 In this week's news, why SpaceX are nowhere near ready for the orbital flight test, more firm dates on the next wet-dress attempt for SLS have been revealed, and China has some busy months ahead with their space station. This is tomorrow's Space News. Heading straight down to Starbase in Texas, Starship 24 has been rolled out of High Bay 1 and driven down the road on some self-propelled modular transporters down to the launch site. Here, you can see that most of the vehicle is covered with its thermal tiles, however there are still some gaps left. There isn't any reason given as to why the ship has been left in this condition, but it's been speculated that this could make it easier for the engineers in Boca Chica to evaluate any issues between the welded sections. Once S-24 arrived at the orbital launch site, it was hooked up to the cryo station in preparation of testing. The first sign of life was very quickly found as this little vent appeared for approximately 20 seconds. The following day, testing continued, more specifically ambient proof testing. This didn't go too swimmingly from the outside, however, as following a loud sound which sounded like some kind of rupture, multiple starbrick tiles were seen cascading down ship 24. That's not a brilliant start for the ship currently destined to perform the orbital flight test, and it also means that the FAA environmental review slipping again to June 13th doesn't really matter as SpaceX are nowhere near ready for the UFT. We need to see ships working, boosters working, static fires, and so much more before we know, looking in from the outside, that SpaceX are truly ready for their orbital flight. At this point in time, the FAA aren't delaying SpaceX's operations. SpaceX are delaying SpaceX's operations. At the end of the day, once ambient proof testing was complete, workers could be seen removing a very bent pipe from inside of S24. Now, I'm no plumbing expert, but I'm pretty sure that a pipe bent this much isn't a good sign, especially after dozens of tiles have just fallen off the ship, following a loud noise. On the back of the ship, there is a large patch where the majority of the tiles fell off, so it'll be interesting to see what SpaceX do next to try and rectify this issue. They've been fixing Booster 7, so repairing ship 24 is definitely an option, if it is physically possible. And speaking of repairing this pipe, which looks like a straight version of the bent one was taken into ship 24 on Monday. Following ship 24 will be ship 25 and good progress is being made on that ship as well. This is a forward dome which was sleeved on Wednesday. With the arrival of a new ship to the launch site and another one under construction, ship 16 has continued disassembly, with one of the aft flaps being removed. Raptors keep on arriving at the production site here, we can see Raptor 2 SN74 being delivered and a few days later we saw SN62 and SN77. And this isn't really an update, but it is something that caught my eye. This majestic shot by Nick Ansuini of the sun rising over the launch site is just incredible. Ship 24's heat shield has had some problems and a dragon heat shield has had an issue too, with the structure destined for crew 5 failing acceptance testing earlier in the month meaning it will not be used on dragon endurance. Acceptance testing includes X-rays of the heat shield as well as low testing at various points in the flight, such as during the most intense part of re-entry and when the capsule splashes down in the ocean, which is the point where the test failed. This failure was caused by a manufacturing defect so a new shield will be produced and sent through the same rigorous testing regime before flying on crew 5. It's also important to note that this defect doesn't impact the dragon spacecraft currently docked to the International Space Station for crew 4, Freedom. That's because each heat shield is tested separately, this issue only applies to the specific heat shield we're just going to fly on crew 5. It has also been a big week for Starlink, but more on the positive side as three new countries have signed on to accept the service within their territory. First to be announced was the Philippines, with Starlink Internet Services Philippines Incorporated, the Filipino subsidiary of Starlink being approved by the National Telecommunications Commission, also known as the NTC. This was followed by a tweet a few hours later from Elon Musk saying that Starlink had also been approved in Nigeria and Mozambique. The network availability map on Starlink's website currently says that Mozambique and the Philippines will be receiving the service by Q4 of 2022 and that Nigeria will be receiving the service in Q3 of 2022. Launcher is a small satellite launch services company who are aiming to launch their first rocket called Light in 2024. Its first stage is powered by one of their E2 engines, which they've branded as the world's highest performance liquid rocket engine for a small rocket. In 2019 they won a small business innovation research or SPUR contract, which was for development of the E2, valued at US$1.5 million. That helped to get the development rolling, which has led to the company winning a second contract from the Space Force. Launcher has won another US$1.7 million, which has come in the form of the SPUR Phase 2B Tactical Funding Increase, which will accelerate the development of the engine. This also means better and longer testing so the company can really push the engine and its components to see how far it can go. This will include full duration tests of turbo pumps and long duration tests of combustion chambers. Hopefully this extra funding will keep the first launch of Light on track for 2024 as it is always awesome to see another rocket come online, especially from new private entities trying to make their way into the launch market. It's also especially awesome when that rocket is powered by a 3D printed engine with 327 seconds of specific impulse. That's a pretty powerful engine. The next few months for China's space station are pretty busy, as with the arrival of Tianzhou 4 on May 10, the next crew are now ready to fly up to the station and welcome two new science modules, Wen Tian and Meng Tian, which will allow space for more science as well as space for on-orbit crew transfers, exactly how crew handovers are performed on the ISS. The crew which will see the arrival of these two new modules is Shenzhou 14 and the rocket for that flight has just rolled out of the assembly building at the Jiquan satellite launch centre. No official dates and times for the launch have been confirmed, but there is speculation that June 5th is the first liftoff date being targeted. That's not the only thing we don't know about the flight yet, however, as we don't even know who will be on board. The identities of the three taikonauts embarking on the six-month voyage are still unknown, just days before the mission. The two new modules being added onto the station are both approximately 20 metric tonnes in mass, 17.9 metres long and 4.2 metres in diameter. The way that they're going to be added to the station is also unique as both modules will arrive first at the forward port on the Tianhe core module. From there, they'll be manually transferred via robotic arm to their respective forward left and forward right ports. Wen Tian will be