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Virgin Galactic’s first space tourists finally soar, an Olympian and a mother-daughter duo

Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday, including a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean. (August 10) (Production Marissa Duhaney)

This photo provided Virgin Galactic shows passengers during Virgin Galactic’s first space tourism flight on Thursday Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday. The space plane glided back to a runway landing at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, after a brief flight that gave passengers a few minutes of weightlessness.(Virgin Galactic via AP)

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Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered plane Unity 22, lands after a short flight to the edge of space at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered plane Unity 22, left, flies past its mothership Eve on its way to the edge of space after taking off from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Virgin Galactic’s mothership Eve, carrying the rocket-powered plane Unity 22, flies after taking off from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Space tourists, from left, Anastatia Mayers, Jon Goodwin and Keisha Schahaff pose for photos before boarding their Virgin Galactic flight at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Guests wave flags of Antigua and Barbuda while watching the return of Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered plane Unity at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride, including a British former Olympian and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean island. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Space tourists, from left, Anastatia Mayers, Jon Goodwin and Keisha Schahaff walk to the tarmac before boarding their Virgin Galactic flight at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Virgin Galactic’s mothership Eve, carrying the rocket-powered plane Unity 22, takes off from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M. (AP) — Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday, a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean.

The space plane glided back to a runway landing at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, after a brief flight that gave passengers a few minutes of weightlessness.

This first private customer flight had been delayed for years; its success means Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic can now start offering monthly rides, joining Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the space tourism business.

“That was by far the most awesome thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Jon Goodwin, who competed in canoeing in the 1972 Olympics.

Goodwin, 80, was among the first to buy a Virgin Galactic ticket in 2005 and feared, after later being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, that he’d be out of luck. Since then he’s climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and cycled back down, and said he hopes his spaceflight shows others with Parkinson’s and other illnesses that ”it doesn’t stop you doing things.”

Ticket prices were $200,000 when Goodwin signed up. The cost is now $450,000.

He was joined on the flight by sweepstakes winner Keisha Schahaff, 46, a health coach from Antigua, and her daughter, Anastatia Mayers, 18, a student at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen. They high-fived and pumped their fists as the spaceport crowd cheered their return.

“A childhood dream has come true,” said Schahaff, who took pink Antiguan sand up with her. Added her daughter: “I have no words. The only thought I had the whole time was ‘Wow!’ ”

With the company’s astronaut trainer and one of the two pilots, it marked the first time women outnumbered men on a spaceflight, four to two.

Cheers erupted from families and friends watching below when the craft’s rocket motor fired after it was released from the twin-fuselage aircraft that had carried it aloft. The rocket ship’s portion of the flight lasted about 15 minutes and it reached 55 miles (88 kilometers) high.

It was Virgin Galactic’s seventh trip to space since 2018, but the first with a ticket-holder. Branson, the company’s founder, hopped on board for the first full-size crew ride in 2021. Italian military and government researchers soared in June on the first commercial flight. About 800 people are currently on Virgin Galactic’s waiting list, according to the company.

In contrast to Virgin Galactic’s plane-launched rocket ship, the capsules used by SpaceX and Blue Origin are fully automated and parachute back down.

Like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin aims for the fringes of space, quick ups-and-downs from West Texas. Blue Origin has launched 31 people so far, but flights are on hold following a rocket crash last fall. The capsule, carrying experiments but no passengers, landed intact.

SpaceX, is the only private company flying customers all the way to orbit, charging a much heftier price, too: tens of millions of dollars per seat. It’s already flown three private crews. NASA is its biggest customer, relying on SpaceX to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station. since 2020.

People have been taking on adventure travel for decades, the risks underscored by the recent implosion of the Titan submersible that killed five passengers on their way down to view the Titanic wreckage. Virgin Galactic suffered its own casualty in 2014 when its rocket plane broke apart during a test flight, killing one pilot. Yet space tourists are still lining up, ever since the first one rocketed into orbit in 2001 with the Russians.

Branson, who lives in the British Virgin Islands, watched Thursday’s flight from a party in Antigua. He was joined by the country’s prime minister, as well as Schahaff’s mother and other relatives.

“Welcome to the club,” he told the new spacefliers via X, formerly Twitter.

Several months ago, Branson held a virtual lottery to establish a pecking order for the company’s first 50 customers — dubbed the Founding Astronauts. Virgin Galactic said the group agreed Goodwin would go first, given his age and his Parkinson’s.

This story has been updated to correct introductory price to $200,000, not $250,000.

Dunn reported from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Virgin Galactic to launch space plane with Richard Branson onboard

The billionaire, along with two pilots and three other passengers, will reach 55 miles above Earth for about an hour

The British entrepreneur Richard Branson is set to fly to the edge of space in his Virgin Galactic passenger rocket plane on Sunday, days ahead of a rival launch by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as the two billionaires race to kick off an era of space tourism.

Branson’s extraterrestrial venture Virgin Galactic will send its space plane into sub-orbital flight on Sunday morning, aimed at reaching 55 miles above Earth at its peak altitude.

Spaceflight Unity 22 took off shortly after 10.40am ET (5.40pm BST) from Virgin Galactic’s operational base at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert.

The jaunt from launch to landing will last about an hour, according to the company, and those onboard will experience several minutes of weightlessness.

Branson, 70, arrived at the spaceport on a bicycle on Sunday morning and greeting his crewmates with a hug. He is flying with two pilots and three other passengers, and a live broadcast of the flight is being hosted from terra firma by comedian Stephen Colbert.

In nine days’ time Bezos makes his long-awaited debut launch into space on his rocket, New Shepard – named for Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space – manufactured by Bezos’s company Blue Origin.

New Shepard will take Bezos and five others, including his brother, Mark, and pilot Wally Funk , who was denied the job of astronaut in the 1960s because she was a woman, roughly 62 miles above the Earth’s surface.

The flight will also include a yet-to-be-named passenger who paid $28m for their trip in an auction last month.

A spat has erupted over whether Branson’s flight really counts as going into space.

The boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, known as the Kármán line, has been a source of controversy for years.

Aeronatics standard setter Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the Switzerland-based world body, defines the Kármán line as the altitude of 100km (62 miles; 330,000 feet) above Earth’s mean sea level, as do several other organizations.

However, US space agency Nasa says the boundary is 50 miles, or 80 km, above sea level, with pilots, mission specialists and civilians who cross this boundary officially deemed astronauts.

Seemingly stung that its prized “first” moment for space travel for the general public is being seized by Branson, Bezos’s Blue Origin took to Twitter to make digs alluding to whether Unity 22 is really going into space, instead of just to the edge of space.

“From the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Kármán line so none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name,” the company tweeted Friday.

“For 96% of the world’s population, space begins 100km up at the internationally recognized Kármán line.”

Virgin Galactic has not engaged in the social media banter, instead promoting the launch, and hosting a question and answer thread with Unity 22 crew members, with the flight label recognizing that this will be the 22nd flight of the company’s VSS Unity rocket plane, although the first to carry space travel passengers as opposed to crew.

Branson’s spaceplane will be borne aloft by a twin-fuselage carrier jet to an altitude of 50,000 feet, where the Unity craft riding upon it will then be released and soar by rocket power in an almost vertical climb through the outer fringe of Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s a beautiful day to go to space. We’ve arrived at @Spaceport_NM . Get ready to watch LIVE at 7:30 am PT | 10:30 am ET | 3:30 pm BST https://t.co/PcvGTmA661 #Unity22 pic.twitter.com/4KjGPpjz0M — Richard Branson (@richardbranson) July 11, 2021

By contrast, Blue Origin’s passenger capsule lifts off vertically atop a reusable rocket from a launchpad in west Texas, with Bezos’s flight on 20 July scheduled for the 52nd anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing .

On 2 July, Branson had told CNN Business , “I don’t know for sure exactly when Jeff Bezos is going, he may decide to go before us, but I honestly don’t see this as a space race.”

“I would love for Jeff to come and see our flight off … I would love to go and watch him go in his flight, and I think both of us will wish each other well,” he continued.

The three other passengers with Branson are Beth Moses, the company’s chief astronaut instructor, Virgin Galactic’s lead operations engineer Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla, a research operations and government affairs vice-president.

Branson has sought to send a rocket into space since he founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 and aspires to create an “orbital hotel”.

Branson set a new record for the fastest boat crossing of the Atlantic ocean in 1986 and in 1987 made a record-breaking Atlantic crossing by hot-air balloon, both times having to be rescued from the sea.

