SpaceX makes history with first spacewalks by private citizens

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US fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman peeks out to space from a hatch structure called Skywalker during the first private spacewalk performed by the crew of the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission on Sept. 12, 2024. (SpaceX/Polaris via AFP)
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Above, a view of Earth and the Dragon capsule’s Skywalker spacewalk platform shortly after the Polaris Dawn crew launched into an orbit. (SpaceX via AP)
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Updated 13 September 2024
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SpaceX makes history with first spacewalks by private citizens

  • Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman first one out, aiming to join a small elite group of spacewalkers who until now had represented countries
  • This first spacewalking test, expected to last about two hours, involved more stretching than walking

WASHINGTON: A pioneering private crew made history Thursday by becoming the first civilians to perform spacewalks, marking a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry.

The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, led by fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman, launched early Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, journeying deeper into the cosmos than any humans in the past 50 years, since the Apollo program.

Then, with the four-member crew’s Dragon spacecraft lowered to an orbit with a high of 430 miles, pure oxygen began flowing into their suits, marking the official start of their extravehicular activity (EVA) at 1012 GMT on Thursday.

A short time later, Isaacman unlatched the hatch and climbed through, gripping a structure known as “Skywalker,” outfitted with hand and footholds, as a breathtaking view of Earth unfolded below him.

“It’s gorgeous,” he told mission control in Hawthorne, California, where teams cheered on important checkpoints.

 

 

It was yet another major milestone for SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk in 2002. Initially dismissed by traditionalists, it has since grown into a powerhouse that has reshaped the space industry.

In 2020, it beat aerospace giant Boeing in delivering a safe crewed spaceship to provide rides for NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.

Today, it launches more rockets than any competitor, and its Starlink satellite constellation provides Internet service to dozens of countries.

Prior to hatch opening, the crew completed a “prebreathe” process to purge nitrogen from their blood, preventing decompression sickness caused by nitrogen bubbles. The cabin pressure was gradually reduced to match that of space.

Isaacman and crewmate Sarah Gillis, a SpaceX engineer, spent a few minutes each peeking out into open space, performing mobility tests on SpaceX’s next-generation suits that boast heads-up displays, helmet cameras and enhanced joint mobility systems — before returning inside.

They didn’t however float away on a tether like early spacefarers such as Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov or NASA’s Ed White did in 1965 — nor, for that matter, did they use jetpacks to fly away untethered as Space Shuttle astronauts did on three missions in 1984.

Since Dragon doesn’t have an airlock, the entire crew were exposed to the vacuum of space. Mission pilot Scott Poteet and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon remained strapped in throughout as they monitored vital support systems during the activity.

“The risk is greater than zero, that’s for sure, and it’s certainly higher than anything that has been accomplished on a commercial basis,” former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe told AFP.

“This is another watershed event in the march toward commercialization of space for transportation,” he added, comparing the crewmates to early aviators who paved the way for modern air travel.

The spacewalk follows a daring first phase of the mission, during which the Dragon spacecraft reached a peak altitude of 1,400 kilometers.

This put the crew more than three times higher than the International Space Station, in a region known as the inner Van Allen radiation belt — a zone filled with dangerous, high-energy particles.

All four underwent more than two years of training in preparation for the landmark mission, logging hundreds of hours on simulators as well as skydiving, centrifuge training, scuba diving and summiting an Ecuadoran volcano.

Upcoming tasks include testing laser-based satellite communications between the spacecraft and the vast Starlink satellite constellation, and completing dozens of experiments, including tests on contact lenses with embedded microelectronics to monitor changes in eye pressure and shape in space.

Polaris Dawn is the first of three missions under the Polaris program, a collaboration between Isaacman and SpaceX.

Financial terms of the partnership remain under wraps, but Isaacman, the 41-year-old founder and CEO of Shift4Payments, reportedly poured $200 million of his fortune into leading the 2021 all-civilian SpaceX Inspiration4 orbital mission.

