SpaceX
Meet the man who won a trip to space and gave it to a friend
He told his family and a few friends. He dropped hints to a couple of colleagues. So hardly anyone knew that the airline pilot could have — should have — been on board when SpaceX launched its first tourists into orbit last year.
Meet Kyle Hippchen, the real winner of a first-of-its-kind sweepstakes, who gave his seat to his college roommate.
Though Hippchen’s secret is finally out, that doesn’t make it any easier knowing he missed his chance to orbit Earth because he exceeded the weight limit. He still hasn’t watched the Netflix series on the three-day flight purchased by a tech entrepreneur for himself and three guests last September.
“It hurts too much,” he said. “I’m insanely disappointed. But it is what it is.”
Hippchen, 43, a Florida-based captain for Delta’s regional carrier Endeavor Air, recently shared his story with The Associated Press during his first visit to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center since his lost rocket ride.
Also read: New space telescope reaches final stop million miles out
He opened up about his out-of-the-blue, dream-come-true windfall, the letdown when he realized he topped SpaceX’s weight restrictions of 250 pounds (113 kilograms) and his offer to the one person he knew would treasure the flight as much as himself. Four months later, he figures probably fewer than 50 people know he was the actual winner.
“It was their show, and I didn’t want to be distracting too much from what they were doing,” said Hippchen, who watched the launch from a VIP balcony.
His seat went to Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington. The pair roomed together starting in the late 1990s while attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. They’d pile into cars with other student space geeks and make the hourlong drive south for NASA’s shuttles launches. They also belonged to a space advocacy group, going to Washington to push commercial space travel.
Despite living on opposite coasts, Hippchen and Sembroski continued to swap space news and champion the cause. Neither could resist when Shift4 Payments founder and CEO Jared Isaacman raffled off a seat on the flight he purchased from SpaceX’s Elon Musk. The beneficiary was St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Hippchen snapped up $600 worth of entries. Sembroski, about to start a new job at Lockheed Martin, shelled out $50. With 72,000 entries in the random drawing last February, neither figured he’d win and didn’t bother telling the other.
By early March, Hippchen started receiving vague emails seeking details about himself. That’s when he read the contest’s small print: The winner had to be under 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds (2 meters and 113 kilograms).
Hippchen was 5-foot-10 and 330 pounds (1.8 meters and 150 kilograms).
He told organizers he was pulling out, figuring he was only one of many finalists. In the flurry of emails and calls that followed, Hippchen was stunned to learn he’d won.
With a September launch planned, the timeline was tight. Still new at flying people, SpaceX needed to start measuring its first private passengers for their custom-fitted flight suits and capsule seats. As an aerospace engineer and pilot, Hippchen knew the weight limit was a safety issue involving the seats, and could not be exceeded.
Also read: Japanese space tourists safely return to Earth
“I was trying to figure how I could drop 80 pounds in six months, which, I mean, it’s possible, but it’s not the most healthy thing in the world to do,” Hippchen said.
Isaacman, the spaceflight’s sponsor, allowed Hippchen to pick a stand-in.
“Kyle’s willingness to gift his seat to Chris was an incredible act of generosity,” he said in an email this week.
Isaacman introduced his passengers at the end of March: a St. Jude physician assistant who beat cancer there as a child; a community college educator who was Shift4 Payments’ winning business client; and Sembroski.
Hippchen joined them in April to watch SpaceX launch astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, the company’s last crew flight before their own.
In gratitude, Sembroski offered to take personal items into space for Hippchen. He gathered his high school and college rings, airline captain epaulets, a great-uncle’s World War I Purple Heart and odds and ends from his best friends from high school, warning, “Don’t ask any details.”
By launch day on Sept. 15, word had gotten around. As friends and families gathered for the liftoff, Hippchen said the conversation went like this: “My name’s Kyle. Are you The Kyle? Yeah, I’m The Kyle.”
Before climbing into SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, Sembroski followed tradition and used the phone atop the launch tower to make his one allotted call. He called Hippchen and thanked him one more time.
“I’m forever grateful,” Sembroski said.
