AFP UK

Four SpaceX tourists landed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida Saturday evening after spending three days in space, successfully concluding the first orbital mission in history with no professional astronauts on board.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule’s heat shield allowed it to withstand the descent, before it was slowed down by four large parachutes and then splashed into the ocean just after 7:00 pm (2300 GMT), according to a live video feed by the company.

A SpaceX boat immediately raced to retrieve the capsule, before its hatch can be opened and the astronauts can exit. They will be transported by helicopter to the Kennedy Space Center, where on Wednesday they took off aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.

“That was a heck of a ride for us, and we’re just getting started,” said billionaire captain Jared Isaacman, who financed the trip.

The stated goal of the mission, called Inspiration4, was to encourage the democratization of space by proving that the cosmos are accessible to crews that have neither been handpicked nor in training for years.

Isaacman, who paid SpaceX tens of millions of dollars, offered the other three seats to strangers: Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old nurse; Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old professor; and Chris Sembroski, 42, a US Air Force veteran.

The Dragon capsule traveled farther than the International Space Station (ISS) at an orbit of about 575 kilometers (357 miles) high, and circled the globe more than 15 times each day.

The landing marked the third time that Elon Musk’s company has taken humans to space and back, after the return of two NASA missions, one in August 2020 and another in May of this year. Both were bringing astronauts back from a stay at the ISS.

Unlike NASA astronauts, the members of the Inspiration4 mission did not go to the ISS but remained in orbit around the Earth. 

During the flight, the crew members’ vital signs were monitored to study the effects of the environment of space on complete novices.

The four private space tourists aboard a SpaceX capsule are due to return to Earth on Saturday night, touching down off the coast of Florida after three days of orbiting the planet.

The splash-down is scheduled for 7:06 pm local time (2306 GMT) in the Atlantic Ocean not too far from Cape Canaveral, from where the four Americans blasted off into space on Wednesday.

The event will be broadcast live by SpaceX, starting about an hour before the scheduled landing time.

The Dragon’s heat shield will allow the capsule to withstand the descent, which will be slowed by four huge parachutes once the vessel is low enough in Earth’s atmosphere.

After that, a SpaceX boat will come to retrieve it, and the passengers will disembark.

The Dragon capsule traveled farther than the International Space Station (ISS), at an orbit of about 575 kilometers (357 miles) high. Its altitude was reduced to 365 kilometers Friday evening.

This will be the third time that Elon Musk’s company has taken humans to space and back, after the return of two NASA missions, one August in 2020 and another in May this year. Both were bringing astronauts back from a stay at the ISS.

Unlike NASA astronauts, the members of the Inspiration4 mission did not go to the ISS but remained in orbit around the Earth. 

Billionaire Jared Isaacman financed the trip, paying SpaceX tens of millions of dollars. Isaacman, who led the mission, offered the other three seats to strangers: Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old nurse; Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old professor; and Chris Sembroski, 42, a US Air Force veteran.

During the flight, the crew members vital signs were monitored to study the effects of the environment of space on complete novices. 

It will be six months on Sunday that the volcanic eruption currently mesmerising spectators near Reykjavik first began, making it the longest Iceland has witnessed in more than 50 years.

The first lava began spewing out of a fissure close to Mount Fagradalsfjall on the evening of March 19 on the Reykjanes peninsula to the southwest of Reykjavik. 

And the ensuing spectacle — ranging from just a slow trickle of lava at times to more dramatic geyser-like spurts of rocks and stones at others — has become a major tourist attraction, drawing 300,000 visitors so far, according to the Iceland Tourist Board.

Iceland’s sixth volcanic eruption in 20 years is already longer than the preceding one in Holuhraun, in the centre-east of the island, which lasted from the end of August 2014 until the end of February 2015. 

“Six months is a reasonably long eruption,” volcanologist Thorvaldur Thordarson told AFP.

The lava field that has formed this time has been christened “Fagradalshraun” — which can be translated as “beautiful valley of lava” — and takes its name from nearby Mount Fagradalsfjall. 

Almost 143 million cubic metres of lava have been spewed out so far.

But that is actually comparatively small, representing just under a tenth of the volume of the Holuhraun eruption, which spewed out the biggest basalt lava flow in Iceland in 230 years.

