 In this news update, Elon Musk announces a new nuclear Starship variant. NASA are bringing back the space shuttle and there's been a bit of a mishap with the dome of the flat Earth. This is tomorrow's Space News. Elon Musk has taken to the stage in Boca Chica for the second time this year to announce a brand new nuclear version of Starship, which will allow incredible efficiency for interplanetary transport. SpaceX are going to be inheriting some data from the NERVA program, which was a nuclear engine development program ran by the US government between 1956 and 1973. Similarly to the engines developed under NERVA, SpaceX will be creating a special version of the Raptor 2 engines, which is filled with highly enriched uranium. The new engine will be called Raptor N, and there will be two types, Raptor N-center and Raptor N-vacuum. Super Heavy will still be using methane, however. SpaceX are still planning on using on-orbit refilling to have as much uranium on board as possible, as the engines would be able to be used on Mars as nuclear power stations for electricity, reducing the colonists' reliability on solar panels. These new engines also mean that Starship will not be launching this year, but most likely in 2027. Obviously this five-year delay is disappointing, but on the other side of the story, Starship transit times are going to be significantly reduced thanks to the performance of the new nuclear engines. The technology development will be exciting to watch, and if it goes well, SpaceX will be the only entity manufacturing these engines for normal rocky use, so they could also sell them on to other companies like Blue Origin does with their BE4 engine to UAA. I'm curious to see what the general consensus of this move is, so make sure to let me know in the comments down below. This story is very exciting for all the Space Shuttle fans out there, as NASA has announced they are bringing three back into service as a cheaper alternative to SLS. It isn't the last three to fly, however, as both Discovery and Endeavour are now in museums nowhere near the Kennedy Space Center. The first orbiter to be brought back into service will be Atlantis, as that's already at the KSC. To remove Atlantis from the building, NASA will firstly level it out from 43.21 degrees to zero before laying it down on a platform so they can detach it from the ceiling. Once they've done that, the team will remove the roof and airlift the vehicle out using a heavy-lift crane helicopter. Atlantis will then be taken a couple miles over to the VAB before being gently placed onto a new self-propelled modular transporter. The second shuttle to be brought back into service will be Inspiration, a mock-up which is currently at the Shuttle Landing Facility. Once rolled over to the VAB, it will be converted into a flight-ready orbiter with avionics and actual thermal protection tiles. The final shuttle to enter service will be Space Shuttle Independence. Currently located at Space Center Houston, this shuttle was chosen because it is already mounted onto the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, which will speed up the process of transporting the orbiter to the Cape. It just needs to take off. Like Inspiration, Independence is just a mock-up, so once it reaches the VAB, it will also be converted into a flight-ready orbiter with avionics and thermal protection tiles. As I said earlier, these shuttles are being brought into service as a cheaper alternative to SLS. After reports came out that the big orange rocket would cost $4 billion per launch. To save time and money, Atlantis will be strapped to the side of the vehicle previously slated for Artemis-1, except the Orion capsule will be replaced with a nose cone and the four RS-25 engines will be taken off, with three being used on Atlantis. As SpaceX now lease out LC-39A, NASA will only be able to launch the shuttle from LC-39B, and because they removed the permanent structures there, a new fixed service structure and rotating service structure will be constructed on the mobile launch pad itself, which is also a cost and time-saving measure. That's all the main news covered, so let's head into some space traffic. At 16.24 UTC on April 1st, Transporter 4 lifted off from Sleek 40 on a Falcon 9. However, not everything went to plan. At approximately two minutes into flight, the SpaceX broadcast failed to switch into CG mode, which means that we got to see the Falcon 9 crash into the dome of the flat Earth. This was a spectacular sight to see, with a big crunch and a lot of spinning. To support this extremely accurate news coverage, we have the citizens of tomorrow, who back us through a monthly contribution of their cash. The people who pay the most are the escape velocity citizens who get access to an exclusive Discord channel and space news script as they're being written. We also have the orbital citizens, the suborbital citizens and the ground support citizens. That's quite hard to say very quickly, and we also have the system support citizens. Although they don't get their name in the show, every dollar they kindly give to us helps out the show a huge deal. If you want to join the wonderful people on your screen, head to the join button below or youtube.com forward slash tmro forward slash join. Hopefully by this point you've noticed what day this video was published on. A more accurate news episode will be coming next Tuesday. Thank you very much for watching and goodbye.