Aurelia Butler

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX was ready to try again at sending NASA’s next long-duration crew of the International Space Station to orbit on Thursday, about 72 hours after a first attempt was scrubbed due to a clogged filter in the launch system.Two NASA astronauts will be joined by a Russian cosmonaut and an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates for a six-month science mission made up of experiments ranging from human cell growth in space to controlling combustible materials in microgravity.The SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule called Endeavour, was set for liftoff at 12:34 a.m. EST (0534 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.         The four-man crew should reach the International Space Station (ISS), orbiting some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth, about 25 hours after launch, early on Friday morning.Monday’s initial attempt to send the crew to space was called off less than three minutes before liftoff time when launch teams detected a problem in the flow of engine-ignition fluid used to start the rocket’s main thrusters. NASA said the issue was remedied by replacing a clogged filter and purging the system.NASA said on Wednesday the mission was “go” for launch with a 95% chance of favorable weather conditions. “All systems are looking good for launch,” though teams were keeping an eye on weather along the spacecraft’s ascent path, SpaceX said on Twitter.    Designated Crew 6, the mission marks the sixth long-term ISS team that NASA has flown aboard SpaceX since the private rocket venture founded by Musk – billionaire CEO of electric car maker Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Inc and social media platform Twitter – began sending American astronauts to orbit in May 2020.    The latest ISS crew is led by mission commander Stephen Bowen, 59, a onetime U.S. Navy submarine officer who has logged more than 40 days in orbit as a veteran of three space shuttle flights and seven spacewalks.Fellow NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg, 37, an engineer and commercial aviator designated as the Crew 6 pilot, will be making his first spaceflight.Crew 6 also is notable for its inclusion of UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, 41, only the second person from his country to fly to space and the first to launch from U.S. soil as part of a long-duration space station team. Rounding out the four-man Crew 6 is Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, 42, who like Alneyadi is an engineer and spaceflight rookie designated as a mission specialist for the team.Fedyaev is the latest cosmonaut to fly aboard an American spacecraft under a ride-sharing deal signed in July by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, despite heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Crew 6 team will be welcomed aboard the space station by seven current ISS occupants – three U.S. NASA crew members, including commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, the first Native American woman to fly to space, along with three Russians and a Japanese astronaut.The ISS, about the length of a football field and the largest human-made object in space, has been continuously operated for more than two decades by a U.S.-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.The outpost was conceived in part as a venture to improve relations between Washington and Moscow following the Soviet Union’s collapse and the end of Cold War rivalries that gave rise to the original U.S.-Soviet space race in the 1950s and 1960s. (This story has been refiled to add the dropped word “up” in paragraph 2) More

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -The Bank of Mexico said on Wednesday that inflation is taking longer than initially anticipated to return to its target, in large part due to the persistence of core inflation.Banxico, as Mexico’s central bank is known, forecast that annual headline inflation would hit 4.9% in the fourth quarter of 2023, up from a prior projection of 4.1%.The upward revision in the forecast trajectory for inflation “is fundamentally due to the fact that core inflation has not shown favorable dynamics and has displayed more persistence than expected,” Banxico said in its quarterly report. Core inflation strips out some volatile food and energy prices.Inflation is now seen nearing Banxico’s 3% target, plus or minus one percentage point, by the fourth quarter of 2024, a full quarter later than previously anticipated. Banxico has raised its key interest rate by 700 basis points since its rate-hiking cycle started in June 2021 to combat inflation. The bank’s five-member board voted unanimously last month to raise Mexico’s benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points to 11.00%, surprising analysts who had expected a 25-basis-point hike. Banxico’s report said the board’s next rate hike “could be of lower magnitude” given the hikes made so far.”I want to emphasize that we will consider the monetary stance we have already reached. In this hiking cycle we already have an increase of 700 basis points accumulated in the interest rate,” said Banxico Governor Victoria Rodriguez, adding that the board will continue watching how inflation and inflation expectations evolve. Deputy Governor Omar Mejia, the governing board’s newest member, said the interest rate was “close to reaching an adequate level,” echoing comments from an earlier interview published Wednesday.Banxico will publish the decision of its next monetary policy meeting on March 30. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Travel on U.S. roads in 2022 rose by 0.9% to 3.17 trillion miles but still remains below pre-COVID 19 levels after oil prices spiked last year, the Transportation Department said Wednesday.Road travel overall last year was up 29.3 billion miles even as it fell in December by 1.8%. In 2019, U.S. motorists logged 3.26 trillion miles for the year.U.S. driving sharply declined after COVID-19 lockdowns were imposed in early 2020 as many people worked from home. For 2020, driving fell 11% to 2.9 trillion miles, the lowest yearly total since 2003, but rose 8% in 2021 to 3.14 trillion miles.U.S. road deaths have risen sharply since the start of the pandemic despite a declining in miles traveled.U.S. traffic deaths jumped 10.5% in 2021 to 42,915, the largest number killed on American roads in a year since 2005 after rising 7% in 2020, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has said. Deaths fell 0.2% in the first nine months of 2022.As U.S. roads became less crowded during the pandemic, some motorists perceived police as less likely to issue tickets, experts said, likely resulting in riskier behavior on the roads, according to NHTSA. More