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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced earlier this week that he will be flying to space aboard his space company Blue Origin’s New Shephard vehicle on July 20, accompanied by his brother Mark Bezos. This was supposed to make senior Bezos the first ‘space billionaire’ to actually go into space. But it now seems that another ‘space billionaire’ is eyeing the ‘first’ in this modern space race. A report citing sources says that Virgin Galactic is planning to send Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, on a suborbital flight aboard his space company Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo rocket plane in the first week of July (the 4th of July weekend). How is that for a celebration?

But Virgin Group, as reported by Parabolic Arc, has said that the flight was still subject to obtaining an operator’s licence from the authorities at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Branson’s flight, if everything goes as per the plan, will take off at least two weeks before that off Bezos.

A company spokesman reportedly said in a statement on Tuesday that the company was still in the process of analysing data from their successful May 22 flight, adding that they expect to complete the final test flights this summer through to early fall.

“At this time, we have not determined the date of our next flight. An objective from the last flight was to collect data to be used for the final two verification reports that are required as part of the current FAA commercial reusable spacecraft operator’s licence,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report.

The report says Virgin Galactic is said to have announced the plan for Branson’s flight as a response to Blue Origin’s scheduled July 20 flight, but that they had been planning it even before the announcement from Bezos’s company came on June 7.

As for Bezos and Blue Origin, the aerospace company he founded in 2000, the launch calendar has been marked. The New Shephard vehicle scheduled to carry the Bezos brothers — and the winner of an online auction for a spare seat — has flown at least 15 times in the past, but with nobody aboard it.

Bezos also shared an Instagram post telling his followers why he decided to fly to space. In the post, he wrote, “Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of traveling to space. On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother. The greatest adventure, with my best friend.”

The third person to accompany Jeff and Mark Bezos still has to go through a bidding war. A blog post on Blue Origin’s website says the bidding for the space seat will conclude with a live online auction on June 12. Those interested in bidding in the live auction have to register by June 10. The blog added that so far “nearly 6,000 participants from 143 countries” had bid.

New Shepard will launch on July 20, reach Karman Line at 100-km mean sea-level, and then descend back to Earth, all in a matter of 11 minutes. The Karman Line is the recognised boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.

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NASA Solves Black Hole Jet X-ray Mystery with IXPE’s Polarization Powers

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May 9, 2025

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NASA Solves Black Hole Jet X-ray Mystery with IXPE’s Polarization Powers

The blazar BL Lacertae, a giant black hole with jets, facing the earth, have made scientists curious about how X-rays are generated in such extreme conditions for a while. NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer or IXPE now might have been able to solve the mystery. By a collaboration with radio and optical telescopes and using polarisation measurements of X-ray, IXPE’s produced results indicates that the interaction between fast-moving electrons and photons might be the reason for X-ray emission in such conditions.

Evidence of Compton Scattering

According to the IXPE’s findings, high optical to X-ray polarization ratio indicates that Compton scattering might be the mechanism of X-ray generation. There are two possible and competing explanations of X-ray emission in blazar jets. One saying if the X-rays in the black hole jets are highly polarised, then the X-rays are generated from interactions between photons while the other says a low polarisation indicates X-ray formation by electron-photon interaction.

Leveraging IXPE’s unique X-ray polarisation measuring ability, scientists conducted a focused observation on BL Lac in November 2023. During this period, BL Lac’s optical polarization peaked at 47.5%, the highest recorded for any blazar. Yet IXPE found the X-ray polarization to be much lower, capped at 7.6%. This contrast supports the Compton scattering and possibly irradicates the photon-based explanation.

Milestone for blazar studies

“This was one of the biggest mysteries about supermassive black hole jets,” said Iván Agudo, lead author of the study and astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía – CSIC in Spain. The discovery validates IXPE’s mission, launched in December 2021 to study X-ray polarization.

Astrophysicist Enrico Costa, called it one of IXPE’s most significant achievements. Yet, this is just the beginning. Project scientist Steven Ehlert noted the need to observe more blazars, as their emissions vary over time. With IXPE, astronomers are now better equipped to explore these powerful cosmic jets.

