 In this week's news, SLS is finally at the pad. Starship updates are coming in from Elon Musk on Twitter. We have a new record in booster reuse. The latest cosmonauts to arrive to the ISS are wearing some bold colours and James Webb is aligned. This is Tomorrow Space News. The next generation rocket from NASA is finally here and, in my opinion, SLS is a very nice looking rocket indeed. For the first time since 2011, a vehicle has been carried along the crawl away on the crawler transporter, and for the first time since 2009, a rocket has been rolled out to launch complex 39B. The last flight to launch from here was the only flight of ARIES-1X, which can kind of be seen as part of the journey to the point where we are now, with the space launch system, although the launch pad which SLS found looked a little bit different. More on that in a second. Departing high bay three of the vehicle assembly building just before 2200 UTC on March 17th, the 6.7km 4.2 mile journey took approximately 11 hours to complete, but before the main trip got underway, the crawler stopped for a few minutes around the junction for high bay one and three, so the crew access arm could swing back and retract. As SpaceX are now releasing launch complex 39A for Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and soon Starship, they've built a building on the crawl away at the entrance of the complex, so there was no need to refurbish all the way from the junction to 39B to 39A, so just the crawl away from the VAB to pad B has been refurbished. Completed in 1967, LC39B was originally constructed as a clean pad for Saturn V and the Saturn IB at a height two metres higher than 39A. When the Apollo program finished and the space shuttle program booted up, both pads were modified with permanent structures, the fixed service structure, a tall tower that SpaceX kept on their pad, and the rotating service structure, a shell which could be wrapped around the space shuttle to load payloads into the payload bay. 39B has had its permanent structures removed, reverting it back to a clean pad and SLS now carries its service tower along for the ride on the mobile launcher platform. With 39B being reverted back to a clean pad, theoretically any vehicle could launch from there as long as it had the correct platform to sit on the pad. While being cancelled in 2020, Northrop Grumman's Omega rocket was going to be manufactured in a leased-out high bay one in the VAB and then they would pay NASA to launch from 39B, but now that's not happening. As you can see from this image taken during crawler testing in 2019, you can see that 39B has also been retrofitted with three new lightning towers, which is a different design from the four towers we commonly see at slick pads at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Even though there are only three masts, there is a very, very small chance SLS can be struck by lightning whilst on the pad due to the new data that can now be put into the construction of these towers. Each tower is also home to four weather stations, giving the launch director 12 stations to look at for weather data when making a decision on whether or not the conditions are suitable for launch. Back in the shuttle days, the nearest weather station was five miles away, which doesn't make for very accurate weather data if you're trying to launch rockets. With this rollout, the possibility of Artemis I launching very soon is pretty high, pending a successful wet dress rehearsal, which is currently scheduled for April 3rd. During this process, both the first and second stages, called the core stage and interim cryogenic propulsion stage respectively, will be filled up with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and all processes down to about T minus 10 seconds will be performed. If this all goes well, which it should do, SLS will return to the VAB, final checks will commence and then SLS will re-roll out in May to try and hit the net date of June. A more precise target date is going to be released once the wet dress rehearsal is complete. I do just want to say quickly though, if you're going to be anywhere near the Titusville area over the next month, make sure to go and have a look over the water. SLS will be on the pad for a while and it is a very, very pretty site indeed. The SpaceX update typically comes first, but I thought the rollout of SLS to 39B was a bit more of an important topic, since we've been waiting so long for it to happen. Anyways, let's head down to Starbase. We started the week off with another heavy lift rocket being fully assembled at the pad and that was the pairing of booster 4 and ship 20 being stacked for the third time in record time. This site is one of the coolest things you can see as a spaceflight fan and I hope that in the near future, once the FAA have granted the necessary regulatory approval, we'll be able to see a ship and a booster perform the orbital test flight. Wednesday then saw a cryogenic proof test where booster 4 and ship 20 were partially filled with liquid nitrogen, which can be seen by the ice forming on the side of the vehicles. We also got to see this awesome quad vent and double vent from Super Heavy, something which we haven't seen before. This really is something that can rival Falcon 9's T-minus 20 minute vent in my opinion. Two days later, the full stack was testing again and this time it was a propellant load test, which as you can probably tell from the name, means that SpaceX were testing loading propellant onto the vehicle. Sadly though, this wonderful site can't last forever as ship 20 was taken off booster 4 at the weekend. First though, the ship quick disconnect arm needed to pull back and swing away before ship 20 was lifted up by Mechazilla and returned to the ground of planet Earth. As well as all these exciting tests, we saw the flipping of another ship aft dome at the production facility and Boca Chica