And while Hippchen didn’t get to see Earth from orbit, he did get to experience about 10 minutes of weightlessness. During Sembroski’s flight, he joined friends and family of the crew on a special zero-gravity plane.
“It was a blast.”
Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ is Elon Musk
Calling him a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman,” Time magazine has named Tesla CEO Elon Musk as its Person of the Year for 2021.
Musk, who is also the founder and CEO space exploration company SpaceX, recently passed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest person as the rising price of Tesla pushed his net worth to around $300 billion. He owns about 17% of Tesla’s stock, which sold for almost $1,000 each on Monday.
Read: Elon Musk tweets to ask if he should sell some Tesla stock
Time cited the breadth of Musk’s endeavors, from his founding of SpaceX in 2002, to his hand in the creation of the alternative energy company SolarCity in addition to Tesla, the most valuable car company in the world. The magazine emphasizes that its annual acknowledgement is not an award, but rather, “recognition of the person who had the most influence on the events of the year, for good or for ill.”
The magazine also noted the sway Musk holds over an army of loyal followers (and investors) on social media, where he skewers the powerful and also regulators attempting to keep in check an executive that is far from traditional. Before his 66 million followers on Twitter, he offers outlandish assistance to the world and drives even his own followers and investors mad by roiling markets.
Though it only became profitable in recent years, Tesla is far and away the world’s most valuable car company, at one point this year crossing the $1 trillion market capitalization threshold. Detroit heavyweights Ford and General Motors are worth less than $200 billion combined.
Read:Elon Musk: Some Amazing Facts
Musk said last month that SpaceX will attempt to launch its futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship to orbit in January. NASA has contracted with SpaceX to use Starship for delivering astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2025. Musk said he plans to use the reusable ships to eventually land people on Mars.
Time highlighted Musk’s recent admission to his 66 million Twitter followers that half his tweets were “made on a porcelain throne.” In its profile of the provocative CEO, Time went on to chronicle one of those toilet tweet storms in detail before concluding: ”This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit.”
SpaceX’s Musk: 1st Starship test flight to orbit in January
SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Wednesday that his company will attempt to launch its futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship to orbit in January, but he’s not betting on success for that first test flight.
“There’s a lot of risk associated with this first launch, so I would not say that it is likely to be successful, but we’ll make a lot of progress,” he said during a virtual meeting organized by the National Academy of Sciences.
Musk said he’s confident Starship — launching for the first time atop a mega booster — will successfully reach orbit sometime in 2022. After a dozen or so orbital test flights next year, SpaceX then would start launching valuable satellites and other payloads to orbit on Starships in 2023, he said.
NASA has contracted with SpaceX to use Starship for delivering astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2025. Musk plans to use the reusable ships to eventually land people on Mars.
Read: SpaceX crew flight delayed; Musk gets mixed COVID-19 results
The shiny, stainless steel Starship and its first-stage booster — called the Super Heavy — will be the biggest rocket ever to fly, towering 394 feet (120 meters). Liftoff thrust, Musk noted, will be more than double that of NASA’s Saturn V rockets that carried astronauts to the moon a half-century ago.
The Super Heavy has yet to soar. But a full-scale Starship model in May flew to an altitude of more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) before successfully landing back at the SpaceX complex near Texas’ southernmost tip.
The Starship and Super Heavy for the first orbital test flight have both been completed, according to Musk. By the end of November, the company hopes to be finished with the launch pad and tower, with testing in December. The Federal Aviation Administration should be done by the end of the year with its review, leading to a launch in January or February at the latest, Musk noted.
To date, about 90% of Starship’s development costs have been covered by SpaceX, according to Musk, with NASA covering the rest with its lunar lander contract. He did not say how much had been spent so far.
Read: Elon Musk tweets to ask if he should sell some Tesla stock
Musk plans to build multiple Starships in the near term. He envisions needing 1,000 of them to make life truly multiplanetary, his ultimate goal.
He said something natural or manmade will eventually bring about the end of civilization — a pandemic worse than COVID-19, continually decreasing birth rates, nuclear Armageddon or perhaps a direct hit by a killer comet. Moving people to Mars and elsewhere as quickly as possible, he noted, is essential “for preserving the light of consciousness.”