An earlier prototype of the Virgin Galactic rocket plane crashed during a test flight over California’s Mojave desert in 2014, killing one pilot and seriously injuring another.

Interest in space tourism is rapidly catching on. Virgin Galactic says it has more than 600 reserved seats at $250,000 each for people who will fly in the future. The company plans to launch two additional flights before commercial service begins in 2022.

Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, along with fellow billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX, are competing head-to-head in the emerging business of space tourism, though Musk has a big head start .

In a Twitter exchange with Branson early on Saturday, Musk said that he would attend the launch “to wish you the best”. It was not immediately clear if Musk would be present at the launch site or join online.

Will see you there to wish you the best — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2021

SpaceX, which will send its first all-civilian crew (without Musk) into orbit in September, has already launched numerous flights to the International Space Station.

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Highlights From SpaceX’s Starship Test Flight

The powerful rocket, a version of which will carry astronauts to the moon for NASA, launched for the third time on Thursday morning. It achieved a number of milestones before losing contact with the ground.

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Kenneth Chang

Here’s what happened during the third test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built.

Spacex launches starship for third time, the rocket, a version of which will eventually carry nasa astronauts to the moon, traveled almost halfway around the earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere..

“Five, four, three, two, three, one.” “This point, we’ve already passed through Max-Q, maximum dynamic pressure. And passing supersonic, so we’re now moving faster than the speed of sound. Getting those on-board views from the ship cameras. Boosters now making its way back, seeing six engines ignited on ship. Kate, we got a Starship on its way to space and a booster on the way back to the Gulf.” “Oh, man. I need a moment to pick my jaw up from the floor because these views are just stunning.”

The third try turned out to be closer to the charm for Elon Musk and SpaceX, as his company’s mammoth Starship rocket launched on Thursday and traveled about halfway around the Earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere.

The test flight achieved several key milestones in the development of the vehicle, which could alter the future of space transportation and help NASA return astronauts to the moon.

This particular flight was not, by design, intended to make it all the way around the Earth. At 8:25 a.m. Central time, Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever to fly — lifted off from the coast of South Texas. The ascent was smooth, with the upper Starship stage reaching orbital velocities. About 45 minutes after launch, it started re-entering the atmosphere, heading toward a belly-flop splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Live video, conveyed in near real-time via SpaceX’s Starlink satellites , showed red-hot gases heating the underside of the vehicle. Then, 49 minutes after launch, communications with Starship ended, and SpaceX later said the vehicle had not survived the re-entry, presumably disintegrating and falling into the ocean.

Even so, Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, congratulated SpaceX on what he called a “successful test flight” of the system his agency is counting on for some of its Artemis lunar missions.

SpaceX aims to make both the vehicle’s lower rocket booster and the upper spacecraft stage capable of flying over and over again — a stark contrast to the single-launch throwaway rockets that have been used for most of the space age.

That reusability gives SpaceX the potential to drive down the cost of lofting satellites and telescopes, as well as people and the things they need to live in space.

Completing most of the short jaunt was a reassuring validation that the rocket’s design appears to be sound. Not only is Starship crucial for NASA’s lunar plans, it is the key to Mr. Musk’s pipe dream of sending people to live on Mars.

For Mr. Musk, the success also harks back to his earlier reputation as a technological visionary who led breakthrough advances at Tesla and SpaceX, a contrast with his troubled purchase of Twitter and the polarizing social media quagmire that has followed since he transformed the platform and renamed it X. Even as SpaceX launched its next-generation rocket, the social media company was dueling with Don Lemon , a former CNN anchor who was sharing clips from a combative interview with Mr. Musk.

SpaceX still needs to pull off a series of formidable rocketry firsts before Starship is ready to head to the moon and beyond. Earlier this week, Mr. Musk said he hoped for at least six more Starship flights this year, during which some of those experiments may occur.

But if it achieves them all, the company could again revolutionize the space transportation business and leave competitors far behind.

Phil Larson, a White House space adviser during the Obama administration who also previously worked on communication efforts at SpaceX, said Starship’s size and reusability had “massive potential to change the game in transportation to orbit. And it could enable whole new classes of missions.”

NASA is counting on Starship to serve as the lunar lander for Artemis III, a mission that will take astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. That journey is currently scheduled for late 2026 but seems likely to slide to 2027 or later.

The third flight was a marked improvement from the first two launch attempts.

Last April, Starship made it off the launchpad, but a cascade of engine failures and fires in the booster led to the rocket’s destruction 24 miles above the Gulf of Mexico.

In November, the second Starship launch traveled much farther. All 33 engines in the Super Heavy booster worked properly during ascent, and after a successful separation, the upper Starship stage nearly made it to orbital velocities. However, both stages ended up exploding.

Nonetheless, Mr. Musk hailed both test flights as successes, as they provided data that helped engineers improve the design.

Thursday’s launch — which coincided with the 22nd anniversary of the founding of SpaceX — occurred 85 minutes into a 110-minute launch window. The 33 engines in the booster ignited at the launch site outside Brownsville, Texas, and lifted the rocket, which was as tall as a 40-story building, into the morning sky.

Most of the flight proceeded smoothly, and a number of test objectives were achieved during the flight, like opening and closing the spacecraft’s payload doors, which will be needed to deliver cargo in the future.

SpaceX did not attempt to recover the booster this time, but did have it perform engine burns that will be needed to return to the launch site. However, the final landing burn for the booster, conducted over the Gulf of Mexico, did not fully succeed — an area that SpaceX will attempt to fix for future flights.

SpaceX said the Super Heavy disintegrated at an altitude of about 1,500 feet.

SpaceX engineers will also have to figure out why Starship did not survive re-entry and make fixes to the design of the vehicle.

Even with the partial success of Thursday’s flight, Starship is far from ready to go to Mars, or even the moon. Because of Mr. Musk’s ambitions for Mars, Starship is much larger and much more complicated than what NASA needs for its Artemis moon landings. For Artemis III, two astronauts are to spend about a week in the South Pole region of the moon.

“He had the low price,” Daniel Dumbacher, the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a former high-level official at NASA, said of Mr. Musk, “and NASA chose to take the risk associated with that configuration hoping that it would work out. And we’ll see if that turns out to be true.”

To leave Earth’s orbit, Starship must have its propellant tanks refilled with liquid methane and liquid oxygen. That will require a complex choreography of additional Starship launches to take the propellants to orbit.

“This is a complicated, complicated problem, and there’s a lot that has to get sorted out, and a lot that has to work right,” Mr. Dumbacher said.

Thursday’s flight included an early test of that technology, moving liquid oxygen from one tank to another within Starship.

Mr. Dumbacher does not expect Starship to be ready by September 2026, the launch date NASA currently has for Artemis III, although he would not predict how much of a delay there might be. “I’m not going to give you a guess because there is way too much work, way too many problems to solve,” he said.

Kenneth Chang and Michael Roston

A rare sight: Starship’s bright orange glow as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.

Just past the 45-minute mark of the Starship vehicle’s journey through space on Thursday, something eerie happened. As it drifted high above Earth’s oceans and clouds, the spacecraft’s silvery exterior was overtaken by a brilliant and fiery orange glow.

Starship re-entering Earth's atmosphere. Views through the plasma pic.twitter.com/HEQX4eEHWH — SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2024

When a spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere, the air beneath it gets hot — hot enough that it turns into a plasma of charged particles as electrons are stripped away from the air molecules. The charged particles create picturesque glows, like neon signs.

But seeing this happen in nearly real-time during a spaceflight is uncommon. That plasma disrupts radio signals, cutting off communication.

Such blackouts happen, for instance, when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule returns to Earth from the International Space Station with its complement of four astronauts. Mission controllers must wait with bated breath to be reassured that the spacecraft’s heat shield has held up and protected the crew during atmospheric re-entry.

Until Starship succumbed to the intense forces of re-entry on Thursday, SpaceX used its Starlink internet satellites to relay the live video feed. The Starlink satellites are in higher orbits, and sending signals upward — away from the plasma — is easier than trying to communicate through it to antennas on the ground.

But Starship wasn’t the only spacecraft in recent weeks to give us a view of plasma heating. Varda Space, a startup that is developing technology for manufacturing in orbit, had cameras on a capsule it landed on Earth on Feb. 21. Before it parachuted to the ground, its Winnebago capsule recorded a day-glow re-entry. The company retrieved the video recording from the capsule and shared it online:

Here's a video of our capsule ripping through the atmosphere at mach 25, no renders, raw footage: pic.twitter.com/ZFWzdjBwad — Varda Space Industries (@VardaSpace) February 28, 2024

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Jeff Bezos’s rocket company could race SpaceX to the moon.

