 Elon Musk's been sharing the secrets around Starships made in flight, Russia isn't leaving the International Space Station any time soon, Spaceport Cornwall is growing without Virgin Orbit and much more is to come in this tomorrow's Space News. We're kicking off the week with the Starship secrets that have been told by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Hosting a Twitter space on Saturday, we got the answers to the most pressing questions like, what's the power slide off the launch pad intentional? No. No, it wasn't. The three engines we saw out at 15 seconds, they weren't taken out by flying concrete and they weren't taken out by themselves. Instead, Mission Control decided not to start those engines. We also learned that in order for a launch to go ahead, at least 30 engines must be operating at T0. The offset thrust caused the tilt and the slight power slide. One of the biggest surprises from this Twitter space is that SpaceX lost communication with the vehicle at T plus 27 seconds due to quote, some kind of energy event. I'm going to take a guess that that some kind of energy event means this but right here. The automatic flight termination system or AFTS was another element which was surprising to hear about. According to Elon, it took roughly 40 seconds to engage. The biggest talking point after launch was the giant hull under the orbital launch mount and Elon has reiterated his surprise over the concrete's destruction. For the next flight, instead of leaving the concrete to bear the grunt of 33 Raptor engines, SpaceX are going to lay down steel. Nope, not a flametrench. Just steel. The reason for this move is because any payload aboard Starship won't be near the acoustic environment. It will be nearly 100 meters above it. Personally, I have my doubts but I'm not an aerospace engineer in any capacity. For the next flight of Starship and Super Heavy, SpaceX are targeting beyond stage separation with the upgrades to booster 9 being cited as a way to surpass the hiccups with booster 7. The ship coming along for the ride is yet to be determined, however that decision should be made this week. The flight profile itself will be a repeat of the first, targeting eight near-orbit parabola around the planet before re-entering over the Pacific Ocean. After that, a proper orbital flight is to be expected. Elon says there's an 80% chance Starship will reach orbit this year but we're all fully accustomed to Elon time at this point. He plans to do another update with us in about three weeks, so make sure to keep an eye out for all the juicy details. Spaceport Cornwall, home of the very first orbital launch attempt from UK soil, has opened a new Space Systems Operations Facility, or SOF, with 10 organisations already interested in moving in. The most famous of which, at least to our British viewers, would be Goonhilly Earth Station, the world's first private deep space communications network. Wholesales satellite broadband provider and satellite operator Avanti Communications have also shown interest, as well as Kisper, a company who, quote, partners with customers looking for solutions to complex or technically challenging projects in the areas of space, telecommunications and electronics. Smallsat Tug deployment company D-Orbit are also interested and you may recognise their name from rideshare Falcon 9 missions. Also involved are London Cambridge and Cornwall-based startup ExoBotics, engineering technology and consulting service provider Explio, geospatial consultant Geospatial Ventures, satellite applications catapult, space skills allies and intelligent AI. The SOF sits next to the SIF, or Space Systems Integration Facility, aka the Big Hanger with the logo on it. The biggest selling point of the new building is the new clean room, which makes Spaceport Cornwall the only place in the United Kingdom capable of handling satellite construction, integration and launch. Virgin Galactic, the birth company of Virgin Orb, it has itself returned a flight last week with a glide test of the spaceship to VSS Unity. Departing Spaceport America just before 7 o'clock in the morning, local time on Wednesday under the wing of carrier aircraft VMS Eve, the crew of four pilots, two on each vehicle, climbed up to 47,000 feet over New Mexico. VSS Unity, separated from VMS Eve at 0747 Maritime Daylight Time, beginning its glide down to the runway, touching down nine minutes later. This glide test is not only given Virgin Galactic more data as it progresses towards regular tourism flights to the edge of space, but it's also proved that the modifications and upgrades made to the space plane have worked. Following a fixed flight and now this glide flight, the next step for Virgin Galactic is a test flight to the edge of space. On board VSS Unity, alongside the two pilots, will be four mission specialists from Virgin Galactic. They'll be along for the ride to test out the cabin, experience the customer experience and see if the ground training was worthwhile. With that completed, fingers crossed successfully, Virgin Galactic are aiming to launch their commercial services in Q2. Considering there's only four weeks left of the quarter, I wouldn't be too shocked to see it slip into the second half of the year. