Science News Roundup: SpaceX gets ready to launch first all-civilian crew to orbit; NASA rover Perseverance collects first Martian rock sample and more

Following is a summary of current science news briefs. SpaceX gets ready to launch first all-civilian crew to orbit Yet another billionaire entrepreneur is set to ride into space this week, strapped inside the capsule of a SpaceX rocketship, as part of an astro-tourist team poised to make history as the first all-civilian crew launched into Earth orbit.


Devdiscourse News Desk | Updated: 13-09-2021 02:32 IST | Created: 13-09-2021 02:28 IST
Science News Roundup: SpaceX gets ready to launch first all-civilian crew to orbit; NASA rover Perseverance collects first Martian rock sample and more
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Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

SpaceX gets ready to launch first all-civilian crew to orbit

Yet another billionaire entrepreneur is set to ride into space this week, strapped inside the capsule of a SpaceX rocketship, as part of an astro-tourist team poised to make history as the first all-civilian crew launched into Earth orbit. Jared Isaacman, the American founder and chief executive of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, will lead three fellow spaceflight novices on a trip expected to last three days from blastoff at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to splashdown in the Atlantic.

NASA rover Perseverance collects first Martian rock sample

NASA's Mars science rover Perseverance has collected and stashed away the first of numerous mineral samples that the U.S. space agency hopes to retrieve from the surface of the Red Planet for analysis on Earth. Tools attached to Perseverance and operated by mission specialists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles drilled a rock core slightly thicker than a pencil from an ancient Martian lake bed, then hermetically sealed it in a titanium specimen tube inside the rover.

Virgin Galactic sees delay to space mission with Italian Air Force

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc on Friday flagged a delay to its first commercial research mission with the Italian Air Force to mid-October due to a potential manufacturing defect. The company also attributed the delay in the mission, named "Unity 23", to the pending resolution of a probe by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

(With inputs from agencies.)

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