Boeing will refly Starliner | Space News

Hello all and welcome to Tomorrow's Space News. We have got a loaded episode for you this week. Ryan has got a bit of pressure to talk about at SpaceX. Our sun is really starting to kick up its activity in our weekly space weather update with Dr. Tameth Escove and I'll be talking about a big do-over that will be coming from Boeing. Now before we officially get started, I just of course want to remind you to subscribe to us here at Tomorrow. If you like news, go ahead and like the video and set up notifications so that way you can know when we send out new videos or when we are going live. So why wait any longer, let's go ahead and get into your space news for April 7th, 2020. And Ryan, all yours. It's not looking good for Starship SN3 as it got pretty cold and then crumbled. Down in Boca Chica, SpaceX was starting off another cryogenic test. Testing on Thursday was successful, however this test did not end so well. The centre of the vehicle, in simple terms, sucked itself in as it depressurised, causing it to crumple, allowing the top half of the vehicle to tip over, fall off and smash into the ground. Now this did happen at what seemed like the end of the test, so hopefully the team down there did collect the maximum amount of data that they could to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again. Elon Musk has said on Twitter that this was a test configuration error, and after closer observations it seems that this failure may have been related to detanking rather than a depressurisation failure caused by the vehicle itself. Compared to the Starship Mark 1 and SN1 depressurisation events, this one was a lot slower and a lot less explosive, making it a testing fault. The thrust section from SN3 will be reused for SN4, mainly to save time, and if it's got no damage then you might as well use it. Welding has also come a long way since the previous iterations of the vehicle, as it has become a lot more streamlined and neater, as you can see here. And that is pretty much all SpaceX have been up to during the past week, as expected everything has very much slowed down, but hopefully SN4 will make an appearance very, very soon. Thanks for the update Ryan, I really can't wait until Starship starts doing its belly flops during its test flights, and speaking of test flights that I'm really interested in seeing, Boeing has just announced that they are going to fly a second test flight of their Starliner capsule. Now you'll recall that in its first test flight last December, OFT1, it was basically a near disaster. You'll recall that everything started off looking great with a flawless launch on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V in the N22 configuration, meaning that there's no payload fairing as Starliner sits atop the rocket, two solid rocket boosters, and a twin-engine Centaur upper stage. But at this precise moment, separation of Starliner from that Centaur upper stage, that is exactly where everything began to go wrong. Immediately, the onboard timer placed Starliner into a configuration that was incorrect for that moment in the flight. Thruster firings that shouldn't have happened were happening, attitudes were out of control, very bad things were occurring. Now after getting Starliner into a stable orbit, and abort of an attempt to dock at the International Space Station was called, therefore losing its biggest milestone in this test flight. Instead, Starliner was set to fly solo and work on other tests that could be done in such a configuration. Boeing hastily conducted a review of all of the software that was onboard of Starliner and found that the parameters to jettison the service module were way out of where they should have actually been. That meant that just before reentry, when the service module was released, it could Luckily, Boeing was able to patch together new software, upload that into Starliner, and the potential loss of vehicle and crew event was averted, and the capsule safely landed at White Sands in New Mexico. Now a review after the flight found 61, yes, 6-1, 61 corrective actions for Boeing to take. And credit where credit is due, Boeing fessed up to its errors and admitted that it had made major mistakes. Now this second Starliner test flight will not be funded by NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Boeing will rightfully eat the $410 million cost. Another note, Boeing are the ones who have called for this second orbital test flight for the Starliner capsule. NASA did not, and you're probably asking yourself, well, why? Well NASA just announced that they are nowhere near being done with their investigation into what actually happened. So from NASA's perspective, they're still working on it, but I can't imagine NASA just simply glossing over what actually occurred on that test flight and saying, yeah, go ahead and stick people in it, it's not the space shuttle after all. And NASA also said that they are looking at Boeing because they have not started working on any of those 61 corrective actions yet as