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the aerospace industry has been feeling its impact. Most of the uncertainty was tied up straight away. No more Soyuz from Kuru, one web switch to SpaceX in the ISRO, Northup Grumman partnered with Firefly for Antares, but the International Space Station was not. That was until now, as Yuri Borisov, Director-General of Roscosmos, has confirmed that the country will continue to support the orbiting laboratory until at least 2028. General Borisov sent letters to his counterparts in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan, informing them of this commitment from Russia. Some of you may be asking, why is this a good thing, especially considering the current political climate? From the perspective of scientific research to better humanity and provide us as a species with more data, which can then be applied to future missions beyond our home planet, the Russian orbital segment is extremely important because it's essentially the station's way of staying in space. The Zvezda module contains the station's main engine system, which occasionally boosts the station's altitude to circumvent the drag experienced from the atmosphere. No propulsion, and the ISS is going to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere relatively quickly, with the solar arrays acting as sails against the thin upper atmosphere. The Academy of Aerospace Liquid Propulsion Technology, a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, is marketing three of its engine designs to the commercial market in the hope that it'll spur on the space sector in the country. The engines being marketed are the Kerologs YF-102 and its vacuum-optimized sibling, the YF-102V, as well as the Methalogs YF-209. If you recall last month, private company Space Pioneer successfully reached orbit with their Tianlong-2 rocket, becoming the first private company to do so on a vehicle's maiden launch. The first stage of said rocket utilized three of the YF-102s. The YF-209 is yet to fly into space, all power a rocket for that matter, however it has successfully conducted a 200 second firing on the ground last February. It's being designed with reusability in mind, as well as being high-performing, targeting a maximum thrust at just over 780 kN, which is somewhat comparable to SpaceX's Merlin 1D. It's an exciting SpaceX-filled space traffic, but first thank you to the citizens of Tomorrow for your monthly contributions towards the show. Every penny is put towards the operations of Station 204, and in return the ground supports sub-orbital-orbital escape velocity, and planned ProPlus citizens get access to perks like our member-only post-show hangouts, space news scripts as they're being written, and the escape velocity Discord channel. If that's something you fancy, take a stroll to the join button below. If you still want to support the show, but you don't want to financially, then just take a couple seconds out of your day and share with the latest news with your friends, it all goes a long way in helping to grow the space community. Where were we? Oh yeah, SpaceX launches, and a lot of them. Kicking it off halfway through the week, SpaceX launched Starlink Group 3 Mission 5, the first launch of this group since last summer. Departing Space Launch Complex 4 east of the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1340 Universal Time on Thursday, all 46 Starlink v1.5 satellites were successfully delivered to their initial sun-synchronous orbits. The booster supporting this flight, veteran of the fleet B1061, touched down on the drone ship of course I still love you, concluding its 13th flight. From the west coast to the east coast, Friday saw the launch of O3B M-Power 3 and 4 on this Falcon 9 from Slick 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The mission launched at 2216 UTC, beginning a full-burn flight up to a medium-Earth orbit, three of which were from the second stage, and one of which was from this booster, B1078, one of the newest members of the fleet. It first flew the Crew 6 mission back in March and I expected it will fly many more missions in the future. For the final flight of the week, SpaceX pulled out the big guns, launching the triple-core Falcon Heavy in its most ruthless configuration, fully expendable. Leaving historic launch complex 39A at 2329 UTC on Sunday, such a high-performance configuration was needed as inside the payload fairing was the most massive payload ever carried by a Falcon if you exclude USSF Space Force missions because we don't notice they're classified. The primary satellite was Viasat 3 Americas, a six and a half metric-ton K-A-band satellite with a 300 kilo and 22 kilo ride shares sitting beside it. All of these payloads were inserted directly into a geostationary orbit by the second stage. Falcon Heavy doesn't faff about with geostationary transfer of orbits, it does the job itself. Side boosters B1052 and B1053 ended their careers in the Atlantic whilst Centacorp B1068 ended before it had even started. Coming up over the next seven days Rocket Lab will be launching Rocket Like A Hurrican on the Electron from Mahia. There's another Starlink and there's another Starlink, but at least it's from Vandenberg so we get some variation. Still to come on tomorrow on Wednesday Dr. Timothy Schoes will be back with more weather. Darlie's returning on Thursday with more news and we're all back on Friday with our weekly live show. Thanks for watching and goodbye.