Which billionaire space company will get to the moon first: Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin?

At first glance, SpaceX seems to have a huge head start. It is about to launch the third test flight of Starship. A variation of Starship is scheduled to take NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon as soon as September 2026.

By contrast, Blue Origin has yet to launch anything into orbit, and its contract with NASA for a lunar lander for astronauts is for a mission that is launching in 2030.

But Blue Origin might still get there first. SpaceX faces major challenges with Starship, which is as tall as 16-story building, while Blue Origin plans to send a smaller cargo lander to the moon by the end of next year.

“This lander, we’re expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today,” John Couluris, senior vice president of lunar permanence at Blue Origin, said during a n interview on the CBS News program “60 Minutes” this month.

The first launch of the Mark 1 version of the Blue Moon lander is what Blue Origin calls a “pathfinder” to test technologies like the BE-7 engine, the flight computers, avionics and power systems — the same systems that will be used in the much larger Mark 2 lander that will take astronauts to the moon’s surface.

The Mark 1 lander can carry up to three tons of cargo to the lunar surface, but will be small enough to fit inside one of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets . New Glenn has yet to fly, but the company says its debut journey will occur later this year.

After Blue Moon Mark 1 is launched into an orbit about 125 miles above Earth’s surface, the lander’s BE-7 engine will propel it toward the moon, slowing it down to enter orbit around the moon and then guiding it to the landing on the surface.

The smaller size means that the Mark 1 lander, unlike Starship, will not need to be refueled before leaving Earth orbit. Demonstrating that refueling technology in orbit will be a key test to validate Starship’s design. Refueling will also be needed for the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos have already been beaten to the moon by another billionaire, Kam Ghaffarian , one of the founders of Intuitive Machines, which put a small robotic lander named Odysseus near the lunar south pole in February . That was the first private spacecraft to successfully make it to the moon’s surface in one piece (although its journey had some hiccups ).

As with every American rocket mishap, the Federal Aviation Administration will open an investigation to review what went wrong and what SpaceX needs to do to correct it. But if, as Elon Musk says, there are at least six more Starship flights this year, SpaceX will have opportunities to complete a full test flight.

Starship's third flight went very far, but like its first two flights, it was not a complete success. The landing burn for the Super Heavy booster stage of the rocket — the aim was to “land” it in the Gulf of Mexico — was not fully successful, and the Starship craft did not survive re-entry. But it was marked significant progress, because none of the problems from the earlier flights recurred, and SpaceX engineers now have data to tackle the new problems.

Michael Roston

On the social media site X, Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, congratulated SpaceX on what he called a “successful test flight” of Starship. The agency is counting on Starship to land astronauts on the moon’s surface as part of the Artemis III mission. Another vehicle, the Orion capsule, is to be used to bring those astronauts back to Earth.

SpaceX says Starship did not survive re-entry, but it achieved several key milestones during the flight. That marks significant progress since the second test flight. Elon Musk has said he hopes there will be a half-dozen Starship flights this year.

SpaceX says a dual loss of communication, both through its own Starlink satellites and other forms spacecraft communications with Earth, suggest that Starship did not survive re-entry. They’re still listening to see if radio contact resumes.

Video is gone. Telemetry is also stuck at a speed 25,707 kilometers per hour and an altitude of 65 kilometers. The reason is not clear.

Starship already has private customers booked for deep space trips.

Starship has not yet done a full orbit of the Earth, but SpaceX already has three private astronaut missions on its manifest for the spacecraft.

The first flight with astronauts aboard will be led by Jared Isaacman who previously bought an orbital trip on a Falcon 9 rocket that was known as Inspiration4 .

Then two other Starship flights will travel around the moon and back, one led by Yusaku Maezawa , a Japanese entrepreneur, and the other by Dennis Tito, who was the first private individual to buy a trip to the International Space Station in 2001.

Back in 2018 when Mr. Maezawa signed up for the lunar flyby, Mr. Musk said Starship would be ready by 2023.

Mr. Maezawa later called the mission ‘dearMoon,’ inviting people to apply for a seat on the trip. Last week, he acknowledged it was not going to happen this year.

“We were planning for our lunar orbital mission ‘dearMoon’ to take place in 2023, but seems like it will take a little longer,” he wrote on the social network X. “We’re not sure when the flight will be, but we will give you all an update once we know more.”

SpaceX is apparently also planning uncrewed cargo flights to the surface of the moon with Starship.

In March last year, a small start-up company, Astrolab, announced that it was sending a Jeep Wrangler-size rover to surface in the south polar region of the moon , and the ride would be a cargo Starship flight that would take it there.

SpaceX did not confirm the news.

This appears to be part of the expanding potential market for Starship. SpaceX also plans to use the rocket for launching its second generation of Starlink internet communications satellites .

Starship is re-entering Earth's atmosphere. We’re seeing the heating on the flaps, with video being transmitted to the ground through SpaceX's Starlink satellites. The view is incredible. Usually the plasma disrupts radio transmissions.

SpaceX skipped the restart of one of the Raptor engines on the upper stage of Starship. It did conduct the propellant transfer test and the opening and closing of the payload door, which means the flight achieved some of its experimental objectives during its coast around the Earth, but not others. Next stop: Re-entry through the atmosphere and a hard bellyflop in the Indian Ocean.

The music on the livestream is more old-fashioned than the ambient beats we’re used to during SpaceX video feeds. But there’s nothing old-fashioned about the views in space from the rocket, which are unreal, but have not always been visible as its connection to the ground comes and goes.

During this period of the flight, Starship is scheduled to perform several tests. The first, opening the payload door, is complete. It will also move several tons of liquid oxygen between two tanks within Starship. That’s a preliminary test for future in-orbit refueling between two Starships, which is critical for sending the vehicle to the moon. Finally, Starship will try to restart one of its Raptor engines in the vacuum of space, something it has not done before.

The payload door of the upper Starship rocket stage is now open. That’s how a future Starship will deploy Starlink satellites, and demonstrating that it works was one of the objectives of today's flight.

The engines on the upper-stage of the rocket successfully completed their burn. Starship is now coasting in space, on a trajectory that will re-enter the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.

We were watching the booster attempting to land in the Gulf of Mexico. But the camera feed cut off, and we're not sure what actually happened. The upper stage Starship is still continuing on its trajectory toward the Indian Ocean.

The Super Heavy booster stage of the rocket appears to be headed back to Earth. During the last attempt, the booster exploded at this point, so it looks like SpaceX has fixed that issue.

The large Super Heavy booster stage has separated from the Starship upper stage, which is on its way to space. The flight is looking good.

All 33 Raptor engines in the booster are working fine. So far everything looks good.

Less than 2 minutes until liftoff. Propellant tanks are full, and wind will not prevent an on-time liftoff.

Starship is less than 10 minutes away from its third launch. The countdown is going smoothly.

What will happen during Starship’s third test flight.

For its third test flight, Starship aims to fly part of the way around the Earth, starting from SpaceX’s launch site in Boca Chica Village, Texas, and splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

The earlier test flights — both of which ended in explosions — aimed to come down in waters off Hawaii. SpaceX said it had set the new flight path to allow for safe testing of things it hadn’t done before with the Starship vehicle.

The journey will start at the site that SpaceX calls Starbase, which is a few miles north of where Texas and Mexico meet along the Gulf of Mexico. The rocket, nearly 400 feet tall, will be mounted next to a launch tower that is about 480 feet tall. It will be filled with methane and liquid oxygen propellants during the hours before liftoff.

Three seconds before launch, computers will begin to ignite the 33 engines in the Super Heavy rocket booster beneath Starship.

Starship and Super Heavy will begin their ascent over the Gulf. At 52 seconds into the flight, SpaceX says, the vehicle will experience the heaviest atmospheric stress of its trip, a moment flight engineers call max-q.

If the stainless steel spacecraft survives that stress, the next key moment will occur 2 minutes and 42 seconds into flight, when most of the Super Heavy booster’s engines power down. Seconds later, the upper Starship vehicle will begin “hot-staging,” or lighting up its engines before separating from Super Heavy.

Super Heavy’s journey will end about seven minutes after launch. SpaceX would typically aim to return the massive rocket booster to the launch site for a vertical landing. But for the test flight, the spent Super Heavy will perform a series of maneuvers before firing its engines one last time to slow its descent into the Gulf of Mexico.

