Science Spectacles: Billionaire Backs Out, Boeing Ready, and the Largest Genome Found

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa cancelled his 'dearMoon' mission, originally planned to be the first private flight around the moon. Meanwhile, Boeing's Starliner is set for its first crewed launch. Researchers discovered that a humble fern from New Caledonia boasts the world's largest genome, surpassing the human genome by over 50 times. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has spotted the earliest-known galaxy, bright and large, formed during the universe's infancy.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Japanese billionaire Maezawa cancels moon flyby mission

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa cancelled his "dearMoon" mission, which the project said would have been the first private flight around the moon, the mission announced on Saturday. The team had originally aimed to make the circumlunar flight with celebrities on board by the end of last year but that became "unfeasible", the mission said in a statement on its website.

Boeing's Starliner capsule set for launch of first crewed space flight

Boeing's new Starliner astronaut capsule is poised for launch on Saturday in a much-delayed first crewed test flight, a milestone in the beleaguered aerospace giant's aim to compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX in the astronaut launch business. The CST-100 Starliner with two astronauts aboard is due for liftoff at 12:25 p.m. ET (1625 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, strapped to an Atlas V rocket from Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance (ULA).

Humble fern from New Caledonia boasts world's largest genome

You thought the living organism with ;/"he largest genome might be the blue whale, an African elephant or perhaps a giant redwood tree? Not even close. A human being? Wrong again. That honor instead goes to a little fern that grows in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific Ocean. New research shows that this fork fern species, called Tmesipteris oblanceolata, has a genome - all the genetic information of an organism - that is 7% larger than that of the previous record-holder, the Japanese flowering plant Paris japonica, and more than 50 times the size of the human genome.

Earliest-known galaxy, spotted by Webb telescope, is a beacon to cosmic dawn

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has spotted the earliest-known galaxy, one that is surprisingly bright and big considering it formed during the universe's infancy - at only 2% its current age. Webb, which by peering across vast cosmic distances is looking way back in time, observed the galaxy as it existed about 290 million years after the Big Bang event that initiated the universe roughly 13.8 billion years ago, the researchers said. This period spanning the universe's first few hundred million years is called cosmic dawn.