The latest eruption is “special in the sense that it has kept a relatively steady outflow, so it’s been going quite strong,” said Halldor Geirsson, a geophysicist at the Institute of Earth Science.

“The usual behaviour that we know from volcanoes in Iceland is that they start really active and pour out lava, and then the outflow sort of decreases over time until it stops,” he said.

Iceland’s longest-ever eruption took place more than 50 years ago — on Surtsey island just off the southern coast — and lasted nearly four years, from November 1963 until June 1967.

– No end in sight –

After subsiding for nine days, the lava reappeared at Fagradalshraun in early September, occasionally spurting red-hot from the crater and accompanied by a powerful plume of smoke. 

It also accumulated in fiery tunnels beneath the solidified surface, forming pockets that eventually gave way and unfurled like a wave onto the shore.

The real number of visitors trekking to the rough hills to view the spectacle is probably even higher than the estimated 300,000, as the first counter installed on the paths leading to the site was only set up five days after the eruption.

In the first month, 10 fissures opened up, forming seven small craters, of which only two are still visible.

Only one crater is still active, measuring 334 metres (1,100 feet), according to the Institute of Earth Science, just a few dozen metres short of the highest peak in the surrounding area.

Nevertheless, the volcano is showing no sign of fading anytime soon.

“There seems to be still enough magma from whatever reservoir the eruption is tapping. So it could go on for a long time,” said Geirsson.

Thousands of hunters marched in France on Saturday to defend “rural values” and traditional bird hunting which the country’s top administrative court has banned.

In the medieval town of Mont-de-Marsan in southwest France, authorities said at least 13,000 people protested to the sound of hunting horns and firecrackers.

Wearing bright orange — the colour of hunters’ jackets — the demonstrators marched under driving rain. Further up in Brittany, a protest also took place in Redon, and others were planned elsewhere.

“I’m sick of seeing my culture fall to pieces. They’ve already eradicated my language, Gascon, now it’s the traditional hunts,” said Eric, a 47-year-old who likes hunting and fishing, in Mont-de-Marsan.

He said he was fed up with “the Taliban of Paristan”, referring to decision-makers in the capital.

The State Council in August banned traditional hunting techniques popular in the southwest of France and other parts of the country, such as hunting with nets or bird cages, in line with a 2009 EU directive.

That followed the banning of glue hunting in June.

Activists say that 150,000 birds die annually in France from non-selective hunting techniques such as glue traps and nets at a time when Europe’s bird population is in free-fall.

But Myriam, the wife of a hunter and a fan of bullfighting, said she wanted to “pass on these traditions” to the younger generations.

“It’s not just hunting, it’s a complete way of life,” she said in Mont-de-Marsan.

A man next to her added: “Let the urbanites leave us alone!”

The government is mulling re-authorising some of these traditional hunts, to the dismay of environmental activists, in what is seen as a bid to woo voters ahead of elections next year.

There are about 1.2 million hunters in France, and together with their supporters and families, this could represent a pool of around five million voters.

Concerns over climate change that gave rise to the Green Party are top of mind for Canadians preparing to vote in elections Monday, yet the party itself is fighting for survival.

Beset by internal feuding and other challenges, the Green Party has lost momentum and is struggling to hold on to its two seats in the 338-member parliament in the upcoming vote.

Ten years after the Greens won their first seat in the national legislature, the party is polling at just two to three percent. Liberals and Conservatives, meanwhile, are neck and neck, each with about 32 percent of voting intentions.

The stakes for the Greens are “to show that the party is still alive and kicking, that it is an option for those who believe in the fight against climate change,” said Daniel Beland, a politics professor at McGill University in Montreal.

Its survival hinges on at least holding onto its two seats on Vancouver Island in westernmost British Columbia province, which was hit hard by wildfires and an unprecedented heat wave that left hundreds dead over the summer.

Elizabeth May, the first Green elected to Canada’s parliament in 2011 and the party’s former leader, is likely to retain her seat in the Saanich–Gulf Islands. But fellow Green Paul Manly, seeking re-election in the nearby district of Nanaimo-Ladysmith on the picturesque Pacific isle, is facing tough competition.

“I think climate change is one of the top issues for sure in this election,” Manly told AFP.