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SpaceX Falcon 9 Successfully Launches 28 Starlink Satellites to Orbit From Florida

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May 9, 2025

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SpaceX Falcon 9 Successfully Launches 28 Starlink Satellites to Orbit From Florida

SpaceX continued its rapid-fire Starlink deployment campaign on Tuesday night (May 6), lofting 28 more internet satellites to orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The launch itself took place at 9:17 p.m. EDT (0117 GMT on May 7) from Launch Complex-40, marking the company’s 53rd Falcon 9 launch of 2025 and the 36th dedicated Starlink mission this year. The payload offers worldwide internet connectivity by adding to SpaceX’s swiftly expanding array of over 7,200 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit.

As per a Space.com report, B1085, the reusable first-stage booster, executed a perfect main engine cut about 2.5 minutes after launch, then stage separation and a retrograde burn to stop its descent. Roughly eight minutes after launch, B1085 successfully landed on the autonomous drone ship, stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. The mission was the seventh flight for this particular booster, which had previously supported two other Starlink missions.

The Falcon 9‘s upper stage continued into orbit and deployed the 28 Starlink satellites roughly one hour after launch. These newly deployed units will spend several days adjusting their positions before integrating into the broader Starlink network, which now blankets most of the globe except the polar regions. Each satellite, compact but equipped with large solar arrays, forms part of the larger web responsible for delivering high-speed satellite internet.

The May 6 launch demonstrates how quickly SpaceX is moving to meet its broadband goals. In addition to Falcon 9 missions, the company has performed two Starship test flights this year to demonstrate development progress in both satellite launch and heavy-lift capability.

An expanding constellation would finally bring reliable internet coverage to remote locations around the world. The drive to offer a reliable internet connection to remote sites globally reflects a commitment to putting the world more in reach.

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Asteroid Vesta May Be a Fragment of a Lost Planet, Say Scientists

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May 9, 2025

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Asteroid Vesta May Be a Fragment of a Lost Planet, Say Scientists

Asteroid Vesta, long considered a stalled protoplanet, may actually be a massive fragment of a larger world that once existed in our solar system. New findings based on gravity-field mapping and spin-rate data suggest Vesta lacks the dense core typically found in differentiated planetary bodies. The discovery challenges previous assumptions, drawn from NASA’s Dawn mission in 2012, that classified Vesta as an embryonic planet. Now, scientists report that Vesta might have been ejected from a differentiated world in a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago, upending ideas about the development of planets and asteroids.

New Gravity Data Suggests Vesta Is Debris from a Destroyed Planet, Not a Protoplanet

As per a new study published in Nature Astronomy on April 23, 2025, Vesta does not quite match the former model. Refined calibration methods polished the radio Doppler signals, confirming the absence of a metal-rich core, which was inconsistent with earlier work. Seth Jacobson of Michigan State University, who led the research, stated the new interpretation marks a major shift in planetary science. While Vesta’s basaltic, volcanic surface still indicates geological activity, its internal uniformity contradicts the expectations of a body that once underwent full differentiation.

This paradox has caused scientists to reconsider the asteroid’s heritage. One scenario is that Vesta started to differentiate but never got very far. But data from meteorites called howardite-eucrite-diogenites (HEDs), thought to have come from Vesta, show no signs of such incomplete differentiation. Jacobson and his team instead favour the explanation that Vesta was formed from material blasted off a fully developed planet during an ancient planetary collision, which could also illustrate its volcanic surface without requiring it to have a dense core.

The results not only question Vesta’s identity but also suggest a possibility of a more general theory: that other asteroids could also be pieces of shattered planets. NASA’s Psyche and ESA’s Hera missions, planned for the next decades, intend to do such gravity investigations, which could ultimately confirm this new view. Jacobson noted that Vesta’s composition could even hint at a shared origin with Earth or other early planets, a hypothesis that may reshape asteroid science entirely.

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