A project proposed by Elon Musk's SpaceX and the U.S. Air Force to test hypersonic rocket cargo deliveries from a remote Pacific atoll could harm the many seabirds that nest at the wildlife refuge, according to biologists and experts who have spent more than a decade working to protect them. It would not be the first time that SpaceX's activities have affected protected birds. A SpaceX launch of its Starship rocket in Boca Chica, Texas, last year involved a blast that destroyed nests and eggs of plover shorebirds, landing the billionaire Musk's company in legal trouble and leading him to remark jokingly that he would refrain from eating omelets for a week to compensate. A male Great frigatebird returns to its nest and chick on Johnston Island, within the Johnston Atoll National Wild...
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Spacewalking is the new domain of the super rich as a billionaire makes first private attempt First came space tourism. Now comes an even bigger thrill for the monied masses: spacewalking. A tech billionaire performed the first private spacewalk hundreds of miles above Earth on Thursday, a high-risk endeavor reserved for professional astronauts — until now. Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman teamed up with SpaceX to test the company’s brand new spacesuits on his chartered flight. The daring feat also saw SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis going out once Isaacman was safely back inside. This spacewalk was simple and quick — the hatch was open barely a half hour — compared with the drawn-out affairs conducted by NASA. Astronauts at the International Space Station often need to move acr...
Read MoreA camera atop Hawaii’s tallest mountain has captured what looks like a spiral swirling through the night sky. Researchers believe it was from the launch of a military GPS satellite that lifted off earlier on a SpaceX rocket in Florida. The images were captured on Jan. 18 by a camera at the summit of Mauna Kea outside the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Subaru telescope. A time-lapse video shows a white orb spreading out and forming a spiral as it moves across the sky. It then fades and disappears. Ichi Tanaka, a researcher at the Subaru telescope, said he was doing other work that night and didn’t immediately see it. Then a stargazer watching the camera’s livestream on YouTube sent him a screenshot of the spiral using an online messaging platform. “When I o...
Read MoreBillionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX said on Wednesday that the world's first space tourist Dennis Tito and his wife Akiko have signed up to fly around the moon on the space exploration firm's Starship rocket. Engineer turned financial analyst Tito, 82, was the first private individual to pay for a trip to space on Russia's Soyuz TM-32 mission in 2001, when he spent nearly eight days aboard the International Space Station. The SpaceX flight's roughly week-long journey will see the rocket travel within 200 kilometers of the moon without landing on its surface. FILE PHOTO : Starship prototypes are pictured at the SpaceX South Texas launch site near Brownsville, Texas, U.S., May 22, 2022. REUTERS/Veronica G. Cardenas Tito and his wife are the first crewmembers to be announced for Stars...
Read MoreThe first all-private team of astronauts ever launched to the International Space Station (ISS) were welcomed aboard the orbiting research platform on Saturday to begin a weeklong science mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight. Their arrival came about 21 hours after the four-man team representing Houston-based startup company Axiom Space Inc lifted off on Friday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, riding atop a SpaceX-launched Falcon 9 rocket. The Crew Dragon capsule lofted into orbit by the rocket docked with the ISS at about 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on Saturday as the two space vehicles were flying roughly 250 miles (420 km) above the central Atlantic Ocean, a live webcast of the coupling from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration showed. The fin...
Read MoreA SpaceX rocket ship blasted off on Friday carrying the first all-private astronaut team ever launched to the International Space Station (ISS), a flight hailed by industry executives and NASA as a milestone in the commercialization of low-Earth orbit. Axiom's four-man team lifts off, riding atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. April 8, 2022. REUTERS/Steve Nesius The four-man team selected by Houston-based startup Axiom Space Inc for its landmark debut spaceflight and orbital science mission lifted off at 11:17 a.m. EDT (1517 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Live video webcast by Axiom showed the 25-story-tall Space...
Read MoreJapanese billionaire Lands in Kazakhstan after 12-day space flight to ISS Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa returned to Earth on Monday after a 12-day journey into space, ending a practice run for his planned trip around the moon with Elon Musk's SpaceX in 2023. Ground personnel assist Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa shortly after landing of the Soyuz MS-20 space capsule in a remote area outside Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan December 20, 2021, in this still image taken from video. Roscosmos/Handout via REUTERS The 46-year-old fashion magnate and art collector, who launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 8 along with his assistant Yozo Hirano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, landed on the Kazakh steppe. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa floats ins...
Read MoreHaving made a career out of playing an explorer of the cosmos, William Shatner - Captain James Kirk of "Star Trek" fame - did it for real on Wednesday, becoming at age 90 the oldest person in space aboard a rocketship flown by billionaire Jeff Bezos's company Blue Origin, an experience the actor called profound. Shatner was one of four passengers to journey for 10 minutes and 17 seconds to the edge of space aboard the white fully autonomous 60-foot-tall (18.3 meters-tall) New Shepard spacecraft, which took off from Blue Origin's launch site about 20 miles (32 km) outside the rural west Texas town of Van Horn. The crew capsule returned to the Texas desert from the suborbital flight under parachutes, raising a cloud of dust. Shatner emerged gingerly from the capsule in the desert ...
Read MoreSpaceX gets ready to launch first all-civilian crew to orbit from Cape Canaveral Yet another billionaire entrepreneur is set to ride into space this week, strapped inside the capsule of a SpaceX rocketship, as part of an astro-tourist team poised to make history as the first all-civilian crew launched into Earth orbit. Jared Isaacman, the American founder and chief executive of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, will lead three fellow spaceflight novices on a trip expected to last three days from blastoff at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to splashdown in the Atlantic. FILE PHOTO: With a view of the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at left, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars upward from Launch Complex 39A carrying the company’s Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule and four Crew-2 astronauts towards...
Read MoreThree billionaire entrepreneurs - Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson - are each vying to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel. Here is how their rival ventures compare in the race to open up space travel. TICKETS Bezos, Branson and Musk have been investing billions of dollars in their space startups, each promising to ferry paying customers on rides to space - and it will cost a pretty penny to be part of it. Branson's Virgin Galactic is reported to have more than 600 ticket reservations already, priced around $250,000. It expects to begin a full commercial service in 2022 and eventually hopes to slash the ticket price to around $40,000. FILE PHOTO: Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos addresses the media about the New Shepard rocket booster an...
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