The final Polaris mission aims to be the first crewed flight of SpaceX’s Starship, a prototype next-generation rocket that is key to founder Musk’s ambitions of colonizing Mars.


UK tribunal rules academic’s anti-Zionism beliefs are protected under law

Updated 11 sec ago
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UK tribunal rules academic’s anti-Zionism beliefs are protected under law

LONDON: An employment tribunal in the UK has ruled that an academic’s anti-Zionism should be protected under anti-discrimination laws as a “philosophical belief,” concluding that his views were “worthy of respect in a democratic society.”

The judgment came after Prof. David Miller’s dismissal from the University of Bristol in 2021, where he taught political sociology, for alleged antisemitic remarks in which he argued Zionism was inherently “racist, imperialist, and colonial,” leading to apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

The tribunal, which first ruled in February that Miller had been unfairly discriminated against, has now published a 120-page judgment outlining its decision, acknowledging the divisive nature and controversy of his comments but concluding that his beliefs were genuinely held and protected.

Judge Rohan Pirani said: “Although many would vehemently and cogently disagree with (Miller)’s analysis of politics and history, others have the same or similar beliefs. We find that he has established that (the criteria) have been met and that his belief amounted to a philosophical belief.”

The tribunal also recognized Miller’s expertise in the field and confirmed that his dismissal was due to the expression of these protected beliefs.

Miller gave a lecture in 2019 in which he identified Zionism as a pillar of Islamophobia, which prompted complaints from Jewish students and led the Community Security Trust, which campaigns against antisemitism, to call his remarks a “disgraceful slur.”

A university review found Miller had no case to answer because he did not express hatred toward Jews, but he was dismissed for gross misconduct two years later after sending an email to the university’s student newspaper.

In the email, he said, “Zionism is and always has been a racist, violent, imperialist ideology premised on ethnic cleansing” and claimed the university’s Jewish Society was tantamount to an “Israel lobby group.”

His statements were deemed offensive, leading to his eventual sacking.

However, the tribunal found that Miller’s comments were lawful and did not incite violence.

“What (Miller) said was accepted as lawful, was not antisemitic and did not incite violence and did not pose any threat to any person’s health or safety,” the tribunal decided.

Pirani found that Miller’s anti-Zionism did not equate to antisemitism or opposition to Jewish self-determination, but rather “opposition to Zionism’s realization of exclusive Jewish rights within a land that also includes a significant non-Jewish population.”

Although Miller won his case, the tribunal acknowledged that his public statements “contributed” to his dismissal, resulting in any compensation being reduced by 50 percent. The final amount will be determined in a future hearing.


Indian FM’s visit to Pakistan unlikely to thaw frosty ties, experts say

India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar arrives to visit the India Coast Guard Ship Samudra Paheredar docked in Manila.
Updated 14 October 2024
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Indian FM’s visit to Pakistan unlikely to thaw frosty ties, experts say

  • Jaishankar has said he will not discuss bilateral relations during trip
  • High-level visit may still contribute to ‘slight improvement’ in India-Pakistan ties  

NEW DELHI: Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s visit to Islamabad is unlikely to thaw frosty relations between India and Pakistan as both countries struggle with domestic issues, experts said on Monday ahead of the first such trip by a high-level Indian official.

The Ministry of External Affairs confirmed last Friday that Jaishankar will be leading the Indian delegation to attend the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — a 10-member trans-regional economic and security body established by China and Russia — from Oct. 15-16 in the Pakistani capital. 

Jaishankar has said he will not discuss bilateral relations during the visit.

India has fought three wars with its nuclear-armed neighbor, including two over control of the disputed Kashmir region in the Himalayas.

India controls Jammu and Kashmir, which is part of the larger Kashmiri territory that has been the subject of international dispute since the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Both countries, which claim Kashmir in full and rule in part, further downgraded their diplomatic ties in tit-for-tat moves in 2019, after India unilaterally stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its limited constitutional autonomy. In protest, Pakistan also suspended all bilateral trade.