well. The latter half of 2020 will be the likely timeframe for this second test flight of Starliner, with a crewed flight finally occurring and certainly pushed to 2021. And unfortunately, we did not have any launches since our last episode, but there are a few on the horizon. And for your space weather update, here's Dr. Tammeth Escove. This week we are seeing more signs of new cycle life. As we switch to our front side sun, you can see that bright region rotating into Earth view off of the sun's east limb. This is region 2759, and it has been firing off some very low class flares. In fact, on the fourth, it fired off a B class flare. Don't worry, there were no radio blackouts associated with it, but it does show us that these new cycle sunspots are continuing to be flare active. Now, since then, it's kind of fizzled out just a little bit, but we're still watching it and it is still boosting the solar flux into the 70s. So that's good for amateur radio operators and emergency responders. Now, as far as aurora photographers are concerned, we have been getting some small pockets of fast solar wind. And as of about a week from now, we should be getting yet another finger like coronal hole rotating in through the Earth strike zone that could give us yet more chances for aurora with more fast solar wind coming. Now, as we switch to our far sided sun, this is stereo A and it's looking at the sun pretty much from the side. You can see that region 2759 rotating off of the west limb in stereo's view. But as you notice right around the fifth, you can see in the southern hemisphere, yet another bright region. This is also a solar cycle 25 sunspot, and it is showing a little bit of activity. So once again, we are consistently getting activity from the new solar cycle. And even though things are still pretty quiet right now with this kind of activity, I tell you, things aren't going to be quiet for much longer. And now for your Leo, Mio, Geo, Orbit Outlook. As we switch to our low energy particle environment, these are the fluxes that cause charging around the surface of the spacecraft, including charging up the solar arrays that then can cause discharges and other electrical short circuits and performance degradation. You can see in and around Geo starting around the third, this got these fluxes that are getting injected, especially around the pre-dawn hours. And these fluxes built up just a little bit, and that's because we've been having these mild solar storms that have only been bumping us to active conditions. After about midday on the third, they got flushed and things got pretty pristine. But then, as you can see, right around the fourth, we started building these fluxes again, the injections happen, and now we're beginning to see a nice red ring around Geo. And so you satellite operators, especially around the Geo environment, expect that you might be dealing with surface charging issues over the next couple of days. For more details on this week's space weather, including when and where to see Aurora, and how this new solar cycle activity is going to affect you, come check out my channel or see me at spaceweatherwoman.com. Now's the time of the year where we celebrate Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight done on April 12th, 1961, the first time a human went into space. And Yuri's night is one way that we celebrate that. Big parties all over the world celebrating humans going out and exploring the cosmos. But in the middle of a pandemic, it's not really a good idea to get a whole bunch of people together. So Yuri's night is going virtual. And here at Tomorrow, we're helping out. The global webcast for Yuri's night is happening this Saturday, April 11th, starting at 2300 UTC. Now, you can head on over to the broadcast to set a reminder for yourself, which we'll be dropping a link in the description below. And there's going to be a wide array of guests, including astronaut Scott Kelly, Nicole Stott, Story Musgrave, Chris Hatfield, mechanical engineer Bill Nye, actor Robert Picardo, Bill Weir of The Grateful Dead, and a few more big surprising guests. And a few familiar Tomorrow faces will be there, such as myself, who will be helping host the global webcast. So join up. Hope to see you there. And hopefully we can dance really awkwardly with our cameras on. All right. So to wrap up this week's Space News, of course, I want to thank all of you who contribute to the shows of Tomorrow. We really can't do this without you. And each and every one of you who does this, you are absolutely amazing. And I cannot quantify my appreciation to what you do for us. If you'd like to contribute to the shows of Tomorrow, head on over to youtube.com to do so and check out all the rewards that we have available to you at different levels of support. And of course, watching our shows, liking our videos, subscribing to us and setting up notifications and sharing our videos everywhere that you can. That's an incredible help as well. And that's Seiko 7 for this week's Space News. Until the next one, remember, keep exploring.