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Category Archives: Transhuman News

In Virginia, Censors Attempt to Axe ‘Wishtree’ – Publishers Weekly

Posted: March 24, 2024 at 4:43 pm

The Floyd County (Va.) Public Schools have suspended a One Division, One Book community reading of Katherine Applegates Wishtree following complaints that the middle-grade novel depicts a monoecious red oak, a tree with reproductive parts that can pollinate and flower simultaneously. In the book, originally published in 2017, the tree claims an identity that is both female and male and responds to diverse pronouns: Call me she. Call me he. Anything will work. (Trees have four primary systems of reproduction.)

The schools reading program kicked off on March 4 and was already underway when parent Jodi Farmer, whose children attend a private Christian academy in neighboring Carroll County, took to Facebook to inform Floyd County residents about the reference to gender. Farmer challenged Wishtree's nonbinary account of the oak's identity, calling the book "indoctrination at its finest."

In a March 11 email sent to families from FCPS, unspecified officials wrote, We understand and respect the concerns raised by members of the community regarding certain material within the selected book, and After careful consideration, we decided to suspend the One Division, One Book reading event. Families are welcome to continue reading the book on their own, but schools will not be hosting any corresponding activities.

Reached by phone, school board vice-chairperson Laura Leroy said PW should contact FCPS for more information about One Division, One Book and the Wishtree decision. School board chair James Ingram, superintendent Jessica Cromer, and secondary literacy educator Kristen Harrod did not respond to phone messages or email requests for comment. Floyd County, southwest of Roanoke, serves children at four pre-K7 elementary schools and one high school with grades 812.

Applegate, who was not scheduled to participate in events related to One Division, One Book, learned secondhand about the literacy program's suspension. I found out via Dan Caseys article in the Roanoke Times, Applegate told PW after tweeting her thoughts on X. My first reaction was laughter, because it seemed like satireit could be a story in the Onion, the humor site. But of course there is nothing funny about the real motivation, which is bigotry against LGBTQ people.

The irony is that Wishtree is about community and kindness and tolerance, Applegate added. She said she wrote Wishtree in response to the othering of whole communities of immigrants and people of color in the mid-2010s. In the novel, townspeople in an unnamed U.S. neighborhood write their wishes on pieces of cloth and tie them to the branches of Red, an oak tree two centuries old.

Red also observes local dramas, including the bullying of a Muslim girl whose family has moved to the towna conflict the tree helps resolve. In the documentary The ABCs of Book Banning, you see a sweet Muslim girl reading a passage from Wishtree, Applegate noted, adding that the books religious and cultural diversity has been a point of contention. It has been challenged in other places, but embraced too, in similar community one-book readings. On March 2, Applegate read from and signed Wishtree as part of the Kennedy Centers environmentally focused Reach to Forest event.

Applegate expressed disappointment that One Division, One Book and Wishtree were dismissed with no explanations, nothing concrete from FCPS, and she noted the fear school boards face when book challenges put them on the defensive. We have to keep making noise again and again, and the litigation in Texas is a really good step toward combating book bans, she said. On that note, FCPSs next school board meeting is April 8maybe Ill stop by and say hi.

A version of this article appeared in the 03/25/2024 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline:

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Supreme Court Makes A Mockery Of Free Speech – The Federalist

Posted: at 4:43 pm

They say bad facts make bad law. But bad hypotheticals make even worse law, especially when they come from a clueless set of judges considering the most important free speech case in years.

That thought repeatedly crossed my mind as I listened to the U.S. Supreme Court make a mockery of free speech in Mondays arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri censorship case.

Make no mistake: The actions that led the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to sue the Biden administration were not normal. They were unprecedented, both in the extremes to which government officials went in their effort to pressure tech companies into censoring viewpoints they did not like and in the way the companies submitted to the governments pressure. To use White House official Rob Flahertys word, they became partners in an Orwellian scheme to remove speech the government deemed false, misleading, or, in a perfect reflection of our elites beloved new nanny state, harmful to society.

