• Chewing gum releases hundreds to thousands of microplastics into your mouth, a new study suggests.
• Chewing gum's base ingredient is synthetic rubber, which is a type of plastic.
• A stick of gum is a relatively small source of microplastics, but a chewing habit could add up.

Microplastics are flowing out of gum as you chew it, preliminary results of a new study suggest.

The burst of flavor in the first few minutes of chewing a stick of gum comes from the hundreds to thousands of microplastics the gum is releasing into your saliva, said the study's lead author, Sanjay Mohanty.

Indeed, the base ingredient of chewing gum — the part that makes it chewy — is synthetic rubber. That's plastic.

"That's something very few consumers know," Mohanty, an engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Business Insider.

"You are eating a material that is made of plastic. At least 2% of that is plastic," he said, referring to a piece of gum.

To be sure, microplastics are everywhere. Countless products shed them in your home. They're in your dust, food, and drinking water. They're in soil and oceans all over the world — from the Mariana Trench to the top of Mount Everest. They've been found in human blood, poop, hearts, testicles, placentas, and breast milk.

An especially offputting study recently found human brains potentially contained enough microplastics to make a spoon.

Mohanty said, "99% of things I see around me are plastic, so I should not be surprised to find plastic in everything, including my own body."

Research has found correlations between microplastics and inflammation, infertility, lung and colon cancers, and risk of heart attacks and stroke. However, it's unclear if microplastics caused or contributed to those conditions.

"My goal is just to inform what we could do differently," Mohanty said.

Chewing less gum, it seems, is one thing we can do.

Mohanty presented these findings, which have not undergone peer review through a scientific journal, at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society last week.

"Chewing gum was not something on my radar," Britta Baechler, the director of ocean plastics research at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, who recently co-authored a study on microplastics in food, told BI.

"I think scientists are getting really creative with trying to get a more complete picture of our exposure to microplastics," she added.

Natural gum released plastic, too

Mohanty and the graduate students in his lab chose five brands of synthetic gum and gave seven pieces of each brand to a single person, who chewed each piece for up to 20 minutes, rinsing with clean water in between pieces to clear out residual plastic.

Knowing the plastic base of gum, Mohanty wasn't surprised when he measured hundreds to thousands of tiny plastic polymers swimming in the person's saliva as they chewed each piece.

He was surprised, however, when they ran the same tests with five brands of natural gums, which are made from plant materials like chicle instead of a rubber base.

Natural gums resulted in about the same quantity of microplastics in the chewer's saliva.

They even found the same plastic polymers in both types of gum: polyolefins, polyethylene terephthalates, polyacrylamide, and polystyrene. Those types of plastics are also used in food wraps, shopping bags, car parts, egg cartons, and packing peanuts.

Because of the measuring techniques they used, this experiment was only able to detect plastic particles 20 micrometers wide or larger. That's about one-fifth the width of a human hair. It's likely that gum also releases plastic of even smaller size — nanoplastics — Mohanty said.

Should you chew gum?

There's good news — sort of.

The researchers found the most microplastics within the first two minutes of chewing gum. After eight minutes, 94% of the plastic particles they detected had already been released.

A simple way to cut back on plastic is to chew your gum for longer instead of popping a new piece, Lisa Lowe, a graduate student who ran this study with Mohanty, said in a press release.

In the grand scheme of your daily microplastic ingestion, a stick of gum probably isn't much. You ingest billions more microplastics from a cup of tea made with a plastic-containing teabag (which is more common than you might think), a 2019 study found.

Still, a gum-chewing habit could add up. Based on their findings, the researchers calculated that someone who chews 160 to 180 small sticks of gum per year would ingest about 30,000 microplastic particles annually.

Mohanty said his wife stopped chewing gum altogether after hearing their results.

"Why eat chewing gum and directly ingest plastics? Chewing gum is non-essential," Mohanty said.

If you do chew, Mohanty added, throw your gum in the garbage instead of leaving chewed-up plastic in the street.

• Archaeologists found a new pharaoh's tomb at Anubis Mountain in Egypt.
• The tomb is from the mysterious Abydos Dynasty of warrior kings in a chaotic historical era.
• The pharaoh's identity is a mystery for now. Check out his tomb.

Archaeologists have discovered a mysterious new king of ancient Egypt, buried in a network of tombs at Anubis Mountain.

"Discovering king's tombs, new pharaohs, are few and far between," Josef Wegner, a leader of the team that uncovered the new tomb, told Business Insider.

Researchers don't know this pharaoh's identity because they think ancient grave robbers damaged the marking of his name on the tomb wall. Still, he could help illuminate a forgotten era of Egyptian history from about 1640 BCE to 1540 BCE, when warrior pharaohs battled each other for territory.

"It's a really fascinating period of turmoil, conflict," said Wegner, who teaches Egyptian archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and curates the Penn Museum's Egyptian section.

"It gives birth to the new kingdom, the famous golden age of many of the well-known pharaohs like King Tut and the Ramses kings," he added.

Take a peek inside this unknown pharaoh's tomb.

Wegner's team excavated the 3,600-year-old tomb beneath 23 feet of sand at the necropolis of Anubis Mountain.

It's part of Abydos, one of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt and once home to the little-known Abydos Dynasty, which archaeologists believe was one of several warring kingdoms across Egypt during the region's Second Intermediate Period.

"It's a mystery dynasty," Wegner said of the Abydos kings.

Today, the ancient city is home to a sprawling archaeological site, where the Abydos kings turned the necropolis into a royal cemetery.

Wegner's team had previously discovered a tomb in the area in 2014, housing the remains of a pharaoh named Seneb Kay.

Seneb Kay was evidence for the wars of that time period. Ancient tomb raiders had pulled his body out of its burial site and left it in another chamber. Centuries later, researchers examined the skeleton and found 22 traumatic wounds in his bones, including battle-ax blows that cracked his skull. They concluded he'd died in battle.

The walls of Seneb Kay's tomb were adorned with colorful paintings, including hieroglyphs of the king's name.

Then they discovered seven other undecorated tombs surrounding his, for a total of eight Abydos kings.

"We believed we had exhausted all the evidence until this last winter season at Abydos, where we began working in a new section of the site," Wegner said. "Lo and behold, there's another one of these tombs which is much larger in size than the ones we had found previously."

Like Seneb Kay's tomb, this one was decorated with paintings — including hieroglyphs of the pharaoh's name.

To Wegner's dismay, though, ancient tomb robbers had damaged the hieroglyph painting and made the name illegible.

"It was, of course, a little frustrating that we could see where his name had been preserved," Wegner said.

In the tomb, a series of chambers with 16-foot-high vaulted brick ceilings led to the limestone burial chamber.

"It was such a large, impressive structure," Wegner said. He added that the size of the tomb and its vaults "may have ultimately drawn the tomb robbers to this location."

This pharaoh was probably a predecessor of Seneb Kay.

From small dedicated monuments in the region, Wegner knows of two Abydos kings who haven't been found yet, who could be the person in this new tomb. Their names are Senaiib and Paentjeni.

Wegner still hopes to confirm the new king's identity.

The archaeological team may find clues as it excavates the surrounding area. Wegner said they've finished excavating the tomb's interior since discovering it in January.

One detail gives him hope: They haven't yet found this mystery pharaoh's canopic jars, which store a mummy's organs.

Sometimes tomb robbers would grab and later discard canopic jars, Wegner said. It's also common for such jars to feature the name of the mummified pharaoh. He hopes to find a fragment of one of those jars with this king's name.

"That would be an immediate positive identification," Wegner said.

Wegner plans to return to the site this summer for further excavation.

They have a "sizable area" where they want to keep digging, he said, both for further evidence from this tomb and to check for other tombs, too.

The Anubis Mountain area has yielded much more history than Wegner expected when he began working there in the 1990s.

"We've realized it's a full royal cemetery," he said, "like a Valley of the Kings."

• Russia is still escalating its nuclear threats as the war in Ukraine goes on.
• If a nuclear bomb were headed toward the US, residents would have fewer than 30 minutes to prepare.
• Actions immediately following a nuclear bomb blast amid fallout could help you survive.

Nuclear weapons remain an ever-present threat.

To date, only the US has ever dropped nuclear bombs on a population — in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Still, the number of nuclear warheads in military stockpiles continues to grow worldwide, and tensions continue between nuclear powers.

President Vladimir Putin, for one, has repeatedly threatened nuclear force in Russia's Ukraine invasion over the last three years. Former President Joe Biden took those threats so seriously that, in 2022, he warned about all-out nuclear war.

Just a few months ago, Putin updated Russia's nuclear doctrine to allow Moscow to respond with nuclear force to a conventional attack from a nation backed by a nuclear power like the US.