“It (the visit) would contribute in certain ways in thawing the relationship that has been frozen for the last 10 years and may provide an opportunity for India to construct (and) begin conversation with Pakistan,” Sanjay Kapoor, analyst and political editor, told Arab News.

However, Pakistan’s political instability and security challenges are also a drawback to potential bilateral engagements, said Prof. Harsh V. Pant, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

“Pakistan is in such a febrile (state) that who to talk to is a big question,” he told Arab News.

“The way political challenges are rising for the Pakistani government, they are quite substantive and there is no way in which a unified machinery exists … even if India wants to have a conversation with Pakistan and take that conversation forward.”

Unless “something fundamental shifts” in Islamabad concerning its approach to regional security and terrorism, Pant said that India will not be “very incentivized to engage with Pakistan.”

Cross-border terrorism was a top-of-mind issue for the Indian government, said Manish Chand, the CEO of the think tank Center for Global India Insights.

“Pakistan has not done anything tangible, concrete” to address Delhi’s concerns over the matter, he told Arab News, adding that any dialogue with Islamabad also depended on the Indian public perception and mood, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party lost its absolute majority in parliament in June.

“This government, the BJP, does not want to be seen as soft on Pakistan or cross-border terror, so they don’t want to take a political chance because that would mean that it could be they will face cracking political scrutiny,” Chand told Arab News.

Despite the challenges, Jaishankar’s trip should still be seen as a “very positive gesture” that may lead “to a slight improvement” in bilateral relations, which “may eventually lead to some tangible move leading to reengagement at some level or revival of the dialogue process,” he said.

But Prof. Siddiq Wahid, a Srinagar-based political analyst, said engaging with Pakistan was not a priority for the Indian government.

“The current Indian government is hampered by its self-image of India in the world. That self-image is of a major global player. As a result it thinks that time is on its side and it does not have to deal with Islamabad,” he told Arab News.

“Meanwhile, the regional rivalry between Delhi and Islamabad continues to fester.” 


Father accused of Sara Sharif’s murder confessed to UK police, jurors told

Sara Sharif was found dead in August 2023 at her home in Woking, a town southwest of London. (File/Surrey Police)
Updated 14 October 2024
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Father accused of Sara Sharif’s murder confessed to UK police, jurors told

  • Sharif was found dead in August 2023 at her home in Woking, after what prosecutors say was a campaign of “serious and repeated violence”

LONDON: The father of Sara Sharif, a 10-year-old girl who was found dead in her home in Britain, told police “I beat her up too much,” prosecutors said at his murder trial on Monday.
Sharif was found dead in August 2023 at her home in Woking, a town southwest of London, after what prosecutors say was a campaign of “serious and repeated violence.”
Her father Urfan Sharif, 42, his wife and Sara Sharif’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, and the girl’s uncle Faisal Malik, 29, are on trial at London’s Old Bailey court charged with her murder.
The trio are alternatively charged with causing or allowing the death of a child. All three deny the charges against them and blame each other for her death, prosecutors say.
Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones told jurors on the first day of the trial on Monday that Urfan Sharif called British police, having fled to Pakistan after Sara Sharif’s death.
“He used what you may think is an odd expression,” Emlyn Jones said. “He said: ‘I legally punished her and she died’.”
Emlyn Jones said that Urfan Sharif also told police: “I beat her up. It wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much.”
The prosecutor said a note in Urfan Sharif’s handwriting was also found next to his daughter’s body, which read: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”
Emlyn Jones told the jury that each of Urfan Sharif, Batool and Malik “played their part in the violence and mistreatment which resulted in Sara’s death.”
The three defendants all deny responsibility for any of violence and abuse and each “seeks to deflect the blame onto one or both of the others,” Emlyn Jones said.
Urfan Sharif blames his wife Batool, Emlyn Jones said, and his apparent confessions to the police were designed to “protect the true guilty party.”
The prosecutor added that Batool’s case is that Urfan Sharif was a “violent disciplinarian” and that she was scared of him, while Malik says he was unaware of any abuse or violence.
The trial is expected to run until December.


