News

Five months after landing on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover is gearing up to collect its first core sample next month, mission managers said Wednesday, drilling out a lipstick-size bit of rock from the floor of an ancient lakebed where the remnants of past microbial life might be preserved.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, his brother, a pioneering female pilot, and an 18-year-old Dutch student launched to the edge of space Tuesday on a 66-mile-high suborbital flight aboard his company’s New Shepard rocket, the latest achievement in a new era of billionaire-backed human spaceflight.

Blue Origin launched first crew mission aboard a New Shepard rocket at 8:11 a.m. CDT (9:11 a.m. EDT; 1311 GMT) Tuesday from the company’s privately-owned spaceport north of Van Horn, Texas. Billionaire Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder, joined his brother Mark Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Dutch student Oliver Daemen for the successful 10-minute flight to suborbital space.

Nine days after being upstaged by Richard Branson, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is finally ready for his own flight into history, blasting off Tuesday morning aboard a fully automated spacecraft he believes will usher in a new era of commercial passenger service.

While Jeff Bezos and his three crewmates worked through a two-day “astronaut” training course, engineers Sunday tentatively cleared their New Shepard rocket and capsule for blastoff Tuesday on a 10-minute up-and-down flight to the edge of space, matching rival Richard Branson’s feat nine days earlier.