The institutionalists on the Supreme Court appeared not to care. They seemed more concerned about chilling the governments ability to criticize media outlets that print stories they dont like something that, without attribution, Justice Elena Kagan said happens thousands of times a day in the federal government and which Kagan said she does herself. The institutionalists appeared more worried about a hypothetical of restricting law enforcement from informing a tech company (they always use the benign term inform) that people were using its platform to promote a teen suicide game.

Poor Benjamin Aguiaga, the Louisiana solicitor general, had to deal with that and other absurd hypotheticals throughout the argument. At one point, Justice Samuel Alito came to Aguiagas rescue, noting that some of your most recent colloquy with my colleagues have gotten off into questions that I didnt take it from your brief we you think we actually need to decide in this case. Alito correctly observed that your principal argument was that whatever coercion means, it what happened here is sufficient and that coercion doesnt mean only it doesnt apply only when the government says do this, and if you dont do this, there are going to be legal consequences when it says that in this same breath, but that its a more flexible standard and you have to take into account the whole course of the relationship regarding this matter.

That point went missing throughout the Murthy argument. The lawyering did not help. Ive faced my share of hostile panels, so I sympathize with Aguiaga. But he did not rise to the occasion. He got pulled down a rabbit hole with hypotheticals that he could not win. He failed to mention that the state action question that is, the question of whether censorship by a private technology company should be held to constitutional scrutiny because it is traceable to the government is not the end of the inquiry. Even if the plaintiff shows that private action constitutes state action, he or she must still show that the challenged action violates the Constitution.

That is easier said than done. Take the hypotheticals that Justices Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson offered. No judge would find the removal of a teen suicide video to violate the First Amendment, or any other law, because the First Amendment does not protect incitement or speech integral to criminal conduct. For the same reason, no judge would find the removal of terrorist recruitment videos, or child pornography, to violate the First Amendment. Indeed, Congress gave tech companies the power to remove such content in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

The state action doctrine matters in this case because the challenged action the removal of speech based on its viewpoint is so noxious. It is precisely what the founders drafted the First Amendment to prohibit. It is always subject to strict scrutiny especially when, as here, it involves matters of public concern, including public health policy.

That is why Kagan and Jackson had to create strawman arguments based on extreme examples involving speech that gets less (or no) protection under the First Amendment. And while Aguiaga obliged them, he did so in a way that left several of the other justices, especially Amy Coney Barrett, confused about what standard he was discussing.

Aguiaga also failed to emphasize the key point of how the lower courts decided this matter: a preliminary injunction issued after extensive discovery that generated a massive factual record and a detailed opinion that the 5th Circuit largely affirmed in a 3-0 opinion. Appellate courts usually show great deference to such decisions.

Aguiaga should have mentioned that. He could have evaded the bizarre hypotheticals thrown out by Kagan, Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor by explaining that those facts would result in a different factual record that would likely yield a different result.

In fact, lets be honest: Those records wouldnt exist because nobody would file those lawsuits. The attorney general of Louisiana certainly wouldnt sue the federal government for trying to combat the circulation of teen suicide videos. Nor would the Louisiana AG sue the federal government for telling Big Tech that you are hosting a lot of terrorist speech, which is going to increase the chances that theres going to be some terrible harm thats going to take place, another absurd hypothetical Kagan proffered.

The states involvement made this unique. What also made this case special the reason Judge Terry Doughty issued his opinion on Independence Day was the fact that the federal government was not targeting specific content that it could show posed an imminent threat of harm (like the terrorist videos or teen suicide videos in the justices hypotheticals) but was pressuring Big Tech to remove entire viewpoints about matters of public concern. And not just any viewpoints but those that disagreed with, or merely questioned, the governments viewpoint on certain topics. In other words, the government was pressuring the tech companies to silence dissent.

To his credit, Aguiaga tried to make that point a few times, but he did not do it nearly enough. Like the lawyers in the NetChoice cases, he also failed to challenge the justices casual use of the term misinformation and their assumption that tech companies are only censoring the bad stuff that appears online (whatever that means).

That is one of the most troubling aspects of these cases. After all, what is misinformation? In the context of public health, I assume the Supreme Court would say anything that public health officials say is false, misleading, or harmful.

