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SpaceX-Polaris Crew Exits Capsule for First Private Spacewalk

Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
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SpaceX-Polaris Crew Exits Capsule for First Private Spacewalk

Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

A crew of four aboard a SpaceX capsule embarked on the world's first private spacewalk on Thursday, as an astronaut eased out of the Crew Dragon spacecraft on a tether into the vacuum of space, hundreds of miles from Earth.

Billionaire Jared Isaacman, 41, exited first about 6:52 a.m. ET (1052 GMT). After he returned a few minutes later, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, 30, was scheduled to take her turn in space, all their maneuvers streaming live on the company's website, Reuters reported.

"Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world," Isaacman said after emerging from the spacecraft, the planet glittering in half shadow below him.

Before the spacewalk began, the capsule was completely depressurized, with the whole crew relying on their slim, SpaceX-developed spacesuits for oxygen, provided via an umbilical connection to Crew Dragon.

The spacewalk was scheduled to last only about 30 minutes, but the procedures to prepare for it and to finish it safely last about two hours. It was meant to test the new spacesuit designs and procedures for the capsule, among other things.

Isaacman, Gillis, Scott Poteet, 50, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon, 38, had been orbiting Earth aboard Crew Dragon since Tuesday's pre-dawn launch from Florida of the Polaris Dawn mission. Menon and Poteet remained inside the spacecraft during the spacewalk.

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It is the Elon Musk-led company's latest and riskiest bid to push the boundaries of commercial spaceflight.

Isaacman, a pilot and the billionaire founder of electronic payments company Shift4 (FOUR.N), opens new tab, is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.

He has declined to say how much he is paying, but the missions are likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, based on Crew Dragon's price of roughly $55 million a seat for other flights.

-FARTHEST SINCE APOLLO

Throughout Wednesday, the craft circled Earth at least six times in an oval orbit as shallow as 190 km (118 miles) and stretching out as far as 1,400 km (870 miles), the farthest in space that humans have traveled since the last US Apollo mission in 1972.

The gumdrop-shaped spacecraft then began to lower its orbit into a peak 700-km (435-mile) position and adjust cabin pressure to ready for the spacewalk, formally called Extravehicular Activity (EVA), the Polaris program said on social media on Wednesday.

"The crew also spent a few hours demonstrating the suit’s pressurized mobility, verifying positions and accessibility in microgravity along with preparing the cabin for the EVA," it said.

Only government astronauts with several years of training have done spacewalks in the past.

There have been roughly 270 on the International Space Station (ISS) since it was set up in 2000, and 16 by Chinese astronauts on Beijing's Tiangong space station.

The Polaris crew has spent 2-1/2 years training with SpaceX mission simulations and "experiential learning" in challenging, uncomfortable environments, said Poteet.

A record 19 astronauts are now in orbit, after Russia's Soyuz MS-26 mission ferried two cosmonauts and a US astronaut to the International Space Station on Wednesday, taking its headcount to 12.

Three Chinese astronauts are aboard the Tiangong space station.

The first US spacewalk in 1965, aboard a Gemini capsule, used a similar procedure to the one planned for Polaris Dawn: the capsule was depressurized, the hatch opened, and a spacesuited astronaut ventured outside on a tether.

Since 2001, Crew Dragon, the only US vehicle capable of reliably putting humans in orbit and returning them to Earth, has flown more than a dozen astronaut missions, mainly for NASA.

The agency seeded development of the capsule under a program meant to establish commercial, privately-built US vehicles capable of ferrying astronauts with the ISS.

Also developed under that program was Boeing's Starliner capsule, but it is farther behind.

Starliner launched its first astronauts to the ISS in June in a troubled test mission that ended this month with the capsule returning empty, leaving its crew on the space station for a Crew Dragon capsule to fetch next year.