Then there's Iran, which doesn't have nuclear weapons yet but is close enough to building them that other nations are constantly scrambling to subdue its nuclear program.

President Donald Trump said in early March that he sent a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei demanding a new nuclear deal, but later ramped up threats against Iran over the actions of Yemeni Houthis.

No recent developments suggest a nuclear strike is imminent. However, ever since World War II, the risk is always there.

How much time Americans would have between a nuclear alert and strike

If your city was under attack, you'd likely receive a Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) text on your cell phone stating that missiles were on the way and to seek shelter immediately. 

The Emergency Alert System (EAS) would also send out the same alert message as the WEA across all types of television and radio broadcasts, including satellite, cable, and wireless systems. On top of that, the President may choose to send out a "Presidential Alert" to cell phones nationwide.

Russia's nuclear arsenal is capable of striking just about anywhere on the planet. Were Russia to launch a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile at the US, residents would have roughly 30 minutes, or less, to find shelter, assuming they were immediately warned of the attack. Some weapons, such as submarine-launched missiles, could potentially have shorter delivery times. 

"In theory you could park a submarine closer to North America, thereby lessening the warning and flight time," Brian J. Morra, a former Air Force intelligence officer, a retired senior executive in the aerospace and defense industry, and author, previously told Business Insider.

If Russia launched a weapon from international waters just off the East Coast, people in cities like New York, Boston, and Washington, DC, might have just 10 to 15 minutes to prepare.

"You wouldn't even have time to go get your kids from school," Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, told Insider in 2022.

Arguably, the American public is not as prepared or educated on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack as Americans were during the Cold War, when stocked fallout shelters, nuclear drills, and air raid sirens were in place across the nation. So here's a minute-by-minute guide to help.

What to do after a nuclear attack

The minutes to hours after a nuclear blast are a critical window. The potential for radiation exposure decreases 55% an hour after an explosion and 80% after 24 hours, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Immediate actions during those first few hours, like covering your eyes or hunkering down in an indoor shelter, could mitigate your risk of death or serious injury. Here's how to protect yourself in a worst-case scenario.

First 30 minutes: Avert your eyes and shield your face 

The US doesn't have a sufficient warning system for nuclear threats, Redlener said.

Hawaii learned this lesson in 2018, when the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency sent out an erroneous push alert to people's smartphones, warning of an inbound ballistic-missile threat.

"Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill," the warning read. An employee at the agency had sent the alert by mistake.

"It caused chaos," Redlener said, adding: "Some people just totally ignored it, and some people went into panic mode and were jumping down sewer drains with their children."

Redlener said the best way to learn of an impending nuclear attack would probably be TV or radio. Those without immediate access to news reports could hear sirens, he said, but the noise might be confusing. By the time you Googled the sirens or called the police department, your time would have run out, he said.

The best course of action is simply to avert your eyes. When a nuclear bomb strikes, it sets off a flash of light and a giant orange fireball. A 1-megaton bomb (about 80 times larger than the "Little Boy" atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan) could temporarily blind people up to 13 miles away on a clear day and up to 53 miles away on a clear night.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recommends dropping to the ground with your face down and your hands tucked under your body to protect from flying debris or sweltering heat that could burn your skin. If you have a scarf or handkerchief, cover your nose and mouth.

However, make sure to keep your mouth open, so your eardrums don't burst from pressure. Research also suggests that if you're in an above-ground building, avoid narrow hallways and doorways, which can act like a wind tunnel, accelerating the detonation's shockwaves to dangerous, bone-crushing pressures. Instead, seek shelter along walls in large, open spaces and avoid rooms with windows, if you can.

First 45 minutes: Seek shelter indoors away from windows

A single nuclear weapon could result in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of immediate deaths in a major city like New York or Washington. The number of casualties depends on the size of the weapon, where it's detonated, and how many people are upwind of the blast.

Survivors of a nuclear attack would have about 15 minutes before sandlike radioactive particles, known as nuclear fallout, reached the ground. Exposure to fallout can result in radiation poisoning, which can damage the body's cells and prove fatal.

People should ideally look for shelter in the opposite direction of fallen buildings.

"You'd want to go in the direction away from the wind," Redlener said, adding: "Get as far away as you can in the next 10 to 15 minutes, and then immediately seek shelter before the radiation cloud descends."

The best shelters are buildings like schools or offices with few to no windows and a basement for camping out. If there aren't sturdy buildings nearby, it's still better to be indoors than outside.

If you take cover in a multistory building, choose a central location and steer clear of the top and bottom floors. If the building has windows, stand in the center of a room. Shock waves can shatter windows up to 10 miles away from an explosion, resulting in flying glass that could injure people nearby.

First 24 hours: Rinse off in the shower and stay inside 

The hours after a blast are critical for reducing radiation exposure.

Doctors can often treat radiation damage with substances such as potassium iodide, though "there are certain dose levels that you can't do anything about," Kathryn Higley, a professor of nuclear science at Oregon State University, previously told Insider.

However, in a disaster scenario, there may not be enough physicians or hospital beds to care for everyone.

"There are not enough empty burn beds in all of the United States to deal with even a single nuclear attack on one city in the US," Tara Drozdenko, the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security Program, previously told Insider.

People who were outside during an explosion should shower as soon as possible, making sure the water is warm and soap is applied gently. Scrubbing too hard could break your skin, which acts as a natural protective barrier. You should also cover any cuts or abrasions while rinsing off. Complete these same steps for pets, too.

Don't use conditioner, body lotion, or face cream after exposure to a nuclear blast, since these products can bind to radioactive particles and trap them in your skin and hair.

Blow your nose and wipe your ears and eyelids, since debris could get stuck in these places. The CDC also recommends sealing outer layers of clothing in a plastic bag, along with any tissues or cloths used to wipe your body or face.

It's safe to consume food from sealed containers such as packages, bottles, or cans, according to the CDC. You can also eat items from your pantry or refrigerator, as long as you wipe off containers, cookware, counters, and utensils. But anything left uncovered, such as fruits or veggies from a garden, would be unsafe to eat.

Unless you're told to go outside, it's best to stay put until the risk of contamination has gone down. The US Department of Health and Human Services recommends staying indoors for at least 24 hours after a nuclear explosion.

First 7 days: Listen to the radio or television for next steps

The World Health Organization recommends listening to the local radio for information and advice on next steps. Your cell phone, television, and internet probably won't work, but battery-powered and hand-crank radios should.

Over the radio, authorities may advise you to stay put or issue an evacuation to a safer area. This is where you'll also likely learn about available medical aid, if you or someone with you, is sick.

If you venture outside, know that nuclear fallout will be raining from the sky. Most fallout from a nuclear blast takes about a week to return to the ground. 

To reduce exposure, cover your mouth and nose with a damp cloth when you go outside and make sure you don't have any exposed open wounds. Also, avoid any food that's directly exposed to open air like fresh produce or open water supplies.

Ultimately, the best thing you can do is remain indoors for the first week while the majority of nuclear fallout settles back down to the ground.

This story, which was originally published in March 2022, has since been updated and republished amid Russia's continued nuclear threats.

• Scientists are learning what short and long-duration space missions do to human bodies.
• Some changes are common like a puffier face, bone loss, and less sleep.
• Here are nine ways the harsh conditions of space can change the human body.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore returned to Earth on Tuesday after spending nine months in space.

The two were stranded on the International Space Station after their Boeing spaceship malfunctioned and they had to wait for a SpaceX spaceship to become available to bring them home.

Nine months in space isn't a record by any means, but it's long enough that Williams and Wilmore likely saw some changes to their bodies during their time on the ISS.

As with any astronaut, "there's a muscular and cardiovascular reconditioning that has to happen," Steve Stich, tk, said in a briefing after the duo splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico.

Much of what scientists are learning about how space affects the human body comes from NASA's research on astronauts staying on the ISS, like its Twins Study: a research program involving former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who lived in space for nearly a year, and his identical twin brother, Mark, who lived on the ground at the same time.

Indeed, Stich said, "every single crew member that we fly in orbit, we collect medical research data," including drawing blood, measuring bone density, and testing vision multiple times throughout their space mission.

The lack of gravity, higher radiation exposure, space-compatible diet, and other facts of life in orbit affected Scott's body in significant and surprising ways. While Wilmore and Williams weren't in space for as long as Scott, they likely experienced similar changes though perhaps not as extreme.

Here are nine biological oddities that researchers have found might happen to your body if you live in space for a long time.

Your body fluids shift.