Four station astronauts catch ride with SpaceX back home
Four astronauts in orbit since spring headed back to Earth on Monday, aiming for a late night splashdown off the Florida coast.
The undocking of their SpaceX capsule from the International Space Station also paved the way for a launch of their four replacements as early as Wednesday night.
Read:China's 1st woman to spacewalk works 6 hours outside station
The newcomers were scheduled to launch first, but NASA switched the order because of bad weather and an astronaut's undisclosed medical condition. The welcoming duties will now fall to the lone American and two Russians left behind at the space station.
NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan's Akihiko Hoshide and France's Thomas Pesquet should have been back Monday morning, but high wind in the recovery zone delayed their homecoming. Their splashdown was planned for the Gulf of Mexico off Pensacola.
“One more night with this magical view. Who could complain? I’ll miss our spaceship!” Pesquet tweeted alongside a brief video showing the space station illuminated against the blackness of space and the twinkling city lights on the nighttime side of Earth.
From the space station, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei -- midway through a one-year flight -- bid farewell to each of his departing friends, telling McArthur "I’ll miss hearing your laughter in adjacent modules.”
Before leaving the neighborhood, the four took a spin around the space station to take pictures. This was the first time SpaceX attempted a flyaround like this; NASA's shuttles used to do it all the time before their retirement a decade ago.
Read: Russian filmmakers land after shoot aboard space station
It wasn't the most comfortable ride back. The toilet in their capsule was broken, and so the astronauts needed to rely on diapers for the eight-hour trip home. They shrugged it off late last week as just one more challenge in their mission.
The first issue arose shortly after their April liftoff; Mission Control warned a piece of space junk was threatening to collide with their capsule. It turned out to be a false alarm. Then in July, thrusters on a newly arrived Russian lab inadvertently fired and sent the station into a spin. The four astronauts took shelter in their docked SpaceX capsule, ready to make a hasty departure if necessary.
Among the upbeat milestones: four spacewalks to enhance the station's solar power, a movie-making visit by a Russian film crew and the first-ever space harvest of chile peppers. Their 200-day mission began last April.
Trailblazing tourist trip to orbit ends with splashdown
Four space tourists safely ended their trailblazing trip to orbit 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.
The all-amateur crew was the first to circle the world without a professional astronaut.
The billionaire who paid undisclosed millions for the trip and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took them on as the company’s first rocket-riding tourists.
“Your mission has shown the world that space is for all of us,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.
Read:China astronauts return after 90 days aboard space station
“It was a heck of a ride for us ... just getting started,” replied trip sponsor Jared Isaacman, referring to the growing number of private flights on the horizon.
SpaceX’s fully automated Dragon capsule reached an unusually high altitude of 363 miles (585 kilometers) after Wednesday night’s liftoff. Surpassing the International Space Station by 100 miles (160 kilometers), the passengers savored views of Earth through a big bubble-shaped window added to the top of the capsule.
The four streaked back through the atmosphere early Saturday evening, the first space travelers to end their flight in the Atlantic since Apollo 9 in 1969. SpaceX’s two previous crew splashdowns — carrying astronauts for NASA — were in the Gulf of Mexico.
Within a few minutes, a pair of SpaceX boats pulled up alongside the bobbing capsule. When the capsule’s hatch was opened on the recovery ship, health care worker Hayley Arceneaux was the first one out, flashing a big smile and thumbs up.
All appeared well and happy.
Their families were waiting near the scene of Wednesday night’s launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
This time, NASA was little more than an encouraging bystander, its only tie being the Kennedy launch pad once used for the Apollo moonshots and shuttle crews, but now leased by SpaceX.
Isaacman, 38, an entrepreneur and accomplished pilot, aimed to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Donating $100 million himself, he held a lottery for one of the four seats. Late Saturday, Musk tweeted he was donating $50 million, putting them over the top.
For the last seat, Isaacman held a competition for clients of his Allentown, Pennsylvania payment-processing business, Shift4 Payments.
