CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – The two astronauts who have been stranded aboard the International Space Station since June welcomed their new trip home on Sunday, when a SpaceX spacecraft arrived.

SpaceX launched the rescue mission on Saturday with a smaller crew of two astronauts and two empty seats designated for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will return next year. The Dragon capsule docked in the dark as the two aircraft flew 265 miles (426 km) above Botswana.

Stuck NASA Astronauts Welcome SpaceX Capsule That’ll Bring Them Home Next Year

NASA sent Wilmore and Williams to SpaceX after worries about the safety of their Boeing Starliner capsule. It was the first Starliner test flight with a crew, and NASA determined that the thruster failures and helium leaks that occurred after liftoff were too dangerous and little understood to jeopardise the test pilots’ safety. So the Starliner returned to Earth empty earlier this month.

The Dragon, which is carrying NASA’s Nick Hague and the Russian Space Agency’s Alexander Gorbunov, will stay at the space station until February, extending what was supposed to be a weeklong trip for Wilmore and Williams to more than eight months.

Two NASA astronauts were removed from the flight to create way for Wilmore and Williams during the return trip.

“I just want to say welcome to our new compadres,” said Williams, the space station commander, as Hague and Gorbunov floated inside and were greeted by the nine astronauts who awaited them.

Hague stated that it was a smooth flight up. “Coming through the hatch and seeing all the smiles, and as much as I’ve laughed and cried in the last 10 minutes, I know it’s going to be an amazing expedition,” he told me.

NASA like to renew its station crews every six months or so. SpaceX has been providing the taxi service since its first astronaut flight in 2020. NASA also engaged Boeing for ferry flights after the space shuttles were gone, but defective software and other Starliner difficulties caused years of delays and cost more than $1 billion to correct.

Starliner inspections are ongoing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, with post-flight data evaluations scheduled to begin this week.

“We’re a long way from saying, ‘Hey, we’re writing off Boeing,'” NASA’s associate administrator Jim Free stated during a pre-launch briefing.

Stuck NASA Astronauts Welcome SpaceX Capsule That’ll Bring Them Home Next Year

With the arrival of two new astronauts, the four who have been up there since March will be able to return to Earth in their own SpaceX capsule in little over a week, reducing the station’s crew size to the customary seven. Their stay was extended by a month due to the Starliner incident.

Although Saturday’s launch went properly, SpaceX claimed the rocket’s discarded upper stage ended up outside its intended landing zone in the Pacific due to a faulty engine firing. The corporation has paused all Falcon launches until it investigates what went wrong.was extended by a month due to the Starliner crisis.

SOURCE | AP

HELENA, Montana – An 81-year-old Montana man is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court in Great Falls on Monday for illegally combining tissue and testicles from huge sheep taken in Central Asia and the United States to make hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunts in Texas and Minnesota.

According to court records, prosecutors are not seeking a prison sentence for Arthur “Jack” Schubarth of Vaughn, Montana. He is seeking a one-year probationary sentence for breaching federal wildlife trafficking rules. The maximum sentence for both Lacey Act breaches is five years in jail. The fine can be as much as $250,000, or twice the defendant’s financial gain.

Montana Man Faces Sentencing For Cloning Giant Sheep To Breed Large Sheep For Captive Trophy Hunts

Schubarth’s attorney requested a probationary term, claiming that cloning the gigantic Marco Polo sheep hunted in Kyrgyzstan had devastated his client’s “life, reputation, and family.”

However, the sentencing memorandum congratulates Schubarth on successfully cloning the endangered sheep, which he called Montana Mountain King. The animal has been confiscated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Jack did something no one else could, or has ever done,” the memo stated. “He built Montana Mountain King on a Montana ranch, in a barn. MMK is an exceptional animal, born of science and from a guy who, if he could rewrite history, would have left the problem of cloning a Marco Polo to Michael Crichton, the author of the science fiction novel Jurassic Park.

Schubarth owns Sun River Enterprises LLC, a 215-acre (87-hectare) alternative livestock ranch that buys, sells, and breeds “alternative livestock” such as mountain sheep, mountain goats, and ungulates, primarily for private hunting preserves where people pay to shoot captive trophy game animals, according to prosecutors. Schubarth stated he’d been in the game farm industry since 1987.

Schubarth pleaded guilty in March to conspiring with five other people to use tissue from an illegally imported Marco Polo sheep to clone the animal and then use the clone and its descendants to create a larger, hybrid species of sheep that would be more valuable for captive hunting operations.

According to court records, the Marco Polo sheep is the world’s largest, weighing 300 pounds (136 kilograms) and with curved horns that can reach 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length.

Schubarth sold MMK semen and hybrid sheep to three people in Texas, while a Minnesota resident sent 74 sheep to Schubarth’s property for insemination at various points during the conspiracy, according to court filings. Schubarth sold one direct descendent of MMK for $10,000 and several sheep with weaker MMK DNA for smaller sums.

