SpaceX is about to launch the world’s biggest and tallest rocket once again. Elon Musk’s private space company has got its final approval from US federal regulators to launch Starship on Friday morning local central time. The first launch of the rocket initially appeared to go well, with the rocket launching up into the sky and preparing for its journey around Earth. But minutes later the spacecraft began to tumble and soon after that it blew up in a vast explosion. Since then, SpaceX has been working to comply with regulators including aviation authorities as well as those tasked with protecting the environment and wildlife around its base in Texas. The Federal Aviation Administration issued its license Wednesday, noting that SpaceX has met safety, environmental and other requirements to launch again. Elon Musk's rocket company said it was targeting Friday morning. After the self-destruct system blew up the rocket over the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX made dozens of improvements to the nearly 400-foot (121-meter) rocket and to the launch pad, which ended up with a large crater beneath it. SpaceX has a $3 billion NASA contract to land astronauts on the lunar surface as early as 2025, using the spacecraft. A month ago, the FAA completed its safety review of the upcoming Starship launch. It needed more time to wrap up its environmental review. No one was injured in the first attempt, but the pad was heavily damaged as the rocket's 33 main engines ignited at liftoff. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service later reported that concrete chunks, steel sheets and other objects were hurled thousands of feet (hundreds of meters) from the pad. It also said a plume of pulverized concrete sent material several miles (up to 10 kilometers) away. Wildlife and environmental groups sued the FAA over what they considered to be the FAA’s failure to fully consider the environmental impacts of the Starship program near Boca Chica Beach. Plans call for the test flight to last 1 /1/2 hours and fall short of a full orbit of Earth. The spacecraft would go eastward, passing over the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans before ditching near Hawaii. Nothing of value will be on board. Additional reporting by agencies Read More The world’s most powerful rocket should launch imminently, Elon Musk says Robot hand with bones, ligaments and tendons 3D printed in world first Users of iPhones can now check bank balance from Wallet app

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Baffled scientists are trying to unravel the mystery of how a meteorite left Earth’s atmosphere and somehow came back again. Unlike boomerangs, meteorites don’t have a reputation for coming back around again, so when a black rock found in Morocco in 2018 seemed to have done just that, it left the scientific community confused. The rock, whose official name is Northwest Africa (NWA) 13188, is a scientific first (that we know of) to have left the Earth’s atmosphere, gone into outer space and returned again. The 646-gram piece of rock is remarkable not only for its journey but also its makeup. NWA 13188 has a bubbly texture and contains crystals. Its chemical components suggest that the rock is made out of the minerals produced by molten minerals that come from volcanic activity. It also possesses trace elements and oxygen isotopes, which suggests to scientists that it is not the typical meteorite that originates in space, but instead, it originated on Earth itself. However, according to a geophysicist from the French National Centre for Scientific Research, Jérôme Gattacceca, who studied the rock and presented the findings, it has undergone an interesting journey in orbit. Scientists can identify this because of the presence and concentration levels of Helium-3, Beryllium-10, and Neon-21, which suggest exposure to cosmic rays that are not present in Earth’s atmosphere. Compared to other more traditional meteorites scientists have studied, the concentrations are lower on NWA 13188 but are still higher than rocks on Earth. It is thought that NWA 13188 could have been expelled from Earth and in orbit for thousands of years. Scientists said, “We consider NWA 13188 to be a meteorite, launched from the Earth and later re-accreted to its surface”. Despite the rock originating on Earth, the team said it fits the definition of a meteorite since it has achieved orbit. The definition states: “Material launched from a celestial body that achieves an independent orbit around the Sun or some other celestial body, and which eventually is re-accreted by the original body, should be considered a meteorite. “The difficulty, of course, would be in proving that this had happened, but a terrestrial rock that had been exposed to cosmic rays and had a well-developed fusion crust should be considered a possible terrestrial meteorite.” It is not yet understood how the rock came to be launched from Earth into space, as researchers said it still “remains to be determined”. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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