Canada is the world’s fourth largest oil producer, and Manly said the government needs to act decisively.

“We need really bold action on climate change and that means we need to end all subsidies for fossil fuels,” he said. 

– Dueling climate plans –

The Greens also want to cut greenhouse gas emissions 60 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, a more ambitious target than what’s on offer from other parties.

But their message has been drowned out in part because the main political parties have stepped up with their own relatively strong climate plans. And the Tories have been busy fighting a Liberal carbon tax that could curtail oil production in their base of Alberta.

The Greens “have lost their monopoly on the environment. It has become a popular cause for all parties in Canada,” Beland explained.

Nancy Powell, 59, from Vancouver Island, said she once supported the Green Party, but now believes that their focus on the environment is too narrow.

“I’d really like to see them break out of that and expand their expertise in different areas,” Powell told AFP, adding that helping small business is an important for her.

Just two years ago, the Greens won 6.5 percent of the popular vote in the last ballot.

In the lead-up to this snap election call in early August, the Greens were busy arguing among themselves over the loss of an MP to the Liberals, party finances, and its leadership.

Annamie Paul, who last year replaced May as leader, narrowly survived a recent party revolt.

Paul, the first black and Jewish woman to lead a federal political party in Canada, has lamented having had little time to put together a team. As a result, the party is running only 252 candidates in this election.

She is now facing a tough fight to win a seat herself; this is her third attempt to break through in the Toronto-Centre district held by powerful Liberal cabinet ministers since 1993.

Firefighters battling to protect the world’s biggest tree from wildfires ravaging the parched United States said Friday they are optimistic it can be saved.

Flames are creeping closer to the majestic General Sherman and other giant sequoias, as man-made climate change worsens California’s fearsome fire season.

“We have hundreds of firefighters there giving it their all, giving extra care,” Mark Garrett, communications officer for the region’s fire department, told AFP, of the operation in Sequoia National Park.

Crews are battling the spreading Paradise and Colony fires, which have so far consumed 4,600 hectares (11,400 acres) of forest since they were sparked by lightning a week ago.

The blazes are threatening Giant Forest, a grove of around 2,000 sequoias that includes five of the largest trees on the planet — some up to 3,000 years old.

The biggest of them all, the General Sherman stands 83 meters (275 feet) tall.

On Thursday, General Sherman was wrapped in fire-proof blankets — aluminum foil intended to protect its giant trunk from the worst of the flames.

By Friday, managers felt they had the upper hand, thanks in part to clearing of undergrowth and controlled burns that starve the fire of fuel.

“I think the most challenging part is the terrain here,” said Garrett.

But “we haven’t seen explosive fire behavior; it really slowed down and gave us a chance to get ahead of it.”

Around 600 personnel are involved in the fight.

“We have folks up in the Giant Forest protecting structures and preparing everything. 

“The fact is that they’ve been prescribed burning for the past 25 or 30 years so it is really prepared.”

Millions of acres of California’s forests have burned in this year’s ferocious fire season.

Scientists say global warming, stoked by the unchecked use of fossil fuels is making the area ever-more vulnerable to bigger and more destructive wildfires.

The enormous trees of the Giant Forest are a huge tourist draw, with visitors traveling from all over the world to marvel at their imposing height and extraordinary girth.

While not the tallest trees — California redwoods can grow to more than 300 feet — the giant sequoias are the largest by volume.

Smaller fires generally do not harm the sequoias, which are protected by a thick bark and often only have branches 100 feet above the ground.

But the larger, hotter blazes that are laying waste to the western United States are dangerous to them because they climb higher up the trunks and into the canopy.

Four space tourists orbiting the Earth in a SpaceX capsule at 17,500 miles per hour (28,162 kph) talked to movie star Tom Cruise on Friday and provided a live update about life aboard the spacecraft.

The first space tourism mission by Elon Musk’s SpaceX blasted off from Florida on Wednesday for a three-day voyage that is to end with a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean at 4:06 pm Pacific time (2306 GMT) on Saturday.

Mission control said the crew members — Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux and Chris Sembroski — spoke with Cruise, who is hoping to make a film in space, from the vessel on Friday.

