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Bitcoin surges amid growing expectations of a Fed rate cut
Cryptocurrency market rallies as traders anticipate a Federal Reserve interest rate reduction, boosting demand for speculative assets.
Sep 18, 2024
Sep 18, 2024
Cryptocurrency market rallies as traders anticipate a Federal Reserve interest rate reduction, boosting demand for speculative assets.
By 2050, annual death tolls attributed directly to antibiotic resistance, or associated with it, will reach 1.91 million and 8.22 million, respectively
A global project called "Humanity's Last Exam" is seeking tough, expert-level questions to assess the progress of artificial intelligence as popular benchmarks have become too easy for advanced models.
Partnership set to transform AI-powered data processing and support Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 goals.
Govt says it would make tech platforms set codes of conduct governing how they stop dangerous falsehoods spreading, to be approved by a regulator
Blockchain analytics company says India ranked high on usage of centralized exchange and decentralized finance assets
With a workforce of 85,000 in the making, India gears up to be a key player in global semiconductor manufacturing.
Joby's air taxis set to cut travel times from DXB to Palm Jumeirah to just 10 minutes, with ticket prices on par with Uber Black rides.
Four private astronauts blasted into space early on Tuesday in a modified SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, kicking off the company's five-day Polaris Dawn mission, which aims to test new spacesuit designs and conduct the first private spacewalk.
The crew, a billionaire entrepreneur, a retired military fighter pilot and two SpaceX employees, lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida about 5:23 a.m. EST (0923 GMT).
The capsule reached orbit about nine and a half minutes later, and the crew batted around a small plush astronaut toy dog as free fall - zero gravity - became apparent. Crew Dragon separated from its support trunk three minutes after that, with onboard cameras revealing a spectacular view of the capsule over the sunlit Earth.
"As you gaze toward the North Star remember that your courage lights the map for future explorers," SpaceX Launch Director Frank Messina told the crew by radio. "We trust your skills, your bravery and your teamwork to carry out the mission ahead. ... We are sending you hugs from the ground."
The mission's Falcon 9 booster landed safely on a seaborne pad.
It is Crew Dragon's fifth - and riskiest - private mission so far. The spacecraft will eventually settle into an oval-shaped orbit, passing as close to Earth as 190 km (118 miles) and as far as 1,400 km (870 miles), the farthest any humans will have ventured since the end of the U.S. Apollo moon program in 1972.
An attempt to launch last month was postponed hours before liftoff over a small helium leak in ground equipment on SpaceX's launchpad. SpaceX fixed the leak, but the company's Falcon 9 was then grounded by U.S. regulators over a booster recovery failure during an unrelated mission, further delaying the Polaris launch. The launch on Tuesday was delayed about two hours because of unfavorable weather.
Only highly trained, well-funded government astronauts have done spacewalks in the past. There have been roughly 270 on the International Space Station (ISS) since its creation in 2000, and 16 by Chinese astronauts on Beijing's Tiangong space station.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off with Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission with two crew members expected to attempt the first-ever private spacewalk, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. September 10, 2024.Reuters
The Polaris Dawn spacewalk is planned for the mission's third day at 700 km in altitude and will last about 20 minutes. SpaceX's Crew Dragon craft will slowly depressurize its entire cabin - it has no airlock like the ISS - and all four astronauts will rely on their slimmed-down, SpaceX-built spacesuits for oxygen.
The first U.S. spacewalk was in 1965, aboard a Gemini capsule, and used a similar procedure to the one planned for Polaris Dawn: the capsule was depressurized, the hatch opened, and a spacesuited astronaut ventured outside on a tether.
Jared Isaacman, 41, a pilot and the billionaire founder of electronic payment company Shift4, is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did for his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021. He has declined to say how much he is paying for the missions, but they are likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Joining him is mission pilot Scott Poteet, 50, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel; and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis, 30, and Anna Menon, 38, both senior engineers at the company.
For the spacewalk, Isaacman and Gillis will exit the spacecraft tethered by an oxygen line while Poteet and Menon stay in the cabin.
The mission is the first in Isaacman's private Polaris program that includes a follow-on Crew Dragon mission in the future, followed by a flight on SpaceX's Starship, a giant rocket the company has spent billions of dollars developing as a flagship moon and Mars vehicle.
The four-person crew are effectively test subjects for an array of scientific experiments that will aim to shed light on how cosmic radiation and the vacuum of space affect the human body, adding to decades of studies on astronauts living aboard the ISS.
Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, NASA has relied heavily on the company and its Crew Dragon, which has flown nine astronaut missions to and from the ISS for the agency as the only U.S. crew-grade vehicle in operation.
The company has previously flown four private missions: Isaacman's Inspiration4, and three private astronaut flights arranged by Houston-based mission broker Axiom Space.
Boeing is struggling to develop a similar spacecraft, Starliner, that could rival Crew Dragon. But Starliner's latest NASA test mission that began in June - its first time flying a crew - left its astronauts on the ISS last week because of issues with its propulsion system.
PM Anthony Albanese says his government would run an age verification trial before introducing age minimum laws
It was also announced that PlayStation 5 games would be playable on the new console.
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Barakah Nuclear Plant marks a milestone in clean energy, setting the stage for regional energy shifts and environmental goals
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Outlined areas of cooperation include space and earth sciences, aeronautics, space missions, and other fields
Smart vehicle features advanced cameras, sensors and reduces inspection time by 70%
Hottest year on record could be surpassed as global temperatures continue to rise
‘Nature’s Resilience’ offers 10 sessions about ecological concerns and their solutions, starting July 9.
The conference is expected to draw 15,000 AI and computer vision leaders, experts, and enthusiasts