FLORIDA: The quartet of newly minted citizen astronauts comprising the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission safely splashed down in the Atlantic off Florida’s coast on Saturday, completing a three-day flight of the first all-civilian crew ever launched into Earth orbit.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, parachuted into calm seas around 7 p.m. EDT, shortly before sunset, after an automated re-entry descent, SpaceX showed during a live webcast shown on its YouTube channel.
The return from orbit followed a plunge through Earth’s atmosphere generating frictional heat that sent temperatures surrounding the outside of the capsule soaring to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,927 degrees Celsius). The astronauts’ flight suits, fitted to special ventilation systems, were designed to keep them cool if the cabin heated up.
Applause was heard from the SpaceX flight control center in suburban Los Angeles as the first parachutes were seen deploying, slowing the capsule’s descent to about 15 miles per hour (24.14 kilometers per hour) before splashdown, and again as the craft hit the water.
SpaceX recovery boats were shown approaching the water-proof Crew Dragon as it bobbed upright in the ocean, while retrieval teams clambered over the capsule, attaching rigging before hoisting it out of the water. The crew members will be removed from the capsule once it has been placed safely on the floating recovery vessel.
After undergoing medical checks at sea, the four amateur astronauts will be flown by helicopter back to Cape Canaveral to be reunited with loved ones, SpaceX said.
Camera shots from inside the cabin showed them sitting calmly strapped into their seats.
SpaceX, the private rocketry company founded by Tesla Inc. electric automaker CEO Elon Musk, supplied the spacecraft, launched it from Florida and flew it from the company’s suburban Los Angeles headquarters.
The Inspiration4 team blasted off on Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral atop one of SpaceX’s two-stage reusable Falcon 9 rockets.
Within three hours the crew capsule had reached a cruising orbital altitude of just over 363 miles (585 km) — higher than the International Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope, and the farthest any human has flown from Earth since NASA’s Apollo moon program ended in 1972.
It also marked the debut flight of Musk’s new space tourism business and a leap ahead of competitors likewise offering rides on rocket ships to well-heeled customers willing to pay a small fortune to experience the exhilaration of spaceflight and earn amateur astronaut wings.
The Inspiration4 team was led by its wealthy benefactor, Jared Isaacman, chief executive of the e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments Inc, who assumed the role of mission “commander.”
“That was a heck of a ride for us,” he radioed from the capsule moments after splashdown. “We’re just getting started.”
He had paid an undisclosed but reportedly enormous sum — put by Time magazine at roughly $200 million — to fellow billionaire Musk for all four seats aboard the Crew Dragon.
Isaacman was joined by three less affluent crewmates he had selected — geoscientist and former NASA astronaut candidate Sian Proctor, 51, physician’s assistant and childhood bone cancer survivor Hayley Arceneaux, 29, and aerospace data engineer and Air Force veteran Chris Sembroski, 42.
Isaacman conceived of the flight primarily to raise awareness and donations for one of his favorite causes, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a leading pediatric cancer center in Memphis, Tennessee, where Arceneaux was a patient and now works.
The Inspiration4 crew had no part to play in flying the spacecraft, which was operated by ground-based flight teams and onboard guidance systems, even though Isaacman and Proctor are both licensed pilots.
SpaceX already ranked as the most well-established player in the burgeoning constellation of commercial rocket ventures, having launched numerous cargo payloads and astronauts to the space station for NASA.
Two rival operators, Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. and Blue Origin, inaugurated their own astro-tourism services in recent months, with their respective founding executives, billionaires Richard Branson and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, each going along for the ride.
Those suborbital flights, lasting a matter of minutes, were short hops compared with Inspiration4’s three days in orbit.
SpaceX capsule with world’s first all-civilian orbital crew splashes down off Florida
https://arab.news/mzb3j
SpaceX capsule with world’s first all-civilian orbital crew splashes down off Florida
- The crew members will be removed from the capsule once it has been placed safely on the floating recovery vessel
Iran ‘categorically’ denies envoy’s meeting with Musk
TEHRAN: Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman on Saturday “categorically” denied The New York Times report on Tehran’s ambassador to the United Nations meeting with US tech billionaire Elon Musk, state media reported.
