Virgin Galactic Carries First Pakistani into Space

This May 29, 2018, photo made available by Virgin Galactic
shows the company's VSS Unity on its second supersonic flight. (Virgin
Galactic via AP)
This May 29, 2018, photo made available by Virgin Galactic shows the company's VSS Unity on its second supersonic flight. (Virgin Galactic via AP)
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Virgin Galactic Carries First Pakistani into Space

This May 29, 2018, photo made available by Virgin Galactic
shows the company's VSS Unity on its second supersonic flight. (Virgin
Galactic via AP)
This May 29, 2018, photo made available by Virgin Galactic shows the company's VSS Unity on its second supersonic flight. (Virgin Galactic via AP)

An adventurer has become the first Pakistani to travel into space, riding aboard Virgin Galactic’s fifth successful flight in five months.

The US company stated that Namira Salim is the “first Pakistani to visit space”, noting that she is a resident of Monaco and the United Arab Emirates.

Salim, who previously traveled to both poles and has also parachuted over Mount Everest, was among the first customers to buy a ticket with billionaire Richard Branson’s space company.

“I love my title ‘first Pakistani astronaut.’ I wanted to visit space since I was a kid,” Salim told AFP back in 2012.

American Ron Rosano and Briton Trevor Beattie were also passengers on the trip.

Unlike traditional rocket launches into space, Virgin Galactic utilized a specialized, massive aircraft that took off from Spaceport in New Mexico to carry the passenger vessel high in the sky.

Once at 13 kilometers high, the mothership released the spaceplane, which in turn engaged its thrusters to soar into space up to 86 kilometers, while its passengers experienced a few minutes of weightlessness. The craft then glided back down, landing just over an hour after takeoff.

Beth Moses, a Virgin Galactic employee, and two pilots were also aboard the trip dubbed “Galactic 04.”



Trump Vexes New Zealanders by Claiming One of Their Proudest Historical Moments for America 

British scientists Dr. E.T.S. Walton, left, and Dr. F.D. Cockroft, right, stand with Lord Rutherford outside the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, UK, May 2, 1932. (AP)
British scientists Dr. E.T.S. Walton, left, and Dr. F.D. Cockroft, right, stand with Lord Rutherford outside the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, UK, May 2, 1932. (AP)
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Trump Vexes New Zealanders by Claiming One of Their Proudest Historical Moments for America 

British scientists Dr. E.T.S. Walton, left, and Dr. F.D. Cockroft, right, stand with Lord Rutherford outside the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, UK, May 2, 1932. (AP)
British scientists Dr. E.T.S. Walton, left, and Dr. F.D. Cockroft, right, stand with Lord Rutherford outside the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, UK, May 2, 1932. (AP)

Among other false and misleading claims in US President Donald Trump's inauguration addresses on Tuesday, his declaration that Americans “split the atom” prompted vexed social media posts by New Zealanders, who said the achievement belonged to a pioneering scientist revered in his homeland.

Ernest Rutherford, a Nobel Prize winner known as the father of nuclear physics, is regarded by many as the first to knowingly split the atom by artificially inducing a nuclear reaction in 1917 while he worked at a university in Manchester in the United Kingdom.

The achievement is also credited to English scientist John Douglas Cockroft and Ireland's Ernest Walton, researchers in 1932 at a British laboratory developed by Rutherford. It is not attributed to Americans.

Trump’s account of US greatness in one of Monday's inauguration addresses included a claim that Americans “crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted millions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand.”

New Zealand politician Nick Smith, the mayor of Nelson, where Rutherford was born and educated, said he was “a bit surprised” by the claim.

“Rutherford’s groundbreaking research on radio communication, radioactivity, the structure of the atom and ultrasound technology were done at Cambridge and Manchester Universities in the UK and McGill University in Montreal Canada,” Smith wrote on Facebook.

Smith said he would invite the next US ambassador to New Zealand to visit Rutherford’s birthplace memorial “so we can keep the historic record on who split the atom first accurate.”

A website for the US Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage Resources credits Cockroft and Walton with the milestone, although it describes Rutherford's earlier achievements in mapping the structure of the atom, postulating a central nucleus and identifying the proton.

Trump's remarks provoked a flurry of online posts by New Zealanders about Rutherford, whose work is studied by New Zealand schoolchildren and whose name appears on buildings, streets and institutions. His portrait features on the 100-dollar banknote.

“Okay, I’ve gotta call time. Trump just claimed America split the atom,” Ben Uffindell, editor of the satirical New Zealand news website The Civilian, wrote on X. “That’s THE ONE THING WE DID.”