 Hello all and welcome to tomorrow news. This week we've got Ryan who's going to be talking about the first of the dragons that will actually be ridden by astronauts. In addition I'm going to be talking about the upcoming Mars sample return mission by NASA that you may not have ever heard about and we've got Dr. Tamethascope to give us our space weather and an update on comet Atlas. Now before we get started with all of this just want to let you know of course that if you like us here tomorrow, you know subscribe to us, like our video, share it everywhere, set up notifications, you can set up for all of them or just a few of them. However you'd like to do it just go ahead and give it a whirl. So let's go ahead and get into our tomorrow news for April 22nd 2020 and let's go ahead and meet up with Ryan to start with our SpaceX update. Things are getting very exciting very quickly over at SpaceX as on the 17th of April both them and NASA announced that the net date for demo mission 2 is the 27th of May at 2032 coordinated universal time. Now I do know that this mission was originally slated for July of 2019 but this is a fairly solid date that I am definitely going to be counting down the days to start today with 35 to go. This will also be the first U.S. orbital flight with just two people on board since STS-4 in 1982. Starship zero number four progress hasn't slowed down as the launch site down in Boca Chica, Texas has been getting ready for another round of hopefully successful testing. The remains of SN3 were removed and framework has been put into place ready for the SN4 stacked vehicle to be transported across to the launch site for what will hopefully be another successful test. And if we get successful tests from SN4 which I am so hoping we will then we might see a short fly of it in the not too distant future. Another batch of Starlink satellites have just been launched into space as the Falcon 9 slowly lifted its way off of launch complex 39A at 1930 UTC today or for those watching after this episode is released the 22nd of April 2020. All 60 of the Starlink satellites have been deployed successfully with them only getting to where they are now because of another flawless launch from the Falcon 9. As usual the B1051 booster made a soft landing on the autonomous spaceport drone ship of course I still love you making it the fourth and probably the final landing for the booster unless SpaceX decides to fly it for a fifth time. Now sadly that's all I have for you this week so Jared it's back over to you. Thanks for the update Ryan I also am very excited for DM2 I'm counting down the days hours minutes seconds man I wish I was making that flight but of course maybe I'll do it when I get a lot of money at some point in the future. Now something like DM2 is very foundational to SpaceX's ultimate goal which is to make humans a multi-planetary species and NASA also does stuff like that as well maybe not as rapidly as SpaceX is and unfortunately with that there but NASA does tend to do that with robotic spacecraft and they are working on a new Mars sample return mission and yes they are actually working on a real Mars sample return mission. With an estimated cost of $7 billion nothing ambitious comes cheap. Collaboration with the European Space Agency is included with NASA's mission and the first element is the Perseverance rover which is set to launch this July and then land on Mars on February 18th 2021. Perseverance has a sample cache system built in carefully selected samples will be gathered by its robotic arm and then placed very carefully into tubes. There are 43 tubes total in the sampling system but they're going to keep five of them intentionally empty to act as a reference that way they can look at them and they could check them out and they could see if there was any inadvertent outgasting of materials from the rover accidentally getting exhaust from the landing system inside and also just in case they didn't clean the system enough here on earth they'll have evidence of what to look for and what to filter out of the data. Once Perseverance has a number of sample scientists are satisfied with they'll command the sample cache system to seal itself and then Perseverance will literally poop it out onto the surface of Mars. In 2026 NASA and ESA will launch a sample retrieval lander and earth return orbiter respectively. That sample retrieval lander is tasked with making a pinpoint landing near the location of Perseverance's sample cache in mid 2028. Once landed a small rover supplied by the European Space Agency will head out and fetch the samples to return them to the Mars Ascent Vehicle. Now the sample cache won't weigh much somewhere on the order of 14 to 16 kilograms and with Mars' gravity being just a little over one-third of what we have on earth the Mars Ascent Vehicle does actually not need to be large. NASA's refined design is no taller than 2.8 meters and no wider than 57 centimeters. Now just for a point of reference I myself am 1.91 meters tall and my width is classified. Mars Ascent Vehicle will use two solid motor stages which NASA has already contracted Northrop Grumman to provide 20 solid motors for testing and eventual use on Mars. One of the concerns is that those solid motors will have to be in the environment of space for months and then sitting on the surface of Mars for a year called soaking. Northrop Grumman according to NASA's sole source procurement has a proprietary solid propellant that can handle these conditions hence the sole source procurement on that contract. Overall the maximum mass of the rocket is expected to be 400 kilograms. Now that's quite small and I actually know people who have built high power rockets that are bigger than that but the Mars Ascent Vehicle doesn't need to be big and complex it just has to loft a maximum of 16 kilograms to an orbit ESA's Earth Return Orbiter can get to and then capture the sample which will occur in mid 2029. Once secure ESA's Earth Return Orbiter will fire up solar or electric propulsion and head off to Earth where in 2031 it'll release the sample cache and a re-entry module to descend through the Earth's atmosphere for a crash landing in the desert of Utah. Now once the samples have been retrieved they'll be taken directly to the Johnson spi- wait crash landing crash landing did I hear myself right there for a crash landing? I did! Yes a crash landing no parachute actual honest to goodness litho breaking the sample cache system on perseverance was designed to survive a direct litho breaking impact before that became an official part of the Mars sample return mission architecture so much like this footage of the unfortunate demise of the Genesis mission's sample return capsule in 2004 this litho breaking is going to be planned and it'll be intact and if you examine how this mission works just about every technology or technique that's being used in it is mature and something that we're already using right now now of course