SpaceX has blasted off a crew of four private astronauts for the first-ever private spacewalk.
A billionaire entrepreneur, a retired military fighter pilot and two SpaceX employees are using the company’s new spacesuits and a redesigned spacecraft for the mission which launched on Tuesday morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Image: Pic: SpaceX
It is the riskiest private space mission so far – only highly trained, well-funded government astronauts have done spacewalks in the past.
Image: The Polaris Dawn crew at the Kennedy Space Center. File pic: EyePress News/Shutterstock
Image: Pic: SpaceX
An attempt to launch last month was postponed hours before lift-off over a small helium leak in ground equipment on SpaceX’s launchpad.
The company fixed the leak, but its Falcon 9 was then grounded by US regulators over a booster recovery failure during an unrelated mission, further delaying the Polaris launch.
Risky Polaris mission is neccesary if Musk wants a city on Mars
Astronauts need courage, and never more so than on the Polaris Dawn mission now in orbit around the Earth.
The four crew members are all civilians. Only one has ever been to space before. Just once.
And if that wasn’t enough, the SpaceX Dragon capsule will take them further from Earth than anybody since the Apollo missions, through radiation belts around the planet.
Then the crew will attempt the first spacewalk by private astronauts, testing a new suit in the vacuum of space, from a spacecraft that doesn’t even have an airlock.
The mission is so full of risk it’s a wonder it ever got insurance.
Jared Isaacman, the billionaire commander and funder of the mission, is a space geek.
He believes in humanity’s journey away from our home planet. And the experiments and proof of technology on this flight are part of that.
Isaacman has paid SpaceX for three Polaris missions. He hopes the third will be on Starship, the mega-rocket that Elon Musk hopes will take people to Mars.
He said recently that uncrewed flights should happen in two years.
If they land successfully, astronauts will be on board two years after that and a self-sustaining city will exist on Mars in 20 years.
It sounds far-fetched.
But daring missions like Polaris could make it more likely.
“Crew safety is absolutely paramount and this mission carries more risk than usual, as it will be the furthest humans have travelled from Earth since Apollo and the first commercial spacewalk!,” Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive, wrote about the mission last month on his social media site X.
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There have been roughly 270 spacewalks on the International Space Station (ISS) since its creation in 2000, and 16 by Chinese astronauts on Beijing’s Tiangong space station.
The SpaceX mission, called Polaris Dawn, will last about five days in an oval-shaped orbit that passes as close to Earth as 190km (118 miles) and as far as 1,400km (870 miles), the furthest any humans will have travelled since the end of the United States’s Apollo moon programme in 1972.
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Now the spacecraft has launched, it will begin a “two-day pre-breathe process” to prepare the crew for their upcoming spacewalk on Thursday.
Israel has approved a plan to capture all of the Gaza Strip and remain there for an unspecified length of time, Israeli officials say.
According to Reuters, the plan includes distributing aid, though supplies will not be let in yet.
The Israeli official told the agency that the newly approved offensive plan would move Gaza’s civilian population southward and keep humanitarian aid from falling into Hamas’s hands.
On Sunday, the United Nations rejected what it said was a new plan for aid to be distributed in what it described as Israeli hubs.
Israeli cabinet ministers approved plans for the new offensive on Monday morning, hours after it was announced that tens of thousands of reserve soldiers are being called up.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far failed to achieve his goal of destroying Hamas or returning all the hostages, despite more than a year of brutal war in Gaza.
Image: Palestinian children struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, Gaza. Pic: AP
Officials say the plan will help with these war aims but it would also push hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to southern Gaza, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis.
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They said the plan included the “capturing of the strip and the holding of territories”.
It would also try to prevent Hamas from distributing humanitarian aid, which Israel says strengthens the group’s rule in Gaza.
The UN rejected the plan, saying it would leave large parts of the population, including the most vulnerable, without supplies.
It said it “appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic – as part of a military strategy”.
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More than 52,000 Palestinians have been killed since the IDF launched its ground offensive in the densely-populated territory, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
It followed the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and saw around 250 people taken hostage.
A fragile ceasefire that saw a pause in the fighting and the exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners collapsed earlier this year.
Yemen’s Houthi rebel group has said 15 people have been injured in “US-British” airstrikes in and around the capital Sanaa.
Most of those hurt were from the Shuub district, near the centre of the city, a statement from the health ministry said.
Another person was injured on the main airport road, the statement added.
It comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate against the Houthis and their Iranian “masters” following a missile attack by the group on Israel’s main international airport on Sunday morning.
It remains unclear whether the UK took part in the latest strikes and any role it may have played.
On 29 April, UK forces, the British government said, took part in a joint strike on “a Houthi military target in Yemen”.
“Careful intelligence analysis identified a cluster of buildings, used by the Houthis to manufacture drones of the type used to attack ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, located some fifteen miles south of Sanaa,” the British Ministry of Defence said in a previous statement.
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On Sunday, the militant group fired a missile at the Ben Gurion Airport, sparking panic among passengers in the terminal building.
The missile impact left a plume of smoke and briefly caused flights to be halted.
Four people were said to be injured, according to the country’s paramedic service.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate against the Houthis and their Iranian “masters” after the group launched a missile attack on the country’s main international airport.
A missile fired by the group from Yemen landed near Ben Gurion Airport, causing panic among passengers in the terminal building.
“Attacks by the Houthis emanate from Iran,” Mr Netanyahu wrote on X. “Israel will respond to the Houthi attack against our main airport AND, at a time and place of our choosing, to their Iranian terror masters.”
Image: Israeli police officers investigate the missile crater. Pic: Reuters
The missile impact left a plume of smoke and briefly halted flights and commuter traffic at the airport. Some international carriers have cancelled flights to and from Tel Aviv for several days.
Four people were lightly wounded, paramedic service Magen David Adom said.
Air raid sirens went off across Israel and footage showed passengers yelling and rushing for cover.
The attack came hours before senior Israeli cabinet ministers were set to vote on whether to intensify the country’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, and as the army began calling up thousands of reserves in anticipation of a wider operation in the enclave.
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Houthi military spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree said the group fired a hypersonic ballistic missile at the airport.
Iran’s defence minister later told a state TV broadcaster that if the country was attacked by the US or Israel, it would target their bases, interests and forces where necessary.
Israel’s military said several attempts to intercept the missile were unsuccessful.
Air, road and rail traffic were halted after the attack, police said, though it resumed around an hour later.
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Yemen’s Houthis have been firing missiles at Israel since its war with Hamas in Gaza began on 7 October 2023, and while most have been intercepted, some have penetrated the country’s missile defence systems and caused damage.
Israel has previously struck the group in Yemen in retaliation and the US and UK have also launched strikes after the Houthis began attacking international shipping, saying it was in solidarity with Palestinians over Israel’s war with Hamas.