As Super Heavy is descending, Starship will be gaining altitude. About eight and a half minutes into its flight, its engines will switch off. It will then begin coasting around the Earth.

While floating through space, Starship will attempt several things that the spacecraft has never done. Nearly 12 minutes into the flight, it will open a door that in the future could deploy satellites and other cargo into space. About 12 minutes later, it will transfer propellants from one tank to another while in space, a technique needed for future journeys to the moon and beyond. Then, 40 minutes into the flight, Starship will relight one if its engines while in space.

If the spacecraft makes it through those experiments, the conclusion of Starship’s journey will start at about the 49-minute mark. The spacecraft is set to pivot horizontally into a belly-flop to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. If it survives the extreme temperatures, Starship will splash down 64 minutes after it left Texas. The company has said in the past that it expects the belly-flop ocean landing to end in an explosion .

After SpaceX completes its testing campaign, future Starship flights will return to the Texas Starbase site after they complete their missions in orbit. SpaceX is also building a launch tower for Starship at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where flights could one day launch and land, including the Artemis III mission that NASA plans to use to return American astronauts to the moon’s surface.

SpaceX has started the company’s official live video stream from Texas, a sign that it is serious about igniting the rocket in about 20 minutes. You can watch it in the video player embedded above.

What went right and wrong during the 2nd Starship test flight.

The second test flight of Starship in November got a lot higher and faster than the first attempt seven months earlier.

During the first launch outside Brownsville, Texas, in April last year, things went wrong from the start — the exhaust of the engines of the Super Heavy booster excavated a hole beneath the launchpad, sending pieces of concrete flying up to three-quarters of a mile away and a plume of dust drifting 6.5 miles, blanketing the nearby town of Port Isabel. Several of the booster engines failed, and the upper stage never separated from the booster.

Instead, the rocket started making loop-de-loops before the flight termination system destroyed it.

During the second test flight , all 33 of the booster engines worked during ascent. A water deluge system protected the launchpad. The upper Starship stage separated from the booster and then made it most of the way to orbital velocity. However, the journeys of both the booster and the upper Starship stage still ended in explosions.

For the booster, as it dropped away from the upper stage, 13 of the 33 engines fired again to guide it toward the landing location. Although this particular booster was not going to be recovered, SpaceX wanted to test the re-entry techniques that are similar to what it currently uses for its smaller Falcon 9 rockets. However, something went wrong. Several engines shut down and then one blew up, causing the destruction of the booster.

In an update posted on the company’s website on Feb. 26 , SpaceX said the most likely cause of the booster failure was a blockage of a filter where liquid oxygen flowed to the engines. The company said it had made design changes to prevent that from happening again.

The upper stage continued upward for seven minutes after stage separation. This was itself an achievement because the company completed a step called hot-staging, during which the upper-stage engines ignite before the stage detaches from the Super Heavy booster.

Because the spacecraft was empty, extra liquid oxygen was loaded to simulate the weight of a future payload it could carry to orbit. But when the extra oxygen was dumped, a fire started, disrupting communication between the spacecraft’s flight computers. The computers shut down the engines and then set off the flight termination system, destroying the spacecraft.

The upper Starship stage reached an altitude of about 90 miles and a speed of about 15,000 miles per hour. For a spacecraft to reach orbit, it needs to accelerate to about 17,000 miles per hour.

What is Starship?

For Elon Musk, Starship is really a Mars ship. He envisions a fleet of Starships carrying settlers to the red planet in the coming years.

And for that eventual purpose, Starship, under development by Mr. Musk’s SpaceX rocket company , has to be big. Stacked on top of what SpaceX calls a Super Heavy booster, the Starship rocket system will be, by pretty much every measure, the biggest and most powerful ever.

It is the tallest rocket ever built — 397 feet tall, or about 90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty including the pedestal.

And it has the most engines ever in a rocket booster: The Super Heavy has 33 of SpaceX’s powerful Raptor engines sticking out of its bottom. As those engines lift Starship off the launchpad in South Texas, they will generate 16 million pounds of thrust at full throttle.

NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket , which made its first flight in November 2022, holds the current record for the maximum thrust of a rocket: 8.8 million pounds. The maximum thrust of the Saturn V rocket that took NASA astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program was relatively paltry: 7.6 million pounds.

An even more transformative feature of Starship is that it is designed to be entirely reusable. The Super Heavy booster is to land much like those for SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rockets, and Starship will be able to return from space belly-flopping through the atmosphere like a sky diver before pivoting to a vertical position for landing.

That means all of the really expensive pieces — like the 33 Raptor engines in the Super Heavy booster and six additional Raptors in Starship itself — will be used over and over instead of thrown away into the ocean after one flight.

That has the potential to cut the cost of sending payloads into orbit — to less than $10 million to take 100 tons to space, Mr. Musk has predicted.

Starship and Super Heavy are shiny because SpaceX made them out of stainless steel, which is cheaper than using other materials like carbon composites. But one side of Starship is coated in black tiles to protect the spacecraft from the extreme heat that it will encounter if it gets far enough in its flight to re-enter the atmosphere.

Here is what to know about Thursday’s SpaceX test flight.

The third try was closer to the charm for Elon Musk and SpaceX, as the company’s flight test of the mammoth Starship rocket launched on Thursday and traveled almost halfway around the Earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere.

The flight achieved some key milestones in the development of the vehicle, which could alter the future of space transportation and help NASA return astronauts to the moon.

This particular flight did not, by design, make it all the way around the Earth. At 9:25 a.m. Eastern time, Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever to fly, lifted off from the coast of South Texas. About 45 minutes later it started its re-entry, but communications were lost a few minutes after that. The company said the rocket was lost before attempting to splash down in the Indian Ocean, a sign that more work needs to be completed on the vehicle.

That reusability gives SpaceX the potential to drive down the cost of lofting satellites and space telescopes, as well as people and the things they need to live in space.

Here’s what else to know:

Thursday’s flight demonstrated new capabilities for Starship. In addition to reaching orbital speeds, the Starship vehicle opened and closed its payload door and managed to move several tons of liquid oxygen between two tanks within the rocket, a key test needed for future missions.

The Starship system consists of two stages — the Super Heavy rocket booster and the upper-stage spacecraft, which is also called Starship. The company intends both to be fully reusable in the future. Read more about Starship .

Thursday’s launch was the third of Starship. Here’s a recap of what happened last time .

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

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Jeremy White

Forget supersonic, the future of super-fast flight is sub-orbital

When Elon Musk’s SpaceX team returned their Falcon Heavy side booster rockets back to Cape Canaveral in February, after placing one of his Tesla Roadster cars in space, it marked a turning point.

With SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic rapidly raising the profile of the commercial space race (Jeff Bezos is liquidating $1 billion a year of Amazon stock to fund Blue Origin), you could be forgiven for thinking that as orbital space flight is more technically difficult and costly, we may soon be experiencing the holy grail of long-haul travel: sub-orbital flight.

Previously the stuff of science fiction, sub-orbital flight would let you travel from one side of the planet to the other in less than an hour. On a London to Sydney trip, it would be difficult to squeeze in an in-flight meal, let alone a Hollywood action film. What makes sub-orbital flight different to orbital space travel? Velocity. In sub-orbital flight, orbital velocity is not achieved, so a vehicle cannot follow a path consistent with the curvature of the Earth - this means it is constantly pulled back down to the surface of our planet. And that makes sub-orbital a real engineering headache.

Despite not quite getting into orbit, sub-orbital passengers would still technically enter space. Such flights would likely climb to altitudes of up to 100 kilometres. That's well beyond the Kármán line, the point above sea level that marks the start of space. Indeed, the US Department of Transport awards commercial astronaut wings to pilots and crew on board a licensed launch vehicle that exceeds 80.45km.

And it won't be cheap, either. According to the UK's Department for Transport, when it does become a reality a seat aboard a sub-orbital flight will likely cost upwards of £200,000 per person.

According to Phillip Atcliffe, senior lecturer in aeronautical engineering at University of Salford, Manchester, Robert Heinlein’s 1982 sci-fi novel Friday accurately describes the passenger experience of sub-orbital flight, as the protagonist boards the SB Abel Tasman ballistic shuttle.