In an interview with state news agency IRNA, spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei was reported as “categorically denying such a meeting” and expressing “surprise at the coverage of the American media in this regard.”
The Times reported on Friday that Musk, who is a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, met earlier this week with Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani.
It cited anonymous Iranian sources describing the encounter as “positive.”
Iranian newspapers, particularly those aligned with the reformist party that supports President Masoud Pezeshkian, largely described the meeting in positive terms before Baghaei’s statement.
In the weeks leading up to Trump’s re-election, Iranian officials have signalled a willingness to resolve issues with the West.
Iran and the United Stated cut diplomatic ties shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the US-backed shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
Since then, both countries have communicated through the Swiss embassy in Tehran and the Sultanate of Oman.
Indian private university opens first international campus in Dubai
- Indian FM inaugurated the Dubai campus of Symbiosis International University on Thursday
- Under national education policy, New Delhi wants to internationalize Indian education system
New Delhi: A private Indian university has opened its first international campus in Dubai this week, marking a growing education cooperation between New Delhi and Abu Dhabi.
Symbiosis International University is a private higher education institution based in the western Indian city of Pune with at least five other campuses operating across the country, offering undergraduate, postgraduate and doctorate-level programs.
It is considered one of the top private business schools in the South Asian country, ranking 13th in management in the Indian Ministry of Education’s National Institutional Ranking Framework.
SIU’s Dubai campus, which will offer management, technology and media and communications courses, was officially inaugurated on Thursday by Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, the UAE minister of tolerance and coexistence.
“I am sure that this campus will foster greater collaboration and research linkages between scholars of India and UAE, for mutual prosperity and global good,” Jaishankar said during the ceremony.
“(The) ceremony is not just an inauguration of a new campus; it is a celebration of the growing educational cooperation between our two countries. Right now, Indian curriculum and learning is being imparted through more than 100 International Indian Schools in UAE, benefitting more than 300,000 students.”
Under India’s National Education Policy 2020, New Delhi aims to internationalize the Indian education system, including by establishing campuses abroad.
Another top Indian school, the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, began its first undergraduate courses in September, after starting its teaching program in January with a master’s course in energy transition and sustainability.
Initially launched in September with more than 100 students, the SIU Dubai Campus is the first Indian university in Dubai to start operations with full accreditation and licensing from the UAE’s top education authorities, including the Ministry of Education.
“A university setting up a campus abroad is not just a bold step, but a concrete commitment to the goal of globalizing India. They certainly render an educational service, but even more, connect us to the world by strengthening our living bridges,” Jaishankar added as he addressed the students.
Dr. Vidya Yeravdekar, pro-chancellor of Symbiosis International University, said that the school’s establishment in Dubai was in line with the UAE’s education goals.
“Internationalization is central to the UAE’s educational vision,” Yeravdekar said on Friday.
“By opening our campus in Dubai, we are creating a gateway for students from around the world to engage in a truly global academic experience, where they can benefit from international faculty, real-world industry collaborations, and a curriculum that meets the needs of a changing world.”
Russia captures two villages in eastern Ukraine, defense ministry says, according to agencies
MOSCOW: Russian forces have captured the villages of Makarivka and Leninskoye in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Russian news agencies reported on Saturday, citing the Russian Defense Ministry.
UN climate chief asks G20 leaders for boost as finance talks lag
- Negotiators at the COP29 conference in Baku struggle in their negotiations for a deal intended to scale up money to address the worsening impacts of global warming
BAKU: The UN’s climate chief called on leaders of the world’s biggest economies on Saturday to send a signal of support for global climate finance efforts when they meet in Rio de Janeiro next week. The plea, made in a letter to G20 leaders from UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, comes as negotiators at the COP29 conference in Baku struggle in their negotiations for a deal intended to scale up money to address the worsening impacts of global warming.