Read:SpaceX launches 4 amateurs on private Earth-circling trip
Joining him on the flight were Arceneaux, 29, a St. Jude physician assistant who was treated at the Memphis, Tennessee hospital nearly two decades ago for bone cancer, and contest winners Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington, and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator, scientist and artist from Tempe, Arizona.
“Best ride of my life!” Proctor tweeted a few hours after splashdown.
Strangers until March, the four spent six months training and preparing for potential emergencies during the flight — but there was no need to step in, officials said after their return. During the trip dubbed Inspiration4, they had time to chat with St. Jude patients, conduct medical tests on themselves, ring the closing bell for the New York Stock Exchange and do some drawing and ukulele playing.
Arceneaux, the youngest American in space and the first with a prosthesis, assured her patients, “I was a little girl going through cancer treatment just like a lot of you, and if I can do this, you can do this.”
They also took calls from Tom Cruise, interested in his own SpaceX flight to the space station for filming, and the rock band U2′s Bono.
Even their space menu wasn’t typical: Cold pizza and sandwiches, but also pasta Bolognese and Mediterranean lamb.
Before beginning descent, Sembroski was so calm that he was seen in the capsule watching the 1987 Mel Brooks’ film “Spaceballs” on his tablet.
“What an amazing adventure!” he tweeted.
Congratulations streamed in, including from the Association of Space Explorers to its four newest members.
Read:4 will circle Earth on 1st SpaceX private flight
Aside from trouble with a toilet fan and a bad temperature sensor in an engine, the flight went exceedingly well, officials said. Some of the four passengers experienced motion sickness when they reached orbit — just as some astronauts do.
“It was a very clean mission from start to finish,” said Benji Reed, a SpaceX senior director.
Reed anticipates as many as six private flights a year for SpaceX, sandwiched between astronaut launches for NASA. Four SpaceX flights are already booked to carry paying customers to the space station, accompanied by former NASA astronauts. The first is targeted for early next year with three businessmen paying $55 million apiece. Russia also plans to take up an actor and film director for filming next month and a Japanese tycoon in December.
Customers interested in quick space trips are turning to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The two rode their own rockets to the fringes of space in July to spur ticket sales; their flights lasted 10 to 15 minutes.
The 60-year scorecard now stands at 591 people who have reached space or its edges — and is expected to skyrocket as space tourism heats up.
SpaceX launches 4 amateurs on private Earth-circling trip
SpaceX’s first private flight streaked into orbit Wednesday night with two contest winners, a health care worker and their rich sponsor, the most ambitious leap yet in space tourism.
It was the first time a spacecraft circled Earth with an all-amateur crew and no professional astronauts.
“Punch it, SpaceX!” the flight’s billionaire leader, Jared Isaacman, urged moments before liftoff.
The Dragon capsule’s two men and two women are looking to spend three days going round and round the planet from an unusually high orbit — 100 miles (160 kilometers) higher than the International Space Station — before splashing down off the Florida coast this weekend.
Read:4 will circle Earth on 1st SpaceX private flight
It’s SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s first entry in the competition for space tourism dollars.
Isaacman is the third billionaire to launch this summer, following the brief space-skimming flights by Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos in July. Only 38, Isaacman made his fortune from a payment-processing company he started in his teens.
Joining Isaacman on the trip dubbed Inspiration4 is Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a childhood bone cancer survivor who works as a physician assistant where she was treated — St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Isaacman has pledged $100 million out of his own pocket to the hospital and is seeking another $100 million in donations.
Arceneaux became the youngest American in space and the first person in space with a prosthesis, a titanium rod in her left leg.
Also along for the ride: sweepstakes winners Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington, and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator in Tempe, Arizona.
Once opposed to space tourism, NASA is now a supporter. “Low-Earth orbit is now more accessible for more people to experience the wonders of space,” tweeted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a congressman when he hitched a ride on a space shuttle decades ago.
The recycled Falcon rocket soared from the same Kennedy Space Center pad used by the company’s three previous astronaut flights for NASA. But this time, the Dragon capsule aimed for an altitude of 357 miles (575 kilometers), just beyond the Hubble Space Telescope.