Angela Watercutter

William Turton

Megan Farokhmanesh

Nena Farrell

“The high-G blast off always feels as if the cradles would rupture and spurt fluid all over the cabin. The breathless minutes in free-fall that feel as if your guts were falling out. And then re-entry, and that long, long glide that beats any sky ride ever built. Presently free fall went away and we entered the incredibly thrilling sensations of hypersonic glide. The computer was doing a good job of smoothing out the violence, but you still feel the vibration in your teeth.

We dropped through trans-sonic rather abruptly, then spent a long time sub-sonic, with the scream building up. Then we touched and the retros cut in, and shortly we stopped. We had lifted at North Island at noon Thursday, so we arrived 40 minutes later at Winnipeg the day before, in the early evening on Wednesday, 1940 hours.”

While the sub-orbital in-flight experience may not lend itself to drinks trolleys and hot towels, the allure of intercontinental travel times becoming less than the duration of an episode of Bake Off is strong. But where are we right now with this technology? How safe will it be and how long before we are regularly skimming the limits of the Earth’s atmosphere to make an appointment in Shenzhen and returning the same afternoon? Atcliffe brings us up to speed on the sub-orbital space race.

WIRED: Where are we with sub-orbital flight now?

Atcliffe: In terms of manned flight, as opposed to military missiles, we’re right at the start. Crawling rather than walking, and don’t even think about running for a while. A problem with sub-orbital flight is that, by its very nature, it’s tangled up with spaceflight, space tourism, hypersonic flight and so on, and it can be difficult to separate one from the other – if, indeed, they can be separated.

The major effort at the moment is for space tourism, such as that offered by Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and Blue Origin – short hops into space above the Kármán line that take place basically for the thrill of it. No-one will be taking a scheduled flight like that to and from specific destinations for some time.

The other significant object of work is the single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) satellite launcher, which would not be a commercial aircraft for passengers, but might be the basis of such a design. Reaction Engines’ Skylon spaceplane has been proposed in two variants: an SSTO vehicle and a hypersonic airliner. The latter may or may not be a sub-orbital vehicle, but it’s close enough.

How long will it be until this technology might be used for, say, passengers flying to Australia in just an hour?

Your guess is as good as mine. It will require new technology, the will to proceed with what won’t be a simple challenge, and the money to do it. It could happen in a relatively short time – don’t ask me how long, we’re probably talking at least a decade. Otherwise, supersonic flight is a likely example of what might happen: only now, more than 40 years after Concorde went into service, is there a possible successor that has got as far as producing hardware. There have been regular streams of paper projects, but none of them have resulted in an actual aircraft until now.

What will be the cost of sub-orbital flights?

Certainly to begin with, a commercial sub-orbital flight – that is, the equivalent of an airline flight – will cost big money. Space tourism flights are six figures or more, so it’s likely that a sub-orbital service won’t be cheap.

Of course, neither were the first commercial flights, the first intercontinental flights, the first jet flights, the first supersonic flights. People are so used to cheap commercial flights today that they tend to forget that once upon a time, any sort of flight was an adventure and a luxury – and correspondingly expensive. It’s only with the advent of the Boeing 747 in 1969, and the subsequent large airliners designed to carry hundreds of passengers at a time (as opposed to, say, the Comet 1 ’s maximum complement of 44) that mass air travel became a reality. It started small, and hence expensive, and so will sub-orbital flight if and when it eventuates.

What are the technical obstacles that need to be overcome to make commercial sub-orbital flight a reality?

Much the same as with any new aircraft, only more so. Producing and then combining the engines and airframe in order to produce the required performance is what it’s all about, made more difficult in this case by the extreme conditions under which the vehicle will operate.

The biggest challenges are heat, propulsion and fuel capacity. Heat may require new materials and methods of construction; propulsion is key to anything in these sort of conditions, to the point that engine/airframe integration can make or break a design; and fuel capacity because cryogenic fuels (liquid hydrogen and oxygen, most commonly) are not very dense and so require large volumes for storage, which leads to a big airframe – which may require a bigger engine and more fuel, which makes the airframe bigger and heavier. And then there’s the infrastructure to support the thing – “spaceports”, access to them, fuel and supplies, navigational methods and regulations, airspace controls, training, diversion fields, regulatory authorities, and so on, and so on. It all needs to be set up and built.

What will be the impact on the commercial aviation industry?

Unpredictable. It may fragment it, leading to extremes of sub-orbital services for the rich and ultra-large high-density low-cost subsonic services for the rest of us, possibly with something in the middle, maybe supersonic services, for the well-off but not rich, and maybe business travellers.

We’ve seen this sort of thing before: in 1969, two very different aircraft made their maiden flights – Concorde and the Boeing 747. One was intended to lead to supersonic travel all over the world, while the other did lead to mass travel at a much lower cost all over the world. Concorde did not sell well for a variety of reasons, and no-one managed to produce a similar aircraft, so the potential split didn’t happen in quite the way airlines expected, but I wouldn’t be surprised if hypersonic/sub-orbital flight produced such a divide. Airlines will have to decide which kind of service they want to specialise in, always remembering that the low-volume, high-cost ultra-fast service will be very vulnerable to any sort of shift in the market. This is what happened after the attacks on September 11, 2001, for instance.

Commercial aviation is currently the safest way to travel. Will sub-orbital flight be safer or carry greater risks?

Eventually, I expect sub-orbital travel to be just as safe as modern commercial aviation. But it must be remembered that it is not a mature technology. We’ve been flying in civil jet aircraft, carrying more than 600 people at a time, for nearly 70 years now. We have yet to fly a single paying passenger sub-orbitally. We hope we know what the risks are, and engineers will do their best to cope with them, but what about the risks we don’t know about?

We didn’t know about explosive decompression due to metal fatigue from repeated pressurisation cycles until it happened to the Comet 1 back in the 1950s, so there may be failure modes lurking out there waiting to cause disaster that we haven’t thought of, and have had no reason to... yet. Expecting perfect safety, or even modern standards of air safety for subsonic aircraft right from the start is dangerously naive. We are effectively back in the equivalent of the pre- or just post-WWI era for civil aviation as far as sub-orbital flight goes. There will be accidents, and lives will be lost, but we’ll learn from them, and, with time and effort, those problems will be overcome.

Read more: What can sci-fi teach us about Donald Trump's Space Force?

What can be done, if anything, in the event of engine failure or loss of cabin pressure in sub-orbital flight?

Two separate problems here, though they may well occur together. Engine failure is not such a biggie, especially if it happens once the aircraft is well off the ground. The Space Shuttle had procedures for this, most notably a series of airfields scattered all over the world to which it could abort a launch if it had to. If the aircraft is sufficiently high and/or sufficiently fast when something goes wrong, then it has the flexibility to make use of these alternate landing sites. Of course, you may end up a long way from where you wanted to be.

Close to the ground, there may not be a lot anyone can do – but that’s much the same as a commercial airliner today. The Miracle on the Hudson shows that when an aircraft loses power at low altitude, it’s going down, and the question becomes how to survive the eventual impact. Hopefully, in such an incident, the flight crew will be up to the standards of airmanship of Chesley Sullenberger and his crew, but we also have to face the possibility that even a crew like that may not be able to cope with the situation, whatever it may be. It becomes a question of what is considered an acceptable risk.

The nature of the engine failure could be a problem, and will depend on the type of engine. A functioning sub-orbital vehicle may need systems to jettison either or both the engines and the fuel and oxidiser. In particular, something like liquid oxygen is very dangerous if there’s any sort of fire, or even just a leak. But so is aviation fuel, so experience will hopefully lead to acceptably safe designs. Once again, engineers will do everything they can to get this right the first time, but only the School of Hard Knocks can tell us if they managed that.

Loss of cabin pressure could be anything from a minor inconvenience to an utter disaster, depending on when and where it happens – and therefore, what damage to the airframe caused it and might be caused by it. At one end of the spectrum of possible outcomes, it won’t be much different to a decompression in an airliner. There may be a more-or-less violent suction towards the hole that caused it, oxygen masks drop down from the cabin ceiling and the aircraft aborts to the nearest landing field.

At the other, there is major structural damage and the possibility of the aircraft breaking up. Both have happened in civil aviation in the past, and this would be no different. In the middle, between the two extremes, there might be the need for additional measures like, say, sealed flight suits that could become what amounts to spacesuits if there’s a problem. Or if people don’t like that idea, perhaps the cabin could be divided into multiple separate sealed units so that as few passengers as possible are affected by a leak. You wouldn’t be able to go for a stroll along the length of the aircraft, but is that such a loss given the alternative?