When you orbit Earth, you're effectively in free-fall around the planet, and weightless. This means there's nothing to force blood and other bodily fluids toward your feet. The fluid shifting from your legs to your head in a year could fill a 2 liter bottle.

Your face looks different.

With less gravity, a lot of liquids move toward and into your head — so your face looks puffy.

Your sight could change.

For the same reason that your face puffs out, your vision might get worse due to pressure changes in the brain. Fluids near the optic nerve can push on the back of the eyeball.

Deep-space radiation might also promote cataracts and impair eyesight. Even high-flying commercial-airline workers face that risk because of the thinner atmosphere.

Your bone density can change.

If you don't exercise while in space, you could lose about 12% of your bone density in a year. Researchers are still trying to understand why this happens, though it seems to be related to how microgravity affects the tissues that makeup bones and bone cell behavior.

"The cells that build new bone slow down, while the cells that break down old or damaged bone tissue keep operating at their normal pace so that breakdown outpaces growth, producing weaker and more brittle bones," NASA says.

You get taller — until you get back to Earth.

Since gravity isn't pushing you down, fluid-filled discs between each of the bony vertebrae in your spine don't get compressed, stretching your height by about 3%. After Scott Kelly's time in space, he returned 2 inches taller than his twin brother. But returning to Earth-like gravity reverses that effect.

Your muscles can shrink.

You don't need muscles when you're weightless, so they atrophy and absorb the extra tissue. This is why physical exercise is a part of every astronaut's schedule. But nothing seems to maintain muscle mass better than the strain of living in the gravity found at Earth's surface.

You'll be sleepy.

You'd probably be sleep-deprived. Most astronauts only get 6 hours a night because sleeping in space feels weird.

Your cancer risk increases.

Radiation bombarding your body outside of Earth's protective magnetic field can increase your risk of getting cancer.

NASA currently limits astronauts' lifetime radiation exposure to 3,250 millisieverts for males, which is equivalent to about 400 CT scans of the abdomen.

Female astronauts typically have more tissue that's susceptible to radiation, so their lifetime limit is 2,500 mSv. 

Animal research suggests this threat could be worse in deep space than previously thought, though studies involving humans are needed to confirm that's also true for astronauts.

Your genetic code behaves differently.

DNA is life's basic blueprint, and genes — much like words in a cookbook — spell out the specific recipes to keep us alive. However, it's equally important when and how much those genes are expressed, or turned on and off. A lot of that has to do with a person's environment.

The Twins Study found that about 7% of Scott Kelly's genes expressed a bit differently after a year in space than they did on the ground, and didn't return to normal (or at least not quickly). The real-world ramifications of this are still being explored.

What if you die in space?

No one has ever died on the ISS. The farther humans travel from Earth, however, and the longer time they spend in space, the greater the risk is that someone could die from a medical event, a vehicle emergency like a fire, depressurization, electrical shock, or simply a lack of food and water.

According to NASA, if someone were to die in space one of the most immediate concerns would be how to ensure the safety of the rest of the crew.

"In the closed atmosphere of a space vehicle, the natural byproducts of decomposition and/or potential pathogens released during the decomposition process could contaminate the enclosed vehicle environment," NASA explains in a technical brief from 2024.

If the crew is close to Earth, like on the ISS, there are a few options, NASA says: return the body to Earth, place it in a safe orbit around Earth, or allow it to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

Ultimately, the final decision would have to take into account multiple factors including minimizing risk to surviving crewmembers, potential forensics collection, biohazard containment, and legal jurisdiction.

If the crew are far from Earth, like on a mission to Mars, the option is to either try to preserve the body for return to Earth — which relies on the crew being able to handle the remains properly — or jettison the remains into space.

• A pod of dolphins swam around SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship after it splashed down Tuesday.
• Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were returning from nine months stuck in space.
• The dolphins made their splashdown extra special.

Shortly after a SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, a pod of dolphins swarmed the spaceship.

Two of the astronauts on board the spaceship — Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — were returning from an unexpected nine-month stint on the space station, which earned them an international reputation as "stranded" or "stuck" on the International Space Station.

The duo launched aboard Boeing's new spaceship in June but could not return to Earth as planned after the vehicle had some engine malfunctions. What was meant to be a roughly weeklong mission for them turned into nine months as they waited for their opportunity to come home with a SpaceX crew.

When they climbed aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship on Tuesday, cruised through Earth orbit all day, and then plummeted back to Earth, they didn't know an oceanic welcoming committee would meet them.

As their spaceship bobbed in the ocean like a toasted marshmallow, smooth, gray dorsal fins began to peek above the water around it.

"Here on your screen, we can see dolphins, actually, who want to come and play with Dragon," Kate Tice, a webcast host and senior quality systems engineering manager at SpaceX, said in the livestream.

The dolphins danced around the capsule for several minutes as a SpaceX recovery crew checked the area for hazardous fumes and prepared the spaceship to get hauled onto a barge. There appeared to be at least six of them.

"That was really fun to see," Sarah Walker, the director of SpaceX Dragon mission management, said in a press call after the splashdown.

SpaceX has previously had to contend with boats of human fans getting too close to its spaceship after the capsule's first crewed flight in 2020.

The company and NASA wanted to avoid a repeat of that kerfuffle with this high-profile mission. The webcast hosts reiterated the importance of the Coast Guard-enforced safety zone around the landing area.

"We do want to stress to the public the need to respect this safety zone," Sandra Jones, NASA's webcast host, said in the livestream. "Recovering a spacecraft from the water is a hazardous task."

The dolphins paid no mind to the safety zone, though. Luckily, they didn't seem to interfere with SpaceX procedures.

It's unclear if Williams, Wilmore, and their two crewmates — Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov — got to see the dolphins in person. The dolphins were no longer visible on the livestream by the time crews started pulling them out of the spaceship.

• SpaceX just brought home two astronauts who were stuck on the International Space Station for months.
• Their return was a fairly routine spaceflight for SpaceX.
• It's a victory Elon Musk can claim after a series of setbacks to his other ventures.

Elon Musk and his many projects have had a rough couple of months, but SpaceX nailed an undisputable win for him on Tuesday.

The rocket company's Crew Dragon spaceship splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, carrying two NASA astronauts who were stuck on the International Space Station for about nine months.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore became international news after their Boeing spaceship glitched as it approached the ISS in June. NASA decided it was safer for them to fly SpaceX home. The change of plans meant they had to stay and serve a full shift with the next astronaut crew, turning their original weeklong mission into nine months.

Their safe return is a win for Musk after a series of high-profile setbacks, from exploding Starship rockets to a Tesla stock crash.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Tesla and SpaceX woes

Williams' and Wilmore's return is a much-needed win for SpaceX and Musk, who is struggling recently.

Musk himself said on Fox Business that he's had "great difficulty" running his companies since taking on the Department of Government Efficiency, which was created by an executive order by President Donald Trump and aims to slash federal spending.

He didn't elaborate, but that day Tesla's stock had dropped 15%, bringing Musk's net worth down $29 billion.

Tesla has also been the subject of a series of protests, boycott efforts, and vandalism incidents in recent months. The electric vehicle company's sales have plunged in multiple countries, including the US.

That all culminated in Trump promoting Tesla cars last week on the White House lawn, where he inspected and praised five of the company's vehicles and said he would buy one.

"The Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World's great automakers, and Elon's 'baby,' in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for," the president wrote on Truth Social ahead of the Tesla event.

Then there's SpaceX. The company's up-and-coming Starship mega-rocket was making significant progress with each uncrewed test flight until this year, when two consecutive flights ended with premature explosions.

Those flights are experimental. In early March, however, one of the company's routine Falcon 9 rocket launches encountered an unexpected issue: The rocket's booster, which normally lands itself on a droneship for reuse, instead caught fire and toppled over after landing.

All the while, Musk has been contending with criticisms and backlash against DOGE — from legal challenges to scrutiny of its hires.

Corporate experts have told Business Insider that Musk is "way overstretched" since taking on DOGE and "may have finally reached his tipping point."

Musk claims victory

SpaceX has been scheduled to bring the two astronauts back since August, when NASA officials decided they weren't confident enough in Boeing's spaceship to return Williams and Wilmore.

Musk started teeing their return up as a new victory in January, when he said on X that President Trump had asked SpaceX to bring them home "as soon as possible."

Musk has since said on Fox News that Williams and Wilmore were "left up there for political reasons," which multiple astronauts have disputed. The day ahead of their return flight he shared a video of Wilmore saying he appreciated Musk and Trump.

