 Hello citizens of Earth and welcome to this edition of Tomorrow News. We are so excited to have you with us because we have got a lot of things to cover. SpaceX is doing so much down in Texas that I've even got to jump in and talk a little bit about it. NASA may have a new administrator and they're going to be grabbing a seat on a Soyuz. In addition, Japan, they're getting a little bit more money for their space budget. Now before we officially get started with Tomorrow News, of course, just want to remind you that if you like what we do here, don't forget to subscribe. To us, hit that like button down below to let us know that you like the video. Also, set up your notifications so that way you can either get some videos or what you probably want all of the videos, especially once we start doing the live shows, which are returning very, very soon. Yeah, they're going to be back pretty, pretty soon. So let's go ahead and get started with your Tomorrow News for the week of March 25th, 2021. And Ryan, why don't you get us caught up over the past couple of weeks that we've missed? Hopping straight down to Boca Chica, some very exciting activity has just started around the construction of the first super heavy booster, which has been dubbed BN1. Most of the booster has been split into two components for the past few weeks. However, just in the last couple of days, all the different sections have been stacked together. The team is going to be wanting to test the boosters soon, so as their current plan is to get to orbit by the end of the year and as a Starship vehicle isn't really designed to be single-stage to orbit capable from Earth, yeah, it is kind of an important part of the system. Speaking of single Starship vehicles, SN11 has been on the move, and it was rolled down to the launch pad last week, and it has been doing some tank tests, sending them up to flight pressures to make sure the vehicle doesn't blow up. So we could be seeing some static fires soon, setting the vehicle up for a full flight, and hopefully a slightly softer landing. Elon Musk has taken to Twitter, applying to Austin Barnard, who was sharing some photos of the landing legs on SN11 actually being tested. According to Musk, the final remaining firing raptor on SN10 was low on thrust, which was probably due to a partial helium ingestion from the header tank at the top of the vehicle. The temporary landing legs also couldn't do their job properly because of a 10 meters per second impact which managed to damage them and a part of the engine skirt. Something else Elon has been on about is the possibility of landing Starship the same way it's been proposed to land or rather catch super heavy. And we got ourselves a nice static fire for Starship SN11. Three raptors lighting up and everyone seems happy. No word yet on when we'll see a hop, but we're hoping for sooner rather than later. Oh goodness, there is a lot to talk about in spaceflight this week, so why don't we go ahead and bring back a classic and have ourselves a nice spaceflight bonanza. After weeks of speculation, rumors, murmurs, half truths, hypotheses, guesswork, conjecture, postulation, guesstimates, and predictions, the Biden executive branch has put forward their nominee for the position of NASA's administrator and that would be Bill Nelson, a former congressional representative from Florida who began his career in the House of Representatives in 1979 and was there until 1991. He then became a senator in 2001 and that 10-year lasted until 2018, which it ended due to losing re-election in that year's midterms. Bill Nelson seems to be a natural fit for the position of NASA administrator. He has broad support from the industry. By partisan support in the United States government, that is something that is nearly unheard of in these modern times and he was sort of in and around the Cape Canaveral area as the representative for a very long period of time. But there is some baggage that does come with him, his comments about commercial spaceflight, SLS, and also that a politician shouldn't run NASA and him being a politician, well, he's probably going to have to explain himself a little bit and we'll go over those details when the time comes and I'm going to definitely be looking forward to watching those hearings for him getting that position. So let's go ahead and take a look at another seat that is in the spotlight. After a proper scramble from NASA to grab a Soyuz seat, the agency has confirmed that astronaut Mark van de Hij will be joining the crew of Soyuz MS-18 as flight engineer 2, hitching a ride with commander Oleg Novitsky and flight engineer 1 Piotr Dubrov as they launch to the International Space Station, currently scheduled for April 9th. And that's to join the ongoing Expedition 64. And this will be Novitsky's third flight, Dubrov's first and van de Hij's second. NASA's goal is to always make sure that there is an astronaut there to take care of the U.S. orbital segment. And this is aerospace. Anything can happen. Delays can occur and other stuff that may end up causing the International Space Station to have to be decreed. So grabbing a seat on a Soyuz assures that there will be an astronaut there to take care of the specific items that are needed. But the rapid procurement of the seat isn't the only unusual aspect at play. NASA actually did not purchase the seat through Roscosmos. Instead, the seat was exchanged via Axiom Space, a commercial space flight company. Axiom had obtained the seat from Roscosmos, but either group has disclosed what the initial deal's terms were. NASA has specified that in acquiring the seat from Mark Van de Hij, they will be giving Axiom a seat on a commercial crew mission to the International Space Station