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      Polaris Dawn Astronauts in SpaceX Dragon Reach Record Orbit Above Earth

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      After launching early on Tuesday, the billionaire Jared Isaacman and his crew traveled to altitudes not visited by any astronaut since the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and ’70s.Four private astronauts aboard an ambitious space mission led by a billionaire entrepreneur traveled farther from Earth on Tuesday than any other human being in more than half a century.Two of them, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, have now gone farther from the planet than any other women ever.The mission, named Polaris Dawn, lifted off through a break of favorable weather before sunrise on Tuesday. The flight had been grounded for nearly two weeks by unsettled weather in and around Florida.The astronauts, flying an elliptical path around Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, looped outward as far out as 755 miles above the planet’s surface. The mission’s orbits were carefully planned to reduce the hit of radiation the crew would absorb, and to minimize the chances of being struck by tiny bits of rock crisscrossing the solar system.The journey on Tuesday was only a small fraction of the nearly quarter million miles that NASA’s Apollo astronauts traveled to the moon. But after the last mission going there in 1972, humanity has stayed close to our planet, not venturing beyond orbits a few hundred miles up.The Polaris Dawn mission, led by Jared Isaacman, founder of the payment services company Shift4, is a collaboration with SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk. It is the first of three missions designed to spur technological advances needed for Mr. Musk’s ambition to send people to Mars eventually.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Starliner Capsule Returns, but Boeing’s Space Business Woes Remain

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      The capsule, which returned without astronauts, and other space programs at Boeing have suffered many delays and cost overruns.Space programs are a small part of Boeing’s business, which is dominated by sales of commercial and military planes and equipment. But the work is a point of pride: Boeing has long been involved in spaceflight, going back to the first mission to take an American to space.But Boeing’s efforts to add to that space heritage are in doubt.The company’s Starliner capsule returned to Earth safely from the International Space Station on Friday night, but without the two astronauts it took up there in June because NASA was concerned about thrusters on the capsule that had malfunctioned before it docked at the station.A decade ago, NASA chose Boeing and an upstart rival, SpaceX, to ferry astronauts to and from the space station. SpaceX has since carried out seven of those missions and will bring home the astronauts Starliner left behind, while Boeing has yet to complete one. And with the station set to retire as soon as 2030, time is running out.“It’s unclear if or when the company will have another opportunity to bring astronauts to space,” Ron Epstein, an aerospace and defense analyst at Bank of America, said in a research note last month. “We would not be surprised if Boeing were to divest the manned spaceflight business.”On Thursday, asked to comment on Starliner’s problems and the future of its space business, Boeing responded with this statement: “Boeing continues to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return.”Boeing’s troubles could be a setback not only for the company but for the U.S. space program more broadly, which wants multiple private companies available to ably support its efforts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Know About the Blue Supermoon

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      The celestial event, which is visible from Sunday to Wednesday morning, probably won’t happen again until 2037.Stargazers are being treated to an astronomical show this week as an infrequent blue supermoon lights up the night sky, one of the largest and brightest full moons of the year.Visible from late Sunday through Wednesday, it will be the first of the year’s four consecutive supermoons. But it’s a special instance, because Sunday’s supermoon is also a seasonal blue moon — the third full moon in a season of four.The full moon will appear larger and brighter than usual.The term “supermoon,” coined by the astrologer Richard Noelle in 1979, refers to a moment when the full moon is closest to Earth on its orbital path. It’s not an official astronomical term, but it is used by the lay-stargazers among us. A “blue” moon bears no connection to the color blue, and the moon won’t have a colorful tinge. Instead, a blue moon is used to describe what is effectively an additional full moon, one that violates the rule of thumb, that there is one full moon in a month, or three full moons in a season.Supermoons, full moons and blue moons occur on their own, but it’s not often that they all happen at the same time. According to NASA, roughly 25 percent of full moons are supermoons, and only 3 percent of full moons are blue moons. From Sunday through Wednesday morning, they’ll occur simultaneously.Supermoons can appear 30 percent brighter than the average moon.Like “supermoon,” the term “blue moon” is also colloquial, but blue moons are infrequent — more so than supermoons — and tend to occur every few years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      SpaceX’s Assault on a Fragile Habitat: Four Takeaways From Our Investigation

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      The development of Elon Musk’s facility in South Texas did not play out as local officials were originally told it would.When Elon Musk first eyed South Texas for a new base of space operations, he promised that SpaceX would have a small, eco-friendly footprint and that the surrounding area would be “left untouched.”A decade later, the reality is far different. An investigation by The New York Times shows how SpaceX’s ferocious growth in the area has dramatically changed the fragile landscape and has threatened the habitat that the U.S. government is charged with protecting there.More repercussions are likely coming, in South Texas and in other places where SpaceX is expanding. Mr. Musk has said he hopes to one day launch his Starships — the largest rocket ever manufactured — a thousand times a year.Executives from SpaceX declined repeated requests to comment. But Gary Henry, who until this year served as a SpaceX adviser on Pentagon launch programs, said the company was aware of concerns about SpaceX’s environmental impact and was committed to addressing them.Here are four takeaways from our investigation:Musk used preserved lands as a buffer for SpaceX operationsRocket launch sites in the U.S., such as Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, typically are enormous, secure facilities with tens of thousands of acres within their confines.Mr. Musk didn’t intend to buy up anything like that amount of land when he was looking at the area near Brownsville, Texas. Instead, he wanted to buy a tiny piece of property in the middle of public lands — what the team involved referred to as a “doughnut hole.” He figured the surrounding state parks and federal wildlife preserves would serve as natural buffers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wildlife Protections Take a Back Seat to Elon Musk’s Ambitions