Read: Space station supplies launched with a pizza delivery for 7
Across the country, SpaceX employees at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, cheered wildly at every flight milestone, including when the spent first-stage booster landed upright on an ocean platform. French astronaut Thomas Pesquet rooted from the space station on Twitter: “No matter if you’re a professional or not, when you get strapped to a rocket and launch into space, we have something in common. All the very best from, well, space.”
Isaacman noted upon reaching orbit that few people have been to space — fewer than 600 over 60 years. But he added, “Many are about to follow. The door’s opening now and it’s pretty incredible.”
Their capsule has already been to orbit: It was used for SpaceX’s second astronaut flight for NASA to the space station. The only significant change is the large domed window at the top in place of the usual space station docking mechanisms.
An accomplished pilot, Isaacman persuaded SpaceX to take the fully automated Dragon capsule higher than it’s ever been. Initially reluctant because of the increased radiation exposure and other risks, SpaceX agreed after a safety review.
“Now I just wish we pushed them to go higher,” Isaacman told reporters on the eve of the flight. “If we’re going to go to the moon again and we’re going to go to Mars and beyond, then we’ve got to get a little outside of our comfort zone and take the next step in that direction.”
Isaacman, whose Shift4 Payments company is based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is picking up the entire tab for the flight, but won’t say how many millions he paid. He and others contend those big price tags will eventually lower the cost.
“Yes, today you must have and be willing to part with a large amount of cash to buy yourself a trip to space,” said Explorers Club President Richard Garriott, a NASA astronaut’s son who paid the Russians for a space station trip more than a decade ago. “But this is the only way we can get the price down and expand access, just as it has been with other industries before it.
Though the capsule is automated, the four Dragon riders spent six months training for the flight to cope with any emergency. That training included centrifuge and fighter jet flights, launch and reentry practice in SpaceX’s capsule simulator and a grueling trek up Washington’s Mount Rainier in the snow.
Read: New Russian lab briefly knocks space station out of position
Four hours before liftoff, the four met with Musk before emerging from SpaceX’s huge rocket hangar, waving and blowing kisses to their families and company employees, before they were driven off to get into their sleek white flight suits. Once at the launch pad, they posed for pictures and bumped gloved fists, before taking the elevator up. Proctor danced as she made her way to the hatch.
Unlike NASA missions, the public won’t be able to listen in or watch events unfold in real time. Arceneaux hopes to link up with St. Jude patients, but the conversation won’t be broadcast live.
SpaceX’s next private trip, early next year, will see a retired NASA astronaut escorting three wealthy businessmen to the space station for a weeklong visit. The Russians are launching an actress, film director and a Japanese tycoon to the space station in the next few months.
“Someday NASA astronauts will be the exception, not the rule,” said Cornell University’s Mason Peck, an engineering professor who served as NASA’s chief technologist nearly a decade ago. “But they’ll likely continue to be the trailblazers the rest of us will follow.”
SpaceX to partner local firms to make satcom gear in India
Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to partner with Indian companies to locally manufacture satellite communications equipment, including antenna systems and user terminal devices, as it gears up to launch its high-speed Starlink satellite broadband services in the country next year.
SpaceX is excited to find ways to work together with the Indian industry for manufacturing products for its Starlink devices,” Matt Botwin, director (market access with the Starlink program), said on Monday during SpaceX’s first official interaction with Department of Telecommunications (DoT) secretary Anshu Prakash, reports The Economic Times.
The company always looks for opportunities to maximise the efficiency of its (global) supply chain, and “is now looking forward to working with its partners in India to recognise those opportunities”, Botwin said.
This was also SpaceX’s first official comments on its India plans in the satellite communications space.
The DoT had called a meeting with global satellite companies to discuss a holistic roadmap for locally manufacturing satellite communications gear and ways to create an enabling regulatory regime for global low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation operators to establish in-country gateways in India.