According to court filings, Schubarth paid a hunting guide $400 in October 2019 for the testicles of a trophy-sized Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep taken in Montana, which was then excised and sold for semen.

Montana Man Faces Sentencing For Cloning Giant Sheep To Breed Large Sheep For Captive Trophy Hunts

According to authorities, the conspiracy involved bringing in sheep breeds that are not permitted in Montana, including 43 sheep from Texas.

The five co-conspirators were not identified in court documents, but Schubarth’s plea agreement requires him to fully cooperate with prosecutors and testify if called upon. Montana wildlife officials stated the situation is still under investigation.

Schubarth, in a letter attached to the sentencing statement, stated that he becomes tremendously passionate about any project he undertakes, including his “sheep project,” and is embarrassed of his conduct.

“I got my normal mindset clouded by my enthusiasm and looked for any grey area in the law to make the best sheep I could for this sheep industry,” he wrote in his diary. “My family has never been broke, but we are now.”

SOURCE | AP

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA – SpaceX launched a rescue mission for the two trapped astronauts at the International Space Station on Saturday, sending up a smaller crew to bring them home, but only until next year.

The capsule launched into orbit to retrieve the test pilots, whose Boeing aircraft had returned to Earth empty earlier this month due to safety concerns. The change in rides required NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov to retrieve Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

Because NASA rotates space station crews every six months, this recently launched spacecraft, which has two vacant seats allocated for Wilmore and Williams, will not return until late February. Officials claimed there was no way to bring them back sooner on SpaceX without disrupting other scheduled operations.

SpaceX Launches Rescue Mission For 2 NASA Astronauts Who Are Stuck In Space Until Next Year

By the time they return, the two will have spent over eight months in space. They signed up for Boeing’s first astronaut journey, which launched in June, expecting to be gone for only a week.

NASA ultimately judged that Boeing’s Starliner was too risky after a series of thruster problems and helium leaks hampered its journey to the orbiting complex. The space agency removed two astronauts from this SpaceX mission to create room on the Dragon capsule’s return leg for Wilmore and Williams.

According to NASA deputy program manager Dina Contella, Wilmore and Williams observed the liftoff via a live link broadcast to the space station, causing Williams to scream “Go Dragon!”.

Williams has been appointed to commander of the space station, which will soon return to its normal crew of seven. Once Hague and Gorbunov arrive on Sunday, the four astronauts who have been there since March will be able to leave in their own SpaceX capsule. Starliner’s problems caused a month-long delay in their return home.

Hague stated before the trip that change is the one constant in human spaceflight.

“There is always something that changes. “Maybe this time it was more visible to the public,” he explained.

Hague was appointed commander of the rescue mission based on his experience and handling of a launch incident six years prior. The Russian rocket failed shortly after takeoff, and the capsule holding him and a cosmonaut was propelled off the top to safety.

Rookie NASA astronaut Zena Cardman and veteran space flier Stephanie Wilson were removed from this journey after NASA decided to work with SpaceX to bring the trapped astronauts home. Both promised a future space voyage and were there at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre to watch the launch live. Gorbunov remained aboard the voyage as part of a NASA-Russian Space Agency exchange agreement.

“Every crewed launch that I’ve ever seen has made me quite emotional. “This one today was especially unique,” a teary-eyed Cardman said after the early afternoon launch. “It was hard not to watch that rocket lift off without thinking, ‘That’s my rocket and that’s my crew.'”

Moments before liftoff, Hague paid tribute to his two colleagues who were left behind, saying, “Unbreakable. “We did it together.” Once in orbit, he referred to it as a “sweet ride” and expressed gratitude to everyone who made it possible.

Previously, Hague acknowledged the difficulties of launching with half a crew and returning with two astronauts trained on another spacecraft.

SpaceX Launches Rescue Mission For 2 NASA Astronauts Who Are Stuck In Space Until Next Year

“We’ve got a dynamic challenge ahead of us,” Hague stated after returning from Houston last weekend. “We know each other and we’re professionals and we step up and do what’s asked of us.”

SpaceX has long been at the forefront of NASA’s commercial crew program, which began more than a decade ago while the space shuttles were being retired. In 2020, SpaceX outperformed Boeing in terms of astronaut delivery to the space station, and NASA now has ten crew trips scheduled.

Boeing has struggled with a number of challenges over the years, including repeating a Starliner test flight with no one on board after the original one went off course. The Starliner that left Wilmore and Williams in space landed safely in the New Mexico desert on September 6 and has since returned to the Kennedy Space Centre. Boeing removed its defence and space chief a week ago.

The latest SpaceX liftoff, delayed by Hurricane Helene battering Florida, was the first for astronauts from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 40. SpaceX took over the old Titan rocket pad nearly two decades ago and utilised it for satellite and station cargo launches, as well as flying people from Kennedy’s older Apollo and shuttle pads next door. As the number of Falcon rockets increased, the firm desired greater flexibility.

SOURCE | AP