China Heads For Mars | TMRO News

Hello all and welcome to Tomorrow News. Now this week, Ryan is going to be giving a little cryo on us. I'm going to be talking about China heading off to Mars, Sea Launch not really doing much of anything, and NASA doing what NASA does best. But before we get into that, I just want to remind you that if you really like us here at Tomorrow, don't forget to subscribe to us, like our videos, hit the notification bell wherever it's at. You can set it up so you get all notifications for things like news or live shows, or just some notifications if you're an occasional viewer and we still appreciate you even if you are. So, let's go ahead and get started with this week's news for April 30th, 2020, and we're going to hand it right over to Ryan to start with our SpaceX update. Starship SN4 is feeling the pressure, quite literally, of some successful testing over the past week. As you can see, the cryogenic testing has been completed without any unscheduled rapid depressurization events occurring. This is exciting because after the test was completed, Elon Musk tweeted saying that SpaceX are aiming to perform a single engine static fire before the end of the week, and then if that goes well, we should be seeing a 150 metre hop with SN4, similar to what we saw with Starhopper over half a year ago. The nose cone for SN5 has also been stacked down in Boca Chica, as BocaChicaGal tweeted this photo of it in the Vehicle Assembly Building down in the south of Texas. And before I end off this week, on the next Starlink launch, all of the Starlink satellites will have sunshades to make the satellites less reflective, whilst raising their orbits and repositioning themselves. In my opinion, yes, keeping the night sky is a good thing, however, if SpaceX weren't making their satellites less reflective, it would be a price I would be willing to pay to see satellites flying over my head all the time, knowing that those little specks of light in the sky were allowing everybody here on Earth the ability to have the world's knowledge at their fingertips. Not much else has come out of SpaceX this week, so Jared, it's back over to you. Thanks Ryan! Really great to see some cold progress finally happening for SpaceX, and in regard to Starlink, I'm not going to say anything because I could stand here for an hour ranting about it, and we really could actually end up doing that, right? There's not a lot going on right now, huh? I mean, Disneyland is closed, there's no baseball, Formula 1 races haven't happened yet, there's been no concerts, and that's all happening for a very, very good reason, of course. But SpaceX doesn't care what's happening down here on the Earth, and that means that multiple teams that are getting ready to launch their orbiters and landers and rovers to Mars are still working right now, because that launch window is in July, and if you don't make the launch window, you gotta wait 26 months into 2022, and you really don't want to end up doing that. China is one of the countries that is going to be launching an orbiter, a lander, and a rover, and they are giving us a little more detail, finally, about what that's all going to consist of. Tianwen-1 is its name, and being a triple threat is its game. It can't sing, dance, and act, but it is a orbiter, lander, and rover. Quite an ambitious mission for your first one right out of the gate. Now it's expected to weigh in at a whopping five tons total, and it'll take China's biggest rocket, the mighty Long March 5, to lob it on the way to the Red Planet this summer. However, a test launch of the Long March 5 needs to occur to verify that it's set and ready to send that triple combo after a series of failures, and that Long March 5, it has moved out to the launch pad just this week. Now the payload for this launch coming up of the Long March 5 is actually a prototype of China's next generation crewed spacecraft, so it's sort of going to be like NASA's Exploration Flight Test 1 for Orion, kind of a check out of the vehicle, and make sure everything goes according to plan. And China's space ambitions, they don't just stop at Mars with an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. They're actually talking about doing their own Mars sample return mission, and even looking further beyond into the outer solar system for robotic missions as well. So that Long March 5, it better work correctly when it's going to go. And speaking of rockets going correctly when they go, we actually did have a launch and an arrival this week. So let's go ahead and jump into space traffic and see what happened. And liftoff. Liftoff of the 75th Progress resupply ship. Leaving the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 25th at 0151 Universal Time, a Soyuz 2.1A rocket lifted off carrying Progress MS-14. This was the 75th Progress spacecraft resupply flight to the International Space Station. Now after performing a two-orbit fast track rendezvous with the ISS, Progress MS-14 docked at 0512 Universal Time, and over the next few weeks, its 1,350 kilograms of cargo will be unpacked by the crew on board. Now viewers, come and firewalk with me in preparation for these upcoming launches. Now growing up in the Los Angeles area, Long Beach is a destination that is an absolute must if you're going to have a good time, like restaurants or hanging out or concerts or other stuff like that. And I distinctly remember as a kid driving over quite a few bridges near the port of Long Beach and seeing a gigantic ship and then a huge platform right next to it. And on the side of both of them, in really big letters, was Sea Launch. In the late 1990s, it was a simple idea executed well. Take a rocket to the equator and launch it from the ocean. You get the payload boost from the Earth's rotation and the ability to launch to any azimuth. It worked well for a while, but reliability problems with its Ukrainian Zenit launch vehicle led to several spectacular failures. The satellite market that was expected in the early 2000s didn't materialize, a bankruptcy occurred in 2009, and then the ongoing crisis in the Ukraine crippled chances of a new launch vehicle being made. In 2016, Sea Launch was purchased by S7 Group, owners of the Russian S7 Airlines. Several months ago, both Sea Launch's command ship and launch platform were dispatched from Long Beach to their new owner's HQ in Vladivostok. But without a launch vehicle on the horizon, S7 Group has announced that they're putting a hold on all of the company's operations. I really do hope that Sea Launch makes a comeback one day. It was just such a really great idea, and it had just enough quality control issues that it did itself in. And of course, the geopolitical issues, that's not helping either, nor is the spectacular blowing up of rockets and then cutting away from that and making it very sus and everyone putting it on YouTube because of that. But I want to end this show on a bit of an upbeat note, and I want to give some kudos to NASA because in the timeframe of about a month, they have developed several faster, better, cheaper methods to actually help out with the COVID-19 pandemic. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory came up with the Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally, what they call VITAL. Now that's designed to help COVID-19 patients, but has much fewer parts and a much simpler design than conventional ventilators, allowing it to be used in regular or field hospitals or even in random places. But Caltech, who manages JPL on behalf of NASA, has made VITAL available for anyone to build with a royalty-free license. NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center has developed a partial pressure helmet for COVID-19 patients who may need pressurized air, but not the invasive intubation of a ventilator. The NASA Center, along with Virgin Galactic, are now working to make and deliver more helmets. NASA's Glenn Research Center is working with a private company to develop a rapid decontamination system to sterilize surfaces and air near instantly. In addition, a breathalyzer system to potentially identify COVID-19 in a patient instantly is also beginning to materialize, but they say that they're going to have to have a little bit more time in order to do that. But hey, some good news to hear indeed. Wow, doing some fantastic work at NASA. And of course, I want to wrap up this week's news by thanking all of you who helped contribute to the shows of tomorrow. When I say that we really can't do this without you, that's kind of true. Each and every one of you who helps us out here at Tomorrow, you are absolutely amazing. It is greatly appreciated. The reason we're able to have a studio, the reason we're able to have all this equipment in order to make this happen is because of you. Now, if you'd like to contribute to the shows of tomorrow, head on over to youtube.com slash T-M-R-O slash join, and you can check out all the great rewards that we have available to you at the different levels of support, like our Escape Velocity Discord channel where you could talk directly with us and you could see my awful dad jokes. Now, of course, watching our shows, liking, subscribing, setting up notifications, and sharing us everywhere that you can is an incredible help as well. And that's Niko for this edition of Tomorrow News. Thank you all so much for joining us this week, and until the next one, remember, stay safe, stay healthy, and keep exploring. Now, viewers, come and firewalk with me in preparation for these upcoming launches. I don't know why I wrote that, but I did. So.