This article is part of our WIRED on Space series. From the global fight over how we handle first contact with aliens to the endless search for dark matter and the inside story of China's top-secret space ambitions, we're taking an in-depth look at humanity's future amongst the stars.

What if everything we know about dark matter is totally wrong?

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Follow the hashtag #WIREDonSpace on Twitter for all of our coverage.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

Radian Aerospace raises $27.5 million for new orbital space plane

The Radian One vehicle could transform spaceflight, company representatives believe.

There's a new private space plane in the works.

Washington-based Radian Aerospace emerged from "stealth mode" Wednesday (Jan. 19), announcing that it has raised $27.5 million in seed funding. The money will aid the development of Radian One, a crew-carrying orbital space plane that Radian hopes will transform spaceflight as well as travel here on Earth .

"We believe that widespread access to space means limitless opportunities for humankind," Radian CEO and co-founder Richard Humphrey said in a statement . 

"Over time, we intend to make space travel nearly as simple and convenient as airliner travel," Humphrey said. "We are not focused on tourism; we are dedicated to missions that make life better on our own planet, like research, in-space manufacturing and terrestrial observation, as well as critical new missions like rapid global delivery right here on Earth."

Space planes : Evolution of the winged spaceship (infographic)

Radian One is an ambitious vehicle. It's designed to launch and land horizontally on a runway, unlike NASA's old space shuttle orbiters, which landed horizontally but lifted off vertically with the help of solid rocket boosters. (Radian One will get some takeoff help, too, from a sled that will accelerate the vehicle on the runway.)

The new space plane will be fully reusable and capable of spending up to five days in orbit, according to its newly unveiled specifications page . Rapid turnaround time is also part of the plan: Radian aims eventually to refly vehicles as soon as 48 hours after touchdown.

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Radian One is designed to carry people and payloads to and from orbit. But the space plane could also do a lot of work here on Earth; the plane will be able to deliver up to 5,000 pounds (2,270 kilograms) anywhere on the planet in less than an hour, Radian Aerospace representatives said.

Radian has not revealed many other details about the space plane — for example, its size, how many passengers it will be able to carry and when it's expected to start flying. Radian representatives said in Wednesday's press release that it has signed launch services agreements with a variety of private companies and government agencies, but it did not name any of those customers.

The new round of seed funding was led by the venture capital fund Fine Structure Ventures. A number of other investors chipped in, including Exor, The Venture Collective, Helios Capital, SpaceFund, Gaingels, The Private Shares Fund, Explorer 1 Fund and Type One Ventures, Radian representatives said.

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"On-demand space operations is a growing economy, and I believe Radian's technology can deliver on the right-sized, high-cadence operations that the market opportunity is showing," Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager Space and an early personal investor in Radian, said in the same statement. 

"I am confident in the team working at Radian and look forward to cheering them along in this historical endeavor," added Taylor, who recently flew to suborbital space aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle.

Mike Wall is the author of " Out There " (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall . Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook . 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with  Space.com  and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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How to travel to space, Earth’s hottest new destination

Go boldly, but pack lightly.

The space just above our planet is booming . Off-world trips are rapidly increasing: 42 of the 51 commercial astronauts recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration left Earth within the past two years.

The FAA predicts their ranks will balloon in the next decade — which may also bring new destinations, such as a rotating space hotel whose construction, planners claim, will begin in 2026 — and some experts have expressed optimism that relatively affordable space travel could be possible by the middle of this century.

For now, though, costs remain enormous. A $450,000 ticket reserves a spot on Virgin Galactic’s space plane, which flies 50 miles above Earth — six times a passenger plane’s cruising altitude. Expect to pay even more to go higher. Blue Origin’s 11-minute journey by rocket, which reportedly cost more than $1 million, shoots above the 62-miles-high Kármán line, the generally agreed-upon boundary between Earth and space. Others spend days in space. In September 2021, four civilian Americans orbited for three days aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. No word on how much it cost them.

For $55 million , Axiom Space will send astronauts via a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station, a laboratory that circles Earth once every 90 minutes. For two weeks last April, the ISS’s first Axiom crew members worked in the lab while forgoing proper showers.

The New Space Age

Space “ought to be on everybody’s bucket list,” said former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría , the Axiom Space vice president who commanded the April mission. “We’d be the first to admit that it’s not quite democratic yet, because it’s still pretty expensive, but we’ll get there.” The Houston-based company has already begun to build a segment of what will be a private space station.

Here’s how to pack and prep for Earth’s hottest new destination.

Getting ready

Training takes days to months. Axiom Space crew members spent at least 700 hours learning new tasks: how to run experiments, dock a transport vehicle to the ISS and respond to fires.

They also practiced on a centrifuge, the rapidly spinning machine that simulates the extreme acceleration of space travel. You don’t need to be in tiptop shape — floating in microgravity is effortless, López-Alegría said — but you will have to endure intense G-force as you exit and reenter the atmosphere.

You should be mentally prepared for a unique psychological experience called the overview effect , which occurs when people witness their home planet from above. “When we came back to Earth, I could not stop crying,” said aerospace PhD student Sara Sabry, founder of the Deep Space Initiative , who traveled to space last August via Blue Origin (whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post).

Aboard SpaceX, you’ll wear spacesuits: sleek, pressurized white outfits with black-visored helmets. On Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights, the fit is closer to a jet pilot’s, with gear that’s not designed for loss of pressure. Sabry said her suit was comfy and custom-tailored. Under Armour makes the clothes — underwear, jumpsuit and zip-up boots — for Virgin Galactic, which founder Richard Branson wore in his July 2021 journey to space’s edge.

Going boldly, packing lightly

Space may be the one place you can fly without packing an ID or passport . “When we walk onto the vehicle, we’re wearing our spacesuits and pretty much nothing else,” López-Alegría said.

Expect to leave the rest of your worldly possessions on Earth, with a few exceptions. Sabry packed three pounds of mementos in a bag, including photographs and a single dirty sock belonging to her niece. On Inspiration4, the Earth-orbiting SpaceX mission, one astronaut brought his ukulele to serenade his teammates in the capsule.

Snapping selfies

Don’t plan on filling your Instagram feed with your space travels to make your friends jealous. You won’t have your phone.

On Sabry’s Blue Origin flight, a few people had a GoPro strapped to their wrists to capture video — especially of the three minutes of weightlessness.

The ISS provides cameras to use. Astronauts can browse the internet on the space station, but posting requires help. Pictures snapped in space are beamed to Earth, López-Alegría said, where someone on the ground uploads them to social media.

Eating and drinking

There wasn’t any snacking on the Blue Origin craft, Sabry said, and the up-and-down trips don’t leave time for in-flight meals. Hot food isn’t always an option with other carriers, either. The first course served on the orbiting Dragon capsule was cold pizza, though SpaceX founder Elon Musk apologized for the unheated pie and promised future astronauts would have a food warmer.

Why NASA and other space agencies want to return to the moon

That’s how the crew heats dinner on the ISS, which boasts a varied menu: about 200 options , mostly freeze-dried or thermostabilized. Tortillas replace bread to avoid crumbs; what’s just a tabletop mess on Earth becomes a hazard when bits can float into electronics or eyeballs. There’s no soda or beer because, according to NASA, carbonation bubbles would be unpleasantly routed through the digestive system without gravity to help an astronaut burp.

Staying clean-ish

Space is like backcountry camping. Both lack laundry machines and require some hygienic compromises. When astronauts must bathe, they squeeze packets of soap and water on their skin and apply rinseless shampoo to their hair. Toilets on the ISS and Dragon Capsule collect waste via suction hoses and fans. On the space station, urine is recycled into drinkable water . Toothbrushes and paste are the same, but without sinks, there’s no spitting.

Falling asleep

You’ll roll out sleeping bags in the SpaceX spacecraft or as an Axiom crew member on the ISS. Vehicles are temperature-regulated because the outside of the ISS can swing from minus-250 in the shadows to 250 degrees in the sun. Still, some modules, or sections, of the ISS can be chillier than others: López-Alegría said he donned long underwear to be cozier when drifting off in space.

Illustrations by Elizabeth von Oehsen. Editing by Amanda Finnegan.

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3 predictions for the future of space exploration — including your own trips

Alejandra Marquez Janse

Mary Louise Kelly

Tinbete Ermyas

Peggy Whitson says more widely available space tourism is realistic. Axiom Space hide caption

Peggy Whitson says more widely available space tourism is realistic.

If you've ever traveled somewhere that left you so enthralled that you wanted to go back over and over, then you get how Peggy Whitson feels about space.