“Rook, Nova, Hanks, and Leo spoke to @TomCruise sharing their experience from space,” said the Twitter account of Inspiration4, the official name of the first ever space mission to take place without an actual astronaut.

The names are the call signs of the four passengers aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.

“Maverick, you can be our wingman anytime,” the tweet added, accompanied by a video clip of Cruise playing the elite fighter pilot whose call sign was Maverick in the movie “Top Gun.” 

Last year, former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced a film project starring Cruise to be shot in zero gravity on board the International Space Station.

However, no details have yet been delivered about the project, which would be done in collaboration with SpaceX.

– ‘Fortunate’ –

The four crew members shared their experiences in space during a 10-minute live webcast with mission control on Friday.

Proctor, 51, who teaches geosciences at a college in Arizona and was a finalist to become a NASA astronaut, displayed a picture she drew with metallic markers of the Dragon capsule being propelled into space by a dragon.

Arceneaux, a 29-year-old physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, demonstrated her impressive spins in zero gravity.

“Hayley is a champ at spinning,” Proctor said. “She has been spinning from the moment we got on orbit.”

“It’s a lot of fun and allows us to lift very heavy things without any issue,” said Arceneaux.

“We’ve also been taking several swabs of different parts of our body to evaluate the microbiome and how that changes in these three days in space,” she added. 

And “we have been spending so much time in this cupola,” she observed.

Sembroski, a 42-year-old US Air Force veteran, pulled out his ukelele and played a few chords.

The crew members also opened up the hatch in the nose of the capsule to show off the view from the cupola, a clear glass dome that allows for a 360 degree view outside.

Crew members said they were collecting blood samples for research and doing cognitive tests which will be compared with their results prior to liftoff.

“We know how fortunate we are to be up here,” said billionaire Jared Isaacman, the mission commander.

Four space tourists orbiting the Earth in a SpaceX capsule at 17,500 miles per hour (28,162 kph) talked to movie star Tom Cruise on Friday and provided a live update about life aboard the spacecraft.

The first space tourism mission by Elon Musk’s SpaceX blasted off from Florida on Wednesday for a three-day voyage that is to end with a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean at 4:06 pm Pacific time (2306 GMT) on Saturday.

Mission control said the crew members — Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux and Chris Sembroski — spoke with Cruise, who is hoping to make a film in space, from the vessel on Friday.

“Rook, Nova, Hanks, and Leo spoke to @TomCruise sharing their experience from space,” said the Twitter account of Inspiration4, the official name of the first ever space mission to take place without an actual astronaut.

The names are the call signs of the four passengers aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.

“Maverick, you can be our wingman anytime,” the tweet added, accompanied by a video clip of Cruise playing the elite fighter pilot whose call sign was Maverick in the movie “Top Gun.” 

Last year, former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced a film project starring Cruise to be shot in zero gravity on board the International Space Station.

However, no details have yet been delivered about the project, which would be done in collaboration with SpaceX.

– ‘Fortunate’ –

The four crew members shared their experiences in space during a 10-minute live webcast with mission control on Friday.

Proctor, 51, who teaches geosciences at a college in Arizona and was a finalist to become a NASA astronaut, displayed a picture she drew with metallic markers of the Dragon capsule being propelled into space by a dragon.

Arceneaux, a 29-year-old physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, demonstrated her impressive spins in zero gravity.

“Hayley is a champ at spinning,” Proctor said. “She has been spinning from the moment we got on orbit.”

“It’s a lot of fun and allows us to lift very heavy things without any issue,” said Arceneaux.

“We’ve also been taking several swabs of different parts of our body to evaluate the microbiome and how that changes in these three days in space,” she added. 

And “we have been spending so much time in this cupola,” she observed.

Sembroski, a 42-year-old US Air Force veteran, pulled out his ukelele and played a few chords.

The crew members also opened up the hatch in the nose of the capsule to show off the view from the cupola, a clear glass dome that allows for a 360 degree view outside.

Crew members said they were collecting blood samples for research and doing cognitive tests which will be compared with their results prior to liftoff.

“We know how fortunate we are to be up here,” said billionaire Jared Isaacman, the mission commander.

Firefighters battling to protect the world’s biggest tree from wildfires ravaging the parched United States said Friday they are optimistic it can be saved.

