Berlin Zoo Hopes for More German-born Giant Pandas as Scans Confirm Pregnancy

FILE -In this April 5, 2019 file photo taken through a window female panda Meng Meng eats bamboo at its enclosure at the zoo in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, file)
FILE -In this April 5, 2019 file photo taken through a window female panda Meng Meng eats bamboo at its enclosure at the zoo in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, file)
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Berlin Zoo Hopes for More German-born Giant Pandas as Scans Confirm Pregnancy

FILE -In this April 5, 2019 file photo taken through a window female panda Meng Meng eats bamboo at its enclosure at the zoo in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, file)
FILE -In this April 5, 2019 file photo taken through a window female panda Meng Meng eats bamboo at its enclosure at the zoo in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, file)

The Berlin Zoo has much anticipated news: Meng Meng the panda is pregnant again, months after the first giant pandas born in Germany were sent to China, The Associated Press reported.
The zoo said Tuesday that ultrasound scans over the weekend showed Meng Meng is expecting two cubs. They still have plenty of growing to do but the zoo expects the birth at the end of August, if all goes well, it said.
Meng Meng and male panda Jiao Qing arrived in Berlin in 2017. In August 2019, Meng Meng gave birth to Pit and Paule, also known by the Chinese names Meng Xiang und Meng Yuan, the first giant pandas born in Germany.
The twins were a star attraction in Berlin, but they were flown to China in December — a trip that was contractually agreed from the start but delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. China gifted friendly nations with its unofficial mascot for decades as part of a “panda diplomacy″ policy. The country now loans pandas to zoos on commercial terms.
Giant pandas have difficulty breeding and births are particularly welcomed. There are about 1,800 pandas living in the wild in China and a few hundred in captivity worldwide.
Meng Meng was artificially inseminated in March. The zoo noted that female pandas are only capable of reproducing for about 72 hours per year.



SpaceX Launches Billionaire to Conduct the First Private Spacewalk 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule, carrying the crew of the Polaris Dawn Mission, lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule, carrying the crew of the Polaris Dawn Mission, lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)
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SpaceX Launches Billionaire to Conduct the First Private Spacewalk 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule, carrying the crew of the Polaris Dawn Mission, lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule, carrying the crew of the Polaris Dawn Mission, lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)

A daredevil billionaire rocketed back to space Tuesday, aiming to perform the first private spacewalk and venture farther than anyone since NASA's Apollo moonshots.

Unlike his previous chartered flight, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman shared the cost with SpaceX this time around, which included developing and testing brand new spacesuits to see how they'll hold up in the harsh vacuum.

If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk, but they won’t venture away from the capsule. Considered one of the most riskiest parts of spaceflight, spacewalks have been the sole realm of professional astronauts since the former Soviet Union popped open the hatch in 1965, closely followed by the US. Today, they are routinely done at the International Space Station.

Isaacman, along with a pair of SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbirds pilot, launched before dawn aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. The spacewalk is scheduled for late Wednesday or Thursday, midway through the five-day flight.

But first the passengers are shooting for way beyond the International Space Station — an altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers), which would surpass the Earth-lapping record set during NASA’s Project Gemini in 1966. Only the 24 Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon have ventured farther.

The plan is to spend 10 hours at that height — filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris — before reducing the oval-shaped orbit by half. Even at this lower 435 miles (700 kilometers), the orbit would eclipse the space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope, the highest shuttle astronauts flew.

All four wore SpaceX’s spacewalking suits because the entire Dragon capsule will be depressurized for the two-hour spacewalk, exposing everyone to the dangerous environment.

Isaacman and SpaceX's Sarah Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the hatch. They’ll test their white and black-trimmed custom suits by twisting their bodies. Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or attached support structure that resembles the top of a pool ladder. There will be no dangling at the end of their 12-foot (3.6-meter) tethers and no jetpack showboating. Only NASA’s suits at the space station come equipped with jetpacks, for emergency use only.

Pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX’s Anna Menon will monitor the spacewalk from inside. Like SpaceX’s previous astronaut flights, this one will end with a splashdown off the Florida coast.

At a preflight news conference, Isaacman — CEO and founder of the credit card processing company Shift4 — refused to say how much he invested in the flight. “Not a chance,” he said.

SpaceX teamed up with Isaacman to pay for spacesuit development and associated costs, said William Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX vice president who once headed space mission operations for NASA.

“We’re really starting to push the frontiers with the private sector,” Gerstenmaier said.

It’s the first of three trips that Isaacman bought from Elon Musk 2 1/2 years ago, soon after returning from his first private SpaceX spaceflight in 2021. Isaacman bankrolled that tourist ride for an undisclosed sum, taking along contest winners and a childhood cancer survivor. The trip raised hundreds of millions for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Spacesuit development took longer than anticipated, delaying this first so-called Polaris Dawn flight until now. Training was extensive; Poteet said it rivaled anything he experienced during his Air Force flying career.

As SpaceX astronaut trainers, Gillis and Menon helped Isaacman and his previous team — as well as NASA’s professional crews — prepare for their rides.

“I wasn’t alive when humans walked on the moon. I’d certainly like my kids to see humans walking on the moon and Mars, and venturing out and exploring our solar system,” the 41-year-old Isaacman said before liftoff.

Poor weather caused a two-week delay. The crew needed favorable forecasts not only for launch, but for splashdown days later. With limited supplies and no ability to reach the space station, they had no choice but to wait for conditions to improve.