Despite the hubbub, this was a pretty routine flight for SpaceX. It was the 10th time the company's Crew Dragon vehicle has returned NASA astronaut crews to Earth in the last five years — in addition to five private Crew Dragon flights.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at mmcfalljohnsen@businessinsider.com. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Remember those two NASA astronauts who got stuck on the International Space Station for nine months?
• They're coming back to Earth on Tuesday afternoon aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship.
• Watch Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore fall back to Earth and splash down in the ocean.

A SpaceX spaceship falling back to Earth Tuesday afternoon will be carrying precious cargo: two astronauts who have been stuck in space for nine months.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were the first astronauts to fly aboard Boeing's Starliner spaceship, which carried them to the International Space Station in June. Their mission was originally set to be about eight days, since it was just a demonstration to show the spaceship could fly humans.

That didn't work out. The Starliner's engines glitched as it approached the ISS. After weeks of review, NASA decided to send Starliner back to Earth empty and wait to bring Wilmore and Williams back on a SpaceX vehicle.

Now, finally, the wait is over and they're returning home.

Watch the astronauts return live on Tuesday afternoon

Williams and Wilmore boarded the SpaceX Crew Dragon early Tuesday morning alongside their two new crewmates: NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

With the help of other astronauts on the ISS, they closed the spaceship's hatch, then sat suited up and buckled in as the Crew Dragon slowly backed away from the station.

They've been cruising in orbit all day, preparing for a fiery plummet back to Earth, which is set to begin at 4:45 p.m. ET, with the spaceship expected to splash down off the coast of Florida at about 5:57 p.m. ET.

Watch it in NASA's livestream, below.

Williams and Wilmore have both said that they enjoy being in space and were prepared for the possibility that their deployment would be extended, but they also said that they miss their families and friends.

"Every day is interesting because we're up in space and it's a lot of fun," Williams said in a press conference from the ISS two weeks before their return.

"The hardest part is having the folks on the ground have to not know exactly when we're coming back," Williams added.

SpaceX has already successfully flown nine astronaut crews to space and back aboard its Crew Dragon spaceship, as well as five private crewed missions.

• The two stranded astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, are finally coming back to Earth.
• Their spaceflight has become such a drama that Elon Musk and President Trump are commenting on it.
• Meet the two astronauts who flew to space on a Boeing ship, got stuck, and are flying SpaceX back.

Two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, are finally coming back to Earth on Tuesday. Their spaceship is scheduled to splash down off the coast of Florida at about 5:57 p.m. ET.

The duo — affectionately known as "Butch and Suni" in NASA lingo — has been thrust into the global spotlight since they flew to the International Space Station for a short stint to test Boeing's new Starliner spaceship.

They were supposed to spend about eight days on the ISS for a demonstration flight. As they approached the station in June, though, the Starliner's engines malfunctioned, kicking off the months-long saga of two stranded astronauts.

NASA tapped SpaceX to carry them home, since the company has already successfully flown nine astronaut crews. The decision was made in August, with their return scheduled for early 2025.

Elon Musk said in January that President Trump asked SpaceX to speed up that schedule.

How stuck are the astronauts?

Wilmore and Williams have served a longer-than-average, but not exceptional, shift on the ISS. They're about 100 days shy of the current record for longest US spaceflight, which astronaut Frank Rubio set just two years ago.

Though they have been stuck up there for technical and scheduling reasons, they weren't "abandoned," as Trump said on Truth Social.

After NASA sent Starliner back to Earth without them (it landed safely in the end), the duo took on the regular duties and routine of space-station staffers. They've received supply shipments from NASA and have had their SpaceX return vehicle docked at the space station since September.

NASA officials have said that the original eight-day timeline for their mission was always an estimate, and everyone involved knew it could go longer than that — though not quite this long.

Musk, however, has leapt at the opportunity for his rocket company to take over its competitor's space mission.

At Trump's behest, last month NASA shuffled around SpaceX's spaceship schedule to bring the astronauts home a few weeks earlier than planned. They're set to return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon ship on Tuesday.

Who is Sunita Williams?

Like many NASA astronauts, Williams and Wilmore are both decorated US Navy test pilots.

"We've both been on deployments. We're not surprised when deployments get changed," Williams said in a September call with journalists. "Our families are used to that as well."

Williams was born in Ohio and grew up in Needham, Massachusetts. She became a Naval aviator in 1989 and made a series of deployments overseas as part of a helicopter combat support unit, including for Operation Desert Shield and Operation Provide Comfort in the Persian Gulf.

She ran a detachment for Hurricane Andrew relief in Miami in 1992, then spent a few years conducting rotary aircraft test flights before becoming an instructor.

NASA selected Williams to be an astronaut in 1998, while she was deployed on the USS Saipan. She began training two months later. Her first gig at NASA was going to Moscow to work with Russia's space agency on its piece of the International Space Station.

In her wide-ranging time at NASA, Williams has also spent nine days living in an underwater habitat and flown two previous missions totaling 322 days on the International Space Station.

When asked in the September call what she missed about Earth, she said, "of course, the things that we always miss: our families. I miss my two dogs, I miss my friends."

She and her dogs live with her husband, Michael, and the couple enjoy some highly technical hobbies: working on houses, cars, and airplanes together.

Who is Barry 'Butch' Wilmore?

Wilmore is a retired US Navy captain, having spent the first part of his career flying tactical jets.

He's completed 8,000 flight hours, 663 landings on an aircraft carrier, and four operational deployments. During Operation Desert Storm, he carried out 21 combat missions from the flight deck of the USS Kennedy.

He spent some time as a flight instructor at Edwards Air Force Base, California, before NASA selected him as an astronaut in 2000.

He's previously flown two NASA missions: an 11-day mission on the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2009 and a shift of 167 days on the International Space Station in 2014 and 2015.

Wilmore and his wife, Deanna, are originally from Tennessee. Now, the couple and their two daughters, Daryn and Logan, live in Texas.

During the September call, Wilmore cited a Bible verse about gaining strength from adversity as "how I feel about all of this."

He later added, "We deal with all types of difficulties in all types of situations and it builds a great deal of fortitude and it builds a great deal of character."

• The Getty Villa survived the Palisades fire, the worst in Los Angeles history.
• The villa shows how homeowners can protect their homes through construction choices and yard work.
• Anti-fire tricks include trimming low-hanging branches, installing double-pane windows, and cleaning gutters.

The Getty Villa is one of the most luxurious properties in the Pacific Palisades.

It's a sprawling estate and museum featuring a replica of an ancient Roman villa that was buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

Now it's one of the sole surviving properties in its neighborhood after the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history, the Palisades fire, tore through in January.

Since then, wildfires also have ripped through South Carolina and Long Island. It's as good a time as ever to brush up on protecting your home, and the Getty's survival offers a few lessons.

The villa is owned by the J. Paul Getty Trust, which has the largest museum endowment in the world at more than $8 billion in 2023. Needless to say, it has more resources than the typical homeowner.

Still, the anti-fire measures at the Getty follow basic principles that people can apply in their own homes: fire-resistant construction and defensible space.

First thing's first: The Getty Villa is made of concrete and travertine.

Those materials are virtually fire-proof. Essentially, the villa was "built like a vault," Les Borsay, the facility's emergency preparedness specialist, told Business Insider.

Of course, most homes aren't pure concrete, but consider it when you're building a driveway or fence.

In urban conflagrations like the ones that ripped through Los Angeles in January, a wood fence or mulch landscaping can be the fuel that brings the fire to your house.

A fire-resistant roof can make a huge difference too, since embers accumulate there.

At the Getty Villa, roofs are made of tile. Wood shake or shingles, of course, are the most flammable roofing material. An ideal fire-resistant roof is made of asphalt, clay tiles, or concrete tiles, according to the California state fire agency, Cal Fire.

Then there are the openings into a home: windows, doors, and vents.

If enough embers get in through openings, or if a window breaks from the heat, fire can easily start inside the home.

That's why double-pane windows are the choice of fire-resistant construction experts like Clark Stevens, an architect working with the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains.

The Getty Villa has fire-rated doors, but homeowners can up their anti-fire game by installing a good seal around their doors.

Don't forget the garage door, too.

"It's bigger than any window in your house, usually, so these edges are really important," Stevens told BI as he showed off the garage-door seal at a model home he's built in the Santa Monica mountains.

Since people often use garages as storage spaces, they're also often full of flammable items. They can be a huge vulnerability if they're not properly sealed.

Vents into the Getty Villa's buildings are fitted with mesh to prevent embers from flying in.

Installing metal mesh screening with 1/8-inch spacing — or, better yet, 1/16-inch — can prevent embers from accumulating inside an attic or crawlspace and starting a fire inside your home.

The Getty Villa has a fancy water-supply system that's not a realistic option for most homeowners.

