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SpaceX gets ready to launch first all-civilian crew to orbit

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Yet another billionaire entrepreneur is set to ride into space this week, strapped inside the capsule of a SpaceX rocketship, as part of an Astro-tourist team, poised to make history as the first all-civilian crew launched into Earth orbit.

Jared Isaacman, the American founder and chief executive of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, will lead three fellow spaceflight novices on a trip expected to last three days from blastoff at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to splashdown in the Atlantic.

The 38-year-old tech mogul has plunked down an unspecified but presumably exorbitant sum to fellow billionaire and SpaceX owner Elon Musk to fly Isaacman and three specially selected travel mates into orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

The crew vehicle is set for blastoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center atop one of Musk's reusable Falcon 9 rockets, with a 24-hour targeted launch window that opens at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT) on Wednesday. That window will be narrowed or possibly altered a few days before, depending on the weather.

Dubbed Inspiration4, the orbital outing was conceived by Isaacman primarily to raise awareness and support for one of his favorite causes, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a leading pediatric cancer center. He has pledged $100 million personally to the institute.

But a successful mission would also help usher in a new era of commercial space tourism, with several companies vying for wealthy customers willing to pay a small fortune to experience the exhilaration of supersonic flight, weightlessness and the visual spectacle of space.

Setting acceptable levels of consumer risk in the inherently dangerous endeavor of rocket travel is also key and raises a pointed question.

"Do you have to be both rich and brave to get on these flights right now?" said Sridhar Tayur, a professor of operations management and new business models at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, in an interview with Reuters on Friday (September 10).

Inspiration4 officials stress that the mission is more than a joyride. Once in orbit, the crew will perform medical experiments with "potential applications for human health on Earth and during future spaceflights," the group said in its press materials.

"There is a certain amount of frivolousness and ego in it. But I also believe that we have moved in our understanding of science and our capability and technologies because people have taken these kinds of extraordinary risks. I mean, that is the human endeavor to push the limits," Tayur said.

The SpaceX flight is designed to carry its four passengers where no all-civilian crew has gone before - into Earth orbit.

There, they will circle the globe once every 90 minutes at more than 17,000 miles per hour, or roughly 22 times the speed of sound. The target altitude is 575 kilometers, or nearly 360 miles high, beyond the orbits of the International Space Station or even the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Inspiration4 crew will have no part to play in operating their spacecraft, despite some largely honorary titles, though two members - Isaacman and geoscientist Sian Proctor - are licensed pilots.

Rounding out the crew are "chief medical officer" Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a bone cancer survivor turned St. Jude physicians' assistant, and mission "specialist" Chris Sembroski, 42, a U.S. Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer.

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Iran enforces stricter laws on employment of illegal immigrants

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Iran's Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni said on Thursday that the country has enforced stricter laws on the employment of illegal immigrants.

According to IRNA, Momeni told reporters that since March last year, about 1.1 million illegal foreign citizens have been repatriated to their country with the coordination of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Pointing out that some deported illegal foreign nationals return to Iran, he stated: "Plans in the areas of physical and electronic border closures have been prioritized to minimize the number of returns."

Momeni emphasized that employing illegal foreign nationals deprives Iranians of many job opportunities, therefore, labor laws have been implemented more strictly in this regard and violating employers will face action.

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IEA says it has control of Afghanistan embassy in Ankara

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A foreign ministry official in Kabul said on Thursday that the Islamic Emirate's diplomats at the Afghanistan embassy in Ankara provide consular services and represent the country.

Earlier, the Afghan embassy in Ankara said in a statement that all diplomats appointed by the previous government would end their missions from February 6, 2025, adding that the embassy was handed over to the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

Zakir Jalali, director of the third political department of the Afghan Foreign Ministry, said on X that the Afghan embassy in Ankara continues to operate and is at the service of citizens and other visitors.

"Citizens should be assured that consular services and representating duties are carried out by the diplomats of the Islamic Emirate in the embassy with transparency, responsibility and full commitment," he said. "Changes in diplomatic personnel are common in diplomatic missions.”

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IEA rejects claims of being targeted by cyberattackers

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The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) said in a statement on Thursday that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s (IEA) digital systems have not been hacked and that all its data is secure.

This comes after a self-declared hacker group started posting documents on social media claiming that these were taken from IEA government systems over the past 12 months.

However, the IEA said in a statement on Thursday that the documents shared on social media were old documents that could have been leaked from individual computers that lacked security.

The IEA said the aim of social media users, who published the documents, was to confuse the public and make it appear as if the Islamic Emirate’s systems had been targeted in a cyberattack.

They also said their systems are secure, maintained by professional staff and protected from external interference.

In addition, the National Data Center and other archived systems are fully secure and have been reliably maintained against cyberattacks, the IEA’s statement read.

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