She is a seasoned astronaut who has multiple achievements under her belt: She was the first woman to command the International Space Station, and in 2017 broke the record for most cumulative days in space of any American and female astronaut, with a count of 665.

Whitson retired from NASA nearly five years ago, but last month, at age 63, she packed up the necklace she wore on her wedding day, zipped her spacesuit one more time, and took flight in a SpaceX capsule as commander of the Ax-2 mission. It was sponsored by a private company, Axiom Space, where she now works as the director of human spaceflight. Three paying crew members traveled with her.

After returning to Earth, Whitson spoke with All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly and shared a few thoughts about the future of space exploration.

This interview has been edited slightly for clarity and brevity.

The Ax-2 crew in a training session. The group, composed of Whitson (far left) and three paying costumers, spent nine days in space last month. Axiom Space hide caption

The Ax-2 crew in a training session. The group, composed of Whitson (far left) and three paying costumers, spent nine days in space last month.

1. Space exploration will be a mix of public and private money

If you look at even the NASA missions returning to the moon, lots of different private space companies are involved in that process. And that includes Axiom Space, for instance, who are building the spacesuits that will be used by the NASA astronauts as they step on the moon again. So it's exciting to be part of this changing philosophy of space and the efforts of commercial companies like Axiom Space. We intend to build the first commercial space station initially attached to the International Space Station, but to undock before the space station is decommissioned.

I think it's a worldwide relationship between different companies and peoples, and that's what makes it such a special time to be a part of the [Ax-2] mission, because [space exploration] is changing flavor and it's exciting because there are going to be many more opportunities in the future.

The Ax-2 crew returns to Earth. Could this be you one day? Axiom Space hide caption

2. More people will be able to go to space

Obviously some of it will take time to make it not cost-prohibitive, but the fact that we are taking those initial steps is really important now. If you look back at commercial aviation and how that occurred and the development of that process, you know, it also started off to be only a few people could be involved and then later more and more, and so now it's pretty commonplace. I like to think that we're doing some of the same steps in commercial spaceflight now.

3. The goals depend on the person — and the country — that's traveling

Well, the objective of the mission is slightly different, obviously. My personal roles and responsibilities of taking care of the crew and ensuring their safety obviously are very similar. But our objectives were, we had one private astronaut, John Shoffner, who was trying to develop science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) outreach products for educators in the future, as well as doing research. And then we had two government sponsored astronauts from Saudi Arabia – the first female Saudi Arabian to fly in space and go to the International Space Station – and the second male to arrive.

SpaceX mission returns from space station with ex-NASA astronaut, 3 paying customers

So the objectives of the crew weren't all that much different necessarily than a NASA mission, which is outreach and scientific investigations, but these were with the specific goals of expanding outreach in specific areas for Saudi – which hadn't had a person in space for 40 years – and, you know, to inspire their youth as well as inspiring the youth in the United States.

I will fight for overhead space on a plane, but I shouldn't have to | Cruising Altitude

I’ll admit it. I will elbow you out of the way to get on the plane 30 seconds sooner and secure overhead bin space. I’m not proud of it, but I'll probably never see you again, and I really don’t want to have to check a bag on most flights.

I’m part of the problem, but I’m not alone. The bag wars just keep heating up. 

“We travel a couple times a year, about four times a year, and we’re noticing that we don’t have any overhead space for our bags. When people are getting on the plane, they’re taking the first (space) available,” Elaine DiCresce, a retiree from Minneapolis, told me. “The last few times, we actually checked our bags at the gate. It’s just frustrating.”

So how did we get here? Why is overhead bin space at such a premium, and what can be done about it? Here’s what I learned.

Who sets carry-on bag rules?

Most flights have a 1 + 1 rule: one carry-on bag that goes in the overhead bin and one personal item that fits under the seat in front in economy and on most domestic flights. But these guidelines are flexible and not set in stone.

“The airlines make the rules,” Loulu Lima, founder of the Texas-based travel agency Book Here Give Here , told me. “This is real simple, and every airline has a different rule.” 

That is to say, there’s no overarching regulation about what carry-on bags have to be, just that most airlines use similar equipment and set standards more or less the same way.

“Sometimes you’ll hear an agent blame the FAA, but that’s not true,” said Brett Snyder, author of the blog Cranky Flier and owner of the travel agency Cranky Concierge.

But whenever you fly, it’s a good idea to check the details of your carry-on allowance.

Lima said each airline has slightly different dimensions for allowable carry-on bags, and different tickets have different rules. Some basic economy tickets might not allow for overhead bin baggage, and ultra-low-cost carriers like Spirit and Frontier may charge an extra fee for carry-on bags.

What are the best ways to secure overhead bin space?

Unfortunately, there’s no great strategy here. The best way to access a bin on most airlines is to be in an early boarding group, which usually means having a more premium ticket, having frequent flyer status with the airline, holding the right credit card, or paying for access.

“I hate to say it, but sometimes I would join a credit card that gets you earlier boarding or buy that early boarding space. It really depends on the airline," Lima said. 

How can overhead bin space be less competitive?

First, a brief detour to look at why bin space is so sought-after in the first place:

“We initially got there when checked bags were still free, but people were primarily concerned that their checked bag would be lost,” Snyder said. “When (airlines) started charging for checked bags, then it became even more important for people, because people don’t want to pay for it.” 

Lima agreed that passengers mistrusting airlines is a big part of why so many passengers rely solely on carry-ons on their trips.

“We’ve all become control freaks to a certain extent,” she said. “There’s no trust that the bag is actually going to make it. Why do you think the AirTags and the Tiles and all of these other things are so popular these days?” 

Airlines are aware that access to bins is competitive and frequently tout improvements that mean more space for rollaboards. In fact, just on Tuesday, United Airlines announced it was installing larger bins on its Embraer E175 regional jets, operated by Skywest. Regional jets, which typically fly short routes, are notoriously tight on carry-on space.

Beyond physical improvements to overhead bins, airlines can’t do much to help with the competition, though. 

Snyder said airlines can encourage or require passengers to gate-check their bags but acknowledged that sometimes backfires, especially if they start forcing checks before the overhead bins are full.

And, of course, airlines can charge for overhead bin access, which is unpopular with passengers, but it does smooth things along at the boarding door.

“You have airlines like Spirit and Frontier, they charge you more to carry-on than to check a bag,” Snyder said. “You don’t see the same kind of mad dash that you see on other airlines to get on board just so you can claim your bin space.”

Yet, the efficacy of such practices is somewhat limited. 

For DiCresce and her husband, Clifford, they’re left wondering why airlines don’t assign slots in the overhead bin like seats, and to be honest, I think it’s a fair question to which I don’t have an answer.

Expert packing tips

Until new innovations or some sort of sorcery make overhead bin space unlimited, we’re stuck duking it out with fellow passengers for whatever we can get.

Lima said that she usually travels with carry-on bags only and that you can minimize the space you need by being strategic about how and what you pack.

“I’ve gone to China and to Finland for three weeks and I’ve had different temperature changes,” she said. “I’m all about rolling and, as a plus-sized woman, my clothes are bigger than most, so if I can do it, everyone else can do it, too.”

For Snyder, the best way to avoid the stress is to just determine not to rely on the bins at all. 

“When you travel without a carry-on bag, it is remarkably freeing. You, all of a sudden, don’t care when you board if you have an assigned seat,” he said.

And I’ve seen for myself that the checked-bag system is increasingly reliable. I’ll still fight you for that overhead bin space for now, but I may be coming around to Snyder’s view.

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in New York. You can reach him at [email protected]

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The National Space Council invites you to join us for Find Your Place in Space Week.

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Opinion: The menace the U.S. confronts from space

N ews that Russia may have the ability to launch nuclear bombs through space made headlines around the globe, but other world events soon stole the attention — much to our detriment, because what we’ve read and have been told is not even half the story.

The remaining part is much scarier. Not only could a trajectory through space accelerate the speed at which a missile could strike us, it limits our ability of detection and threatens the very satellites that make our modern day lives possible.

Cell phones. Internet. Television. Plane travel. And, most importantly, national defense.

In one strike, Russia could render America dark — and stop our ability to prevent a strike that could take Washington, D.C., and most other cities off the map. We’d be unable to respond in kind, because the systems we use to defend our borders would have been obliterated.

This is not a scare tactic or talking point. It’s not campaign rhetoric, because the nightmare is apolitical. Space has no party affiliation, nor borders. The only silver lining is that it brings attention to a gaping hole in our national defense that we have been warning about for years.

