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Three billionaire entrepreneurs – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson – are each vying to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel.

Here is how their rival ventures compare in the race to open up space travel.

Tickets

Bezos, Branson, and Musk have been investing billions of dollars in their space startups, each promising to ferry paying customers on rides to space – and it will cost a pretty penny to be part of it.

Branson’s Virgin Galactic is reported to have more than 600 ticket reservations already, priced around $250,000 (roughly Rs. 1.8 crores). It expects to begin a full commercial service in 2022 and eventually hopes to slash the ticket price to around $40,000 (roughly Rs. 30 lakhs).

Reuters reported in 2018 that Bezos’ Blue Origin was planning to charge passengers at least $200,000 (roughly Rs. 1.4 crores) for the ride, based on an appraisal of Branson’s rival plans and other considerations, though its thinking may have changed. Blue has not divulged its long-term pricing plans.

An as-yet unidentified person secured one of the seats on Blue’s first suborbital mission, slated for July 20, with a $28 million auction bid.

Musk’s SpaceX has already taken a crew to the International Space Station, and the company has plans to send an all-civilian crew into orbit in September. Musk has also said SpaceX will fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon with its forthcoming Starship rocket in 2023.

Design

Virgin Galactic’s reusable SpaceShipTwo system will see its VSS Unity spaceplane lifted to altitude by a large carrier aircraft called VMS Eve before separating.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket-and-capsule combo shoots into suborbital space before separating. The rocket section returns to the launchpad, with the pressurised capsule falls back to earth under parachutes. It features six observation windows – the largest ever used in space.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule sits atop a reusable Falcon rocket which it uses to reach space.

Crew and passengers

Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane can hold six passengers: two crew and four passengers.

Blue Origin’s craft can take six passengers and flies autonomously.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule is capable of carrying up to seven people.

Itinerary

Virgin Galactic boasts a flight time of around 90 minutes from take-off to landing, including several minutes of weightlessness.

Blue Origin’s capsule suborbital flight is around 10 minutes after separation. Again, those on board experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the planet before returning to Earth.

The SpaceX missions are expected to last three to four days from launch to splashdown.

Funding

Typical of Branson’s ventures, Virgin Galactic is publicly funded. Its shares peaked at almost $60 (roughly Rs. 4,480) following FAA approval in June 2021.

Blue Origin is privately owned, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos previously indicating he would sell around $1 billion (roughly Rs. 7,470 crores) in Amazon stock annually to fund the venture.

SpaceX is also privately owned and has raised billions of dollars in successive funding rounds. Key investors include Alphabet and Fidelity. Musk says fees charged for SpaceX’s charter flights will go toward missions to the moon and eventually Mars.

© Thomson Reuters 2021

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NASA Deploys High-Tech Aircraft to Support Texas Flood Relief and Recovery Efforts

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July 15, 2025

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NASA Deploys High-Tech Aircraft to Support Texas Flood Relief and Recovery Efforts

NASA deployed two aircrafts to help state and local authorities in the continuing recovery operations, in response to the flood near Kerrville, Texas. The aircrafts are from NASA’s Disasters Response Coordination System, and is activated to support the emergency response for flood and is closely working with the Texas Division of Emergency Management, the humanitarian groups Save the Children and GiveDirectly, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Persistent cloud-cover over there has made it quite difficult to capture the clear satellite images.

NASA Deploys Aircraft with Advanced Sensors for Texas Flood Response

As reported by NASA, if this can be done, the NASA’s Airborne Science Program can concur a series of flights to fetch observations of te impacted areas. NASA is sharing this data with emergency response teams to inform the search and rescue efforts and help in resource allocation and decision making. WB-57 aircraft departed from Ellington Field on July 8, 2025 for conducting aerial surveys. The aircraft is loaded with the DyNAMITE which is known as Day/Night Airborne Motion Imager for Terrestrial Environments sensor.

Real-Time Data and Imagery Aid Emergency Teams and Flood Recovery Efforts

The DyNAMITE views the Guadalupe River and many miles of the surrounding area, and provides high-resolution imagery which is important to evaluate the damage and support coordination of the foundation-based recovery efforts. This system enables the real-time data collection and analysis, which enhances the situational awareness and enhancing emergency response times.

Further, the agency’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Syntehtic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) aboard the Gulfstream III. UAVSAR is managed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and is planning to collect the observations over the Guadalupe, San Gabriel, and Colorado river basins on three weekdays, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It can penetrate the vegetation to see water that sensors are unable to detect. The goal of the team is to characterise the flood extent of flood and help the understanding of the damage amount within communities.

