Four-person crew asked for the public’s help in reaching fundraising target of $200m for the children’s charity St Jude
Elon Musk surprised his first all-private crew of space tourists with a welcome home gift after their trailblazing trip to orbit ended on Saturday night: a $50m donation to the children’s charity St Jude.
Related: ‘The point is ambition’: are we ready to follow Netflix into space?
Continue reading...The four-person crew thanked mission control as they splashed down in the Atlantic
Four space tourists ended their trailblazing trip to orbit on Saturday with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast.
Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier.
Continue reading...Launch marks biggest advancement so far in space tourism as Elon Musk’s company conducts first chartered passenger flight
SpaceX has launched the world’s first crew of “amateur astronauts” on a private flight to circle Earth for three days.
Wednesday night’s successful launch marked the most ambitious leap yet in space tourism. It’s the first chartered passenger flight for Elon Musk’s space company and the first time a rocket streaked toward orbit with a crew that contained no professional astronauts.
Continue reading...Four-person Inspiration4 mission will orbit Earth for up to four days and marks latest step in space tourism
The world’s first crew of “amateur astronauts” is preparing to blast off on a mission that will carry them into orbit around Earth before bringing them back home at the weekend.
The four civilians, who have spent the past few months on an astronaut training crash course, are due to launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8.02pm local time on Wednesday (1.02am UK time on Thursday).
Continue reading...As Amazon founder prepares to jet off in his Blue Origin vessel, can he compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX?
Every billionaire needs something to spend their fortunes on. For Howard Hughes, it was the Spruce Goose; for Roman Abramovich, it’s Chelsea FC. And for the current crop of tech moguls, it’s space.
Jeff Bezos has led the charge. He founded his company, Blue Origin, in 2000, after a conversation with his friend, the science fiction author Neal Stephenson. And in July, 21 years later, the investment will pay off: Bezos will blast himself, his brother, and a third fee-paying guest 100km up in the company’s New Shepard rocket, brushing the edge of space until he comes back down to earth three minutes later.
Continue reading...Rocket due to reach the International Space Station this weekend is loaded with 7,300lb of fresh food and supplies for an orbiting lab
SpaceX has launched a supply mission bound for the International Space Station on Thursday, carrying with it thousands of tiny sea creatures along with a plaque-fighting toothpaste experiment and powerful solar panels.
The 7,300lb (3,300kg) shipment – which also includes fresh lemons, onions, avocados and cherry tomatoes for the station’s seven astronauts – should arrive Saturday.
Continue reading...Previous test flights of the rocketship, which Elon Musk plans to use for future missions to the moon and mars, ended in explosions
SpaceX launched and successfully landed its futuristic Starship on Wednesday, finally nailing a test flight of the rocketship that Elon Musk intends to use to land astronauts on the moon and send people to Mars.
The previous four test flights ended in fiery explosions before, during or soon after touchdown at the south-eastern tip of Texas, near Brownsville.
Continue reading...Capsule parachutes into Gulf of Mexico at 3am, the first night-time US crew splashdown since 1968
SpaceX safely returned four astronauts from the International Space Station on Sunday, making the first US crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot.
The Dragon capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, just before 3am, ending the second astronaut flight for Elon Musk’s company. It was an express trip home, lasting just six and a half hours.
Continue reading...Biak island residents say SpaceX launchpad would devastate island’s ecology and displace people from their homes
Papuans whose island has been offered up as a potential launch site for Elon Musk’s SpaceX project have told the billionaire Tesla chief his company is not welcome on their land, and its presence would devastate their island’s ecosystem and drive people from their homes.
Musk was offered use of part of the small island of Biak in Papua by Indonesian president Joko Widodo in December.
Continue reading...Elon Musks's Starship rocket has made its first test launch, flight and intact landing – before suddenly exploding minutes later. After a delay to the initial flight, SN10 lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas, reaching an altitude of 10 kilometres, before descending and landing upright, albeit apparently on fire at its base. Three minutes after touchdown and soon after the SpaceX live stream was turned off, the rocket exploded. The landing was at least better than the last two times, where the prototypes crashed down and exploded
Continue reading...SpaceX’s second full test flight of its futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship ended in another fiery crash landing on Tuesday.
Elon Musk’s company launched its latest Starship prototype from the south-eastern tip of Texas, two months after the previous test ended in an equally explosive belly flop.