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Sharks Are Famous for Fearsome Teeth, but Ocean Acidification Could Make them Weaker

In this undated handout photo provided by Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf in January 2026, a blacktip reef shark swims at Sealife Oberhausen in Oberhausen, Germany. (Maximilian Baum/Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf via AP)
In this undated handout photo provided by Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf in January 2026, a blacktip reef shark swims at Sealife Oberhausen in Oberhausen, Germany. (Maximilian Baum/Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf via AP)
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Sharks Are Famous for Fearsome Teeth, but Ocean Acidification Could Make them Weaker

In this undated handout photo provided by Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf in January 2026, a blacktip reef shark swims at Sealife Oberhausen in Oberhausen, Germany. (Maximilian Baum/Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf via AP)
In this undated handout photo provided by Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf in January 2026, a blacktip reef shark swims at Sealife Oberhausen in Oberhausen, Germany. (Maximilian Baum/Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf via AP)

Sharks are the most feared predators in the sea, and their survival hinges on fearsome teeth that regrow throughout their lives. But changes in the ocean's chemistry could put those weapons at risk.

That is the takeaway from a study performed by a group of German scientists who tested the effects of a more acidic ocean on sharks' teeth. Scientists have linked human activities including the burning of coal, oil and gas to the ongoing acidification of the ocean, The Associated Press reported.

As oceans become increasingly acidic, sharks' teeth could become structurally weaker and more likely to break, the scientists found. That could change the big fishes' status at the top of the ocean's food chain, they wrote.

The ocean will not become populated with toothless sharks overnight, said the study's lead author, Maximilian Baum, a marine biologist at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. But the possibility of weaker teeth is a new hazard to sharks that already face pollution, overfishing, climate change and other threats, Baum said.

“We found there is a corrosion effect on sharks' teeth,” Baum said. “Their whole ecological success in the ocean as the rulers of other populations could be in danger.”

The researchers, who published their work in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, performed their study as ocean acidification has become an increasing focus of conservation scientists.

Acidification occurs when oceans absorb more carbon dioxide from the air, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said. The ocean is expected to become almost 10 times more acidic than it currently is by the year 2300, the German scientists wrote.

The scientists performed their study by collecting more than 600 discarded teeth from an aquarium that houses blacktip reef sharks, a species of shark that lives in the Pacific and Indian oceans and typically grows to about 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) long. They then exposed the teeth to water with the acidity of today and the projected acidity of 2300.

The teeth exposed to the more acidic water became much more damaged, with cracks and holes, root corrosion and degradation to the structure of the tooth itself, the scientists wrote.

The results “show that ocean acidification will have significant effects on the morphological properties of teeth,” the scientists wrote.

Still the ocean's top predator Shark teeth are “highly developed weapons built for cutting flesh, not resisting ocean acid,” Baum said. Sharks will go through thousands of teeth in a lifetime, and the teeth are critical for allowing sharks to regulate populations of fish and marine mammals in the oceans.

Many sharks are also facing extinction jeopardy, as more than a third of shark species are currently threatened with extinction according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Thankfully, sharks have a number of factors that can help them stave off the negative effects of ocean acidification, said Nick Whitney, senior scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.

Whitney, who was not involved in the study, said the scientists' work on the shark teeth was sound. However, because shark teeth develop inside the mouth tissue of sharks, they will be shielded from changes in ocean chemistry for a time, he said.

And history has taught us that sharks are survivors, Whitney said.

“They've been around for 400 million years and have evolved and adapted to all kinds of changing conditions,” he said.

Ocean acidification could be a concern, but overfishing remains the biggest threat to sharks, said Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Acidification will bring many changes Naylor and others cautioned that ocean acidification is indeed going to pose many threats to the ocean beyond just sharks. Ocean acidification is expected to be especially harmful to shellfish such as oysters and clams because it will make it more difficult for them to build shells, NOAA has said.

It could also make fish scales weaker and more brittle. It's tough to say now whether that could ultimately benefit the sharks that feed on them, Naylor said.

For now, ocean acidification can't be disregarded as a threat facing sharks, Baum said. Some shark species could come close to extinction in the coming years and ocean acidification could be one of the factors causing that to happen, he said.

“The evolutionary success of sharks is dependent on their perfectly developed teeth,” Baum said.