there is rightful concern from scientists about the potential contamination of Earth from the samples on Mars so they're going to be treating them very very carefully now this mission sounds absolutely amazing and this is the NASA and ESA that I absolutely love you know that cutting-edge technology the right kind of crazy that is the stuff that I love to see them doing now to move on a little bit to space traffic we actually do have a departure and Earth return combo this week and one launch to cover so let's go ahead and get right into it we're up on orbit with the International Space Station to start Oleg Skripachka, Jessica Mir and Drew Morgan said their goodbyes to their crewmates and entered into Soyuz MS-15 on docking at 0153 universal time on April 17th after an engine burn and re-entry the capsule touched down safely on the steps of Kazakhstan as planned at 0516 universal time all three astronauts exited the capsule in good spirits and now we head to a country that we rarely talk about in our launch coverage Iran a Ghassid rocket launched on April 22nd at an unknown time from an unknown location within Iran and a satellite called noon apparently to be used for military purposes was placed into orbit now as you can imagine not much is known about what's actually going on but US Space Command has confirmed that at least two objects from this launch have made it into orbit and with a little fire walking for good measure here are your upcoming launches and now let's head on over to Dr. Tamethascope it's been an exciting week in space weather we're coming down from a solar storm the likes of which we haven't seen in quite some time and it brought Aurora as far south as Seattle Washington in the northern hemisphere and as far north as Christchurch New Zealand in the south and just like that we're now beginning to see some fast solar wind it's almost like it's a chaser after a stiff drink because it's brought us back up to active conditions and we're easily going to see that over the next couple days now as we switch to our front side son you can see that remnant coronal hole that's rotating into the earth strike zone that's where that source of fast solar wind is it's kind of bumping us up to active conditions now and also on the 19th we had a little bit of a filament eruption in the south and it looks like it did launch a very small solar storm so we may have yet another solar storm that's earth directed but it's hard to tell and it's probably going to be a lot smaller than this one we just had by now you have probably heard about the demise of poor comet Atlas about a month ago Atlas was poised to become the first really bright naked eye comet in a decade but then Atlas shrugged and now it's falling apart best estimates indicate it is fragmented into at least three pieces none of which will be able to produce the kind of significant display we had all hoped Atlas's fate might have been predictable considering that soon after its discovery in late 2019 it brightened extremely rapidly combined with the fact that it was traveling in the same orbit as the great comet of 1844 made many believe that it was a remnant of that famous comet which meant it could either become spectacular in its own right or disintegrate right before our eyes it shows the latter indeed the brightening trend of Atlas flattened on March 17th and by early April it was fading astronomers Yi and Zhang published this paper in the astronomer's telegram that showed the comet head or coma if you prefer was elongating in comet speak this is bad news comets don't usually elongate and when they do it means its nucleus is beginning to fragment but even as one comet dies another comes into view on April 11th the same day that Atlas broke into three pieces amateur astronomer Michael Matziatso discovered a new comet while looking at data from NASA's Soho spacecraft the comet suddenly appeared in images from the solar wind anisotropy instrument also known as swan now this instrument was never designed to find comets its job is to survey the solar system for hydrogen but because comets often spray a significant amount of hydrogen into space in the form of water ice they're often easily detected by swan so of course this comet has been appropriately named swan currently comet swan is only accessible to those south of the equator and it can be seen in the faint constellation of sculptor as of April 16th it was shining at magnitude plus 7.8 easy enough to pick up in good binoculars and displaying ahead roughly one sixth the apparent width of the moon so will swan become bright enough to be seen with the naked eye no one sure yet like atlas comet swan appears to be relatively small assuming it continues to brighten at its current pace it could reach third magnitude during the final week of may and that would make it bright enough to be visible to the naked eye just when people in the northern hemisphere could have an opportunity to see it very low in the west northwest sky after sunset and then again low in the east northeast sky before sunrise and lucky us we will have a new moon on may 22nd which will give us the darkest skies of the month perfect for viewing now if you've been watching space news you know about two months ago we showed off images that came from northrop grumman's mission extension vehicle one which rendezvoused with intel sat 901 and they were absolutely stunning i still really can't get over how amazing this looks it just looks like something straight out of a jaybus blonde movie it's just absolutely amazing now intel sat contracted the services of mev one from northrop grumman due to intel sat 901 running low on fuel meaning it was near the end of its usable life at geosynchronous orbit but with the attachment of mev one which provides propulsion and attitude control intel sat has brought 901 back into service mev one moved the satellite from its temporary location over the pacific ocean to where it should be back over the atlantic where it's now providing services for 30 customers mev one is contracted to provide an additional five years of service after which it'll move intel sat 901 higher up into a graveyard orbit that's five additional years of revenue in intel sat's eyes northrop grumman they're going to be launching a new mission extension vehicle later this year and that's also going to meet up with another intel sat comm sat as well and to wrap up this week's news i just want to thank each and every one of you who helped contribute to the shows here at tomorrow we really can't do this without you and each and every one of you that does so you are absolutely amazing people greatly loved and it is super appreciated and if you would like to help contribute to the shows at tomorrow 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 you can is an incredible help as well and that's miko for this edition of tomorrow news thank you for joining us this week and until the next one stay healthy stay safe and remember keep exploring