sometime around 2023. And if you thought that was the end of the story, oh no, there is a bit of an extension. The flight after next to the International Space Station, Soyuz MS-19, will be carrying a Russian cosmonaut as the commander. But two additional crew will be there as well, a film director and an actress intending to shoot a film while aboard the station. This means that two seats down will be occupied. So there's a very strong possibility of NASA astronaut Mark Van de Hij staying on the International Space Station for nearly a year. And he wouldn't be the only one Roscosmos rookie Piotr Dubrov would also spend nearly a year on the ISS. And that's not bad for your first flight to space. So NASA and Roscosmos will continue their cooperation on the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. But a vast majority of the Earth's space agencies are currently aimed squarely at getting humans on the moon. And that is where Russia diverts away from NASA entirely. In fact, Roscosmos will be going to a completely different country to be a partner, China. Roscosmos and the China National Space Administration have signed a memorandum of understanding regarding exploration of the moon. By signing that specific MOU, Russia and China have agreed to come together and use their technological know-how in order to build a base on the moon and have successful operations of it. And in addition to that, they have not closed the door on any international partners who would like to join in. It's being dubbed the International Lunar Research Station and both the China National Space Administration and Roscosmos have put a heavy emphasis that they are open to all interested countries and international partners being a part of it. It is, of course, illegal due to a act of the United States Congress for NASA to collaborate with China. So when it comes to this lunar base, do not look for the United States to be joining at all. But Europe is very interested in working with China and they are pursuing several projects and are sort of looking over the fence, if you will, to see if they might be able to join into this. Now, speaking of collaboration, we've got some happening up in geosynchronous orbit right now. Northrop Grumman's Mission Extension Vehicle 2 has begun to start up close proximity operations with its target, Intel SAT-102. MEV-2 approached to prepare its systems and analyze results from them before moving away. And this is the same operating procedure that Mission Extension Vehicle 1 used in 2020 when it rendezvoused with Intel SAT-901, spending around two months before officially moving in to grab the satellite. Mission Extension Vehicle 1 and Mission Extension Vehicle 2 are actually operating a little bit different at the start. You see, MEV-1 arrived at Intel SAT-901 when it was in a graveyard orbit, grabbed onto it, and moved it to an operational orbit. So Intel SAT-901 at that time was, if you will, dead and put it back into service. MEV-2, however, is a little bit different because Intel SAT-102 is still operational. So Intel SAT actually has to figure out a time that it can halt operations on one of its satellites so that MEV-2 can actually go in and then attach to it and become its new engine and fuel tank. So that is a completely different kind of operation compared to what MEV-1 had to do. And that adds a extra amount of complexity. So we'll see what MEV-2 does over the next couple of months. It's not just geosynchronous orbit where all of the action is happening. No, down in low Earth orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope went into safe mode. It was found to be caused by a software error and that patch was applied and after about half a week, Hubble is now back up and running again. But even with the successful recovery of the Hubble Space Telescope, it's really starting to show its age on orbit. After all, in just a couple of weeks, we're gonna be celebrating its 31st anniversary of being deployed into low Earth orbit. And there were some things that happened during safe mode that kind of show that it really is starting to age a little poorly. When Hubble goes into safe mode, the aperture door, which is a cover at the top of Hubble's optical tube, is programmed to close itself without needing to be commanded to do so. However, this time, it did not close itself and controllers on the ground were lucky enough to catch this, so they switched it to its backup motor and were able to successfully close it. If you look at all of the other components and systems that make up Hubble, everything looks like it actually should be fine to roll through the 2020s. But of course, Hubble operating that long is not a guarantee, it is simply a hope. And we do have the technology to actually send another service mission to Hubble if we would like to, but that would also be very, very expensive. Hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. Remember, the Hubble Space Telescope is a bespoke spacecraft. You can't just roll up there with anything that you've got and start to tear it apart and work on it like it's your Honda or your Toyota or your Jeep in the garage. It requires very, very specific things. There's also that risk of sending people up to Hubble. It's in an orbit that's a little bit higher than the International Space Station, so that kind of makes things a little more difficult. And with the Nancy-Grace Roman Telescope coming up, it's going to be able to cover Hubble's ability from near-infrared to visible light. And it may very well be okay for us to leave Hubble as it is. And one day let it finally get some well-deserved rest. The United States Space Force has awarded four new launch contracts to both SpaceX and United Launch Alliance staying