In March 2021, Yusaku Maezawa, the Japanese billionaire behind the e-commerce site Zozotown, announced a contest to select eight civilian crew members to join him on a private spaceflight. After over a million applications for the flight, a crew has been selected, and it includes YouTuber Tim Dodd (aka Everyday Astronaut), Steve Aoki, K-pop artist T.O.P, Indian actor Dev Joshi, and four others.
The weeklong mission, called dearMoon, will fly around the moon and back on a SpaceX Starship sometime in 2023. The eight selected will accompany Maezawa, who flew last year to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. Crew members have passed full health checks and a litany of tests, but they still have to undergo months of rigorous training.
“It’s insane to think about going 240,000 miles away from home,” Dodd told BuzzFeed News. “How do you physically and mentally truly prepare for that? It’s so absurd.”
DearMoon is the latest in a recent outpouring of civilian space travel opportunities. In the last few years, there’s been a boon in private companies offering to take people off this wretched planet — for an astronomical price, of course. Virgin Galactic charges $450,000 for a spot on a suborbital space flight; a ticket on a Blue Origin flight has previously cost as much as $28 million. Private companies are aiming to build space hotels that will orbit Earth as early as 2027, the New York Times reported, and many believe that commercial space travel will be the new frontier of tourism within the next several years.
President Joe Biden said Russia is using “winter as a weapon” by freezing and starving Ukrainians
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Wednesday marked the 300th day since Russia invaded Ukraine, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Washington, DC, to meet with Biden. At the news conference, Biden described Russia’s actions as “unprovoked, unjustified,” and an “all-out assault on the free people of Ukraine.”
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Biden specifically promised $2 billion in defensive weapons and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The US is also helping Ukraine make emergency repairs to its power transmission system and strengthen the stability of its grid, he said. Since March, the US has taken in 221,000 Ukrainian refugees.
SNAPSHOTS
Eight teenage girls swarmed a 59-year-old man in Canada and stabbed him to death, police say. A motive for the killing was not immediately released, and authorities are unclear on how or why the group of girls gathered in person on Saturday.
The NASA Mars lander InSight has died and people here on Earth are very upset. “My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene.”
Lionel Messi’s Instagram post celebrating Argentina’s World Cup win has become the platform’s most-liked photo ever. With more than 69 million likes, Messi’s post beat the previous record of more than 57 million likes for a photo of a brown egg.
Elon Musk said he’ll step down as Twitter CEO as soon as he can “find someone foolish enough to take the job”
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexalee1/space-travel-steve-aoki-everyday-astronaut-nasa-mars
