DUBAI: The first all-private team of astronauts ever launched to the International Space Station (ISS) were welcomed aboard the orbiting research platform on Saturday to begin a weeklong science mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight.
Their arrival came about 21 hours after the four-man team representing Houston-based startup company Axiom Space Inc. lifted off on Friday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, riding atop a SpaceX-launched Falcon 9 rocket.
The Crew Dragon capsule lofted into orbit by the rocket docked with the ISS at about 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on Saturday as the two space vehicles were flying roughly 250 miles (420 km) above the central Atlantic Ocean, a live webcast of the coupling from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration showed.
The final approach was delayed for about 45 minutes by a technical glitch with a video feed used to monitor the capsule’s rendezvous with the ISS, but it otherwise proceeded smoothly.
The multinational Axiom team, planning to spend eight days in orbit, was led by retired Spanish-born NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, 63, the company’s vice president for business development.
His second-in-command was Larry Connor, a real estate and technology entrepreneur and aerobatics aviator from Ohio designated as the mission pilot. Connor is in his 70s, but the company did not provide his precise age.
Rounding out the Ax-1 crew were investor-philanthropist and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52, both serving as mission specialists.
With docking achieved, it took nearly two hours for the sealed passageway between the space station and crew capsule to be pressurized and checked for leaks before hatches were opened to allow the newly arrived astronauts to come aboard the ISS.
The Ax-1 team was welcomed by all seven of the regular, government-paid crew members already occupying the space station: three American astronauts, a German astronaut from the European Space Agency and three Russian cosmonauts.
The NASA webcast showed the four smiling Axiom astronauts, dressed in navy blue flight suits, floating headfirst, one by one, through the portal into the space station, warmly greeted with hugs and handshakes by the ISS crew.
Lopez-Alegria later pinned astronaut wings onto the uniforms of the three spaceflight rookies of his Axiom team — Connor, Stibbe and Pathy — during a brief welcome ceremony.
Stibbe is now the second Israeli to fly to space, after Ilan Ramon, who perished with six NASA crewmates in the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster.
SCIENCE FOCUSED
The new arrivals brought with them two dozen science and biomedical experiments to conduct aboard ISS, including research on brain health, cardiac stem cells, cancer and aging, as well as a technology demonstration to produce optics using the surface tension of fluids in microgravity.
The mission, a collaboration among Axiom, Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX and NASA, has been touted by all three as a major step in the expansion of space-based commercial activities collectively referred to by insiders as the low-Earth orbit economy, or “LEO economy” for short.
NASA officials say the trend will help the US space agency focus more of its resources on big-science exploration, including its Artemis program to send humans back to the moon and ultimately to Mars.
While the space station has hosted civilian visitors from time to time, the Ax-1 mission marks the first all-commercial team of astronauts sent to ISS for its intended purpose as an orbiting research laboratory.
The Axiom mission also stands as SpaceX’s sixth human spaceflight in nearly two years, following four NASA astronaut missions to the space station and the Inspiration 4 launch in September that sent an all-civilian crew into orbit for the first time. That flight did not dock with the ISS.
Axiom executives say their astronaut ventures and plans to build a private space station in Earth orbit go far beyond the astro-tourism services offered to wealthy thrill-seekers by such companies as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, owned respectively by billionaire entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson.
Space station’s first all-private astronaut team welcomed aboard orbiting platform
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Space station’s first all-private astronaut team welcomed aboard orbiting platform
- The Crew Dragon capsule lofted into orbit by the rocket docked with the ISS at about 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on Saturday
- The final approach was delayed for about 45 minutes by a technical glitch with a video feed used to monitor the capsule's rendezvous with the ISS
Polish nationalists stage anti-immigration demo ahead of polls
Immigration is a central issue in the central European country ahead of the May 18 election
WARSAW: Several thousand people demonstrated in Warsaw on Saturday against illegal immigration and the pro-European government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a week before the EU member chooses a new president.
The protest, organized by the nationalist opposition, drew demonstrators from across Poland, who carried the red and white national flag and chanted slogans such as “no to immigration.”
Immigration is a central issue in the central European country ahead of the May 18 election.
Poland currently hosts around one million refugees from the war in neighboring Ukraine, and has accused Russia and Belarus of orchestrating a wave of immigration into the European Union member.
The protesters made their way toward the seat of government in central Warsaw, chanting the name of nationalist presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki.
The 42-year-old fan of US President Donald Trump has the backing of the right-wing opposition Law and Justice party and outgoing President Andrzej Duda.
He is polling second in the presidential race, with around 25 percent support.
The frontrunner, Warsaw’s pro-European Union Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, has the support of Tusk’s Civic Coalition and is polling on 32 percent.
“Poland has to defend itself against illegal immigration. These migrants have their own countries. They should stay there,” 66-year-old farmer Boguslaw Uchmanowicz told AFP.
Taliban arrest 14 people for playing music and singing
- Those detained were under investigation
- Wedding halls are no longer allowed to play music
KABUL: Taliban authorities have arrested 14 people in northern Afghanistan for playing musical instruments and singing, activities they restricted since taking power, provincial police said on Saturday.
The Taliban government has steadily imposed laws and regulations that reflect their austere vision of Islamic law since seizing power in 2021.
This includes cracking down on music in public, from live performances to playing at gatherings, in restaurants, in cars or on radio and TV.