with the two launch providers as their main launch providers until 2027. $224.2 million has been handed over to ULA for USSF 112 and USSF 87. SpaceX, on the other hand, have only received $159.7 million for both USSF 36 and NROL 69. The reason that this contract price is lower is because the National Reconnaissance Office mission only needs a launch and the mission integration will be funded separately. These four extra missions are adding on to the already existing roughly 30 planned missions between 2022 and 2027, which will also be shared by ULA and SpaceX. NASA has said that they are supporting Blue Origin in simulating lunar gravity aboard their new Shepard rocket. The crew capsule, which sits atop New Shepard, will use its reaction control thrusters to spin at a rate of 11 revolutions per minute, which will turn it into a centrifuge that can simulate lunar gravity for around two minutes. The first of this type of mission is currently scheduled for around 2022, with half of the payload capacity on board being purchased by NASA. Blue Origin have also got plenty of suborbital test flights under their belts, so hopefully that will reduce the number of hiccups we could see between now and the flight. And just before we get into some space traffic, Japan has budgeted a record 449.6 billion yen, which converts to 4.14 billion USD for all their government space activities. 80 billion yen will go to the nation's Information Gathering Satellite Programme. 212.4 billion yen is going to be handed over to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and 51.4 billion of that figure will go to JAXF for their participation in NASA's Artemis Programme. 37 billion yen will then be used to develop a new space station resupply vehicle, which has been dubbed HTVX. It is also listed in the budget documents that 3.4 billion yen will be used to develop the smart lander for Investigating Moon, which as you can probably tell from the name, is a lunar lander being developed by JAXA, and 2.8 billion yen will be designated for the Lunapolar Exploration or RUPEX mission, which is a joint project between JAXA and ISRO. 18.9 billion yen will also go towards the development of the H3 rocket, which is planned to start flights this year. Future flights are also planned all the way beyond 2025. That's it for the main stories this week, then so let's pop into some space traffic. Every week we have a new Starlink launch to talk about, and unsurprisingly, we have two to talk about today. Starlink 20 lifted off out of Space Launch Complex 40, which is located at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 08.30 in Coordinated Universal Time on March 11th. Booster B1058 safely landed for a sixth time on the drone ship, just read the instructions, something it had done for Bob and Doug's mission to the ISS, an ACIS-2, CRS-21, Transporter-1, and one other Starlink mission. Next up on that same day was the launch of XJY-602, which had placed atop this brand new Long March 7A rocket. 1751 UTC at LC-201, located at the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in China, saw the first successful flight of the Long March 7A, taking the 6,300 kilogram payload on its way to a geostationary orbit around the Earth. It was second time lucky for this rocket type, the first of which failed its mission. This was also the fourth launch of a Long March 7. The third launch to cover also came out of China, as the Yaogan 3104 mission was lifted to space by this Long March 4C rocket. Taking to the skies at 02.19 UTC on March 13th, out of Site 9401 at the G-Con Satellite Launch Center, all the equipment on board is heading for low Earth orbit, and that, as it always is with reconnaissance satellites, is all we are allowed to know. Something we are allowed to know about is this very special launch. Now, the payload isn't that special, but the rocket, in my opinion, is. Heading back over to the Cape, we had the launch of Starlink-21, and no, the fact that this is the second Starlink launch of the episode isn't the special part. The special part is that this was the ninth launch of this booster, the ninth. Lifting off at 10.01 UTC on March 14th, the B-1051 booster gracefully lifted into the sky, only to drop off the second stage on its way to low Earth orbit, and then turned itself around to land again on the drone ship. Of course, I still love you. The fact that just a couple years ago, our minds were being blown by a booster flying for the third time, and now it's for the ninth, that just completely blows me away, and just to put the cherry on top of the already tasty cake, this launch also set the first and second fastest turnaround of a fairing to date at 49 days for both used, breaking the previous record a measly 88 days. Oh, and that isn't all, as this was also the fastest turnaround of LC-39A ever in the history of the launch pad at just 10 days, one hour, and 37 minutes. My mind is blown to pieces, so let's look at some upcoming launches. Look into her face, determination and her station. These girls are... Before this week's show is over and done with, I'd like to thank everyone who helps to support the show. We are, of course, crowdfunded by you, the community, and every penny we receive goes straight back into making these episodes as awesome as possible. The escape velocity, orbital, suborbital, and ground support citizens all help the show get off the ground every week, and without their help, we simply wouldn't be able to share these exciting stories with you. So if you'd like to join them, head over to youtube.com forward slash TMRO forward slash join and donate as little as $1 a month. That's it for another week in space. Thank you for watching, and well, we'll see you next week. Goodbye.