Gao called the new flatter common dome design outside alongside the older toilet design which has been used on all of the ships and boosters constructed until this point. The wide bay just keeps on getting higher and even though no more prefabricated corner sections have been lifted up, more beams are being assembled and the gaps are being filled in with panels as we're now moving closer to the completion date of this new high bay. SpaceX has received new self-propelled modular transporters or SPMTs which are used to transport around the booster and ship mounts, other large parts of rockets and of course the boosters and ships themselves when required. It appears they've purchased these themselves but no official confirmation has been made. They're also really big. One of Starship SN8's forward flaps has been gifted to Brownsville airports just as something cool that passengers can see when arriving or departing. It's also important for SpaceX to keep a healthy relationship with the governmental bodies, companies and other organizations that operate around the local area because without their support there would probably not be a starbase where it is now. Last week I covered the new layout of the COPVs on the side of Booster 7 and this week we can see that the team at the production facility have started covering those helium tanks with the aero covers which will protect them during flight and make the vehicle more aerodynamic. Booster 4 has also done some more tests but you can't really make out anything on the footage. We've received word from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk via Twitter that the first Starship Orbital flight will be using Raptor 2 which now eliminates Booster 4 and Ship 20 from being the pair that will take Starship to orbit as they are not compatible with the next generation engines. If FAA approval is at the end of this month then Elon said they'll use April for integration and then May for the orbital flight test which is close to SLS's first flight so a minor delay could see the orange rocket go to orbit before the shiny one. SpaceX has been launching operational styling batches since 2019 and their network has been slowly growing over the last two years. When OneWeb decided to pull out of Baikonur a couple of weeks ago there was speculation over who they'd pick as their new launch provider and as it turns out one of their competitors is now going to be launching their satellites on a Falcon 9. All we know so far is that OneWeb plans to have their first ride on a Falcon 9 this year and that the company is still on track to finish building their fleet of low Earth orbit satellites. I did say that Stariac and OneWeb are competitors and that's kind of true they do compete for the same type of product but OneWeb is tailored more towards corporate entities with Stariac being tailored more towards individual consumers. SpaceX might assign this deal knowing that either one OneWeb isn't directly competing with them or two they're already so much further ahead of OneWeb that helping them out doesn't really matter and they don't really see them as a threat but I'm not sure which one it could be if that is the case so let me know what you think in the comments. Spaceflight Inc is a company which acts as the middleman for small satellite launches basically if you also launch a payload into space you tell them how big it is and where you want it and they'll organize a flight for you on a variety of rockets from all around the world. One of the companies they had a close relationship with was SpaceX but that's no longer the case. SpaceX are severing ties with Spaceflight and the way they were informed of this was via a text message sent just minutes before the SpaceX rideshare team sent an email to several customers informing them that only the current manifested launches will be operated for spaceflight and after that there will be no more missions. According to a senior official at spaceflight the high ups at the company are surprised by SpaceX's decision and they're continuing to reach out to the company but as of yet they haven't received a response. These types of rideshare flights from spaceflight and other similar companies bring down the cost of placing a satellite into orbit especially on the rideshare type of missions. If you want to book a rideshare spot directly with SpaceX you're looking at an initial cost of $1 million per payload as a minimum a lot higher than the flights offered by spaceflight and two other companies ExoLaunch and Deorbit. The latter two do compete with spaceflight although the dominant player in the market is most definitely the former. Last year alone they helped integrate 81 spacecraft on 11 different launches from nine different companies in just the US they already have relations with Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab, Firefly, Astra, Relativity and another company which has had an announcement of their own. Virgin Orbit the small sat launch provider of the Virgin Group is expanding upon its current launch facilities in Mojave California with scheduled launches from the United Kingdom later this year but they've also been looking into Japan and last week they signed a letter of intent with another European space agency not the European space agency but a European space agency. Pulsar the Polish space agency has agreed to use Virgin Orbit's Launcher 1 vehicle as soon as next year which is a move to try and diversify the European launch market which is dominated by French rockets which are operated by Ariane Space. Historically Europe would go and get help from a Russian vehicle but in light of the invasion of Ukraine the president of Pulsar has said that using those is no longer an option for Poland. Even though Poland isn't land locked it's locked off from launching rockets unless it wants to dump used rocket parts on innocent people's homes which is something we've