AppleMagazine #538

The billionaire who launched on his own SpaceX flight last year is headed back up, aiming for an even higher orbit and the chance to take part in a spacewalk. Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman announced that he will make another private spaceflight launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, alongside two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force fighter pilot. It’s the first of three planned flights to try out new tech — including still-in-the-works spacewalking suits — culminating in the first flight with people of SpaceX’s new Starship, which is intended for moon and Mars travel. Isaacman paid undisclosed millions for last September’s three-day spaceflight for himself and three others, the first space tourism flight for Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Isaacman told reporters that he and the company are sharing costs for the upcoming…

NASA’s new space telescope has captured its first starlight and even taken a selfie of its giant, gold mirror. All 18 segments of the primary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope seem to be working properly 1 1/2 months into the mission, officials said. The telescope’s first target was a bright star 258 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. “That was just a real wow moment,” said Marshall Perrin of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Over the next few months, the hexagonal mirror segments — each the size of a coffee table — will be aligned and focused as one, allowing science observations to begin by the end of June. The $10 billion infrared observatory — considered the successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope — will seek light from the…

Europe needs a bolder space policy, French President Emmanuel Macron declared this week, warning that Europe’s sovereignty is at stake if it falls behind rival powers in a key field for technology, science and military competitiveness. Speaking at a meeting in Toulouse, France, Macron said recent events had shown how crucial it is to be able to monitor troop movements from orbit — a reference to satellite images showing Russia’s mass military deployment near Ukraine that raise fears of an imminent invasion. “There is no full power or autonomy without managing space,” Macron said. “Without (it) you can’t conquer new frontiers or even control your own.” Europe has a strong record when it comes to launching satellites for telecommunications, global positioning services and scientific research. But it has lagged behind rivals such as…

SpaceX’s newest fleet of satellites is tumbling out of orbit after being struck by a solar storm. Up to 40 of the 49 small satellites launched last week have either reentered the atmosphere and burned up, or are on the verge of doing so, the company said in an online update. SpaceX said a geomagnetic storm last Friday made the atmosphere denser, which increased the drag on the Starlink satellites, effectively dooming them. Ground controllers tried to save the compact, flat-panel satellites by putting them into a type of hibernation and flying them in a way to minimize drag. But the atmospheric pull was too great, and the satellites failed to awaken and climb to a higher, more stable orbit, according to the company. SpaceX still has close to 2,000 Starlink satellites orbiting Earth…

There’s no denying that SpaceX and its Starship program is a game-changer for the future of space exploration, designed to carry hundreds of people to the Red Planet. This month, Elon Musk took to the stage to announce the latest updates to the project, signaling that Starship is full steam ahead, bringing us even closer to a whole new world far beyond Planet Earth. THE STARSHIP PROGRAM Though the Starship program dates back as far as 2005, it’s only in recent years that the world has begun taking the project seriously. Elon Musk, famed for his success co-founding PayPal and, of course, Tesla, has been developing a vehicle that could change the way we think about interplanetary transportation forever. Creatively named Starship, the project will feature a reusable transportation system that’s capable…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk donated about 5 million shares of company stock worth roughly $5.7 billion to an unidentified charity in November, according to a regulatory filing. The shares were donated from Nov. 19 to Nov. 29, the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said. In late October, Musk, the world’s richest man, tweeted that he would sell $6 billion in Tesla stock and give the money to the United Nations World Food Program if the organization would describe how the money would solve world hunger. But the filing did not name any recipients for the donation. David Beasley, WFP executive director, said in a statement that the organization hasn’t received anything from Musk yet. “There are millions of people around the world on the brink of starvation. Whether WFP receives…