 Welcome to 2020 and your first Space News of the Year. And we have got an excitingly, epically amazing year ahead of us, which Jared is going to be talking about in just a moment. And then after that, we've got Dr. Tammotha Scove, not just bringing in a space weather, but also a deep dive on the Parker Solar Probe. It's a pretty awesome segment. But also we've got a whole lot of really great content coming out for the rest of the year. We're throwing in new graphics, we're throwing in a whole bunch of new stuff. And if you like to stay up to date with what tomorrow is doing, make sure to like and subscribe on YouTube and hit that notification bell as well. We're trying to hit 100,000 subscribers before the end of the year. And our analytics say we're gonna be about 15,000 short. I would love to prove the analytics wrong. All right, my name is Jamie Higginbotham. We're gonna get this show started. Let's head on over to Jared, giving us an update on what to look forward to in 2020. First and foremost, a literal flotilla of orbiters and landers will be heading off to Mars when our launch window reopens. We've got just enough rocket power to make the shortest duration trip every 26 months. So what'll be on its way this year? NASA is sending Mars 2020, which looks a lot like Curiosity, but has upgraded mechanical systems and instruments. It'll also carry the incredibly epic Mars helicopter scalp. This is going to be the first powered flight in atmosphere vehicle on another world, which should snap some nice landscape shots with the Mars 2020 rover in the frame. In addition, it will have a system to cache samples for eventual return to Earth, keeping some pristine before humans arrive and make a mess of everything. The European Space Agency partnered with Roscosmos, which will be launching the Rosalind Franklin rover and the Kazachuk lander. The China National Space Administration will launch its X-H1 mission, its first mission to another planet where it will be all Chinese vehicles from launch to surface operations. X-H1 includes an orbiter and a lander with a small rover. The fourth player joining the Mars fray will be the newest, the United Arab Emirates. They're going to be sending their hope Mars mission orbiter on a Japanese H2A rocket. It'll study the present climate of Mars to help generate better weather forecasts and look for evidence as to why Mars climate changed so rapidly and catastrophically in its past. And we'll potentially have three sample return missions in all three phases of operation. China will use its recently flight-proven Long March 5 heavy lift rocket to send its next mission to the moon, Chengdu-5. No information yet on where it will land or how large of a sample of the moon it will return to the earth, but it will be the first sample returning from our closest celestial neighbor since the Soviet operated Luna 24 in 1976. So we'll see how well the cheese has aged over almost half a century. In July, NASA's mission with the best background ever created, OSIRIS-REx, will gently lower down to the surface of asteroid Bennu and grab a sample using a nitrogen gas vacuum on the end of a robotic arm. There's enough nitrogen available for three sample attempts and those samples will return to earth in 2023. Then in December, JAX's Hayabusa-2 mission will deliver its samples of the asteroid Ryugu, multiple samples both from the surface and using an explosive charge to excavate below the surface were captured. So we'll get to see just how much Hayabusa-2 snatched of Ryugu and I'm really hoping that it's a lot. And when 2023 rolls around and OSIRIS-REx drops off its samples of asteroid Bennu, then we'll have some very exciting work in comparing those two samples with each other, seeing what's the same and also what's different. Someone please alert Dr. Scove, we've got two missions to study the sun launching this year. The first is Solar Orbiter, an ESA mission which will launch in February and help with understanding heliophysics as a whole, along with more data to improve space weather forecasts. ISRO is also jumping into the solar mix with their own mission, Adida-1, being sent to the Earth's sun L-1 point. Parker's solar probe will also continue its present orbits around the sun. And just one more thing, ESA's Beppe Colombo mission to Mercury will perform two gravity assists. First at Earth and another at Venus to bleed off energy as it heads in towards a Mercury arrival in 2025. Getting to Mercury is extremely difficult. But don't think that the robots are gonna be dominating 2020. You're about to see the inevitable rise of humans with their spaceships from Earth. Almost every single instance of the return of human spaceflight capability to the United States of America is something we watched play out for the entirety of the 2010s, and now it's finally paying off. SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner should begin operational crew rotation missions to the International Space Station, returning human spaceflight capability to the U.S. Suborbital flights from Virgin Galactic carrying paying customers and Blue Origin carrying company astronauts should occur, and the debut of the Alpha launch vehicle from Firefly Aerospace, along with Launcher-1 of Virgin Orbit should occur as well. And NASA is also preparing the first stage of the space launch system rocket to carry the Artemis-1 mission to the moon through what's called a green run, where they're basically gonna fuel it up, run everything and see how it works. And a few larger rockets are also expected to make their first flights in 2020. This includes Japan's H-3 vehicle and Arianespace's Arian-6, which both of these rockets are intended to lower launch costs for their current operators thanks to the pressures of SpaceX. And speaking of SpaceX, we can't wait to see Starship Mark III and Mark IV begin to make high velocity, high altitude test flights, and construction of prototypes for Super Heavy should begin as well later in the year. Also, the launch cadence for Falcon 9s will absolutely crank as SpaceX works to build out its Starlink satellite internet constellation as fast as possible. And SpaceX isn't the only one building out their satellite internet constellation. The OneWeb is also expected to begin to deploy their satellites en masse for their own constellation. 