carrying its own airlock for EVAs, another robotic arm, as well as the ability to control the station in the event that the core module is unable to. Meng Tian is similar with an airlock designed for supplement and equipment transportation and an unpressurised cargo compartment. Following Shenzhou 15, the next crewed flight after Shenzhou 14, the station will be considered fully operational and then China will start to consider what other taikonauts will be eligible for a flight to the station. Tourist visits and commercial missions are also on the cards, similar to Axiom and SpaceX's collaboration on ISS flights. International flights could also occur as the station uses the international docking system found on the US crewed vehicles. Speaking of US crewed vehicles, Orion is one of them and it is set to fly around the moon on SLS sometime in the autumn. I covered some SLS updates last week, but more firm dates on what is happening when have just been announced. Roll out will occur on June 5th or 6th, starting at around midnight local time and arriving at the pad the following morning. NASA will then have some time to effectively set up the rocket and then the three-day countdown will begin on June 17th. That means that the terminal count and fuel link will begin on June 19th, but it is important to remember that these are never earlier than dates, so there's a pretty good chance that they can slip. Weather delays have also been built into the dress rehearsal, so even if a classic Florida storm rocks up, the schedule should be able to hold up at least for a day or two. We still don't have an official date for launch, apart from the August launch windows which are currently being targeted. Speaking of launches, we had one last week, so let's hop into space traffic. There was just one launch to cover last week, and there's just one launch to cover again this week, which is SpaceX's Transporter 5 mission. Launching at 1835 UTC on the 25th of May from Sleek 40 in Florida, on board were 59 separate small sat palos for a variety of different customers all wanting to end up in a sun-synchronous orbit. Due to the relatively light mass of the payload and the second stage for this mission, booster B1061 had enough fuel remaining to turn around and head back to land for a return to launch site landing, which was, of course, successful. This landing marks the end of the eighth flight for this specific booster, and the 99th reflight of a booster by SpaceX. And following that launch, literally one minute later at 1836, Starliner spacecraft 2 undocked from the Harmony module on the International Space Station to start the descent phase of the Orbital Flight Test 2 mission. Following its due orbit burn, Starliner re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and descended upon White Sands missile range in New Mexico under three strong, healthy main chutes. The heat shield was then jettisoned, and the airbags were inflated before touching down in the desert at 2249 UTC the same day, ending a successful test ride with only some minor glitches, which can be fixed, which also had redundancies anyway. Only three launches are scheduled for the next seven days. Those are the resupply mission Progress MS-20, the aforementioned Shenzhou 14, and Capstone on Electron heading to the Moon. And here is your space weather with Dr. Tammethers' go. Space weather this week continues to be a bit on the calm side. As we take a look at our Earth-facing disc, you can see that big crescent-shaped coronal hole. That has been sending us some fast solar wind over the past couple days, and it's bumped us up to storm levels and kind of kept us there for a day or so. But this region now is rotating off of the Earth-facing disc, and therefore things are beginning to calm down. But never fret, Aurora photographers, there is yet another coronal hole that's going to be rotating into the Earth strike zone here about in the next four or five days, and that could get us yet another burst of fast solar wind and more Aurora chances. So just hang in there. Now also we have only three active regions on the Earth-facing disc right now, region 30, 23, 24, and 25. Only region 30, 25 is a big flare player, but it's only a Scotia of a big flare player. So things have definitely calmed down when it comes to solar flares, and also solar flux. We're actually struggling to keep up into the triple digits, and that will easily continue over the next few days, possibly over a week before things begin to get a little bit better. And now for your Leo-Mio-Geo orbit outlook. As we take a look at our low-energy particle environment, these are the particles that can gather on the outside of spacecraft and cause surface charging and other types of electrical discharges. We can see it late on the 27th. We can see particle injections kind of beginning to build that flux up in Geo, as well as clear down deep into the Mio environment. In fact, we're beginning to see surface charging issues from our radiation clock, especially in the post-Midnight pre-dawn sector. And this lasts easily through the 28th, and by the 29th, things begin to kind of settle down a little bit with these low-energy particles. But when we flip to our higher-energy particles, now these are the ones that cause internal charging because they can penetrate deep into the spacecraft and cause electrical upsets from the inside. Taking a look at these particles at 1 MeV, you can actually see right around the 28th, these particles actually get flushed. You can see that because the radiation belts here in this figure actually turns really blue. But very shortly thereafter, we begin to build those particles back up, and you can see the radiation belts beginning to get really intense. And this goes deep into the Mio orbits, cleared down at about 2 Earth radii all the way out to Geo. And these particles are going to continue to intensify over the next day or two, so you satellite operators, especially in Mio and Geo orbits, expect internal charging could be an issue over the next few days. Station 204 has high operating costs, and these are the people who help to keep it on orbit. Those quick airlocks don't come cheap, you know? The escape velocity, orbital suborbital, and ground support citizens contribute varying amounts every month for a place on this list, as well as other perks, such as exclusive Discord channels, access to the pre and post live show hangouts, and access to the space news scripts as they're being written. If you want to take a look at all that, consider becoming a citizen of tomorrow at youtube.com slash tomorrow slash join, or the join button below. That's it for another week, but of course I want to quickly drop in my Psyche GoFundMe campaign, so if you want to head over there and help to send me to Florida in September to report on the launch, that would be greatly appreciated. Even if you just want to share the link, every little thing that everyone can do to help is awesome and greatly appreciated. If you want to see the next episode of the news, and many more episodes to come, so you always know what's happening in the world of spaceflight, then subscribing will do just that, and ensure that all our videos show up in your subscriptions feed. Even if you don't want to watch all of them, having them there, it's nice to watch. For now though, thank you for watching and goodbye.