But why should the government get to define what is true and what is false? Why should the government get to define what speech is misleading? Why should the government define what speech is harmful?

Those should be the central questions in these censorship cases. That is why the Missouri and Louisiana AGs filed this case. After all, speech that the government calls misinformation and which it has successfully pressured Big Tech to block often turns out to be true. Take, for example, the authenticity of Hunter Bidens laptop and the efficacy of the Covid-19 shots.

That is why the Supreme Court has never required that speech be true to be protected by the First Amendment. It has also rebuffed efforts to reduce the legal protection given to offensive (or some would say harmful) speech, including obscenity. Indeed, although obscenity is widely assumed to be unprotected by the First Amendment, the constitutional analysis is more nuanced.

The Murthy argument showed a Supreme Court that is headed in a very different direction. Justices Alito and Neil Gorsuch were the lone bright spots. They were the only ones who asked probing questions of both sides and seemed to care more about protecting the rights of ordinary Americans than unnamed federal bureaucrats.

Following Justice Antonin Scalias death, Justice Clarence Thomas has also become a leading voice for the courts originalists, even during oral argument, a practice he once seemed to disdain (I was there on Feb. 22, 2006, when Thomas asked a question in Holmes v. South Carolina; he did not ask another question until 2016).

Of course, there may still be a way to convert the courts three leftists back to the free speech side of society. Just a few years ago, in Manhattan Community Access Corporation v. Halleck, Kagan took the side of free speech when dissenting from a decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh that ratified a private companys refusal to broadcast a controversial documentary. Perhaps the leftists would change their tune if it was Donald Trumps White House that was pressuring tech companies to remove the speech of their political opponents.

What if Google decided that abortion is murder, and harmful to women who go through it, so it decided to remove speech that promotes abortion and abortion rights from YouTube? Would Kagan really have no problem with that? Would she be OK with Google removing videos of her criticizing the Dobbs decision from YouTube?

Or suppose Trump wins the 2024 election and his administration takes a hard stand against transgenderism. Under government pressure, Google decides that trans ideology is dangerous and harmful to children (it could cite plenty of evidence for support, of course) and says pro-trans videos should be removed from YouTube. Thats fine? We are supposed to believe that Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson not to mention untold numbers of Democrat-appointed judges across America would go along with that?

I think not. Aguiaga should have said so. Instead, he showed little resistance to a hostile bench that we knew was coming and that could render one of the most destructive constitutional decisions since the 19th century.

Scott Street is a Democratic lawyer and consultant in Los Angeles. He regularly writes about legal and political issues.

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No matter how you view TikTok, banning the platform would be censorship – The Daily Orange

Posted: at 4:43 pm

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Dear Senator Schumer,

I am writing to give you a different perspective on the bill now in front of the Senate. The bill forces TikTok to decouple from Chinese ownership and, barring some miracle, will effectively ban it in the United States.

As a Ph.D. student and media scholar at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University studying social media behavior, I concur with you a lot about TikTok that you already know. TikToks proprietary For You algorithm is designed to build a personality profile around you and serve you with only the most instantly mesmerizing content. Its made TikTok the most successful app in history, surpassing Google as the worlds most visited web domain.

And for many students here at SU, its become an addiction akin to nicotine. I did a study last year, and many students admitted they can spend up to five hours a day watching TikTok videos. Research also shows that excessive TikTok watching leads to digital dementia, causing anxiety, depression and the loss of attention span.

I am not a big fan of TikTok, but I am against banning it. Before returning to school, I lived and worked in China for 17 years as an advertising executive in American and British firms. I personally witnessed the growth of Bytedance and the dominance of Douyin, TikToks sister platform in China. During that time, I also saw the dramatic rise of Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube and online news platforms such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, which the Chinese government all effectively blocked because they didnt follow the Communist Party line.

It is for this reason that I am opposed to the bill banning TikTok. It is fundamentally un-American and we are simply following Chinas censorship playbook. Blocking TikTok in any way effectively stops one of the core values that both you and I hold dearly, which is also our strength: openness. Are we willing to follow China and apply it here? America is better than this.