Flames are creeping closer to the majestic General Sherman and other giant sequoias, as man-made climate change worsens California’s fearsome fire season.

“We have hundreds of firefighters there giving it their all, giving extra care,” Mark Garrett, communications officer for the region’s fire department, told AFP, of the operation in Sequoia National Park.

Crews are battling the spreading Paradise and Colony fires, which have so far consumed 4,600 hectares (11,400 acres) of forest since they were sparked by lightning a week ago.

The blazes are threatening Giant Forest, a grove of around 2,000 sequoias that includes five of the largest trees on the planet — some up to 3,000 years old.

The biggest of them all, the General Sherman stands 83 meters (275 feet) tall.

On Thursday, General Sherman was wrapped in fire-proof blankets — aluminium foil intended to protect its giant trunk from the worst of the flames.

By Friday, managers felt they had the upper hand, thanks in part to clearing of undergrowth and controlled burns that starve the fire of fuel.

“I think the most challenging part is the terrain here,” said Garrett.

But “we haven’t seen explosive fire behavior; it really slowed down and gave us a chance to get ahead of it.”

Around 600 personnel are involved in the fight.

“We have folks up in the Giant Forest protecting structures and preparing everything. 

“The fact is that they’ve been prescribed burning for the past 25 or 30 years so it is really prepared.”

Millions of acres of California’s forests have burned in this year’s ferocious fire season.

Scientists say global warming, stoked by the unchecked use of fossil fuels is making the area ever-more vulnerable to bigger and more destructive wildfires.

The enormous trees of the Giant Forest are a huge tourist draw, with visitors traveling from all over the world to marvel at their imposing height and extraordinary girth.

While not the tallest trees — California redwoods can grow to more than 300 feet — the giant sequoias are the largest by volume.

Smaller fires generally do not harm the sequoias, which are protected by a thick bark and often only have branches 100 feet above the ground.

But the larger, hotter blazes that are laying waste to the western United States are dangerous to them because they climb higher up the trunks and into the canopy.

Four space tourists orbiting the Earth in a SpaceX capsule at 17,500 miles per hour (28,162 kph) talked to movie star Tom Cruise on Friday and provided a live update about life aboard the spacecraft.

The first space tourism mission by Elon Musk’s SpaceX blasted off from Florida on Wednesday for a three-day voyage that is to end with a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean at 4:06 pm Pacific time (2306 GMT) on Saturday.

Mission control said the crew members — Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux and Chris Sembroski — spoke with Cruise, who is hoping to make a film in space, from the vessel on Friday.

“Rook, Nova, Hanks, and Leo spoke to @TomCruise sharing their experience from space,” said the Twitter account of Inspiration4, the official name of the first ever space mission to take place without an actual astronaut.

The names are the call signs of the four passengers aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.

“Maverick, you can be our wingman anytime,” the tweet added, accompanied by a video clip of Cruise playing the elite fighter pilot whose call sign was Maverick in the movie “Top Gun.” 

Last year, former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced a film project starring Cruise to be shot in zero gravity on board the International Space Station.

However, no details have yet been delivered about the project, which would be done in collaboration with SpaceX.

– ‘Fortunate’ –

The four crew members shared their experiences in space during a 10-minute live webcast with mission control on Friday.

Proctor, 51, who teaches geosciences at a college in Arizona and was a finalist to become a NASA astronaut, displayed a picture she drew with metallic markers of the Dragon capsule being propelled into space by a dragon.

Arceneaux, a 29-year-old physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, demonstrated her impressive spins in zero gravity.

“Hayley is a champ at spinning,” Proctor said. “She has been spinning from the moment we got on orbit.”

“It’s a lot of fun and allows us to lift very heavy things without any issue,” said Arceneaux.

Sembroski, a 42-year-old US Air Force veteran, pulled out his ukelele and played a few chords.

The crew members also opened up the hatch in the nose of the capsule to show off the view from the cupola, a clear glass dome that allows for a 360 degree view outside.

Crew members said they were collecting blood samples for research and doing cognitive tests which will be compared with their results prior to liftoff.

“We know how fortunate we are to be up here,” said billionaire Jared Isaacman, the mission commander.