Also read: SpaceX to send Dogecoin-funded satellite to the Moon in 2022
Those present at the meeting included officials from OneWeb, Viasat, Hughes, Airtel NSE 0.08 %, Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea, Department of Space, and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
India's satellite based communications space is heating up with the likes of SpaceX, Bharti Global-backed OneWeb and Jeff Bezos-led Amazon’s Project Kuiper looking to enter the country’s nascent satellite broadband space starting next year.
During the meeting, Botwin, one of Musk’s key lieutenants, said, “SpaceX has been working with the Indian industrial sector for a long time, buying steel and steel-tubing for many of its rockets.” It is now committed to manufacturing hardware and satellite components and components of (satellite broadband) networks in India, he said.
The company, known for its vertical integration, manufactures the gamut of rockets, antennae systems and user terminal devices.
Also read: SpaceX capsule departs station with 4 astronauts, heads home
SpaceX has been accepting pre-orders for beta version of its Starlink satellite internet service in India for a fully refundable deposit of $99 (above Rs 7,000). According to its website, the company’s satellite broadband services are being targeted in India in 2022, although availability, it says, is subject to regulatory approvals.
During the meeting, satellite companies strongly discouraged the Indian government from auctioning mmWave satellite spectrum in the 28 GHz band for 5G mobile services, saying such a move would impact their data download speeds and geographical reach in India.
“Unlike the mobile use case, by its very nature of usage, satellite spectrum is not dedicated to a single satellite operator, and the world over, it is not auctioned but assigned as per International Telecom Union (ITU) regulations,” said Anil Prakash, director general of Satcom Industry Association of India (SIA-India), who was present at the meeting with Prakash.
The coveted 28 GHz spectrum – with a band range from 27.5 GHz to 29.5 GHz – is currently used exclusively by satellite players but it is considered a highly efficient band for 5G services.
Also read: Biggest space station crowd in decade after SpaceX arrival
Telcos, on their part, have repeatedly told DoT that unavailability of 28 GHz spectrum could jolt India’s 5G business case. Without these airwaves, 5G deployment costs would surge and make the ultra-fast wireless broadband service unaffordable in the country, they said.
SpaceX capsule departs station with 4 astronauts, heads home
A SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts departed the International Space Station late Saturday, aiming for a rare nighttime splashdown to end the company’s second crew flight.
It would be the first U.S. splashdown in darkness since Apollo 8′s crew returned from the moon in 1968.
NASA’s Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi, headed home in the same Dragon capsule that delivered them to the space station last November. The ride back was expected to take just 6 1/2 hours.
Read Also: China launches main part of its 1st permanent space station
“Thanks for your hospitality,” Hopkins radioed as the capsule undocked 260 miles (420 kilometers) above Mali.
SpaceX targeted a splashdown around 3 a.m. Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida. Despite the early hour, the Coast Guard deployed extra patrols — and spotlights — to keep any night-owl sightseers away. The capsule of the first SpaceX crew was surrounded by pleasure boaters last summer, posing a safety risk.
Hopkins, the spacecraft commander, rocketed into orbit with his crew on Nov. 15 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Their replacements arrived a week ago aboard their own Dragon capsule — the same one that launched SpaceX’s first crew last spring.
The four should have been back by now, but high offshore wind kept them at the space station a few extra days. SpaceX and NASA determined the best weather would be before dawn.
The delays allowed Glover to celebrate his 45th birthday in space Friday.
Read Also: Biggest space station crowd in decade after SpaceX arrival
“Gratitude, wonder, connection. I’m full of and motivated by these feelings on my birthday, as my first mission to space comes to an end,” Glover tweeted.
Saturday night’s undocking left seven astronauts at the space station: three Americans, two Russians, one Japanese and one French.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Biggest space station crowd in decade after SpaceX arrival
The International Space Station’s population swelled to 11 on Saturday with the jubilant arrival of SpaceX’s third crew capsule in less than a year.
It’s the biggest crowd up there in more than a decade.
All of the astronauts — representing the U.S., Russia, Japan and France — managed to squeeze into camera view for a congratulatory call from the leaders of their space agencies.
“In this tough situation around the world, I believe you have brought courage and hope for all of us,” Japanese Space Agency President Hiroshi Yamakawa said from his country’s flight control center, referring to the global pandemic.