2020 is indeed shaping up to be an amazing year for spaceflight. Now, if time allows the day job, I'm also hopeful that later this week, I can produce a separate video outside of Space News talking about what to expect later this year and then over the next five to 10 years, kind of a high level picture of why this year matters so much for humans living in a working space. And in that, I'm also probably gonna update is to some of the new elements that you've seen already in the Space News episode and kind of what we're working on for our live shows as well. So again, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Now, we're hoping to cover some launches last week, but there weren't any, but we do have a launch coming up this next week. And of course, the return of an old musical figure. -♪ From her destination, cause she's flying, walking, she's flying. Yes, I think my plan is to keep flyer walking back in the show. I might change that graphic a little bit, but y'all loved it, y'all told me you missed it, so back in it goes. All right, now it's time for me to hand it over to Dr. Tammeth Ascove, who'll be talking about not only space weather, but also the Parker Solar probe. Space weather this week is definitely starting out the new year with some promise. As we switch to our front side sun, it all started with region 2753. This is a solar cycle 25 sunspot. It occurs at high latitudes, very far away from the magnetic equator, but no sooner than this region rotates off of the earth-facing disk, then yet another solar cycle 25 sunspot appears that's region 2755. As we switch to our far side sun, you can see it from stereo's view. This is stereo looking at the sun from the side. Right about the beginning of the year, you see that solar cycle 25 sunspot emerging right about the center of stereo's view. This region is the second region of the new solar cycle that we've seen in just so many days, and even though we do have yet another solar cycle 24 sunspot that has emerged in stereo's view that will be rotating into earth view, having all these new sunspots emerging so close together means these new regions will start flaring soon. And that means we're gonna start having to worry about radio blackouts, not just for amateur radio and emergency communications, but also for radio comms when it comes to rocket launches and other types of space traffic. Last year, NASA's Parker Solar Probe made records around the world as it flew closer to the sun than any other spacecraft. The probe has now made three of its 24 plan passes through the sun's corona, and scientists are beginning to unravel longstanding mysteries. Four papers published back in December in nature, described early results from the data, but one discovery in particular has everyone in the scientific community talking. It's the discovery of kinks in the magnetic field near the corona at the edges of equatorial coronal holes thought to be the birthplace of the slow solar wind. These switchbacks, as now they are affectionately called, are created when the sun's magnetic field folds back in on itself, which can only occur because the field is frozen into the charged gas of the solar wind as if glued there by magnetic and electric forces. The reason why these switchbacks are so noteworthy is that they might finally be leading us to understand why the solar corona is so much hotter than any other region of the sun. Considered to be the holy grail of solar atmospheric physics, the coronal heating problem has plagued the physics community since before scientists even knew the solar wind existed. And now finding these switchbacks is like finding the smoking gun that will dramatically change current theories of the solar corona and the solar wind. At the American Geophysical Union meeting back in December, numerous solar and space physicists gathered to discuss the origin and nature of these switchbacks. As it turns out, near the sun's surface, small fast jets of solar wind can overtake slower ones, thus causing the magnetic field that is glued to these different jets of solar wind to fold back in on themselves in kink, like ribbons or flags kink while flapping in a rapid breeze. But in space, these kinks imply a very specific kind of wave process called alphane waves, which have long been postulated as a source of heating of the corona. The longstanding question has always been, well, what would be causing these alphane waves to develop? And now it looks like Parker Solar Probe has found the answer. Impulsive jets from things like spike fuels, jetlets, or even bright points on and beneath the solar surface may just be the source of coronal heating. But the final word is yet to be written. As Dr. Tim Horbury from Imperial College said at the meeting, quote, the nice thing about the sun is that it has so many possible sources of impulsive events, so clearly we need to work back over the next few years to find out and sample what they are, unquote. For more details on this week's space weather, including those new cycle 25 sunspots and what it means for radio communications, come check out my channel and see me at spacewetherwoman.com. And that is our first space news of 2020. And I hope you're as excited about the new year as we are. Now, before we go, I do want to thank all of the citizens of tomorrow who helped to make all of these episodes happen. You are the people who help keep the lights on at the station and keep us on orbit without you there is no show. And we are updating our rewards for you in 2020. You're gonna see those very, very shortly. It's gonna be amazing. You're gonna get an incredible behind the scenes look at how we produce every aspect of the show from news to live shows to everything else. It's going to be pretty awesome. And I'm looking forward to sharing all of this with you in 2020. And if you'd like to learn how you can get access to the behind the scenes footage and behind the scenes access as well as help support the show so we can keep doing this week after week. Head on over to youtube.com slash TMRO slash join. All right, one last note. And that is remember that Jared Head has his own channel on YouTube now. You can go over to youtube.com slash Jared Head. And if you really have an interest in astronomy as opposed to industry news that's really where you're gonna want to follow that. We'll have some astronomy stories on tomorrow in 2020 but really our focus will be industry news into the new year. So if you really, really, really enjoyed those astronomy stories from Jared and Jade and Sarah and so forth Jared Head's channel is gonna be a better place to pick those up kind of moving forward. Thank you all so much for watching. We'll see you next week.