Continue reading...Tesla co-founder overtakes Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as car firm’s shares soar after ‘blue Senate’ victory
Elon Musk, the maverick boss of Tesla, has overtaken Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person, after shares in the electric car company he co-founded soared on hopes that a Democrat-controlled US Senate would usher in a new green agenda.
A 4.8% rise in Tesla’s share price was enough to push Musk into the top spot according to the Bloomberg billionaires index, which tracks the daily changes in the fortunes of the world’s 500 wealthiest people.
Continue reading...The response to Covid-19 has been momentous but discoveries in AI, diet, conservation, space and beyond, show the power of science to improve the world post-pandemic
In 2020 the race to space changed gear. The May launch of the SpaceX vehicle Crew Dragon was the first time a private vehicle had delivered astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). It was deeply impressive, but also featureless… sleek, white inner walls replaced the complex instrument panels of old, and it was clear that the two test pilots on board were mostly passengers, with no direct control over the flight. In November, Crew Dragon became the first private spacecraft fully certified by Nasa to transport humans to the ISS and later that month delivered four astronauts to the orbiting station. This taxi may not be cheap, but it’s here to stay and it’s a game-changer.
Continue reading...Elon Musk tweets ‘Mars here we come’ after fireball engulfs prototype
SpaceX’s Starship prototype has exploded while attempting to land after its test launch from the company’s rocket facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Live video of Wednesday’s test showed the self-guided rocket landing at speed following a controlled descent before disappearing in a ball of flame.
Despite the catastrophic end to the six-and-a-half-minute test, SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk was thrilled. “Mars, here we come!!” he tweeted.
Continue reading...Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin will take the first woman to the moon, the billionaire said as Nasa nears a decision over who will supply its first privately built lunar landers, meant to be capable of sending astronauts to the moon by 2024.
Related: Japan’s Hayabusa2 capsule returns to Earth carrying asteroid samples
Continue reading...Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi successfully lifted off for the 27-hour flight on Sunday
SpaceX has launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on the first full-fledged taxi flight for Nasa by a private company.
The Falcon rocket thundered into the night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida with three Americans and one Japanese onboard, the second crew to be launched by SpaceX. The Dragon capsule on top – named Resilience by its crew in light of this year’s many challenges, most notably Covid-19 – is due to reach the space station after 27-and-a-half hours and remain there until spring.
Continue reading...Public-private partnership with Elon Musk’s company to send four astronauts to international space station on Saturday
In a rocket ship perfectly named for the year of a global pandemic, three American astronauts and one from Japan are scheduled to blast off from Florida on Saturday evening as Nasa finally returns to the business of routine crewed spaceflight.
The 7.49pm launch of the SpaceX capsule Resilience from the Kennedy Space Center, a mission officially designated as Crew 1, will be the first time since the final flights of the space shuttle fleet in 2011 that the US space agency has its own operational rotating program of sending humans to the international space station.
Continue reading...Miniature satellites open up a world of technological possibility. But experts say they degrade the astronomical landscape
The natural serenity of the night sky is a touchstone for all of us. Everyone alive today looks at the same stars no matter where they are located on the planet. But the connection is more profound because, next to our brief lives, the stars are immortal. Shakespeare saw the same stars in the same patterns that we do. So did Galileo, Columbus, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra and the first human ancestor to look up in curiosity. The night sky is nothing short of our common human heritage.
Last year, however, something happened that might change that view for ever. On 23 May 2019, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX launched 60 small satellites from a single rocket. The satellites were the first in what is planned to be a “megaconstellation” of thousands of satellites that will bring internet coverage to the entire planet.
Continue reading...Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley land off Florida after two-month voyage that was Nasa’s first crewed mission from home in nine years
US astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, who flew to the International Space Station in SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon, splashed down in the capsule in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday after a two-month voyage that was Nasa’s first crewed mission from home soil in nine years.
Behnken and Hurley left the station on Saturday and returned home to land in the waves off Florida’s Pensacola coast on schedule at 2.48pm ET following a 21-hour overnight journey aboard Crew Dragon “Endeavor.”
Continue reading...Stargazing under threat as pristine skies over New Zealand and Australia are clogged with hundreds of Starlink satellites
Astronomers in the southern hemisphere have warned that the wonders of the night sky are at risk from hundreds of satellites that have been shot into space by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.
The night skies of Australia and New Zealand are globally renowned for their clarity, drawing tourists from across the world to dark-sky sanctuaries such as Tekapo on New Zealand’s South Island and the Warrumbungle national park in New South Wales.
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