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Defying all early polling, Donald Trump swept the election and can quickly be sworn in for his second time period in workplace. From an area coverage perspective, issues are already beginning to look attention-grabbing. That’s principally as a result of distinguished position SpaceX CEO Elon Musk performed within the run-up to the election, and the position he may play within the subsequent administration.
There’s already been some nice reporting from The New York Instances on their relationship; I’ll level to this story, which describes how Musk joined a name between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and this one, during which sources say that Musk needed Trump to rent SpaceX staff to prime authorities positions, together with on the Division of Protection.
If Musk manages to safe even a fraction of the affect that he has talked about in latest weeks — like heading a Division of Authorities Effectivity — we may see the top of the most important area firm, the most important electrical car producer, and one of many largest social media platforms acquire as-of-yet-unheard of affect.
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Senior reporter Rebecca Bellan and I dove into what Trump’s presidency may imply for Elon Musk. Bellan covers all issues transportation, so she took a detailed have a look at the prospects for Tesla, and I threw in my two cents in regards to the implications for area coverage. We tried very, very onerous to not speculate an excessive amount of — at this level, it’s too simple to float into fantasy, and there are too many unknowns — however there’s nonetheless loads of information to go on.
Talking of SpaceX, the corporate is gearing as much as launch its sixth built-in flight take a look at of Starship on November 18. Most of the take a look at goals are the identical because the fifth take a look at, which noticed the Tremendous Heavy booster return to the launch website for the primary time ever, however SpaceX did say it will likely be testing some {hardware} and software program upgrades.
With Musk having the ear of the subsequent sitting president, Mars is on everybody’s minds in a brand new means. It’s solely doable that SpaceX may certainly launch an uncrewed Starship to Mars when the subsequent Earth-Mars transit window opens in 2026. However this week, we’re trying again at a really small spacecraft that made historical past as the primary human-made object to orbit the pink planet: Mariner 9, which entered Mars’ orbit on November 13, 1971.
When the probe arrived, a large mud storm was obscuring a lot of the planet’s options. That calmed down, and Mariner 9 was capable of take a lot of unimaginable photographs over its 10 months orbiting the planet. A lot of what it noticed fully shocked scientists.
