(Hey, it takes effort to write a clickbait headline that’s inaccurate even by internet standards)
We do have some Newspace stories, including a record-setting breakthrough in the field of practical fusion power at the Joint European Torus near Oxford, UK.
Neanderthals and more, below:
A little Christmas present for the astronomically-inclined, the James Webb telescope successfully launched into space from Korou Spaceport in Guiana. The ten-billion dollar instrument will see further into the universe– and back in time– than has been previously possible.
Another magnate will soar into space this month. Jeff Bezos, best known as the founder of Amazon, will launch July 20 on board a crewed New Shepard, built by his company, Blue Origin. The passengers will include Oliver Daemen (18) and former “Mercury Thirteen” candidate Wally Funk (82), who will become, respectively, the youngest and oldest people in space to date.
Details below.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson will launch Sunday, July 11 at 9am 10:30 EST aboard the VSS Unity, the first Virgin Galactic flight to carry a full crew. The event, intended in part to show the viability of space tourism, will go full media circus, with Stephen Colbert hosting and Khalid debuting a new song at the landing site.
SpaceX’s current (or replayed, depending on when you watch) activity:
SpaceX has has announced the full (hypothetical) crew of the first “all-civilian” space mission, scheduled to launch next September. Hopefully the launch will occur without too many complications and prove an Inspiration for future space exploration.
Meanwhile….
Eccentric Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa plans to travel on Elon Musk’s SpaceX ’round the moon, and he’s seeking eight artistic and creative types to join him. Will you go to the moon?
Meanwhile, here on earth, a cuttlefish has passed a delayed-gratification cognitive test designed for human children. “Iä! Iä!
Today sees the landing of the most advanced Martian exploration device thus far, the Perseverance Rover. Information on how to follow the event may be found at NASA’s official site.
Updated
James Doohan, best-known as the Enterprise’s Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, died in 2005. His ashes made it to the International Space Station three years later, a fact only . Entrepreneur and “private astronaut” Richard Garriott, with the backing of Doohan’s family, smuggled the ashes onto the ISS in 2008, thus fulfilling a final wish of the Star Trek actor.
Lunar exploration has been in the news lately, with China’s Chang’e-5 capsule returning with rock samples, and ambitious American plans to send Artemis II around our moon (with the first ever Canadian on the mission) in 2023. If successful, it will represent the first time since the final Apollo mission that humans will fly so far from home. Artemis III is even more ambitious: humanity will return to the lunar surface.
If you’ve been following the non-political news this last week, you know that members of the Utah Department of Public Safety, while counting Bighorn sheep, discovered a monolith in the Utah desert. It is, of course, an object strangely familiar to SF fans….
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