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      As Elon Musk’s Starship — the largest rocket ever manufactured — successfully blasted toward the sky last month, the launch was hailed as a giant leap for SpaceX and the United States’ civilian space program.Two hours later, once conditions were deemed safe, a team from SpaceX, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a conservation group began canvassing the fragile migratory bird habitat surrounding the launch site.The impact was obvious.The launch had unleashed an enormous burst of mud, stones and fiery debris across the public lands encircling Mr. Musk’s $3 billion space compound. Chunks of sheet metal and insulation were strewn across the sand flats on one side of a state park. Elsewhere, a small fire had ignited, leaving a charred patch of park grasslands — remnants from the blastoff that burned 7.5 million pounds of fuel.Most disturbing to one member of the entourage was the yellow smear on the soil in the same spot that a bird’s nest lay the day before. None of the nine nests recorded by the nonprofit Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program before the launch had survived intact.Egg yolk now stained the ground.“The nests have all been messed up or have eggs missing,” Justin LeClaire, a Coastal Bend wildlife biologist, told a Fish and Wildlife inspector as a New York Times reporter observed nearby.The outcome was part of a well-documented pattern.On at least 19 occasions since 2019, SpaceX operations have caused fires, leaks, explosions or other problems associated with the rapid growth of Mr. Musk’s complex in Boca Chica. These incidents have caused environmental damage and reflect a broader debate over how to balance technological and economic progress against protections of delicate ecosystems and local communities. More

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      A Global Push Fixed the Ozone Hole. Satellites Could Threaten It.

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      A sharp increase in hardware orbiting Earth could mean more harmful metals lingering in the atmosphere, according to a new study.Low-Earth orbit, a layer of superhighway that wraps around Earth’s thermosphere some 200 to 600 miles above our heads, is newly congested.Yet no one knows how the vast increase in satellites orbiting Earth will affect the atmosphere, and therefore life down below. With the rush to send up more and more satellites, a new study proposes that the hole in the ozone layer, a problem scientists thought they had solved decades ago, could make a comeback.“Up until a few years ago, this was not a research area at all,” Martin Ross, an atmospheric scientist at Aerospace Corporation, said of the study, which looked at how a potential increase in man-made metal particles could eat away at Earth’s protective layer.Ever since Sputnik, the first man-made space satellite, was launched in 1957, scientists have thought that when satellites re-enter our atmosphere at the end of their lives, their vaporization has little impact. But new satellites — much more advanced, but also smaller, cheaper and more disposable than previous satellites — have a turnover that resembles fast fashion, said the lead author of the study, José Pedro Ferreira, a doctoral candidate in astronautical engineering at the University of Southern California.Almost 20 percent of all satellites ever launched have re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in the last half-decade, burning up in superfast, superhot blazes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Voyager 1, After Major Malfunction, Is Back From the Brink, NASA Says

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      The farthest man-made object in space had been feared lost forever after a computer problem in November effectively rendered the 46-year-old probe useless.Several months after a grave computer problem seemed to spell the end for Voyager 1, which for nearly a half century had provided data on the outer planets and the far reaches of the solar system, NASA announced on Thursday that it had restored the spacecraft to working order.“The spacecraft has resumed gathering information about interstellar space,” NASA said in its announcement about Voyager 1, the farthest man-made object in space.Since the problem surfaced in November, engineers had been working to diagnose and resolve the issue, a tedious and lengthy process complicated by the fact that it takes almost two days to send and receive information from Voyager 1, which was the first man-made object ever to enter interstellar space and is currently more than 15 billion miles from Earth.The space community had been holding its breath since last year as the prospect of fixing the aging probe appeared as dire as ever.In February, Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager mission project manager, said the problem, which hindered Voyager 1’s ability to send coherent engineering and science data back to Earth, was “the most serious issue” the probe had faced since she began leading the mission in 2010.Voyager 1 and its twin probe, Voyager 2, were launched in 1977 on a mission to explore the outer planets. NASA capitalized on a rare alignment in the solar system that enabled the probes to visit the four of the outer planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — by using the gravity of each to swing to the next.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Edward Stone, 88, Physicist Who Oversaw Voyager Missions, Is Dead

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      He helped send the twin spacecraft on their way in 1977. Decades and billions of miles later, they are still probing — “Earth’s ambassadors to the stars,” as he put it.Edward C. Stone, the visionary physicist who dispatched NASA’s Voyager spacecraft to run rings around our solar system’s outer planets and, for the first time, to venture beyond to unravel interstellar mysteries, died on Sunday at his home in Pasadena, Calif. He was 88.His death was confirmed by his daughter Susan C. Stone.Inspired by the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957, while he was a college student, Dr. Stone went on to oversee the Voyager missions 20 years later for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which the California Institute of Technology manages for NASA.Twin aircraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched separately in the summer of 1977 from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Almost five decades later, they are continuing their journeys deep into space and still collecting data.Dr. Stone was the program’s chief project scientist for 50 years, starting in 1972, when he was a 36-year-old physics professor at Caltech. He became the public face of the project with the double launch in 1977.Dr. Stone in 1972 as a physics professor at Caltech. That year, he became chief project scientist of the Voyager program and held that post for 50 years, retiring in 2022.Caltech ArchivesTaking advantage of a gravitational convergence of four planets that occurs only once every 176 years, the spacecraft soared past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More