Further, the Disasters are being coordinated with FEMA, the local responders and the Texas Division of Emergency Management for ensuring the data is quickly delivered to the decision making people on the ground. The data is being shared on the NASA Disasters Mapping Portal as soon as it is available.

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Massive Boulders Ejected by DART Mission Could Complicate Future Asteroid Deflection

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July 15, 2025

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Massive Boulders Ejected by DART Mission Could Complicate Future Asteroid Deflection

When NASA’s DART spacecraft smashed into the asteroid moon Dimorphos in 2022, it was more than proof that a kinetic impactor can nudge the orbit of an asteroid. The impact created about 100 large boulders, some of which had greater than three times the spacecraft’s momentum. These high-speed ejecta added unanticipated forces that may complicate future planetary defence efforts. Using data from Italy’s LICIACube—an observer satellite deployed during the mission—a University of Maryland-led team tracked the rocks’ locations and velocities, revealing a complex and potentially disruptive impact legacy.

DART’s Boulder Ejecta Could Disrupt Asteroid Deflection, New Study Warns of Hidden Forces

As per a study in Planetary Science Journal published on July 4, 2025, the team discovered that the boulders weren’t scattered randomly but instead clustered into two clear groups, indicating unknown mechanisms at work. Lead author Tony Farnham noted that this added momentum, largely perpendicular to the spacecraft’s trajectory, might have tilted Dimorphos’ orbit and introduced unpredictable rotation. The largest cluster, travelling southward at shallow angles, likely originated from two larger surface boulders struck moments before the main impact.

Second author Jessica Sunshine explained that DART’s solar panels may have shattered these large boulders, Atabaque and Bodhran, creating chaotic debris patterns. In contrast to NASA’s earlier Deep Impact mission—which hit a dustier target and produced smoother ejecta—DART’s rocky terrain resulted in filamentary structures. The results emphasise how varied the surfaces of asteroids can be and how that variety can affect the practicality of deflection techniques, complicating mission-level planning.

The debris kicked out would transfer momentum, shifting the asteroid’s orientation in space — an aspect that had not been accounted for in previous models. Unaccounted for, these forces may have led to future missions missing their deflection targets. Sunshine emphasised that such subtle forces are critical, likening future planetary defence efforts to “a cosmic pool game” where missing a shot could have planetary consequences.

ESA’s Hera mission, to the Didymos-Dimorphos system in 2026, will demonstrate these predictions and reveal more about the physics of the boulder-flying impact. The need for two points of view is already apparent from the LICIACube data, Farnham stressed. With Hera’s help, researchers aim to refine their models to better prepare for the next real-life asteroid threat.

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Earth’s Spin to Speed Up Briefly, Causing Shorter Days This Summer

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July 14, 2025

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Earth’s Spin to Speed Up Briefly, Causing Shorter Days This Summer

Reports indicate that for three days this summer – July 9, July 22 and August 5 – Earth’s rotation will speed up slightly, trimming 1.3 to 1.5 milliseconds off each day. Imperceptible in everyday life, this shift underscores how the Moon’s position influences our planet’s spin. For reference, the shortest day on record was July 5, 2024, lasting 1.66 milliseconds less than 24 hours. Over billions of years Earth’s rotation has slowly lengthened, but recent data show speedups. Scientists say monitoring these tiny changes is important for understanding Earth’s dynamics and timekeeping.

Causes of Faster Spin

According to timeanddate.com, the shortest-ever recorded day was on July 5, 2024, which was 1.66 milliseconds shy of 24 hours. The acceleration is largely driven by the Moon’s gravity. On those dates (July 9, July 22 and August 5), the Moon will lie far north or south of Earth’s equator, weakening its tidal braking on our planet’s spin. As a result, Earth rotates a bit faster – like spinning a top held at its ends. Seasonal shifts in mass distribution also affect rotation. Richard Holme of the University of Liverpool notes that summer growth and melting snow in the Northern Hemisphere move mass outward from Earth’s axis, slowing the spin in the same way an ice skater slows by extending her arms.

Timekeeping and Technology

Shifts in day length are handled by precise timekeeping. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) monitors Earth’s spin and adds leap seconds to keep Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in sync with solar time. Normally a second is added when Earth’s rotation slows, but if the spin-up trend continues, scientists have floated a “negative leap second” – removing a second – to realign clocks.

Dr. Michael Wouters of Australia’s National Measurement Institute says this fix would be unprecedented, and notes that even if a few seconds accumulated over decades, it would likely go unnoticed. Dr. David Gozzard of the University of Western Australia points out that GPS satellites, communications networks and power grids rely on atomic clocks synced to nanoseconds, and that millisecond-scale changes in Earth’s rotation are easily absorbed by these systems.

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