It involves a 50,000-gallon tank of water deep underground, a system of pipes and fire hydrants, and sprinklers throughout all the buildings on the property.

However, simple, cheap measures also helped save the villa, like trimming low-hanging tree branches.

According to Borsay, the groundskeeping team regularly cleared tree branches up to six feet above the ground.

On the hillside where fire traveled down toward the villa, in this photo, you can see where flames burned up the trunks of trees, but not into their leafy crowns. That helps prevent fire from jumping tree to tree, spreading more quickly.

"Nine out of 10 times, this boils down to two words: yard work," Pat Durland, an instructor for the National Fire Protection Association, told BI in 2023.

Flying embers can ignite plants or leaves in the yard or a roof gutter, which can then ignite your home. That's where defensible space comes in.

Experts recommend maintaining a five-foot zone around your house that's free of dry vegetation or other highly flammable materials.

The forest "may be showering us with embers, but what's burning our homes down and forcing us to run and evacuate is human fuels," Durland, who has 30 years of federal wildfire management experience, told BI after the Palisades fire.

"It's bark mulch, it's ornamental grasses. It's structures that are readily flammable" — all things humans can change.

That applies to other fuel sources, too, like cars.

A vehicle that goes up in flames can quickly ignite nearby structures, such as a car in a driveway helping fire spread to a house's outer wall.

Cal Fire recommends keeping vehicles at least five feet away from the house.

At the Getty, staff simply didn't want their cars to burn, so they moved them into the underground parking garage.

The Getty Villa has lots of vegetation, but staff keep the gardens well-watered and spaced apart, at a distance from the building itself.

After the five-foot no-fuel zone, Cal Fire recommends homeowners maintain a 30-foot "lean, clean, and green" zone.

"You are where the rubber meets the road. The things you do on your house and around your house are going to make the difference," Durland said.

That's certainly on display at the Getty Villa. It's still standing after the most destructive fire in the region's history because of its builders' construction choices and diligent groundskeeping.

• High schooler Matteo Paz won $250,000 for discovering 1.5 million new space objects with AI.
• Paz built an AI algorithm to search data from a NASA space telescope for objects like black holes.
• His discoveries could help solve one of the universe's biggest mysteries.

When Matteo Paz scored a high school internship at the California Institute of Technology, the scientists there gave him the daunting task of manually sorting reams of data from a NASA mission.

It was "classic intern work," Paz, an 18-year-old from Pasadena, California, told Business Insider. "The very menial, tedious, dirty tasks that require a lot of time."

Instead of manually sifting through the data, Paz built an AI algorithm to do it for him. Ultimately, he discovered 1.5 million new objects in space, including supernovae and supermassive black holes.

On Tuesday, he won $250,000 in the Regeneron Science Talent Search for his efforts.

Every year the competition casts a net across the nation for high schoolers doing the type of research you might expect from graduate students. This year Paz snagged first place out of nearly 2,500 entrants.

"Surprised isn't a strong enough word," Paz said shortly after the award ceremony. "I didn't even give a thought to what I'd say to people if I'd won."

The objects in Paz's catalog aren't just plain old stars or planets. They're all variable objects, meaning they change dramatically, violently, and often unpredictably. A black hole, for example, can emit powerful jets that vary in brightness depending on how much material it's gobbling up or how fast it's spinning.

That makes these objects a wealth of information about some of the universe's most befuddling mysteries. For example, they can be used to measure how quickly the universe is expanding from the Big Bang — a puzzle scientists are still trying to solve, which could rewrite physics.

Most of the objects Paz discovered are "candidates," meaning further study is required for scientists to confirm what Paz's analysis suggests they are.

Luckily, astronomers are already digging into his catalog.

Building an AI to scan the sky

Paz needed his machine-learning algorithm to comb through nearly 200 terabytes of data from a 10-year infrared survey of the entire sky by NASA's NEOWISE space telescope.

Looking in the infrared — wavelengths invisible to the human eye — the NEOWISE mission searched for asteroids and comets near Eart. Infrared wavelengths, however, can also reveal objects deep in space that are shrouded in interstellar dust.

Even though NEOWISE wasn't designed to look for such objects, Paz thought he could tease them out of the data with his AI algorithm.

"Prior to Matteo's work, no one had tried to use the entire (200-billion-row) table to identify and classify all of the significant variability that was there," Davy Kirkpatrick, who was Paz's mentor at Caltech, told BI in an email.

Other surveys had tried to comb through NEOWISE data for specific types of variable objects, he added.

At the end of the summer program, "we were so impressed with his results that we hired him part-time at Caltech to finish the catalog," Kirkpatrick said.

Paz said a lot of that work was him "in a dark room, eye bags heavy, looking at my computer, trying to solve a bug." Sometimes he worked out math problems on a whiteboard at Caltech. He also consulted a variety of astrophysicists and astronomers.

Once the algorithm was ready though, it blew him away.

Making 1.5 million new discoveries

In order to analyze all 200 terabytes of data, Paz divided up the data into 13,000 equal parts.

The algorithm analyzed miniscule changes in infrared radiation to identify variable space objects and sort them into different classes, such as black holes or double-star systems. In some constellations, the algorithm was discovering more objects than anticipated.

"That was where I first started to see a lot of promise in the project," Paz said.

In the end, he surveyed over 450 million objects in the sky and identified 1.9 million that may be variable objects like black holes or supernovae. Of those, 1.5 million had never been cataloged before — they were new discoveries.

"It's very beautiful. Not just that number — it's a big number that obviously makes you proud — but when you visualize the data," Paz said.

Here's that visualization, plotting all the candidate objects he discovered:

"You can see the Milky Way, you can see satellite galaxies, you can see Andromeda, you can see star-forming regions," Paz said. "Even though it's a very one-dimensional view of the universe, just plotting a point at every discovery we've made, we can really see the intricacies and the glory of the night sky."

Now an infrared research group at Caltech is already using his catalog, called VarWISE, to study dual-star systems in the distant universe. They've already found dozens of star systems in VarWISE that weren't previously detected, Kirkpatrick said. He added that the research helps them calculate the mass of distant alien planets.

Paz is submitting the catalog for publication in the Astrophysical Journal later this year. The catalog has not yet gone through the peer-review process, but the algorithm itself was peer-reviewed and published in the Astronomical Journal in November.

"The variable candidates that he's uncovered will be widely studied and illustrate the enduring value of astronomical surveys," Amy Mainzer, a scientist who led the NEOWISE mission, told BI in an email.

"It's clear that he is simply a unique talent — smart, hardworking, and with a crazy ability to assimilate newfound knowledge into new ideas for studying the universe," Kirkpatrick said.

From LA fires to the Big Bang

As for Paz and his $250,000, the next frontier is college. He said he's been accepted at Stanford University, and is keeping his mind open about potential career paths.

Just weeks before flying to Washington, DC for the awards ceremony, Paz woke up in his Pasadena home to see flames outside the window. The Eaton fire traveled so quickly that he had received no official warning. After evacuations and several days of fire, his family's home was spared.

"It really gives you a new perspective," he said. "I have a new appreciation for the problems that I have the privilege not to worry about."

Now he's pondering the possibility of putting an infrared telescope into Earth orbit — this time to monitor Earth itself for emerging fires.

More immediately, though, Paz wants to use his NEOWISE findings to study the elusive expansion rate of the universe, starting from the Big Bang, and hopefully help scientists solve the biggest mystery in cosmology.

"It will either contribute to the resolution of a very contentious topic in current research, or it's going to reveal something truly foundational about the origins of the universe," Paz said.

• The Getty Villa survived the Pacific Palisades fire, aided by its construction and technology.
• The museum's staff also spent days protecting the property and its artifacts from flames and smoke.
• Photos from the Getty Villa after the fire show what it takes to keep an at-risk estate safe.

When fire razed the Pacific Palisades in January, the Getty Villa proved itself to be practically impenetrable.

Built like a fortress and outfitted with state-of-the-art firefighting infrastructure, this museum, a replica of an ancient Roman estate, remained standing as nearby homes burned down.

The facility's emergency preparedness specialist, Les Borsay, gave Business Insider a tour of the villa just weeks after he and a team of about 17 employees fought the flames encroaching on the property.

"It's not luck that this place is still here," he said.

In an era of megafires that can threaten urban areas like Los Angeles, the Getty Villa shows what it can take to keep an at-risk estate safe.

The Palisades fire sped down a hillside toward the Getty Villa on January 7, starting days of firefighting.

"It was a little shocking how fast it moved," said Borsay, who was on-site when the fire broke out.

The museum is closed to visitors on Tuesdays, so there were no guests to evacuate.