“Next week’s summit must send crystal clear global signals,” Stiell said in the letter.
He said the signal should support an increase in grants and loans, along with debt relief, so vulnerable countries “are not hamstrung by debt servicing costs that make bolder climate actions all but impossible.”
Business leaders echoed Stiell’s plea, saying they were concerned about the “lack of progress and focus in Baku.”
“We call on governments, led by the G20, to meet the moment and deliver the policies for an accelerated shift from fossil fuels to a clean energy future, to unlock the essential private sector investment needed,” said a coalition of business groups, including the We Mean Business Coalition, United Nations Global Compact and the Brazilian Council for Sustainable Development, in a separate letter.
Success at this year’s UN climate summit hinges on whether countries can agree on a new finance target for richer countries, development lenders and the private sector to deliver each year. Developing countries need at least $1 trillion annually by the end of the decade to cope with climate change, economists told the UN talks.
But negotiators have made slow progress midway through the two-week conference. A draft text of the deal, which earlier this week was 33-pages long and comprised of dozens of wide-ranging options, had been pared down to 25 pages as of Saturday.
Sweden’s climate envoy, Mattias Frumerie, said the finance negotiations had not yet cracked the toughest issues: how big the target should be, or which countries should pay.
“The divisions we saw coming into the meeting are still there, which leaves quite a lot of work for ministers next week,” he said.
European negotiators have said large oil-producing nations including Saudi Arabia are also blocking discussions on how to take forward last year’s COP28 summit deal to transition the world away from fossil fuels.
Saudi Arabia’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Progress on this issue has been dire so far, one European negotiator said.
Uganda’s energy minister, Ruth Nankabirwa, said her country’s priority was to leave COP29 with a deal on affordable financing for clean energy projects.
“When you look around and you don’t have the money, then we keep wondering whether we will ever walk the journey of a real energy transition,” she said.
Protesters’ biggest day expected at UN climate talks, where progress is slow
- Several experts have said $1 trillion a year or more is needed both to compensate for such damages and to pay for a clean-energy transition that most countries can’t afford on their own
BAKU: The United Nations climate talks neared the end of their first week on Saturday with negotiators still at work on how much wealthier nations will pay for developing countries to adapt to planetary warming. Meanwhile, activists planned actions on what is traditionally their biggest protest day during the two-week talks.
The demonstration in Baku, Azerbaijan is expected to be echoed at sites around the world in a global “day of action” for climate justice that’s become an annual event.
Negotiators at COP29, as the talks are known, will return to a hoped-for deal that might be worth hundreds of billions of dollars to poorer nations. Many are in the Global South and already suffering the costly impacts of weather disasters fueled by climate change. Several experts have said $1 trillion a year or more is needed both to compensate for such damages and to pay for a clean-energy transition that most countries can’t afford on their own.
Panama environment minister Juan Carlos Navarro told The Associated Press he is “not encouraged” by what he’s seeing at COP29 so far.
“What I see is a lot of talk and very little action,” he said, noting that Panama is among the group of countries least responsible for warming emissions but most vulnerable to the damage caused by climate change-fueled disasters. He added that financing was not a point of consensus at the COP16 biodiversity talks this year, which suggests to him that may be a sticking point at these talks as well.
“We must face these challenges with a true sense of urgency and sincerity,” he said. “We are dragging our feet as a planet.”
The talks came in for criticism on several fronts Friday. Two former top UN officials signed a letter that suggested the process needs to shift from negotiation to implementation. And others, including former US Vice President Al Gore, criticized the looming presence of the fossil fuel industry and fossil-fuel-reliant nations in the talks. One analysis found at least 1,770 people with fossil fuel ties on the attendees list for the Baku talks.
Progress may get a boost as many nations’ ministers, whose approval is necessary for whatever negotiators do, arrive in the second week.