The police said in a statement that on Thursday night in the capital of northern Takhar province “fourteen individuals... took advantage of the nighttime to gather in a residential house where they were playing musical instruments and singing songs, which caused disturbance to the public.”
Those detained were under investigation, it added.
After their takeover, Taliban authorities shuttered music schools and smashed or burned musical instruments and sound systems, saying music caused “moral corruption” and public disturbance.
Wedding halls are no longer allowed to play music, though segregated women’s sections often do so secretly.
Many Afghan musicians fled the Taliban takeover out of fear or in need of work after losing their livelihoods in one of the world’s poorest countries.
The Taliban authorities have encouraged former musicians to turn their talents to Islamic poetry and unaccompanied vocal chants — the only forms of music allowed under their previous rule from 1996-2001.
Newly elected Reform UK councillors face scrutiny over Islamophobic social media posts
- Party made major breakthrough at last week’s local elections
- Campaign group: ‘They have yet to drop any of the candidates that have been exposed’
LONDON: Up to a dozen newly elected councillors from Reform UK have been accused of posting Islamophobic and far-right content on social media, The Guardian reported on Saturday.
It comes a week after the party made a major breakthrough in local elections across the country, winning 677 of the more than 1,600 contested seats.
Reform UK councillors at three country councils have shared social media content from Britain First, a far-right party known for its anti-Islam views.
Paul Harrison, who was elected to Leicestershire’s county council, retweeted and voted “yes” to an X poll asking if the UK should conduct mass deportations.
The post was accompanied by an image, generated by artificial intelligence, of Muslim men holding Pakistani flags.
Reform UK officials are facing greater scrutiny in the wake of the local elections, with many of the social media posts being revealed by counter-extremism campaign group Hope Not Hate.
Its director of campaigns, Georgie Laming, said: “(Party leader) Nigel Farage has claimed that Reform UK have the ‘most in-depth vetting procedure’ of any party. Our investigation shows that their processes leave much to be desired.
“Not only have they admitted using ‘AI techniques and other things’ to do the vetting, but Reform UK continue to shirk responsibility for their candidates’ online behaviour. They have yet to drop any of the candidates that have been exposed.”
The campaign group previously uncovered Islamophobic content posted by Reform candidates on social media, as well as far-right conspiracies and support for extremist figures including Tommy Robinson and David Irving.
Nigerian state bans petrol aiming to curb militant attacks
- “I have directed the immediate ban on the sale of petrol in Bama town,” Borno state governor said
- The ban is part of the “state government’s strategic response to counter insurgency operations“
KANO: Nigeria’s northeastern state of Borno, the epicenter of the militant insurgency, on Saturday said it was banning the sale of petrol in a bid to curtail a resurgence of militant attacks.
“I have directed the immediate ban on the sale of petrol in Bama town, ...and other parts of Bama Local Government Area with immediate effect,” Borno state governor Babagana Umara Zulum was quoted as saying in a statement issued by his office.
The ban is part of the “state government’s strategic response to counter insurgency operations,” the statement added.
The cutting of fuel supplies for vehicles is expected to restrict the militants’ mobility.
The town targeted by the ban is the largest after the state capital Maiduguri, and sits on the fringes of Sambisa forest, a major enclave of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a splinter group of Boko Haram.
The town witnessed the worst devastation by Boko Haram militants who seized it in 2014 and killed hundreds of residents.
Northeastern Nigeria has seen an upsurge in Islamist militant attacks in recent weeks, reigniting a grinding 16-year conflict that has left more than 40,000 dead and displaced some two million people.
More than 100 people have been killed in the region since April.
The state of Borno in particular, where the Boko Haram militant group emerged 16 years ago, remains the epicenter of the conflict in Africa’s most populous country.
Recovery of sunken yacht in Italy suspended after diver’s death
- The diver was part of a team working to raise the 56-meter “Bayesian” yacht
- The yacht sunk within minutes after being struck by something akin to a mini-tornado
ROME: Work to raise a superyacht that sank in Sicily last year, killing a UK tech mogul and six others, was suspended Saturday after the death of a specialized diver, according to local news reports.
The diver was part of a team working to raise the 56-meter (185-foot) “Bayesian” yacht that was struck by a pre-dawn storm in August last year while anchored off Porticello, near Palermo.
The yacht sunk within minutes after being struck by something akin to a mini-tornado, killing British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, his teenage daughter and five others.
Authorities suspended work on raising the vessel after prosecutors opened an investigation Friday into the death of a 39-year-old diver, according to Italian media.
According to initial reports, the diver was part of a team working to cut and remove the 75-meter mast, a first step before recovery of the yacht itself, which is lying on its side on the seabed some 50 meters down.
TMC Marine, the British company working to raise the superyacht, did not immediately respond to an AFP request for more information.
In a statement Friday cited by news reports, TMC Marine said it was cooperating with the probe and that “the circumstances of the accident are currently being investigated by the authorities.”
Work to bring up the yacht began last week, with Italy’s coast guard saying it would take up to 25 days.
Inquests into the deaths of the five British victims of the yacht sinking are currently being held in Ipswich, in eastern England.
In Italy, prosecutors in Termini Imerese have opened investigations into the captain and three others on suspicion of manslaughter and the crime of negligent shipwreck.
Lynch, the 59-year-old founder of software firm Autonomy, had invited friends and family onto the boat to celebrate his recent acquittal in a huge US fraud case.