“In space, no one can hear you scream” was a catchline for a famous science fiction movie that at the time seemed prescient. Now, everyone can hear the screaming. But are we listening?

It’s time to start, because this is not the first time Russia has tested our readiness — they have a long history of irresponsible and menacing space behavior. From July 2017 to December 2020, a Russian satellite, alternatively known as Luch or Olymp-K, made a series of belligerent orbital maneuvers after reaching its intended position on sixteen different occasions, even squeezing itself directly between two operational Intelsat commercial satellites.

In February 2020, Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, then chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force, publicly acknowledged that a Russian satellite had repositioned its orbit very close to a U.S. national security satellite. He noted that the satellite separated, or split in two, from the other satellite, like a Russian nesting doll, and purposefully maneuvered very close to threaten the American satellite.

Then, in November 2021, a few months before the Ukrainian invasion, Russia launched an anti-satellite missile and destroyed one of its own satellites, polluting the surrounding orbit with debris that will last for decades. These examples, among other similar space events, clearly send a warning shot across the bow of any space-faring nation that might oppose Russia. It is a stark reminder that U.S. space capabilities are in Russian crosshairs.

And others. Our country’s adversaries know our vulnerabilities and have proven to the intent and ability to take down U.S. space systems both in orbit and on the ground. It is no longer a peaceful, uncontested, low-volume domain. According to every U.S. space leader and the stated doctrine of Chinese and Russian leadership, our adversaries remain focused on the strategic advantage to be gained by disabling U.S. space capabilities.

Our rivals clearly recognize the asymmetric advantages enabled by space systems in modern warfare. As our competitors move quickly from developing advanced concepts to delivering full-scale capabilities that can rapidly disable space and ground systems, U.S. space leaders have sounded the alarm and called for funding to modernize and augment the Satellite Control Network (SCN) for almost a decade.

The satellite network that controls and provides critical operations and support to United States military and intelligence forces is at serious risk. Daily cyberattacks on this network by state and nonstate actors indicate that adversaries are actively seeking to deny, disrupt, degrade or destroy its capability. Russia’s move to develop and deploy nuclear weapons in-orbit near U.S. satellites that are controlled by a brittle network emphatically underscores the clear and present danger of ignoring adversarial intentions to affect our national space capabilities.

The infrastructure we have come to rely on is a system of 19 globally dispersed ground antennas that communicates with and controls U.S. military and intelligence satellites, along with civil satellites and spacecraft. It is a system that has been around for over six decades to provide critical operations and support to Department of Defense, NASA and National Reconnaissance Office satellite functions, including launch. As the major backbone that controls most of our space assets, the SCN operates as a national critical infrastructure that enables mission success across both national security and civil space. Built in the 1950s, its purpose was to support low-volume operations in an uncontested space operations era.

Beyond the adversarial threat posed, within the next three years, the SCN must be ready to support operations for twice the currently supported 200 satellites. Today, the SCN is already taxed at well over the 70 percent industry-standard utilization rate. This leaves precious little time and opportunity to maintain the system or to respond to urgent user needs. Therefore, as more dynamic, highly responsive space operations are envisioned, the SCN must become more resilient, decentralized and redundant .

To successfully spark the needed revolutionary change, the SCN will require national commitment at all levels of government. Any new system must preserve existing and near-term planned capability improvements, while leaving an effective standalone system that can be modularly upgradable to meet existing and planned mission requirements.

This new system must take full advantage of commercial and civil networks to drive improved capability and resiliency through integration of additional modern communication systems. Lastly, any new plan must minimize management complexity to plan, develop, deploy, operate, maintain and sustain the SCN with a simplified contract construct.

We are out of time to talk about the need to improve the Satellite Control Network. The threats posed today by our adversaries demand new thinking and bold action. Space is screaming. It’s time to hear what it’s telling us.

Gen. (Ret.) John E. Hyten, USAF, is the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Roger Teague, USAF, served in executive leadership positions in both the Air Force and defense industry. Gen. Hyten now serves as a senior principal advisor to Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy, where Maj. Gen. Teague is a founding partner.

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Travel Experts Reveal The Airplane Seat They Always Try To Book

Senior Reporter, HuffPost Life

Choosing your plane seat when you book a flight can sometimes feel like a crapshoot.

Of course, we’d all love to enjoy the extra legroom and amenities that come with business class or other upgraded sections, but the reality is that most travelers are trying to stick to a budget. So which of the many economy cabin seats on a plane makes for the best choice?

HuffPost asked travel experts to share which seat they usually opt for when flying. Keep scrolling for their best practices.

For sleep, the window is king.

“I always book a window seat on flights,” said Gabby Beckford , the founder of travel site Packs Light. “No one likes the middle seat for obvious reasons, and the window allows me to entertain myself and a better opportunity to sleep.”

Indeed, sitting in the window seat means that you can lean your head against the wall to rest, and you won’t be bothered by row mates getting up to use the bathroom.

“I’ll opt for a window if I know the flight path will offer great views,” said travel blogger Esther Susag .

Basically, if you’ll be flying over the Grand Canyon or landing in the Maldives, you might want a chance to marvel at the sights without craning your neck.

If you hate turbulence, consider the wings.

There are other advantages to window seats, especially if they’re over the wings.

“As someone with a fear of flying, I always prefer the window seat above the wings,” said travel blogger Sean Lau . “I recently learned that this spot is usually the smoothest due to its proximity to the plane’s center of gravity. Being able to manage the window shade and having the opportunity to glance outside for reassurance comforts me.”

Try to sit as close to the front as possible.

“I try to sit as forward in the plane as possible so that I can find room for my carry-on in the overhead bin,” Beckford said. “I’m often carry-on-only, and don’t want to be forced to check my bag.”

The closer you are to the front of the plane, the less time it takes to board and deplane as well.

“Being near the front means deplaning more quickly than other passengers, which can be a lifesaver during quick connections,” noted Eric Rosen , the director of travel content at the website The Points Guy.

However, there is one thing to keep in mind about opting for the front row of a plane or section.

“If you are sitting in the first row behind a wall, you will have to place your bag in the overhead bin,” said Adam Duckworth , the president and founder of the travel agency Travelmation. “Some people do not like giving up their things, so don’t book this seat if that’s you.”

Or at least avoid the last rows.

Even if you can’t book a seat close to the front, it’s worth trying to avoid the last few rows of the plane when possible.

“I avoid the last couple of rows on the plane, as it offers the roughest ride,” Lau said. “You’ll also have to deal with noise from the passengers using the lavatory. The last row on the plane may not always recline.”

For stretching or moving, book an aisle seat.

“For long flights, I prefer aisle seats for several reasons,” said Jessica van Dop DeJesus , the founder and editor at The Dining Traveler. “First, it’s easier to deplane without having to wait for several people. Second, it gives me easier access to the overhead bin. And third, it’s easier to get up to stretch my legs and go to the bathroom.”

If you’re someone who likes to stand up and stretch, or has to use the lavatory somewhat often, the aisle seat will allow you to do that without worrying about disturbing your fellow passengers.

There are ways to get out of your middle seat.

If you had to book at the last minute and wind up with a middle seat, just know that there might be a way to get out of it.

“Like most people, I avoid the middle seats at all costs unless it’s the only option left when booking late,” Susag said. “But even then, when I get to the gate, I will always as the desk clerk if there are any other openings besides my middle seat. You just never know unless you ask.”

You might also wind up in the middle between a couple traveling together. While many might want to stick to their preferred window and aisle seats, it doesn’t hurt to offer to swap so that they can sit next to each other.

Avoid the bathroom areas.

“I know a ton of people who avoid sitting near a restroom for obvious reasons but also because it’s the area where people tend to gather,” Duckworth said.

It’s not always just the last rows that are near bathrooms, especially on larger planes. So when you select your seat on the map, pay attention to where all of the lavatories are located.

“Some planes have them in their midsections,” Rosen said. “I try to avoid locations by the lavatories at all costs so I’m not bothered by noise, foot traffic or smells.”

Choose exit row seats wisely.

Many travelers try to choose seats in exit rows when they fly because there’s often additional room in those areas. But this option can have a drawback as well.

“If you are in the main cabin but prefer extra space, then consider getting the exit row — but remember that not all exit row seats will recline,” Duckworth said.

Ultimately, every air passenger has different needs when it comes to seat choices. So the next time you fly, assess what you prefer and keep these expert tips in mind to make the best selection for you.

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