seen happen before in China. Instead of vertical launching a horizontal launch is more appropriate as Cosmic Girl and Launcher 1 can fly out into the North Sea and air launch with no homes in sight. The letter is still very much fresh and unlike the Japan deal an airport which can be converted into a spaceport has not yet been selected that process will be starting soon. Pulsar will also be undertaking an in-depth study to determine the best business model for this project with Virgin. Poland also has plans to invite other nations along for better access to space with nations such as Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia being potential operators of this new system. The James Webb Space Telescope the latest flagship telescope from NASA has just completed the latest step in its mirror alignment known as Fine Phasing. Every optical element which has to be checked out on the Optical Telescope Element or OTE has been confirmed to be working at expectations or beyond them. With this stage in alignment complete the view from the near infrared camera or NERCAM is now crystal clear and the first image we got back from Webb was of the star with the catchy name Tumas J17 5540 42 plus 65 5127 7. It really rolls off the tongue. This star is quite bright but because of NERCAM's optics you can see the different dimmer galaxies and stars in the background which is very cool. According to read Verkeski Kua the deputy optical telescope element manager of James Webb NERCAM is performing better than specifications which is something everybody is happy to hear. Over the next few weeks the Webb team are going to be working through aligning all of the other instruments before they start the final preparations for the science instruments. Up next are the near infrared spectrograph also known as NERSPEC, the mid-infrared instrument also known as MIRI and the near-infrared imager and slidless spectrograph also known as NERIS. We also got another selfie from NERCAM using a specialised pupil imaging lens which is specifically designed to take a picture of the mirror segments for engineering purposes. You can see all of the different mirror segments are of the same brightness which is very different from the first selfie we received where one segment was significantly brighter than the others. This is because now all of the mirror segments are aligned properly, the same amount of light from the star is hitting the same part of the instrument. The JWST team is currently on track to finish up all of the aspects of the OTE alignment by early May and then actual proper science should be starting in the summer. Something that isn't starting in the summer is this episode's space traffic report, which starts right now. Unless you're from the future and then you're watching this episode in the summer, in which case, go watch the latest episode. March 17th at 0709 Coordinated Universal Times saw the second Yao Gan 34 reconnaissance satellite launch atop a Long March 4C from sighted 9401 SLS-2 at the Zhiquan Satellite Launch Centre in China. The satellite was placed into a 1092 x 941 km low Earth orbit at an inclination of 63.44 degrees. The following day, March 18th at 1555 UTC, the most recent crew launch to the International Space Station commenced, which was Soyuz MS-21 on Soyuz 2.1A. Launching out of launch complex 316 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the all Russian crew of Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matyev and Sergei Korsakov docked to the Nadeer port of the Pre-Chal module at 1912 UTC the same day, and when they opened the hatch and floated through to the station, they were wearing a rather colourful version of the Soyuz flight suit, oddly similar to the colours in the Ukrainian flag. Roscosmos has said, however, that the suits aren't yellow and blue for the Ukrainian flag, but rather because they are the colours of the Bamin Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from. Take from that what you will, but it does seem a little suspicious. March 19th at 04.42 UTC was the time when Starlink Group 4-12 took to the skies for the nighttime launch of 53 Starlink satellites. The booster supporting this mission, B-1051, has just broken the record for the most flights flown by a single orbital-class booster, again making it 12 total launches for the fleet-leading booster. Its age didn't hamper the mission though as all of the satellites were successfully deployed to their initial 317 x 304 km 53.22 dc orbits, with B-1051 landing on just read the instructions for a 12 smooth touchdown. After supporting Demo-1, the radar-sat constellation, Starlink Version 1.0 Launch 3, Launch 6, Launch 9, Launch 13, SXM7, Starlink V1.0 Launch 16, Launch 21, Launch 27, Starlink Group 4-4, and now Group 4-12. The final launch to cover is another launch from Russia and it was another Soyuz 2.1a, but instead of a crew, it had cargo, as at 12.48 UTC on March 22nd, the Meridian M-20L mission lifted off from the Plesets Cosmodrome in Russia. All we know about that payload is that it's a part of a series of communication satellites which are for military and civilian use. We don't actually have any footage of this launch yet, so what you're seeing right now is a Meridian M launch in 2020. For the first time in a very long time, there's no scheduled orbital launches, so just thank the citizens. As pretty much everything in life does, running tomorrow costs a bit of money, and to help cover the costs, we have the wonderful citizens of tomorrow who contribute to the show once a month, ranging from the escape velocity rank all the way through the orbital and sub-orbital ranks and ending up at the ground support level. The people on your screen now support us in varying amounts, and in return they get some cool perks, such as exclusive Discord channels and seeing scripts as they're being written. 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