India accuses Canada of ‘deliberate’ smear campaign in latest diplomatic row

Updated 14 October 2024
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India accuses Canada of ‘deliberate’ smear campaign in latest diplomatic row

  • Last year’s murder of a Sikh separatist activist in Surrey is at the center of diplomatic row
  • India ‘reserves the right to take further steps’ after latest allegations, foreign ministry says

NEW DELHI: India said on Monday that the Canadian government was deliberately smearing New Delhi for political gain, after being told by Canada that its envoy and other diplomats in Ottawa were named ‘persons of interest’ in an investigation.

India and Canada have been under diplomatic strain since last September, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country was investigating “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen of Indian descent who was shot dead by masked gunmen in Surrey, British Columbia.

The Indian government rejected the allegation as “absurd” then, and the two countries expelled their senior diplomats in reciprocal moves. India also moved to suspend visa services for Canadian citizens, which have since been restored.

After over a year, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said the government received diplomatic communication from Canada on Sunday “suggesting that the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats were ‘persons of interest’”in an ongoing investigation.

“The Government of India strongly rejects these preposterous imputations and ascribes them to the political agenda of the Trudeau Government that is centered around vote bank politics,” the ministry said in a statement issued on Monday.

“This latest step follows interactions that have again witnessed assertions without any facts. This leaves little doubt that on the pretext of an investigation, there is a deliberate strategy of smearing India for political gains.”

The Canadian government “has not shared a shred of evidence” with New Delhi since their allegations last year, it added.

At the center of the Canadian investigation is Nijjar, who was an outspoken supporter of the Khalistan movement, which calls for a separate Sikh homeland in parts of India’s Punjab state.

The movement is outlawed in India and considered a national security threat by the government, which formally designated Nijjar as a terrorist.

He was shot dead last June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, which has a significant number of Sikh residents.

Canada is home to the world’s largest Sikh community outside India — about 770,000 people, or 2 percent of its entire population.

The Indian government said Trudeau has long been hostile to India, adding that his government “has consciously provided space to violent extremists and terrorists to harass, threaten and intimidate” Indian diplomats and community leaders in Canada.

“India now reserves the right to take further steps in response to these latest efforts of the Canadian Government to concoct allegations against Indian diplomats,” the Foreign Ministry said.


Spanish PM says ‘no withdrawal’ of UN force from Lebanon

Updated 14 October 2024
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Spanish PM says ‘no withdrawal’ of UN force from Lebanon

  • Spain condemns Netanyahu’s call for the force to pull back
  • Sanchez affirmed his commitment to a UN Security Council resolution that bolstered the force’s role in 2006

MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday said there would be “no withdrawal” of the UN peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon after Israeli attacks and calls to leave.
Israel’s offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia has thrust the UNIFIL force deployed in Lebanon since 1978 into the spotlight.
The force, which involves about 9,500 troops from some 50 nations led by a Spanish general, has reported multiple Israeli attacks in recent days that injured five of its troops and sparked international condemnation.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on them to withdraw for their own safety and said their presence had “the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields.”
Spain condemns Netanyahu’s call for the force to pull back and “there will be no withdrawal of UNIFIL,” Sanchez told a forum in Barcelona.
Sanchez affirmed his commitment to a UN Security Council resolution that bolstered the force’s role in 2006 following the last major conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.
That commitment “makes more sense today than ever after seeing what is happening on the ground,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez has been one of the most strident critics of the Netanyahu government’s war in Gaza, which was sparked by last year’s unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel.
The war has drawn in Iran-backed groups from across the region including Hezbollah, with Israel last month escalating its cross-border fire with the group and launching a ground offensive in southern Lebanon.