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Mummified Cheetahs Found in Saudi Caves Shed Light on Lost Populations

This undated image provided by Communications Earth and Environment shows the mummified remains of a cheetah. (Ahmed Boug/Communications Earth and Environment via AP)
This undated image provided by Communications Earth and Environment shows the mummified remains of a cheetah. (Ahmed Boug/Communications Earth and Environment via AP)
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Mummified Cheetahs Found in Saudi Caves Shed Light on Lost Populations

This undated image provided by Communications Earth and Environment shows the mummified remains of a cheetah. (Ahmed Boug/Communications Earth and Environment via AP)
This undated image provided by Communications Earth and Environment shows the mummified remains of a cheetah. (Ahmed Boug/Communications Earth and Environment via AP)

Scientists have uncovered the mummified remains of cheetahs from caves in northern Saudi Arabia.

The remains range from 130 years old to over 1,800 years old. Researchers excavated seven mummies along with the bones of 54 other cheetahs from a site near the city of Arar.

Mummification prevents decay by preserving dead bodies. Egypt's mummies are the most well-known, but the process can also happen naturally in places like glacier ice, desert sands and bog sludge.

The new large cat mummies have cloudy eyes and shriveled limbs, resembling dried-out husks.

“It’s something that I’ve never seen before,” said Joan Madurell-Malapeira with the University of Florence in Italy, who was not involved with the discovery.

Researchers aren’t sure how exactly these new cats got mummified, but the caves’ dry conditions and stable temperature could have played a role, according to the new study published Thursday in the journal Communications Earth and Environment.

They also don't know why so many cheetahs were in the caves. It could have been a denning site where mothers birthed and raised their young.

Scientists have uncovered the rare mummified remains of other large cats, including a saber-toothed cat cub in Russia.

It's uncommon for large mammals to be preserved to this degree. Besides being in the right environment, the carcasses also have to avoid becoming a snack for hungry scavengers like birds and hyenas.

Cheetahs once roamed across most of Africa and parts of Asia, but now live in just 9% of their previous range and haven't been spotted across the Arabian Peninsula for decades. That’s likely due to habitat loss, unregulated hunting and lack of prey, among other factors.

In a first for naturally mummified large cats, scientists were also able to peek at the cheetahs' genes and found that the remains were most similar to modern-day cheetahs from Asia and northwest Africa. That information could help with future efforts to reintroduce the cats to places they no longer live.

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Vonn Launches Social Media Search Mission After Ski Pole Goes Missing

US' Lindsey Vonn crosses the finish line to win the Women's Downhill event of the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in Altenmarkt Zauchensee, Austria, on January 10, 2026. (AFP)
US' Lindsey Vonn crosses the finish line to win the Women's Downhill event of the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in Altenmarkt Zauchensee, Austria, on January 10, 2026. (AFP)
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Vonn Launches Social Media Search Mission After Ski Pole Goes Missing

US' Lindsey Vonn crosses the finish line to win the Women's Downhill event of the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in Altenmarkt Zauchensee, Austria, on January 10, 2026. (AFP)
US' Lindsey Vonn crosses the finish line to win the Women's Downhill event of the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in Altenmarkt Zauchensee, Austria, on January 10, 2026. (AFP)

Lindsey Vonn may be dominating World Cup downhills at 41, but even the US speed queen is not immune to missing equipment.

Vonn took to social media on Thursday with an unusual plea after losing a ski pole in Tarvisio, Italy, ahead of this weekend's World Cup event.

"Someone took ‌my pole ‌in the parking ‌lot ⁠today in ‌Tarvisio. If you have seen it, please respond to this. Thank you," Vonn wrote on X, posting a photo of the matching pole complete with her initials on the ⁠hand strap.

Vonn, a favorite for the speed events ‌at next month's Milano-Cortina ‍Olympics, retired ‍from the sport in 2019 and ‍had a partial knee replacement in April 2024 but returned to competition later that year and has been enjoying a fairy-tale comeback that has defied age and expectation.

Already the oldest ⁠World Cup winner of all time, Vonn continued her astonishing, age-defying form with a downhill victory in Zauchensee, Austria last week.

That triumph marked Vonn's fourth podium from four downhills this season, cementing her lead in the World Cup standings and her status as the woman to ‌beat at next month's Olympics.