A privately owned rocket blasted off for a trial run to the International Space Station yesterday, carrying more than food and supplies for the crew.
Tucked into the rocket’s second stage are the cremated remains of more than 300 hardcore space fans finally making it into the final frontier.
Space Exploration Technologies’ Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 3:44am. The company, also known as SpaceX, replaced a faulty engine valve that triggered a last-second halt to its initial launch attempt on Saturday.
The rocket’s prime cargo is a 4.4m tall capsule called Dragon that is filled with food, clothes and supplies for the six astronauts and cosmonauts living aboard the space station, a US$100 billion project of 15 countries that flies more than 330km above Earth.
Falcon 9 carries a secondary payload as well — a container holding lipstick-tube-sized canisters filled with cremated remains. The deceased include Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, who died in 2004, and actor James Doohan, who portrayed chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on the original Star Trek television series. Doohan died in 2005.
If all goes as planned, nine -minutes and 49 seconds after liftoff, Dragon’s second stage will separate. It should spend the next year or so circling Earth as an orbital space memorial before it is pulled back into the atmosphere and incinerated.
Houston-based Celestis Inc has arranged for cremated remains to be flown in space 10 times previously, though not all the launches have been successful.
The Earth-orbiting space memorials cost about US$3,000. Celestis also arranges for suborbital flights and launches to the moon. Relatives are invited to attend the launch and then participate in a group memorial service.
The Falcon 9 flight is the firm’s biggest yet, Charles Chafer, chief executive officer of parent company Space Services, wrote on his Facebook page. Ashes from 308 people are aboard, though most are reflights from a failed 2008 launch.
“With my Celestis team,” Chafer posted on his Facebook page on Saturday, as the group gathered to watch the launch attempt. “Ignition, no liftoff ... wow that was close. Try again Tuesday.”
Chafer declined an interview request.
“We made a commitment not to comment publicly until after the mission,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS