 Hello all and welcome to my garage. Yes all of us here at tomorrow are under stay at home orders so that means I can't get to the launch pad which takes me to station 204 but that is not going to stop us from doing space news and we have got a lot to talk about. Ryan's going to be giving us an extra large portion of a SpaceX update. We've got Dr. Tamethyscove with your weekly space weather and I'll be talking a little bit about how the pandemic is continuing to slow down the space industry but it's not all bad you might want to get your hammers out because there's some good things that are happening as well. Now before we officially get into things that just want to remind you to subscribe to us here at tomorrow hit like on the video below if you like it and set up notifications. You can set up all notifications or just some notifications and right now our studio is undergoing a very big sort of redo that Jamie is doing and Jamie's doing it live so if you'd like to watch us redo 204 you can do that. So let's go ahead and get right into space news and I'm going to go ahead and toss it to Ryan for our SpaceX update to start. The world may not seem like a very nice place at the moment however COVID-19 has not stopped some very exciting news from SpaceX which has all come together over the past two weeks. The Dragon spacecraft which SpaceX has not shown much commitment to in the past for the future of the company has been announced in a brand new variant which will work within NASA's Artemis program. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstein tweeted on March 27th that they have selected SpaceX as the initial commercial partner to deliver cargo and supplies to the lunar gateway using the new Dragon XL vehicle. Resembling no other SpaceX vehicle before it the Dragon XL looks to be more of a neglect sickness vehicle which is produced by Northwick Grumman Innovation Systems formerly known as Orbital ATK. Its design prohibits a return to Earth with no heat shield or aerodynamic designs which will also mean that it will have to be launched within the payload fairing of a Falcon Heavy. Putting the future into the Falcon Heavy is very exciting stuff because so far it has only launched two commercial missions and more missions means more money for SpaceX and much more enjoyable launches for us humans to watch. When at the gateway the Dragon XL will aim to stay from anywhere between 6 to 12 months which is a much longer window than its smaller sister stays at the ISS for. But the announcement of the new Dragon variant hasn't halted Starship progress as the launch site down in Boca Chica has been through its preparation stages in order for a test pressurisation of the full SN3 vehicle and also hopefully a low altitude flight near mid-April. But not all in the SpaceX world has been good as it was at 1216 coordinated universal time on March 18th when SpaceX launched the Starlink 5 mission just after an auto abort before liftoff on March 15th didn't allow it to launch then. This mission was quite a monumental one for SpaceX as it was the fifth time that they had flown the first stage booster being B1048. This was the first time that SpaceX had flown a booster for the fifth time but it didn't come without any hiccups. At T plus two minutes and 21 seconds well if the 9 million 1D engine shut down prematurely however the mission continued as normal as the other engines could compensate for the lack of power from that one engine. SpaceX also failed to complete their secondary mission of landing the first stage as it was confirmed on the webcast that the first stage had failed to land on the drone ship. However this was a demanding mission for this booster being its fifth flight and the most flown Falcon 9 booster in history. SpaceX also used completely reused ferries on this mission and they recovered both of them however they did have to be fished out of the ocean. Thanks for the update Ryan I'm really looking forward to hearing about the data from SpaceX especially about what happened to that Merlin engine and it may take a little extra longer for that to happen because around the world the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating which is causing the space industry to slam on the brakes. Arianespace announced this week that launch campaigns at the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana are suspended and they'll be holding off on Arian5, Vega and Soyuz flights until it's safe to do so. This will also impact the debut of Arianespace's new Arian6 launch vehicle that was set to occur this year and Rocket Lab has also announced the pausing operations in New Zealand and then will resume them when the recommendations allow. All operations at NASA's Stennis and Michoud facilities are shuttered that means that they are now leaving Arian and the space launch system high and dry so that green run of the space launch system for stage is delayed. Nine of NASA's 18 facilities are set at what's called stage four response. That means that everyone is doing mandatory telework unless you are involved in the immediate safety and security of that site. Now the nine other facilities are at stage three which is mandatory telework unless you are a mission critical personnel. Work on time critical missions like the Perseverance Mars rover continues but even a big mission like the James Webb Space Telescope has seen its work stop and we're likely to see that launch date for web slip again but no fault of its own for once. Internally NASA is looking at any and all ways it can help contribute to combating the pandemic on a local regional national and global scale. But not all of the news coming out of the spaceflight industry recently has actually been all that bad. NASA and Roscosmos will be sending the upcoming Soyuz MS-16 crew of Anatoly Ivanishin, Ivan Wagner and Chris Cassidy on schedule with liftoff planned for April 9th at 0805 Universal. Likewise the crew of Soyuz MS-15 Oleg Skripochka, Jessica Mir and Drew Morgan they are scheduled for an on time return to earth on April 17th and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan has reaffirmed its commitment to try and move forward with the debut flight of its new H3 rocket which will replace the current workhorse H2 rocket. So even with this slowdown because of the global pandemic it looks like we are still at least ever so gently moving forward towards the future. Now one thing that certainly has not slowed down is launches so let's go ahead and get ready to go all over the world this week because we've got a lot of them to cover. A new variant of China's Long March 7 rocket known as the Long March 7A began its ascent from the bad at the Wenchang Space Center on March 16th at 1334 Universal time. The payload was classified but what was not classified several hours after the launch news agencies reported that the launcher had failed. Video on social media shows a bit of a boom during the first few seconds of the burn of