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.An Arizona grand jury indicted 18 people Wednesday in the ongoing investigation into an alleged attempt to use alternate electors after the 2020 presidential election as part of a wider alleged conspiracy to falsely declare then-President Donald Trump the winner, the state's attorney general announced.
Almost four out of every 10 people in the United States live in a place where air pollution is considered bad enough to put their health at risk, the American Lung Association warned in its latest "State of the Air" report released on Wednesday. That proportion of people — about 39% of the population — had risen sharply since earlier rounds of pollutant data were analyzed for the annual report last year, and the trends were especially pronounced in certain parts of the country.