The argument is that the Chinese Communist Party is extracting data from us. If the Chinese government wanted to get our data, they could find many different ways. They could take a chapter from Russia and simply go to X, formerly known as Twitter, or Meta and do not need their own platform. Fueled by artificial intelligence, our American social media platforms are so porous and flawed, but our congressional leaders seem to do little about them despite hearings after hearings. And Americans simply do not value data privacy compared to other countries. Your bank credit score knows more about you than any piece of data that the CCP knew about me back in China.

There has only been speculation of a massive TikTok data breach without much hard evidence, only to say, they could if they wanted to. And given easily accessible data alternatives, why would the CCP jeopardize a highly-profitable company? TikTok is a cash cow, and it would be bad business to disrupt it, especially now that the Chinese economy is experiencing a slowdown.

There are better solutions than what Congress is proposing. What ever happened to Project Texas, the plan to house TikTok data in Oracle servers which would be Apples equivalent in China under their data localization laws? Project Texas would have been a reasonable compromise if we were worried about data leaving our shores.

Some have also argued that the CCP is using TikTok to spread anti-American propaganda. If this were the case, it wouldnt seem to be working. Why wouldnt the CCP use TikTok to improve American opinions on China? American opinions on China are now at an all-time low.

Why is Congress doing this? Its an emotional reaction to our governments failure to control social media. If TikToks addictive and potentially harmful algorithm leaves our youth due to the ban, platforms like Meta will pick up the slack.

We are so worried that the CCP will undermine democracy, so what do we do? Block or ban a social media platform. I have lived under a censorious regime, and I can tell you it is not something we want for our country.

Published on March 18, 2024 at 9:44 pm

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SpaceX launches its 30th Dragon cargo mission to the ISS (video) – Space.com

Posted: at 4:42 pm

SpaceX launched its 30th cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA this afternoon (March 21), carrying 3 tons of supplies and scientific hardware to the orbiting lab.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying an uncrewed Cargo Dragon spacecraft lifted off today at 4:55 p.m. EDT (2055 GMT) from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The mission, known as CRS-30, was the first cargo launch from SLC-40 since March 2020. Since then, the pad has been outfitted with a new launch tower, which allows for more efficient cargo loading and upgrades the facility to support crewed launches as well.

Related: SpaceX to launch 30th cargo mission to the ISS for NASA this week

Before the SLC-40 upgrades, "we loaded cargo while the vehicle was still horizontal using a mobile cleanroom before we would take the vehicle vertical for lunch, but thanks to this new state of the art crew tower, required for our human spaceflight missions, that late-load cargo operation got a massive upgrade, too," Sarah Walker, director of SpaceX Dragon mission management, said during a pre-launch press briefing on Tuesday (March 19).

"It's much easier to load a huge complement of time-critical NASA science into our Dragon spacecraft in the flight orientation," she added.

The Falcon 9's first stage booster came back to Earth as planned today, making a vertical touchdown at SpaceX's Landing Zone-1, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, about eight minutes after launch. It was the sixth launch and landing for the booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

The CRS-30's Cargo Dragon capsule separated from the rocket's upper stage just under 12 minutes after launch. The spacecraft will spend around two days en route to the ISS, with a rendezvous and docking scheduled for 7:30 a.m. EDT on Saturday (March 23). You can watch that orbital meetup live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, beginning at 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT) on Saturday.

Over 6,000 pounds (2,721 kilograms) of scientific supplies, maintenance equipment, two new coffee kits, fresh fruits and vegetables and other food for the station's inhabitants are stowed aboard Dragon on CRS-30. Included in that haul is a new spare pump stored in Dragon's trunk, which will be integrated into the space station's external thermal loop system.

In addition to materials to support ongoing research aboard the orbital laboratory, a number of new science investigations are also aboard CRS-30 to enrich our understanding of the effects of microgravity on a range of biological and technological processes.

TheNano Particle Haloing Suspensionexperiment, for example, will study nanoparticles' reaction to electrical fields, and their use to help synthesize semiconductor material known as "quantum dots," which holds the potential to greatly increase the efficiency of solar panel technology.

