The demo flight from Cape Canaveral is the first test of a wide, flat capsule SpaceX has barely described in public. Almost everything known about it comes from federal filings, not the company.
The threshold quietly crossed on 2 November 2000 was, in retrospect, one of the more consequential moments in the history of human spaceflight.
The numbers behind Peggy Whitson's career do not, by themselves, capture the unusual shape of it.
The popular framing of the question — why has no human walked on the Moon since 1972? — usually proceeds as though there is some technical answer to be found.
For the first forty years of human spaceflight, getting into space required being a professional astronaut or cosmonaut.
When Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore packed for their trip to the International Space Station in early June 2024, they packed for approximately a week.
The record sits at the top of every list of human spaceflight endurance achievements, has been there since 1995, and is currently held by a man who has been dead for three years.
On 2 July 1908, a 27-year-old Bavarian importer named Hans Wilsdorf trademarked a five-letter word in Switzerland for a watch company he did not yet manufacture. The word was Rolex — and the choice of letters has carried the brand for 118 years.