the second stage. We'll get you more information on this failure if it ever becomes available. A handful of hours later at the Plistik's Cosmodrome in Russia a Soyuz 2-1B rocket carrying a Glonass satellite M60 left the pad at 1828 Universal time. Now Roscosmos and the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed its entry into the correct orbit. Glonass is Russia's own navigation system and M60 now joins 24 other active Glonass satellites along with another new satellite launched in December 2019 that is still undergoing testing. Heading a little down south to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan a Soyuz 2-1B rocket lifted off on March 21st at 1706 Universal time. It was carrying 34 satellites for high-speed space-based internet communications company OneWeb. The Arion space arranged the launch services for OneWeb and they confirmed that all satellites were successfully deployed into low earth orbit several hours after launch. Just a few days ago however OneWeb filed for bankruptcy so no word on what will happen to these and the 40 other satellites OneWeb has on orbit currently. Jumping east from Kazakhstan to China a Long March 2C left the launch pad at the Zhixiang Space Center at 0343 Universal time on March 24th. It was carrying three satellites simply known as Yalgan 3006. China's state-run news agency Xinhua described them as being used for remote sensing missions but satellite analysts suggest that they're actually being used by the Chinese military for intelligence gathering. That's a nice little blast from our own photographer of tomorrow Adrian Ruiz placing a camera where most folks don't getting that full experience. And I gotta say I forgot just how fast an Atlas 5551 gets off of the pad. I mean it's 58 meters tall goes like a hot ride. Anyways back to the launch on March 26th at 2018 Universal time an Atlas 5 and the 551 configuration its most powerful one leapt up from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. 551 designates five solid field boosters, a five meter payload fairing and a single engine Centaur upper stage. This was carrying the final advanced extremely high frequency satellite AEHF-6. This was the first dedicated United States space force flight. After several hours of burns by the Centaur upper stage AEHF-6 was successfully placed into its target orbit where it will now help out the US armed forces all over the world to have secure communications. And here are your upcoming launches and if you're feeling down go ahead and get up and dance a little bit. And for your space weather update here's Dr. Tameth Scove. After some pockets of fast solar wind brought us up to active conditions and brought a war as far south as Michigan over the past couple days things earth side are beginning to calm down in space weather. As we take a look at our front side sun you can see everything looks pretty quiet. We have a bright region in the northern hemisphere that's pretty much fizzled and outside of that we don't have much of a coronal hole that's going to be rotating into the earth strike zone just a few pockets here and there and that should keep us right around unsettled conditions easily over the next week. However as we slip to our far-sided sun now this is stereo A and it's looking at the sun pretty much from the side. If you look at the southern hemisphere you can see a finger-like coronal hole that is going to be rotating earth side here in the next couple days and it could bring us a solar storm probably in about 10 days or more. But right around the 20th you can't see it in the disc view but you can see it in the coronagraph view. Look at this massive smoke ring that the sun blew out. Now this is a big solar storm it's not earth directed so don't worry about it but it's really nice to see these big storms being launched again and as the sun continues to wake up we're not only going to see more of these but they're going to be bigger and faster. For more details on this week's space weather including details on that massive smoke ring that the sun blew and whether or not your radio communications and launch comms will be affected come check out my channel or see me at spaceweatherwoman.com. I'm sure you remember that game you used to play as a kid where you grab your friend's arm and start making them hit themselves with it and you'd be like stop hitting yourself stop hitting yourself and if you don't remember it that's fine concussions happen but would you do that with a very expensive scientific instrument let alone on a whole other planet? The Insightlander's Heathflow probe drilling system known as the Mole had problems day one since beginning to drill last year on the surface of Mars. It popped out and scientists hypothesized that there wasn't enough friction from the Martian regolith for the mole to hammer itself improperly even with the shovel on the end of Insight's robotic arm pinning the mole down it still didn't work. So what's the next step when a major scientific instrument on a nearly one billion dollar mission stops working? Well you get to move on to a little bit of what I like to call my technique. No really. Ground testing showed a light at the end of the tunnel by placing the shovel right on top of the mole and pressing down hard and even filling in the hole it scooped for the mole during the first few tries. Now this isn't without its hazards as that copper ribbon is actually where the Heathflow sensors are at. If that ribbon is damaged it's game over for that entire instrument. So engineers from JPL are now ready to give it a go over the next few weeks and of course as the saying goes here tomorrow never ever ever bet against JPL. And to wrap up this week's space news I just want to thank all of you who helped contribute to make the shows of tomorrow possible. We really legitimately can't do this without you. Each and every one of you who does so you are absolutely amazing it is greatly appreciated and I've got to figure out a way to pay it back someday. Now if you would like to contribute to the shows of 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. Now of course watching our shows liking subscribing setting up notifications and sharing us everywhere that you can that is an incredible help as well. And that's CCO 8 for this week's space news. Thanks for joining us. Be well all of you and until the next one remember keep exploring. I just want to remind you to subscribe, like to us and do it. That was pretty good. I was doing pretty good. Not mad at that. I was coasting. I was cheesing it. I was getting good. I was rocking it. It's making it happen. It's burning it. Hello everyone and welcome to my own animals are betraying me now. What do you want me on camera? Nobody's going to care what you have to say unless it's about space acts. What have you got to say? I agree with that. I agree with that entirely. It's a very good point. I would have never thought about that. She makes really good points.