The Multi-resolution Scanner (MRS)experiment will utilize the existing autonomous Astrobee robots aboard the ISS to test 3D mapping technology. "The team has big plans for future applications [of this technology] in spaceflight," said Heidi Parris, associate program scientist at NASA's ISS Program Research Office. "If it works well inside the ISS, this technology could be developed to use for scanning of exterior hull damage on the ISS or other space stations, as well as lunar and Martian surface scanning."

Parris highlighted a number of other investigations during Tuesday's press call as well, including the APEX-09 experiment to examine the genetic makeup of plants in microgravity.

CRS-30 "is also going to launch research into many, many other areas, including cellular microbiology, crystal growth, astrophysics, human research, material science and much more," Parris said.

CRS-30 will remain docked to the Harmony module's zenith (upward-facing) port for about a month before deorbiting and returning to Earth. Dragon is the only cargo vehicle currently able to withstand reentry forces through Earth's atmosphere, and it's therefore used to return a number of research materials and other spent items from the space station.

The other two currently operational cargo vehicles Northrup Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft and Russia's Progress vessel are designed to burn up upon reentry.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 5:15 p.m. ET on March 21 with news of successful rocket launch, first-stage landing and Dragon deployment.

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Space Station Welcomes Cargo, Awaits Crew Arrival – AmericaSpace

Posted: at 4:42 pm

The International Space Station (ISS) welcomed cargo and prepared for a new crew arrival Saturday, as SpaceXs CRS-30 Cargo Dragon docked at the sprawling orbital outpost at 7:19 a.m. EDT and Soyuz MS-25crewed by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson and the first national space traveler of Belarus, Marina Vasilevskayatook flight from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 5:36:10 p.m. local time (8:36:10 a.m. EDT). Elsewhere, at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, following a one-day weather delay, SpaceX is gearing up for its ninth Falcon 9 launch of March early on Saturday evening.

Laden with more than 6,000 pounds (2,700 kilograms) of payloads, equipment and supplies for the incumbent Expedition 70, CRS-30 is the 30th Cargo Dragon resupply mission to the space station, conducted under the second-round Commercial Resupply Services (CRS2) contract between NASA and SpaceX. A six-times-used Falcon lifted the four-times-flown Cargo Dragon ship from storied Space Launch Complex (SLC)-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., at 4:55 p.m. EDT Thursday, for a 38.5-hour, 25-orbit rendezvous and phasing profile to reach the station.

With SLC-40 back in service for Dragon operations for the first time since March 2020, CRS-30s haul of cargo includes an experiment to investigate the carbon dioxide capturing mechanisms of two types of grasses to better understand changes in photosynthesis and plant metabolism in space, a multi-resolution scanner for the stations on-board Astrobee robotic helper to support three-dimensional sensing, mapping and situational awareness functions and a deployable CubeSat to measure ocean ice levels and thickness. Also aboard the Cargo Dragon is a replacement ISS pump module, along with goodies for the Expedition 70 crew ranging from citrus fruit and apples to cherry tomatoes to two coffee kits.

This particular Cargo Dragon ship, tailnumbered C209, is making her fourth trek to the station after previously supporting a trio of month-long ISS research trips in summer 2021 and more recently over the Christmas/New Year period in December 2021-January 2022 and latterly in the spring of last year. Across those three missions, she logged over 102 cumulative days in space, transporting more than 20,200 pounds (9,100 kilograms) of cargo to the ISS and returning 14,500 pounds (6,600 kilograms) of research samples and unneeded hardware back to Earth.

In readiness for CRS-30s arrival, Expedition 70 astronauts Loral OHara and Mike Barratt spent Friday reviewing procedures for their monitoring role in the rendezvous. The Cargo Dragon docked autonomously at the space-facing (or zenith) port of the Harmony node at 7:19 a.m. EDT for a month-long stay.

Attention then turned to Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where a 162-foot-tall (49-meter) Soyuz-2.1 booster stood primed with the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft to loft a new crew to the station. Originally scheduled to fly at 6:21:18 p.m. local time (9:21:18 a.m. EDT) Thursday, the launch was scrubbed inside T-20 seconds and teams recycled for a backup opportunity early Saturday morning. The two-day delay also forced an adjustment to Soyuz MS-25s orbital mechanics and phasing, as Novitsky, Dyson and Vasilevskaya shifted from a three-hour and two-orbit ultra-fast rendezvous profile to a longer approach of two days and 32 orbits.

