SpaceX Crew Dragon cleared for launch to space station next week
CBSN
After an all-day review, NASA and SpaceX tentatively cleared a refurbished Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket for launch next Thursday to ferry a three-man, one-woman crew to the International Space Station.
It will be the third piloted flight to orbit from U.S. soil since the shuttle's retirement in 2011 and the second operational Crew Dragon flight as NASA moves away from sole reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to carry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit. Pending resolution of one presumably minor technical issue, liftoff from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center is targeted for 6:11 a.m. ET on April 22, which also happens to be Earth Day, kicking off a 23-hour rendezvous with the space station.Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday said it will consider the constitutionality of the Federal Communications Commission's Universal Service Fund, agreeing to review a lower court decision that upended the mechanism for funding programs that provide communications services to rural areas, low-income communities and schools, libraries and hospitals.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched six space tourists on a high-speed dash to the edge of space and back Friday, giving the passengers — including a husband and wife making their second flight — about three minutes of weightlessness and an out-of-this world view before the capsule made a parachute descent to touchdown at the company's west Texas flight facility.