 Hello and welcome aboard Station 204. Very glad to have you here because we're going to be giving you your SpaceX and Space Weather updates. Talking about Russia swapping out a crew, NASA fixing a computer 18 billion kilometers away and going over the past few weeks' launches. Now, before we get officially started, just of course want to remind you to like, subscribe, and hit the notifications for us here at tomorrow. You're especially going to want those notifications once we get those live shows and those ask me almost anything's happening on a regular basis again. So, why mess around with it? Let's go ahead and get started right with our show for February 24th, 2020. Elon Musk's been tweeting some new information and the fourth batch of Starling V-Bond satellites has been launched, so let's get right into it. Elon has tweeted a tiny snippet of information about the Albedo of the Starling satellites with him saying that the Albedo will drop off significantly on almost every successive Starling launch. Now, even though that is all he revealed, this is really important news for ground-based astronomers as they'll be able to observe the night sky easier and the people that need fast broadband will get the internet connection that they need. And if you want to know more information on this topic, I'd recommend you go back and watch the Space News episode where I chatted about the complications of the Albedo effect of the Starling satellites with ground-based astronomers. And I also talked about what SpaceX were doing in conjunction with this to try and help them out a little. The mission-designated Starling 4 had got them underway two weeks ago with all 60 of the Starling satellites being launched to top the B-1056 booster. This was the fourth launch of this particular booster and what was intended to be the 50th successful Falcon booster landing, however, sadly, it got a little nervous and it did miss the drone ship. After we were watching the webcast several times and watching Scott Manley's analysis video, which I highly recommend you watch and listening to the mission control loops, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the booster did a soft water landing just past the drone ship on its right-hand side. As you can see smoke coming from there, which would be the M1D engines and some water splashed onto the camera lens, which more than likely came from the booster tipping over and hitting the water. This booster had also previously flown for the mission CRS-17, 18 and the JSAT-18 mission. Little news about the Dragon capsule for the crew demo to mission later this year has been released, however, SpaceX have tweeted this awesome photo of it in its preparation stages. And talking about preparation, Starship development just keeps on rolling with images of the Starship nosecone and different bulkhead and barrel sections being made together for the Starship SN1 vehicle. And with no more SpaceX news, let's see what else has been happening in the cosmos. Crewed spaceflight requires an effectively trained team of people in order to accomplish it successfully. And it's not just the prime crews who get training, it's also the backup crews going through the same equivalent training that the prime crews are. So that way, if something goes wrong, someone from the backup crew can replace someone on the prime crew. Now, Roscosmos just announced that two of their cosmonauts that are going to be going on the next expedition to the International Space Station are going to be swapped out. Soyuz MS-16 was originally scheduled to be carrying Roscosmos astronauts Nikolai Tikhanov and Andrei Bebkin along with NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, but now Tikhanov and Bebkin have been replaced by their backups due to Tikhanov sustaining an eye injury. Veteran cosmonaut Anatoly Ivashin and first flight cosmonaut Ivan Wagner have been moved up from backup to the prime crew. Chris Cassidy's assignment has not changed. The three astronauts will be aboard for the arrival of the first US crew vehicle to the ISS, which is, as of the making of this news episode, set to be SpaceX's Crew Dragon sometime in May. Obviously, being bumped is no fun, but safety is paramount. However, I do feel especially bad for Tikhanov. He was originally scheduled to fly on Soyuz MS-04 in 2017, but was delayed and reassigned to Soyuz MS-10. Shortly after, due to further delays, he was removed from MS-10 and placed on to the crew of Soyuz MS-15, but for a third time, he was then removed and delayed to Soyuz MS-16 and with his eye injury, this is now his fourth delay to get his first flight to space. That's some tough luck there for Nikolai, but hey, we're all rooting for him to finally get that shot at going into space. Now, it has been a few weeks since our last Space News episode, so there has been quite a few launches. So, let's go ahead and get into a busy space traffic report. Starting at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Space Port, a Northrop Grumman and Tari's 230 Plus lifted off on February 15th at 2021 Universal Time, carrying an enhanced Cygnus resupply vehicle for the International Space Station on the NG-13 mission. Now, this Cygnus was named the SS Robert H. Lawrence after the first African-American to be selected as an astronaut in the U.S. space program. Nine minutes after liftoff, separation was confirmed and thruster burns to reach the International Space Station began. Hey, Northrop Grumman, give me some nominals! Nominal, nominal, nominal, nominal, nominal, nominal, nominal, nominal, nominal. Speeding ahead a few days to February 18th, the SS Robert H. Lawrence arrived at the ISS and capture via the remote manipulator system occurred at 0905 Universal Time with birthing to station at 1116 Universal. On board is just under 3,400 kg of hardware, crew supplies and new experiments. That beautiful rumble in the jungle was heard at 2218 Universal Time on February 18th as an Arian space Arian 5 lifted off from the Guiana Space Center carrying a dual satellite payload to geostationary transfer orbit. 