With temperatures in the mid-50s Fahrenheit, a little warmer than Thursday, todays launch day dawned fine if overcast at Baikonur. The prime crew and their backupsRussian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner, U.S. astronaut Don Pettit and Anastasia Lenkova of Belaruswere awakened early Thursday and showered, dressed and ceremonially autographed their doors at Baikonurs Cosmonaut Hotel.

A solemn blessing by a Russian Orthodox priest was followed by Novitsky, Dyson and Vasilevskaya getting bussed out to Site 254 to don their Sokol (Falcon) launch and entry suits. That gave the crew a last chance to speak (from behind glass screens) with friends and loved ones.

They were then bussed out to Site 31/6 to board Soyuz MS-25, with Novitsky assuming the center commanders seat in the tiny descent module, flanked by Vasilevskaya to his left and Dyson to his right. In the final minutes of the countdown, Russian music was piped into the Soyuz cabin for the crews benefit.

At T-5 minutes, the launch keyan actual, physical key, inserted in the launch pad bunker to transition the boosters launch sequence to autonomous modewas inserted and Novitskys controls were unlocked. Internal avionics aboard Soyuz MS-25 were spooled up in readiness for liftoff.

As the countdown entered the final minute, all eyes were focused on the launch pads two umbilical towers, both of which were set to retract and recline to their fallback positions in the final seconds before liftoff. The second of these towers, which normally retracts about 15 seconds prior to T-0 marking the initiation of engine sequence start, did not separate last Thursday and the launch was aborted.

On Saturday, by contract, the launch proved charmed. Vehicle to internal power, came the call from the Russian announcer as the first umbilical tower swung away at T-30 seconds. Autosequence initiated, she followed, as the second tower retracted a few seconds past T-20 seconds. Then: LaunchIgnitionEngines to maximum thrust

At 5:36:10 p.m. local time (8:36:10 a.m. EDT), a dull ruddy glow from the rockets RD-108A core stage and four RD-107A tapering boosters appeared at the base of the Soyuz-2.1a as Novitsky, Dyson and Vasilevskaya braced for liftoff. We now have engine ignition, said NASAs Rob Navias. Turbopumps and engines up to flight speednow at full throttleWe have liftoff: Dyson, Novitsky and Vasilevskaya finally underway on a two-day journey to the International Space Station

Heading out of Baikonur on a northeasterly trajectory, the rocket punched out 930,000 pounds (422,000 kilograms) of thrust and it roared smoothly into steadily darkening skies. Ascent was entirely nominal and Soyuz MS-25 separated from the rocket precisely on time at eight minutes and 46 seconds into the flight.

Novitsky, Dyson and Vasilevskaya are scheduled to dock at the Earth-facing (or nadir) port of the stations Prichal module at 11:09 a.m. EDT on Monday, after a 38.5-hour, 25-orbit voyage, lengthened from the nominal three-hour and two-orbit ultra-fast rendezvous regime by orbital mechanics and phasing demands. Before launch, Dyson remarked that she was particularly looking forward to a short trek to the ISS, having endured an uncomfortable two-day ride in the tiny Soyuz cabin for her last mission in 2010. Doubtless, the wait for her next long-duration station stay will be worth it.

Meanwhile, following a day-long weather delay, SpaceX is looking to a four-hour window later tonight for its ninth Falcon 9 mission of March. Scrubbed on Friday night due to weather odds that climbed no better than 20-percent-favorabletempered by gusty winds, showers and isolated thunderstorms across the Space Coastteams realigned for a four-hour launch window opening at 7:39 p.m. EDT and closing at 11:29 p.m. EDT Saturday.

Laden with 23 Starlink internet communications satellites, workhorse B1060the fourth booster to reach a life-leading 19th launch and the third to do so this yearwill rise from historic Pad 39A at Floridas Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for the ninth Falcon 9 mission of March and the 28th of the year so far. An on-time launch will permit the deployment of the Starlink payload about 65 minutes into the flight.