The villa is a museum of the J. Paul Getty Trust. It houses a collection of ancient Greek and Roman art.

The trust possesses the largest endowment of any museum in the world, estimated at more than $8 billion in 2023. It also includes the Getty Center, an art museum 13 miles away in the Brentwood area, which has survived its own brushes with fire.

Most buildings on the property are made of concrete with a tile roof, which is quite fire-resistant.

"Everybody always told me about the James Bond-like construction of our sites," Katherine E. Fleming, the president and CEO of the Getty Trust, said in a press release after the fire. "And then I actually saw it in action. It is pretty astonishing."

Still, the facility staff had already sprung into action when they heard a fire had started in the Palisades that morning.

They wanted to prevent as many spot fires as possible — ignitions of vegetation, cars, or smaller wood structures — and protect the museum's art from smoke or changes in humidity.

Staff also moved cars into the underground concrete parking garage.

They taped up doors to prevent smoke from seeping into rooms where ancient artwork is kept.

The particulate matter in smoke can damage art and ancient artifacts.

They shut off the museum's HVAC system to outside air.

If pressure indoors was lower than pressure outdoors, the system could suck in smoke.

The fire was approaching the Ranch House, which came with the property when J. Paul Getty bought it after World War II.

He added a second floor and filled the house with his growing art collection.

All vents into the house's attic area are fitted with mesh, Borsay said, to prevent embers from flying in and starting fires inside.

Ignition-prevention experts have told Business Insider they recommend homeowners install noncombustible, eighth-inch mesh screening on all vents on the outside of their homes.

Still, the fire's proximity made Borsay nervous until the Los Angeles Fire Department dropped water to snuff it out.

Fire trucks went in and out of the villa that day because of its central location and 50,000-gallon underground water tank.

"If we have a place that's safe, a place with water, they're going to come in and use it to be able to protect us and our surrounding area," Borsay said.

Sharing the water is the neighborly thing to do, he said, but also, "if our neighbors start going down, that could impact us."

Fire hydrants across the museum estate can help fight any fires on-site. They draw from the underground water tank, which feeds automatic sprinklers inside the Getty buildings.

Staff members took turns putting on N95s and goggles, grabbing fire extinguishers, and spending up to 30 minutes outside spraying spot fires. None of them were trained firefighters, but they all had basic fire extinguisher training.

Bushes, vines, and trees were catching fire from all the flying embers. Putting out those fires early helped prevent the flames from spreading.

Borsay said everybody was allowed to leave but many people chose to stay behind to protect the estate and its ancient statues and artifacts.

"This is everybody's shared cultural history that we're the stewards of," he said.

Unlike the Ranch House, the villa building was "built like a vault," Borsay said.

The villa's concrete and travertine construction makes its walls virtually unburnable.

"Concrete's lovely. The brutalists were right," Borsay said.

Getty had the villa constructed in the 1960s and '70s as a replica of the Villa dei Papiri in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum.

In AD 79, the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius buried the city and the villa.

"He knew that this place burned," Borsay said of J. Paul Getty. "I think that that's part of the reason why it was built the way it was."

Fire is a natural part of the Santa Monica mountains' ecosystem, so brush fires are common.

Fire-rated doors also protect the artworks and artifacts inside the building.

"You can imagine some of our lenders were a little concerned," Borsay said, so he sent them videos of the art inside to show it was safe.

When fire burned through a corridor of trees on the estate, Borsay wasn't worried about the villa building itself.

He was, however, keeping an eye on a nearby elevator shaft.

"All around this elevator it was just huge flames. That was probably the part I was most concerned about," Borsay said.

It's an outdoor elevator, going from the estate's entrance to the outdoor auditorium, but it's also connected to indoor areas. So if fire had gotten into the elevator, it could have spread inside an auxiliary building.

Windows are another major vulnerability for any structure, so keeping them clear of foliage is crucial.

Borsay said the museum groundskeepers had been careful about that.

Landscaping is key to preventing the spread of fire.

Wildfires often spread to new buildings through embers falling and gathering in flammable materials — like dry bushes, firewood piles, or dead leaves clogging roof gutters.

That's why ignition experts recommend keeping up with yard work and maintaining a 5-foot fuel-free zone around a house or building.

The museum has two gardens. Both were well watered, so even as embers rained down, they didn't burn.

"We kept an eye on it, but I was less concerned about it," Borsay said. "And again, even if this area burns, it's going to be pretty safe inside."

The villa emerged ashy, but none of its structures burned. The Palisades fire burned for 24 days.

Getty staff members began the long process of replacing damaged irrigation and sprinkler equipment, cleaning up ash, and monitoring the facility for looters or new fires.

Flames even reemerged on a hill near the parking lot a week after the fire had passed. Embers had been smoldering in the dirt.

By the time Business Insider visited the facility in February, most of the ash had already been cleared.

There's still a lot of work to do. Conservators are assessing the art to ensure it wasn't damaged. The surrounding area is undergoing its own cleanup and rebuilding process. It's unclear when the museum will reopen.

Even so, the property is a world away from when it was covered in ash and soot.

"It's amazing how clean it looks like right now," Borsay said, "because I'll tell you in the days after, it just was a serious mess."

• SpaceX's Starship exploded after spinning out of control during its eighth launch to space.
• An amateur astronomer took a stunning video of Starship spiraling and falling from space in flames.
• The footage shows how Starship created a space-debris hazard over southern Florida.

SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket spiraled out, fell from space, and exploded spectacularly after its eighth launch on Thursday.

SpaceX lost the video feed from Starship and cut off its livestream after the vehicle started tumbling, but Scott Ferguson in Sarasota, Florida was recording the whole thing with a telescope.

His unique video footage shows Starship's demise in detail. It also shows what a space-debris hazard the incident created, causing the Federal Aviation Administration to activate its space-debris protocol and briefly ground flights at airports in Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach. If chunks of Starship came raining down, the FAA said, it didn't want planes in the way.

In Ferguson's video, below, Starship creates a bright, ghostly spiral in the sky with wisps of flame.

After about 45 seconds, the spiral becomes a fiery streak as the Starship plummets.

Ferguson, who has a neuroscience PhD and records space footage for his YouTube channel Astronomy Live, told Business Insider he had a camera and a telescope trained on Starship throughout its launch.

Suddenly, SpaceX's webcast showed Starship tumbling and beginning to fall from space. It was likely to explode any minute.

Ferguson told BI he realized in that moment that the software he used to guide his telescope was lagging behind Starship's actual position. He scanned the horizon and saw a bright flare in the southwestern sky. It looked like Starship was blowing up, bright enough for him to see with the naked eye.

He grabbed the joystick controlling his telescope and pointed it at the dying spaceship. By the time he had Starship in his telescope's sights, mere seconds later, he said, it was already almost exactly due south.

"It goes very quickly," Ferguson said.

He kept following it as it arced across the sky, traversing from the Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean as it fell from space.

By the end of his footage, just a few minutes later, the blaze of Starship had disappeared below the southeastern horizon.

Ferguson was disappointed to see Starship explode, but pleased with his footage.

"I'm a fan of any big rocket," Ferguson said, adding that he watched most of the Space Shuttle launches growing up.

NASA is counting on this vehicle to land astronauts on the moon for the first time since the Apollo era, a mission which it aims to fly in 2027.

However, this was Starship's second flight in a row to explode before it finished reaching space.

"It gives me a lot of concern for what that timeline's going to look like," Ferguson said.

Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, said on X that the incident was "a minor setback" and another ship would be ready to fly in four to six weeks.

• SpaceX's Starship hasn't totally stuck the landing yet, and the space industry is watching closely.
• That's because Starship is key to opening the moon for business.
• Companies need the rocket's heft and reusability to launch moon mining and tourism.

SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket screamed past the Texas skies only to spin out of control just as it reached space on Thursday.

The vehicle lost contact with ground controllers, fell from space, and exploded, triggering ground stops at airports in southern Florida. It was the second flight in a row where Starship exploded on ascent, which could be a significant setback.

As with every Starship test flight, the entire space industry was watching with bated breath.

The lunar gold rush is coming, space experts say, and it needs a fully functional Starship.

Leroy Chiao, a retired NASA astronaut who consulted for SpaceX on its Safety Advisory Panel for 12 years, called Starship "the most exciting thing" since the Apollo era and the construction of the International Space Station.

"I don't think the regular person really understands what a technological leap Starship is," Eric Berger, the author of two books about SpaceX, previously told BI.

It's a larger, fully reusable version of the rocket that flew humans to the moon, he added, "and it's just really audacious."

Why Starship is critical for building on the moon

Though the moon isn't Elon Musk's favorite Starship destination — he's got his eyes on Mars — it may be the rocket's greatest business appeal.