A recycled SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts arrived at the space station a day after launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The Dragon capsule docked autonomously with the orbiting outpost more than 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the Indian Ocean. The hatches swung open a couple hours later, uniting all 11 space travelers.
“Man, it is awesome to see the 11 of you on station,” said NASA’s acting administrator, Steve Jurczyk. He noted that this will be the norm, now that SpaceX is regularly flying crews.
The newcomers will spend six months at the space station. They’ll replace four astronauts who will return to Earth in their own Dragon capsule Wednesday to end a half-year mission. NASA deliberately planned for a brief overlap so the outgoing SpaceX crew could show the new arrivals around.
Also read: China names Mars rover for traditional fire god
Although this was SpaceX’s third crew flight for NASA, it was the first to use a vehicle that’s flown before, an essential part of a plan by SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk to push to the moon and Mars. The Dragon capsule was used for SpaceX’s first crew launch last May, while the Falcon rocket soaring Friday hoisted crew two in November.
It was the first time two SpaceX crew Dragons were parked there at the same time — practically side by side.
NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur — the commander and pilot of the returning Dragon — monitored their capsule’s flat screen computers during the morning rendezvous. They could have taken control if necessary, but the autonomous system did its job, much like a self-driving car.
Also checking into the space station: France’s Thomas Pesquet and Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide. Both have lived there before, as has Kimbrough. But it was the first station visit for McArthur. She flew up in the same seat and the same capsule — named Endeavour — as her husband, Bob Behnken, did on SpaceX’s debut crew mission.
The European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, joked that the space station needs expansion with so many on board.
Pesquet — the first European to fly on a commercial crew capsule — noted that the space station has changed quite a bit since his last visit four years ago, with more people and types of spacecraft.
“We’re so happy to see our friends,” he said. “We wish we could keep them a little bit longer, but not too long as well, because 11 people is a lot on a space station.”
Also read: Spacewalking astronauts prep station for new solar wings
The all-time record is 13, set during NASA’s space shuttle era.
The current population includes six Americans, two Russians, two Japanese and one French. It will shrink by four on Wednesday when three Americans and one Japanese depart for home and a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
NASA turned to private companies for space station deliveries after the shuttles retired in 2011. SpaceX began supply runs in 2012, honing its skills before launching astronauts and ending NASA’s reliance on Russia. NASA also hired Boeing for taxi service, but the company’s Starliner capsule isn’t expected to fly astronauts until next year.
SpaceX launches test rocket, breaks apart before landing
SpaceX chalked up another failed landing Tuesday for its futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship, as the prototype Mars rocket broke apart right before touchdown.
A camera on the rocket froze not quite six minutes into the test flight, and dense fog in South Texas obscured views of the ruptured rocket. Other video showed debris raining down and explosions could be heard.
"At least the crater is in the right place!" SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk tweeted.
Musk said "something significant" happened shortly after the engine firings for landing: "Should know what it was once we can examine the bits later today." In addition, one of the three engines had trouble during the ascent, he noted.
This was the fourth full-scale stainless steel model to launch since December to an altitude of more than 6 miles (10 kilometers). The previous three exploded at touchdown or shortly afterward. The prototype is 164 feet (50 meters) tall.
"Another exciting test, as we say," SpaceX launch commentator John Insprucker said as he concluded the webcast.
A newer version of the rocket has undergone hundreds of design changes, according to Musk.
"Hopefully, one of those improvements covers this problem," he said.
SpaceX plans to use Starship to send astronauts and cargo to the moon and, ultimately, Mars. Musk said earlier this month that SpaceX will be landing Starships on Mars "well before 2030." But he noted that "the really hard threshold is making Mars Base Alpha self-sustaining."
Musk has named the launch and landing area at the southeastern tip of Texas, near the Mexico border, Starbase. A few hour after Tuesday's fiasco, he urged people to move to the area, saying on Twitter that he's looking to hire several thousand people over the next year or two — engineers, technicians, builders, workers of all sorts. He said he's also donating millions to the local school district and nearby city of Brownsville.