Blue Origin faces backlash ahead of historic all-female spaceflight with Katy Perry
Fram2 back on Earth, ending polar orbit expedition | Blue Origin faces backlash ahead of all-female spaceflight | NASA website removes 'First Woman' graphic novel
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The first four humans to orbit over Earth's north and south poles have safely returned to Earth. SpaceX's private Fram2 mission splashed down Friday (April 4) at 12:18 p.m. ET (1618 GMT), softly parachuting down into the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Oceanside, California. Their return wraps up about three and half days spent in space, completing the first crewed mission to fly a polar orbit around Earth.
Blue Origin is receiving some backlash ahead of its upcoming all-female spaceflight. During a recent appearance on "TODAY with Jenna & Friends," actress Olivia Munn criticized the private spaceflight mission, questioning its value given the economic hardships facing many people in the U.S. and around the world.
In 2021, NASA released a fictional graphic novel about a pioneering astronaut who becomes the first woman to step foot on the moon, Commander Callie Rodriguez, alongside her diverse crew - this novel has now been erased from the agency's main website as part of the Trump Administration's major crackdown on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) programs. There were, in fact, two graphic novels in the series; both have sadly and suddenly vanished from the space agency's official online presence.
Three astronauts will launch toward the ISS early Tuesday (April 8). A Russian Soyuz rocket will lift off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1:47 a.m. EDT (0557 GMT; 10:47 a.m. local time in Kazakhstan), sending NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky to the orbiting lab. You can watch the launch live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Coverage will begin at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT) on Tuesday.
If all goes to plan, scientists may someday begin building outposts on the moon - and some experts believe that these outposts could be constructed with bricks made out of lunar regolith. And now, a new study based on lunar regolith simulant experiments suggests that if these moon-dust bricks crack, bacteria could be used to seal them back up.
SpaceX sent another big batch of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit from Florida on Saturday night (April 5). A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 Starlink craft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday at 11:07 p.m. EDT (0307 GMT on Sunday, April 6).
From satellite TV broadcast hijacking to jamming and spoofing of satellite navigation systems, attacks on space-based services are on the rise. Experts are racing to find solutions to keep the onslaught in check.
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