That's because it's designed to fly super-heavy payloads all the way to the moon, land on the moon's surface, then launch itself back toward Earth.

On top of that, both stages of the rocket are meant to be reusable, which could slash the cost of spaceflight "by an order of magnitude," Brendan Rosseau, a teaching fellow at Harvard Business School who wrote a book about the space industry and now works for SpaceX competitor Blue Origin, previously told BI.

That reduced-price super-heavy lift is what many companies need to launch their biggest plans for the moon: tourism and mining operations.

Just look at the two Texas-based companies that landed spacecraft on the moon this week.

The Blue Ghost mission by Firefly Aerospace landed on the moon on Sunday, loaded with experiments to test the lunar surface and soil. Intuitive Machines landed on the moon for the second time on Thursday. Its Athena lander is carrying a cellular network and a drilling experiment.

Both missions aimed to test technologies that will be critical for mining on the moon — although Athena landed sideways, couldn't get enough sunlight on its solar panels, and ended its mission early.

To eventually mine ice and minerals on the moon, companies will need to fly in heavy equipment like harvesters, Steve Altemus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines, told BI in December.

"You have to take larger masses up to the moon to have a sustainable human presence on the moon. Habitats, human landers — there's a lot of elements that have to go into sustaining humans on the moon," Altemus said.

How strong is Starship?

Starship will be able to carry up to 100 metric tons (110 tons) to the moon, SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a NASA press conference in 2019. That's about 16 James Webb Space Telescopes, or about one quarter of the space station.

To put that in perspective, the Saturn V rockets that launched the Apollo missions could only carry 50 tons to the moon.

"In order to have a sustained economy around the moon, I think we need a heavy lift launch vehicle," Altemus said.

Starship's competition

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket could be up to the super-heavy lunar lift task, too, but it's further behind in its development than Starship and only designed to reuse its booster.

NASA has its own super-heavy lift vehicle, called the Space Launch System, which has flown an uncrewed test flight around the moon.

However, SLS is so behind schedule and over budget that one of its strongest supporters recently called for an "off-ramp" and Boeing is anticipating the program may be canceled, Ars Technica has reported.

The agency has already contracted Starship to land its next astronauts on the moon, putting boots on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

Starship still needs to stick its landing

SpaceX still needs to prove that Starship can fulfill its promise.

So far, the launch system has flown to space a few times. Its Super Heavy booster has returned to Earth in one piece, caught by a pair of "chopsticks" on the launch tower.

The Starship spaceship itself has returned from suborbital heights to land on the ground in one piece, but has only returned from space to splash down in the ocean.

Returning from a spaceflight to land on the ground will be a key step in the vehicle's development. That's how SpaceX will someday recycle Starships and fly them again and again.

NASA plans for Starship to put its first astronauts on the moon in 2027. Musk said on X in September that Starship could fly its first crewed flights to Mars in four years.

Both NASA and SpaceX have historically set overly optimistic timelines for those milestones, and both have repeatedly moved their dates back.

"We don't know where Starship is going. Maybe it will never be fully reusable. Maybe they'll never nail rapid reuse of the upper stage," Berger said. Even so, no launch system has ever been so powerful and been able to reuse its booster.

"I think it's going to be revolutionary almost no matter what," he said.

• A total lunar eclipse will occur overnight Thursday, turning the moon's surface red.
• This blood moon turns red because all the sunsets and sunrises on Earth are projected onto it.
• Watch Earth's shadow "bite" the moon then change its color for the first time in two years.

When the moon gets spooky on Thursday night, don't panic. It's not an omen, it's just an eclipse.

Earth will cast its shadow across the moon, turning its surface red as our planet, our moon, and our sun align. That's why total lunar eclipses are sometimes called the "blood moon."

This will be the first total lunar eclipse in nearly two-and-a-half years.

The red color comes from the light of all the sunrises and sunsets happening across Earth.

That's because, even though the Earth is casting its shadow on the moon, the sun is still passing through Earth's atmosphere along the edge of that shadow. Those are all the regions where day is transitioning into night, and vice versa.

The atmosphere bends the sunlight toward the moon. Blue light gets scattered in the atmosphere, which is why the sky is blue. Only the red portion of the light spectrum cuts through to reach the lunar surface.

"It's as if all the world's sunrises and sunsets are projected onto the moon," NASA wrote in a blog post.

When and how to see the blood moon

Depending on what time zone you're in, the eclipse will occur the evening of March 13th or very early on the morning of March 14th.

The Earth's shadow will begin to creep over the moon, creating a partial lunar eclipse, at 1:09 a.m. ET.

To the naked eye, according to NASA, "it looks like a bite is being taken out of the lunar disk."

The parts of the moon that are eclipsed will be dark until 2:26 a.m. ET, when the eclipse becomes total. Earth's shadow will completely swallow the moon and cast it in red.

Use binoculars or a telescope to see the eclipse more clearly and peer at the moon's briefly-red craters. For taking photos, NASA recommends putting your phone on a tripod and setting the camera to take long exposures of at least a few seconds.

Totality will last a little over an hour, until 3:31 a.m. ET when the Earth's shadow continues passing over, creating several more hours of partial eclipse. The moon will be completely back to normal by 6 a.m.

If you miss it, don't worry because this is the first of three. There will be another total lunar eclipse in September, and then another in March.

• SpaceX's Starship spun out of control and fell out of contact just as it reached space on Thursday.
• Starship was supposed to deploy mock Starlink satellites and test its structural limits during reentry.
• The FAA grounded flights in southern Florida because of the risk of debris raining down from space.

SpaceX's Starship lost control and started spinning wildly just as it reached space on Thursday, causing major flight disruptions in Florida over the possibility of falling debris.

SpaceX lost contact with Starship and confirmed in a post on X that the spaceship exploded, using its classic euphemism: "a rapid unscheduled disassembly."

That means the ship will most likely rain debris down on Earth along its predesignated flight path. The Federal Aviation Administration closed airspace over southern Florida and issued a ground stop to airports in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach.

According to the FAA website, the incident led to delays at Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and even Philadelphia and Newark airports.

Starship was flying well until about 20 seconds before it was supposed to cut off its engines, which is a major milestone it has passed on multiple flights and is basically the last step of getting itself into space.

That's when some of the ship's engines suddenly went out early, and then it began to spin, said Dan Huot, a SpaceX webcast host.

"We have some more to learn about this vehicle," Huot said on the company's livestream of the flight.

This is the second Starship flight in a row to explode as it climbed to space, taking Elon Musk's biggest ambitions another step back.

Eric Berger, a journalist who has written two books about the rocket company, called the incident "a serious setback for SpaceX."

Starship's second space debris incident

SpaceX said it "immediately began coordination with safety officials" after the ship lost contact.

The incident came just a month after a Starship exploded and rained down huge chunks of debris in the Caribbean, causing the FAA to divert aircraft in the area and triggering an investigation.

"We've got some practice at this now," Huot said. "We've got a lot of measures in place like debris response areas where we coordinate very closely with air traffic control. We have a lot of measures put before we ever launch a rocket to make sure that we're keeping the public safe. Those worked last time and they're actively in work right now."

After the January flight, SpaceX made upgrades to avoid the fuel leaks and fire in the ship's "attic area," which it pinpointed as the cause of the explosion. The company got reapproval from the FAA and flew again Thursday, only to lose Starship again.

"We will review the data from today's flight test to better understand root cause," SpaceX said in its X post.

The future of SpaceX and the space industry at large is on the line.

Starship's many successes

The Starship-Super Heavy launch system — consisting of the lower-stage Super Heavy booster and upper-stage Starship rocket — promises to be the largest, most powerful, and first-ever fully reusable orbital rocket on Earth.

Its prowess could help cut the cost of spaceflight by an order of magnitude, but not anytime soon if SpaceX can't keep Starship in one piece.

Starship has previously flown to space successfully, landed in the ocean with its engines firing, and seen its Super Heavy booster return to Earth and lower itself into a pair of chopstick-like arms on a landing tower.

On Thursday's flight, just a few minutes before Starship's demise, the booster landed flawlessly again.

As the booster slowed itself from supersonic speed, a thunder-like sonic boom sounded across the Texas coastal plain.

On the livestream shortly before launch, the SpaceX communications manager Chris Gebhardt said those booms were like "a spaceship telling everybody it wants to be reused."

Starship, it seems, isn't making the same declaration.

SpaceX was going to test Starship's limits on the way back

The rocket's successes so far have been promising for SpaceX's plans to recover and reuse both Starship and the Super Heavy booster. SpaceX had hoped Thursday's flight would take things a step further.

