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Virgin Galactic is set to send its billionaire founder Richard Branson, along with a crew of five others, aboard VSS Unity to the edge of space today, July 11. Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo vehicle will lift off from Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, US. Now, the question many have been asking is where they can watch all this live. 

On its Twitter handle, Virgin Galactic said that the live broadcast will begin at 6am PT, 2pm BST, and 9am ET. Viewers in India can catch the launch at 6:30pm IST. Virgin Galactic will broadcast the launch on its website as well as its YouTube channel. You can also watch it below: 

“The skies over Spaceport America are ready. Soon our Unity22 mission specialists will soar above New Mexico and see Earth from a whole new, spectacular point of view,” Virgin Galactic tweeted. 

Branson, whose role is to evaluate the experience for future clients, in an interview on Tuesday said, “I’ve been looking forward to this for 17 years,” adding while his wife may be a bit nervous but he wasn’t least bit afraid.  Branson’s flight to space comes just a week before he turns 71. A carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, will first take off from the runway and will drop VSS Unity after reaching a height of roughly 50,000 feet (15,000m).

At this juncture, VSS Unity’s two pilots —  Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci — will ignite its rocket engines, propelling the craft to Mach 3 above the 50 miles (80km) altitude, which is considered the boundary of space by the US. The ship, then, finally glides back to the original runway.

“When we return, I will announce something very exciting to give more people the chance to become an astronaut,” Branson has promised. He denied that there was any sort of competition between him and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to see who goes to space first.  “I just wish him [Bezos] and the people going up with him all the very best. I look forward to talking to him about his ride when he comes back,” Branson said. “I spoke to him two or three weeks ago, and we both wished each other well.”  Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, will travel to space on July 20. Bezos is one of the passengers on his company’s first suborbital sightseeing trip on its spacecraft, New Shepard.

Sunday’s mission is expected to last about 90 minutes in total, while the “weightless” phase — when the ship reaches the top of its suborbital path — may last for up to four minutes, according to a report by Space.com.

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SpaceX to Fly Italian Science Experiments to Mars on Starship in 2026

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August 11, 2025

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SpaceX to Fly Italian Science Experiments to Mars on Starship in 2026

SpaceX has signed a first-of-its-kind deal with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to fly Italian science experiments to Mars aboard its Starship rocket. ASI President Teodoro Valente announced that ASI will send its experiments on SpaceX’s first commercial Mars flights. The payloads will include a plant-growth module, a meteorology station and a radiation detector, which will collect data during the roughly six-month journey and on the Martian surface. This landmark agreement represents a new milestone in Mars exploration.

Italian Scientific Experiments on Starship

According to the ASI officials, the payloads include “a plant growth experiment, a meteorological monitoring station and a radiation sensor”. The plant experiment is designed to test how plants grow during the months-long trip and under Mars-like conditions, which will inform future life-support systems. The meteorological module will record Martian weather (temperature, pressure, etc.) to improve understanding of Mars’s climate. The radiation sensor will measure cosmic rays and solar particles during the flight and on Mars’ surface, providing data essential for assessing astronaut safety.

Mission Timeline and Commercial Partnership Implications

Starship has completed only suborbital test flights (nine as of mid-2025) and has not yet reached orbit. SpaceX is targeting the Nov–Dec 2026 Mars launch window, but CEO Elon Musk cautions that “a lot needs to go right” and success is far from guaranteed. Starship itself is a massive two-stage fully reusable rocket built specifically for Mars missions. Meeting these targets depends on completing Starship’s development and test flights.

For SpaceX, the contract turns Starship into a Mars transportation service. The deal lets Italy send experiments to Mars without developing its own rocket. More broadly, it exemplifies a new era in which countries and organizations can purchase payload flights on commercial rockets, benefiting future Mars research.

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SWOT Satellite Captures Tsunami Wave After Kamchatka Quake

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August 11, 2025

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SWOT Satellite Captures Tsunami Wave After Kamchatka Quake

The U.S.-French SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite captured the leading edge of a tsunami wave that rolled through the Pacific Ocean on July 30, 2025 (11:25 a.m. local time), in the wake of a magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. The satellite captured the data about 70 minutes after the earthquake struck. SWOT is a designed to map oceans and freshwater on Earth. The satellite recorded data from the tsunami as it passed through the deep ocean.

About SWOT

According to NASA, The SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales). NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter, the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem, the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES.

These advanced technology and specialized radar helps SWOT to map the height of the ocean surface. In this case, SWOT’s measurement of the tsunami wave’s height and shape in open water showed that the leading edge of the wave was about 1.5 feet (45 centimeters) high. It also captured the wave’s profile and direction as it traveled toward coastal areas. Such detailed measurements of a tsunami at sea are unprecedented.

Better disaster forecast

The NOAA Center for Tsunami Research tested its forecast models using the new satellite data and found that including SWOT’s measurements could significantly improve forecast accuracy. NASA oceanographer Ben Hamlington noted that even a 1.5-foot tsunami in the deep ocean can amplify into a 30-foot wave at the shore and it is important to detect it early. Vasily Titov, chief scientist at NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research, added that these observations suggest SWOT could significantly enhance operational tsunami forecasting – a capability long sought since the 2004 Sumatra disaster.

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SpaceX to Fly Italian Science Experiments to Mars on Starship in 2026



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Aeneas AI Model Helps Decode and Restore Ancient Roman Inscriptions

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August 10, 2025

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Aeneas AI Model Helps Decode and Restore Ancient Roman Inscriptions

Ancient Roman Inscriptions help us understand laws, traditions, economy, and even the emotional perspective of ancient people. Their lives and histories, however, have been rendered difficult to understand because, over time, the inscriptions have been damaged. Every year, there are 1500 Roman inscriptions discovered, albeit many of them are incomplete. Fortunately, advancements in technology like the new Aeneas tool, is helping in the future understanding of the Roman inscriptions. It serves as a large language model specializing in reading, interpreting, and giving context to Roman inscriptions.

Decode Ancient Roman Inscriptions

As Per Report,Drawing its name from a hero in Roman history, Aeneas, the model has been trained on nearly 200,000 latian inscriptions, which span from the 7th century to the 8th century covering regions from Portugal to Iraq.Aneas has the capability to analyze images of damaged inscriptions and predict or even fill in missing letters or words. In addition to that, it is able to determine a time frame and location for the inscription, as well as cross-reference it with other inscriptions containing similar phrases or purposes.

Making History Clearer Through Technology

Since Aeneas is trained exclusively on Latin inscriptions, specialists believe that he is less prone to random or false errors when compared to general AI approaches. University of Sydney historian Anne Rogerson remarked that Aeneas’s proposals, as informed guesses, still involve real historical data as opposed to baseless conjectures.

Despite the model’s open availability,Made public alongside the model’s code and data, Aeneas’s creator, Google DeepMind, offered the model without restrictions.

Most impressively, Aeneas can be accessed for free, enabling students and researchers to shift through and reinterpret previously concealed fragments of Roman history to understand them on a deeper level.

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