The four astronauts assigned to NASA’s last space shuttle flight can’t seem to escape all the fuss and hubbub.
With just eight days until Atlantis blasts off, the astronauts said on Thursday they are still getting last-minute requests. Relatives, acquaintances and special-interest groups are all clamoring for launch tickets, and just about everyone wants the astronauts to take something of theirs on the last shuttle ride.
“People are procrastinators, right? You’ve always wanted to go see a shuttle launch and all of a sudden it’s the last one, but it’s really nice to see all the enthusiasm,” astronaut Sandra Magnus said in an interview.
At a press conference, commander Christopher Ferguson said there is so much hoopla surrounding the last mission that he can’t wait to go into quarantine. Shuttle crews always take up residence at Johnson Space Center in Houston a week before liftoff to avoid germs.
Ferguson and his crew will fly on to Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, where they’ll remain in quarantine. Liftoff is set for 11:26am on Friday for the 12-day delivery mission to the International Space Station.
Co-pilot Douglas Hurley said the astronauts have the easy part, sitting on the rocket and launching.
“It’s real tough on your family and friends,” he said.
Astronaut Rex Walheim said the crew had been bombarded with requests for NASA passes to see the launch up close from within Kennedy Space Center. Each astronaut got 330 tickets to dole out.
Veterans have put in requests for tickets and so have sick children, plus there are all the family, friends, co-workers, even casual acquaintances. NASA anticipates 45,000 guests at the center on launch day — outside the gates, between 500,000 and 750,000 people are expected to jam area roads.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion