CAPE CANAVERAL: Just over a day after blasting off, a SpaceX crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, delivering the replacements for NASA’s two stuck astronauts.
The four newcomers — representing the US, Japan and Russia — will spend the next few days learning the station’s ins and outs from Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Then the two will strap into their own SpaceX capsule later this week, one that has been up there since last year, to close out an unexpected extended mission that began last June.
Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week when they launched on Boeing’s first astronaut flight. They hit the nine-month mark earlier this month.
The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift.
Wilmore swung open the space station’s hatch and then rang the ship’s bell as the new arrivals floated in one by one and were greeted with hugs and handshakes.
“It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive,” Williams told Mission Control.
Wilmore’s and Williams’ ride arrived back in late September with a downsized crew of two and two empty seats reserved for the leg back. But more delays resulted when their replacements’ brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs. An older capsule took its place, pushing up their return by a couple weeks to mid-March.
Weather permitting, the SpaceX capsule carrying Wilmore, Williams and two other astronauts will undock from the space station no earlier than Wednesday and splash down off Florida’s coast.
Until then, there will be 11 aboard the orbiting lab, representing the US, Russia and Japan.
NASA’s stuck astronauts welcome their newly arrived replacements to the space station
https://arab.news/cr2s6
NASA’s stuck astronauts welcome their newly arrived replacements to the space station
- The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift
Musk could lose billions of dollars depending on how spat with Trump unfolds
- “For someone that rants so much about government pork, all of Elon’s businesses are extremely dependent on government largesse, which makes him vulnerable”
NEW YORK: The world’s richest man could lose billions in his fight with world’s most powerful politician.
The feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump could mean Tesla’s plans for self-driving cars hit a roadblock, SpaceX flies fewer missions for NASA, Starlink gets fewer overseas satellite contracts and the social media platform X loses advertisers.
Maybe, that is. It all depends on Trump’s appetite for revenge and how the dispute unfolds.
Joked Telemetry Insight auto analyst Sam Abuelsamid, “Since Trump has no history of retaliating against perceived adversaries, he’ll probably just let this pass.”
Turning serious, he sees trouble ahead for Musk.
“For someone that rants so much about government pork, all of Elon’s businesses are extremely dependent on government largesse, which makes him vulnerable.”
Trump and the federal government also stand to lose from a long-running dispute, but not as much as Musk.
Tesla robotaxis
The dispute comes just a week before a planned test of Tesla’s driverless taxis in Austin, Texas, a major event for the company because sales of its EVs are lagging in many markets, and Musk needs a win.
Trump can mess things up for Tesla by encouraging federal safety regulators to step in at any sign of trouble for the robotaxis.
Even before the war of words broke out on Thursday, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration requested data on how Musk’s driverless, autonomous taxis will perform in low-visibility conditions. That request follows an investigation last year into 2.4 million Teslas equipped with full self-driving software after several accidents, including one that killed a pedestrian.
A spokesman for NHTSA said the probe was ongoing and that the agency “will take any necessary actions to protect road safety.”
The Department of Justice has also probed the safety of Tesla cars, but the status of that investigation is unclear. The DOJ did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
The promise of a self-driving future led by Tesla inspired shareholders to boost the stock by 50 percent in the weeks after Musk confirmed the Austin rollout. But on Thursday, the stock plunged more than 14 percent amid the Trump-Musk standoff. On Friday, it recovered a bit, bouncing back nearly 4 percent.
“Tesla’s recent rise was almost entirely driven by robotaxi enthusiasm,” said Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein. “Elon’s feud with Trump could be a negative.”
Carbon credits business
One often-overlooked but important part of Tesla’s business that could take a hit is its sales of carbon credits.
As Musk and Trump were slugging it out Thursday, Republican senators inserted new language into Trump’s budget bill that would eliminate fines for gas-powered cars that fall short of fuel economy standards. Tesla has a thriving side business selling “regulatory credits” to other automakers to make up for their shortfalls.
Musk has downplayed the importance of the credits business, but the changes would hurt Tesla as it reels from boycotts of its cars tied to Musk’s time working for Trump.
Credit sales jumped by a third to $595 million in the first three months of the year even as total revenue slumped.
Reviving sales
Musk’s foray into right-wing politics cost Tesla sales among the environmentally minded consumers who embraced electric cars and led to boycotts of Tesla showrooms.
If Musk has indeed ended his close association with Trump, those buyers could come back, but that’s far from certain.
Meanwhile, one analyst speculated earlier this year that Trump voters in so-called red counties could buy Teslas “in a meaningful way.” But he’s now less hopeful.
“There are more questions than answers following Thursday developments,” TD Cowen’s Itay Michaeli wrote in his latest report, “and it’s still too early to determine any lasting impacts.”
Michaeli’s stock target for Tesla earlier this year was $388. He has since lowered it to $330. Tesla was trading Friday at $300.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.
Moonshot mess
Trump said Thursday that he could cut government contracts to Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, a massive threat to a company that has received billions of federal dollars.
The privately held company that is reportedly worth $350 billion provides launches, sends astronauts into space for NASA and has a contract to send a team from the space agency to the moon next year.
But if Musk has a lot to lose, so does the US
SpaceX is the only US company capable of transporting crews to and from the space station, using its four-person Dragon capsules. The other alternative is politically dicey: depending wholly on Russia’s Soyuz capsules.
Musk knew all this when he shot back at Trump that SpaceX would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft. But it is unclear how serious his threat was. Several hours later — in a reply to another X user — he said he wouldn’t do it.
Starlink impact?
A subsidiary of SpaceX, the satellite Internet company Starlink, appears to also have benefited from Musk’s once-close relationship with the president.
Musk announced that Saudi Arabia had approved Starlink for some services during a trip with Trump in the Middle East last month. The company has also won a string of other recent deals in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and elsewhere as Trump has threatened tariffs.
It’s not clear how much politics played a role, and how much is pure business.
On Friday, The Associated Press confirmed that India had approved a key license to Starlink. At least 40 percent of India’s more than 1.4 billion people have no access to the Internet.
Ad revival interrupted?
Big advertisers that fled X after Musk welcomed all manner of conspiracy theories to the social media platform have started to trickle back in recent months, possibly out of fear of a conservative backlash.
Musk has called their decision to leave an “illegal boycott” and sued them, and the Trump administration recently weighed in with a Federal Trade Commission probe into possible coordination among them.
Now advertisers may have to worry about a different danger.
If Trump sours on X, “there’s a risk that it could again become politically radioactive for major brands,” said Sarah Kreps, a political scientist at Cornell University. She added, though, that an “exodus isn’t obvious, and it would depend heavily on how the conflict escalates, how long it lasts and how it ends.”
Pentagon watchdog investigates if staffers were asked to delete Hegseth’s Signal messages
- The inspector general’s request focuses on how information about the March 15 airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen was shared on the messaging app
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon’s watchdog is looking into whether any of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s aides were asked to delete Signal messages that may have shared sensitive military information with a reporter, according to two people familiar with the investigation and documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
The inspector general’s request focuses on how information about the March 15 airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen was shared on the messaging app.
This comes as Hegseth is scheduled to testify before Congress next week for the first time since his confirmation hearing. He is likely to face questions under oath not only about his handling of sensitive information but also the wider turmoil at the Pentagon following the departures of several senior aides and an internal investigation over information leaks.
Hegseth already has faced questions over the installation of an unsecured Internet line in his office that bypassed the Pentagon’s security protocols and revelations that he shared details about the military strikes in multiple Signal chats.
One of the chats included his wife and brother, while the other included President Donald Trump’s top national security officials and inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson had no comment Friday, citing the pending investigation. The inspector general’s office would not discuss the details of the investigation but said that when the report is complete, their office will release unclassified portions of it to the public.
Besides finding out whether anyone was asked to delete Signal messages, the inspector general also is asking some past and current staffers who were with Hegseth on the day of the strikes who posted the information and who had access to his phone, according to the two people familiar with the investigation and the documents reviewed by the AP. The people were not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Democratic lawmakers and a small number of Republicans have said that the information Hegseth posted to the Signal chats before the military jets had reached their targets could have put those pilots’ lives at risk and that for any lower-ranking members of the military it would have led to their firing.
Hegseth has said none of the information was classified. Multiple current and former military officials have said there is no way details with that specificity, especially before a strike took place, would have been OK to share on an unsecured device.
“I said repeatedly, nobody is texting war plans,” Hegseth told Fox News Channel in April after reporting emerged about the chat that included his family members. “I look at war plans every day. What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning.”
Trump has made clear that Hegseth continues to have his support, saying during a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia that the defense secretary “went through a lot” but “he’s doing really well.”
Hegseth has limited his public engagements with the press since the Signal controversy. He has yet to hold a Pentagon press briefing, and his spokesman has briefed reporters there only once.
The inspector general is investigating Hegseth at the request of the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
Signal is a publicly available app that provides encrypted communications, but it can be hacked and is not approved for carrying classified information. On March 14, one day before the strikes against the Houthis, the Defense Department cautioned personnel about the vulnerability of the app.
Trump has said his administration targeted the Houthis over their “unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence and terrorism.” He has noted the disruption Houthi attacks caused through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, key waterways for energy and cargo shipments between Asia and Europe through Egypt’s Suez Canal.
The Houthi rebels attacked more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two vessels and killing four sailors, between November 2023 until January this year. Their leadership described the attacks as aimed at ending the Israeli war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Trump signs orders to bolster US drone defenses, boost supersonic flight
- Trump is establishing a federal task force to ensure US control over American skies
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Friday signed executive orders to bolster US defenses against threatening drones and to boost electric air taxis and supersonic commercial aircraft, the White House said.
In the three executive orders, Trump sought to enable routine use of drones beyond the visual sight of operators — a key step to enabling commercial drone deliveries — and take steps to reduce the US reliance on Chinese drone companies and begin testing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.
Trump is establishing a federal task force to ensure US control over American skies, expand restrictions over sensitive sites, expand federal use of technology to detect drones in real time and provide assistance to state and local law enforcement.
Trump also aims to address the “growing threat of criminal terrorists and foreign misuse of drones in US airspace,” said Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “We are securing our borders from national security threats, including in the air, with large-scale public events such as the Olympics and the World Cup on the horizon.”
Sebastian Gorka, senior director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, cited the use of drones in Russia’s war in Ukraine and threats to major US sporting events.
“We will be increasing counter-drone capabilities and capacities,” Gorka said. “We will increase the enforcement of current laws to deter two types of individuals: evildoers and idiots.”
The issue of suspicious drones also gained significant attention last year after a flurry of drone sightings in New Jersey. The FAA receives more than 100 drone-sighting reports near airports each month.
Drone sightings have at times disrupted flights and sporting events.
Trump also directed the Federal Aviation Administration to lift a ban imposed in 1973 on supersonic air transport over land.
“The reality is that Americans should be able to fly from New York to L.A. in under four hours,” Kratsios said. “Advances in aerospace engineering, material science and noise reduction now make overland supersonic flight not just possible, but safe, sustainable and commercially viable.”
The Trump orders do not ban any Chinese drone company, officials said. Last year, former President Joe Biden signed legislation that could ban China-based DJI and Autel Robotics from selling new drone models in the US DJI, the world’s largest drone manufacturer, sells more than half of all US commercial drones.
Spanish Muslims retrace ancient Hajj route on horseback from Andalusia to Makkah
- Harkassi said the group’s path from Spain took them across about 8,000 kilometers (nearly 5,000 miles) before they reached the Kaaba, the black cube structure in the Grand Mosque in Makkah
CAIRO: Three Spanish pilgrims performing the Hajj in Saudi Arabia rode on horseback to Makkah, traveling thousands of kilometers in snow and rain and along a path they said had not been trekked for more than 500 years.
Abdelkader Harkassi Aidi, Tarek Rodriguez and Abdallah Rafael Hernandez Mancha set out from southern Spain in October, riding through France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkiye, Syria and Jordan to arrive in Saudi Arabia in May.
It was an emotional moment for the trio when they reached Makkah. No pilgrim had traveled this way since 1491, they said.
Harkassi said the group’s path from Spain took them across about 8,000 kilometers (nearly 5,000 miles) before they reached the Kaaba, the black cube structure in the Grand Mosque in Makkah.
“We had crossed so many kilometers to be there and Allah had replied to our wish,” he told The Associated Press on Thursday from Arafat, southeast of Makkah. “We were in front of the Kaaba and had the opportunity to touch it. So, that 8,000 kilometers became nothing.”
During their monthslong journey they came across scenic stretches of nature and historical landmarks in Syria, including the Aleppo Citadel and the Umayyad Mosque.
They also found an old railway track built during the time of the Ottoman Empire that connected Istanbul to Saudi Arabia. They followed it for days to help guide them to the desert kingdom.
But there were challenges, too. They lost their horses in Bosnia, only to find them later in a land mine zone. Nobody could fetch the horses because of the explosives, but the animals eventually made it out of the area unharmed, Harkassi said.
The human element of the trip was the most valuable for the team, he added.
“When we didn’t have anything, people helped us with our horses, with our food, they gave us money. When our assistance car got broken, they fixed it for us,” Harkassi said. “People have been incredible. I think it’s proof that Muslims are united, that the one ummah (nation) that every Muslim longs for is a reality.”
Palestinian under psychiatric evaluation after hitting rabbi in France
- The rabbi, Elie Lemmel, suffered a gash to his head from the chair that hit him as he was speaking with a companion in the cafe in the wealthy western Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine
PARIS: A Palestinian man arrested on Friday for throwing a chair at a rabbi in a Paris suburban cafe has been sent to hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, French authorities said.
The reason for the attack was unknown, but France’s main Jewish association condemned it as an antisemitic assault, and French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou blamed a “radicalization of public debate” against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza.
The rabbi, Elie Lemmel, suffered a gash to his head from the chair that hit him as he was speaking with a companion in the cafe in the wealthy western Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
The local prosecutors’ office said that it had opened a criminal investigation for assault possibly aggravated by religious motives.
It said the Palestinian, an irregular migrant living with temporary papers in Germany, was thought to be 28 years old and born in the Gaza city of Rafah.
It added that “he is undergoing a psychiatric examination requiring his forced hospitalization.”
France’s hard-line interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, said on X that the Palestinian “had no reason to be in France” and should be “severely punished and deported.”
The French Jewish association CRIF said on X that “this attack is yet another illustration of the toxic climate targeting French Jews.”
The French Jewish community, one of the largest in the world, has faced a number of attacks and desecrations of memorials since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, 2023.
French authorities are alert to antisemitic attacks, reports of which have been on the rise as the war in Gaza grinds on.
That conflict was triggered on October 7, 2023 when the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked parts of Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,218 people.
Israel retaliated with relentless bombardments and an aid blockade of the Gaza Strip. The ongoing military operation has resulted in the deaths of at least 54,677 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