Weather predictions are kinder for Saturday, with up to an 80-percent Probability of Go (PGo), according to forecasters at the 45th Weather Squadron at Patrick Space Force Base. Low pressure will be tracking up the Eastern Seaboard, it reported, leaving the Spaceport with northwesterly winds and isolated, wrap-around showers and yielding a primary risk of violating the Cumulus Cloud Rule and Liftoff Winds Rule, associated with the isolated showers. A scrub to Sundays 7:06 p.m. EDT launch time brings increased gradient winds, with lessened chances of showers but a heightened probability of wind violations.

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SpaceX Resupply Mission Docks With Space Station – Aviation Week

Posted: at 4:42 pm

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HOUSTONNASAs 30th SpaceX-contracted commercial resupply (CRS-30) mission autonomously docked to the U. S. segment of the International Space Station (ISS) early March 23, delivering a 6,300-lb. payload of crew supplies, scientific and technology research and demonstration materials and station...

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SpaceX rocket launch: Coffee, cherry tomatoes heading to space station – Florida Today

Posted: at 4:42 pm

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This Week @NASA: A Commercial Mission Carries Science to the Space Station – SciTechDaily

Posted: at 4:42 pm

This Week @NASA: A Commercial Mission Carries Science to the Space Station  SciTechDaily

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Soyuz MS-25 flight to Space Station launches successfully after Thursday’s scrub – UPI News

Posted: at 4:42 pm

A Soyuz MS-25 vehicle successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Saturday and is scheduled to dock with the International Space Station Monday. Photo by Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE

March 23 (UPI) -- A Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft headed to the International Space Station successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Saturday and has entered near-Earth orbit, officials said.

The spacecraft, crewed by NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus, lifted off at 8:36 a.m. EDT, the Russian state news agency TASS reported.

The spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the space station's Prichal nodal module at about 11:09 a.m. on Monday, according to NASA.

Vasilevskaya is Belarus' first astronaut to join a space mission. She and Novitskiy are scheduled to spend 12 days on the space station before returning to Earth on the Soyuz MS-24 along with NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara on April 6.

Dyson is scheduled to return with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Nikolay Chub in September.

Saturday's successful launch occurred two days after an initial launch was scrubbed 20 seconds prior to liftoff Thursday.

NASA spokesman Rob Navias said the engines did not fire as intended, which triggered an automatic abort system. Roscosmos engineers removed the crew and secured the rocket after ceasing fueling operations Thursday.

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Soyuz rocket carrying first Belorussian woman in space en route to ISS – The Spokesman Review

Posted: at 4:42 pm

German Press Agency

MOSCOW Two astronauts from Belarus and the U.S. have set off for the International Space Station together with a Russian cosmonaut, marking the first time that a woman from Belarus is traveling to space.

The Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft lifted off from Russias Baikonur Cosmodrome in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 1236 GMT.

A first launch attempt had been aborted 20 seconds before takeoff on Thursday due to technical problems.

Saturdays launch saw Belorussian astronaut Marina Vasilevskaya, who is being accompanied by NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, becoming the first woman from her country to make it into space.

Space cooperation between the U.S. and Russia, including Moscows ally Belarus, continues despite the U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine.

The launch also saw two women aboard a Soyuz capsule flying to the ISS for the first time.

This is Dysons third flight into space and Novitskys fourth.

Vasilevskaya works as a flight attendant for the Belorussian company Belavia. During her two-week stay on the ISS, she will carry out scientific experiments and take spectral images of the Earths surface.

According to Russian space agency Roskosmos, she will return to Earth with Novitsky and U.S. astronaut Loral OHara in the Soyuz MS-24 at the beginning of April.

Dyson will remain on the ISS until September and will then travel home with cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.

Kononenko, 59, holds the record for the longest stay on the ISS.

By the end of his fifth current stay there, scheduled until Sept. 23, he will have spent more than 1,000 days in space.

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Soyuz rocket carrying first Belorussian woman in space en route to ISS - The Spokesman Review

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