in that area, it's very likely that more pieces of rocket will be falling in that area as well, and nobody wants a chunk of rocket landing on their head. But at the end of the day, everyone should be giving Firefly a huge congratulations for how far they managed to get with their first ever launch. Spaceflight has always been and will always be unforgiving, and the team there have managed to get a rocket further than most other humans on Earth could. The company will still get data from this launch and they can learn lessons on what to improve for the next one. Let's keep the spirit high, moving from a company who had their first launch a few days ago to one who had their first launch 15 years ago. Last week I said the first time we will see the cupula, which is going to be attached to the docking port of the Dragon spacecraft for the Inspiration 4 mission, would be when the vehicle reaches orbit and it opens its nose cone. Turns out I lied, these photos were released last Wednesday of each crew member posing within the dome window in California before it was shipped off to Cape Canaveral to be mated with Dragon resilience. A short full of gravitas officially entered service by receiving the booster used on the CRS-23 mission, B106-1, and a few days after the launch, onlookers at Port Canaveral were able to witness this brand new state-of-the-art ship bring home that booster. ASOG isn't the only new kid on the block, however, as SpaceX has a new fairing recovery ship named Doug after Doug Hurley. Converted from a platform supply ship, which is a cargo ship designed to service offshore platforms, a big crane was put on the back, a design most likely influenced by Sheila Bordelon, one of the ship's SpaceX contracted after they no longer needed the fairing catches, mistree and mischief. The vessel also has the capability to tow a drone ship out to sea, removing the need of an extra tug, and with ASOG already having the capability of full autonomy and just read the instructions getting the upgrade soon, the SpaceX sea fleet may actually be shrinking soon. Doug will also be getting a sister ship, appropriately named Bob after Bob Benkin, the other astronaut who flew on the DM2 mission. Moving down to Starbase, I don't want to say it's been a bit quiet because it's never quiet, but there hasn't been as much major activity going on as there was last week. Let's start with GSE tank 7, which was rolled from the construction facility down the road to the launch site, whilst the test tank that was doing cryogenic proof tests last week did the opposite. It was rolled back to the construction site, and when I say they did this simultaneously, I mean they did it simultaneously, as there was a little bit of a tank traffic jam with tank 7 having to wait at a restaurant for the test tank to pass. I can imagine whilst tank 7 was there, it was probably wanting a nice Methodox cocktail as well. A new common dome has also been sleeved with some stainless steel rings, which is currently speculated to be for the upcoming booster 5. The thermal protection tiles on ship 20 are still being checked over ahead of the orbital flight attempt, with only the top few having markers left on them. And last but not least, in the world of Boca Chica this week, cryo tank Shell 6 has been rolled out to the tank farm. There wasn't any other tank traffic on this run, however, so it didn't need to stop at a restaurant. And finally this week in the world of SpaceX, Andrei Korolev, the grandson of the lead Soviet rocket engineer Sergei Korolev, has been given a tour of the SpaceX factory by the man himself, Elon Musk. Quote, we are incredibly grateful for the invitation, hospitality and unforgettable almost hour-long personal meeting. Continue to move the world forward, Mr. Musk. And here is your space weather with Dr. Tamethaskov. Space weather this week is definitely picking up. As we take a look at our Earth-facing disc, you can see there is a coronal hole that's going to be rotating in through the Earth strike zone here over the next couple days. But you know what, this coronal hole really isn't all that well formed so we're not expecting a lot of fast wind from it. The real story is in all of the bright regions you see, both in the north and in the south, there we've had tons of them actually emerging over the past couple days. In fact, we have region 2864, that's the main player. But over the past couple days, we also had region 2865, 66, 67, and now 68 emerging just in the last 24 hours or so. Back on the fourth, BWAMMO! You see right there, region 2864 launches an Earth-directed solar storm. Now right now, we're waiting for coronagraph observations and models to give us a better indication of how strong this storm is and how soon it will impact us. So we've got to hold on for just a few more minutes for that. Meanwhile, as we take a look at the far-sided sun from stereo's view, this is stereo A and it's looking at the sun just a little bit from the side. You can see region 2864 as it's forming and beginning to gurgle and actually launches that solar storm. But you also see all these regions in the south. Look at it, you can see region 2865, 66, and 67, a whole just kind of emerging very, very quickly. So this is all boosting that solar flux for amateur radio operators and emergency responders and it looks like we're going to stay easily in the moderate and maybe even moving up to the good range for radio propagation. For more details on this week's space weather, including how the new bright regions or that Earth-directed solar storm might affect you, come check out my channel or see me at spaceweatherwoman.com. Just before we leave again for another week, let's take a moment to thank the citizens of tomorrow. Without their continued support of the show, we wouldn't be able to continue. If you'd like to join the escape velocity, orbital, suborbital, or ground support citizens, head on over to youtube.com forward slash join and become a member for as little as a dollar a month. 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