28 minutes after launch, the first satellite was deployed, JC-SAT-17, which will provide data services over Japan and other parts of the Asia-Pacific region. Three minutes later, the second satellite, Geo-Comp-Sat-2B was deployed, which was built and will be operated by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute to study the environment and oceans in the Asia-Pacific region. Bouncing over to the Zhixiang Space Center, a Long March 2D launched on February 19th at 2107 Universal Time. Four satellites were successfully placed into low Earth orbit. Not much is known about them outside of China's own news agency, saying that they will be used to test new Earth observation technologies. And one final launch takes us to the P-6 Cosmodrome, where the Soyuz-21A rocket lifted off at 0824 Universal Time on February 20th, carrying a Russian military commsat called Meridian-M. It was successfully placed into its targeted elliptical high inclination orbit. Quite a weird one, but that weird orbit will provide data links to Russian forces in the Arctic, Siberian, and Northern Sea regions. And hopefully you're ready for a little fire walk-in because here are your upcoming departures. And to talk about our upcoming space weather, here's Dr. Tamethasco. Space weather this week caught us on a bit of a surprise as we switched to our front-side sun. It doesn't look like there's a lot going on, but believe it or not, we did have an Earth-directed solar storm that launched, and when it hit Earth, it bumped us up to storm levels for a short while. That then was followed by a finger-like coronal hole from the south, which gave us some fast solar wind, and that kept us up at active conditions for, geez, over the past couple days. And that has brought us some beautiful aurora down to mid-latitudes and got some gorgeous aurora at high latitudes as well. Meanwhile, we now have a couple bright regions that are kind of emerging on the Earth-facing disk, and this is good news for amateur radio operators and emergency responders. However, these regions are not flaring, so that's also good news for space traffic and launch comms. Now, as we switch to our far-sided sun, this is stereo looking at the sun from the side. You can see there's not a lot going on, so we're still in the throes of the deep solar minimum, and we are just itching to get more activity so we can say hello, SolarCycle25. On February 9th, just shortly after the Inui Solar Telescope revealed the most detailed image of the inner dynamics of our sun, the Joint ESA NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft was launched on its way to get close and personal with our star. And where was Parker Solar Probe at this time? Making history yet again, with its closest flyby of the sun yet, and no doubt recording more untold stories in its ongoing adventure. Now, although these three missions weren't originally designed to work together, an unprecedented collaboration has now begun. Each mission is unique. Parker Solar Probe is the first ever to fly through the sun's atmosphere. The Inui Telescope, called the Microscope of the Sun, is providing ground-based imagery with a higher resolution than even the best space-based solar telescopes. And now, rounding out the three is Solar Orbiter that will fly out of the ecliptic plane where all planets in our solar system reside and look down at the parts of the sun we've never been able to see, its northern and southern poles. Not only is Solar Orbiter the first spacecraft to image the poles, it will also be the first to accurately measure the sun's polar magnetic fields. These polar fields are key to understanding how the sun's dynamic engine functions. And it's what we call the Solar Magnetic Dynamo and how it generates the ever-changing solar activity we call Space Weather. For more details on this week's Space Weather, including when and where to see aurora and more fascinating insights on the Solar Orbiter mission, come check out my channel or see me at spaceweatherwoman.com. Thanks for the update, Dr. Scove. Now, I don't know about you, but when I have problems with my computer, I like to reach for a hammer, enact Clarkson's Law and use a little gentle persuasion in order to get it back up and running in the way it should. Now, that's because my computer is usually in front of me or right next to me. But what if my computer was 18 billion kilometers away from me? I don't think I'd be able to hit it with a hammer. But the folks at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as amazing as they are recently, had to contend with a computer glitch on a computer very far away and a computer that's also quite, quite old. Now, the two Voyager spacecraft have been operating since their launch in 1977. Now, even though they are quite old, they actually have autonomous fault protection built into them. If the spacecraft detects something that doesn't appear right, it stops everything that it's working on and pings us back here on Earth, saying, hey, meatbags, something's wrong with me. Here's some telemetry to help you out. Now, Voyager 2 had a delay to its usual command to roll itself 360 degrees to calibrate its magnetic field instrument on board as it continues to exit out the solar system. Now, this delay caused two other instruments that should operate solo to turn on and operate together. This ended up drawing too much power from Voyager 2's RTG and it triggered Voyager 2 to signal home that an issue was occurring. Since a round trip for a radio signal from Voyager 2 to Earth and then back to Voyager 2 takes about 34 hours, the glitch fix was a very, very slow process. Not to mention you're working with a computer that was built in the mid-1970s, whatever language that computer was working with as well, and it's 18 billion kilometers away. It's not right next to you, but as we say here tomorrow, never bet against JPL and the engineers on that hollowed ground in Pasadena patched and solved the issue. With Voyager 2 now back to regular operations. I guess you couldn't really try turning it off and on again. Now wrapping up this week's Space News, I of course want to thank each and every one of you who contributes to helping make this show happen. We really wouldn't be able to do it without you and each and every one of you who does, you're amazing and it's greatly appreciated. So if you'd like to help contribute to the shows of tomorrow, you can head on over to youtube.com slash tmro slash join to do so and check out all the great rewards that we have available to you at different levels of support. And of course, watching our shows, liking, subscribing, setting up notifications and sharing us everywhere. That is also an incredible help as well. And that officially wraps up this week's Space News. Thank you so much for stopping by Station 204 and we'll be having you again real soon. So until then, keep exploring. Just wanted to show everybody that I do have a studio audience today. Let me see if you can... So yeah. So you were watching me. What'd you think? Was it pretty good? Are you going to like and subscribe to us? All right. Once it's not raining as much, I'm going to take my buddy here out. So some nice shrubs nearby. You're going to love it. Don't you laugh at me over there. I can hear your lizard laughs.