The flight had two primary goals: to deploy its first payload of mock Starlink satellites in space and to run experiments in Starship's reentry and descent to Earth. It never got the chance.

The flight was intended to test the limits of Starship's structure on its return to Earth, with some of its protective tiles removed from vulnerable areas for stress testing. By contrast, for the ascent to space, SpaceX had made upgrades to fortify Starship.

Musk founded the company in 2002 with the goal of bringing humans to Mars. Starship is the vehicle that's supposed to make that happen.

Musk has said that in addition to hauling astronauts and materials to the moon and conducting rapid point-to-point transport on Earth, Starship could carry 1 million people to Mars, along with all the necessary cargo for them to build a city there.

• Firefly Aerospace landed its Blue Ghost spacecraft on the moon on Sunday.
• Moon landings were once exclusive to government agencies, but Firefly is now the second company to do it.
• The Blue Ghost mission, funded by NASA, includes experiments to study lunar dust and moon GPS.

Firefly Aerospace became the second company to ever land on the moon on Sunday when its Blue Ghost spacecraft plopped onto the gray dust of a lunar plain known as Mare Crisium.

Moon landings have long been the sole domain of government space agencies, but no longer.

Blue Ghost is one of a series of commercial missions ushering in a new era, with companies joining the race to the moon in a bid to build new industries of space tourism and mining.

Though the Blue Ghost mission is funded by NASA and carries 10 payloads for the agency, Firefly built the hardware and coded the software that stuck the landing.

"This is such an incredible feat for Firefly, NASA, our nation, and the world, as we pave the way for a lasting lunar presence," a Firefly team member said on a livestream after they confirmed the landing.

Why many try and fail to land on the moon

Landing on the moon is a nail-biting maneuver, and engineers often describe it as "15 minutes of terror."

As it plummets towards the lunar surface, a moon lander must continually sense the ground below it, calculate its altitude, point itself toward a safe landing spot, orient itself to land upright, deploy its legs, and slow itself down at just the right time.

There's no time for sending commands back and forth, so the spacecraft must execute this complex series of tasks without the help of the humans who built it.

"It's just the first time it's completely on its own, making decisions," Ray Allensworth, the director of Firefly's spacecraft program, told Business Insider in mid-February. "I think a lot of us will be holding our breath, you know, lighting a candle."

Many have tried and failed. The moon is littered with crashed spacecraft from India, Russia, an Israeli nonprofit, and the Japanese company ispace.

And the US company Astrobotic had to completely forgo its landing attempt last January after a valve failure caused a propellant leak in orbit.

An elite few have landed softly on the moon: the Apollo-era US, the Soviet Union, China, Japan, India, and the Texas-based company Intuitive Machines, which landed its Odysseus spacecraft a little off-kilter but in one piece a year ago.

Now Firefly has joined their esteemed ranks.

"Even just talking about it kind of sends a little chill down your spine," Allensworth said ahead of the landing.

What Blue Ghost will do on the moon

If all goes well, Firefly's mission will operate for about 14 Earth days, which is a full lunar day. The landing site, Mare Crisium, is in the northeast quadrant of the near side of the moon. It's relatively free of craters and boulders, making it a perfect site to study the lunar surface.

The experiments onboard the lander include a drill to probe just beneath the lunar surface and a vacuum to suck up lunar dust — both from Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin — as well as a demo computer from Montana State University that's designed to withstand extreme radiation, and an Italian experiment that's "like GPS for the moon," Allensworth said.

At the end of the lunar day, Blue Ghost plans to observe the sunset and study how the sun causes moon dust to levitate, a mysterious phenomenon observed by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.

Even before landing, Allensworth said, "I think we have a lot of things to be proud of. We've returned a really significant amount of data for our payloads and from the spacecraft."

All of that data will inform the company's next mission, which aims to land on the far side of the moon in 2026.

"Ultimately, our goal is that we're going to the moon at least yearly and hopefully increase that cadence over time," Allensworth said.

• The Trump administration let go hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Thursday.
• One of NOAA's core functions is weather forecasting through the National Weather Service.
• Meteorologists say that the staff cuts will degrade weather forecasts and public safety.

Meteorologists are warning that weather forecasts will suffer as the Trump administration lays off hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"We will get it wrong a lot more frequently," Ella Dorsey, a meteorologist for Atlanta News First, posted on X.

That's because one of NOAA's core functions is gathering weather data across the country, producing weather forecasts, and issuing warnings. The National Weather Service, National Hurricane Center, and National Tsunami Warning Center are all run by NOAA.

Your local weather station gets its data from the NWS. The weather app on your phone is using NWS forecasts. The Federal Aviation Administration relies on NWS meteorologists and data to route planes around storm systems.

"All of the widely consumed weather information through the private sector relies on this NOAA backbone," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist who specializes in California weather, said in a livestream on Thursday evening. "These are the people who prevent weather disasters from being much worse than they are in this country."

A Trump administration official told Business Insider that 5% of NOAA's staff was let go. With about 12,000 people working for the agency, that would be about 600 people let go. The official said that NWS meteorologists were largely spared.

When reached for confirmation, representatives of both NOAA and NWS declined to discuss personnel matters.

Meteorologists say lives are at stake

"Critical national public safety assets are being weakened," Levi Cowan, who runs the hurricane forecast blog Tropical Tidbits, told Business Insider in an email. He said that would likely lead to "degraded services to the public."

Cowan added that he worried an understaffed NOAA could lead to the discontinuation of datasets or reduced maintenance work on weather infrastructure that ultimately helps warn people in the path of life-threatening weather events.

Understaffed regional NWS field offices could also struggle to respond to weather events and coordinate with local emergency managers.

In an online post, Cowan called the layoffs "insane" and added that "Many of you reading this may knowingly or unknowingly be alive today because of their work, or know someone who is."

Other meteorologists, like Ethan Clark of North Carolina's Weather Authority, were even more direct.

"Let me be clear, people will die because of this," Clark wrote on X.

The value of the National Weather Service

The NWS has had an annual budget of about $1.3 billion, give or take, for the last three years. That's about $4 per taxpayer, according to Swain — the cost of a cup of coffee.

A recent report from the American Meteorological Society found that NWS weather forecasting produced a value of $102.1 billion in 2022. That's about a 73-to-1 return on investment.

"Collectively they are one of, if not the best bang for your taxpayer buck out there," Jim Cantore, a veteran meteorologist at The Weather Channel, wrote on X as rumors of impending layoffs churned earlier this week.

He was responding to another veteran meteorologist, James Spann, who had shared a post urging politicians to support the NWS.

"If NWS products and services are reduced, we all suffer… especially during times of life-threatening weather," Spann wrote.

• Intuitive Machines, Firefly Aerospace, and ispace are all on their way to attempt a moon landing.
• Three private missions at once is notable, and it's just the beginning of the moon opening for business.
• Here's why three companies are flying to the moon right now.

Three companies are flying missions to land on the moon right now, in the early stages of a mad dash for lunar wealth.

The moon may not be Mars-obsessed Elon Musk's favorite space destination, but many other entrepreneurs see it as an untapped economic opportunity.

That's why two Texas-based companies and one Japanese firm are flocking to the moon this month.

All three missions were launched aboard SpaceX rockets.

None of them are carrying human crews, but they all lay the groundwork for more complex operations in the future as the moon opens for business.

Intuitive Machines wants to mine the moon

The Texas-based company Intuitive Machines launched its second moon-landing mission, called IM-2, on Wednesday.

The company became the first commercial enterprise to land on the moon a year ago, but the new mission is taking its ambitions further. The mission includes a rover and a hopper, which carry experimental technology for GPS on the moon and a small drill to test the technology needed to one day mine minerals and ice beneath the lunar surface.

Water ice on the moon could be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel, while minerals like titanium or rare earth elements used in smartphones and computers could be sold back on Earth.

"The whole package of this mission is about prospecting," Steve Altemus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines, told Business Insider in December.

He added that eventually, he hopes to mine rare materials on the moon and bring them back to Earth.

Firefly Aerospace is testing lunar dust for NASA

For now, Intuitive Machines is the only company to ever successfully land softly (that is, without crashing) on the moon. Another Texas company, Firefly Aerospace, is gunning for second place this weekend.

Firefly's Blue Ghost mission is set to attempt its first moon landing on Sunday.

"I think a lot of us will be holding our breath, you know, lighting a candle," Ray Allensworth, the director of Firefly's spacecraft program, told BI.

If Blue Ghost succeeds, it will run experiments on the lunar surface for about two weeks, which is a full lunar day.

All in all, the spacecraft is carrying 10 payloads for NASA, mainly focusing on "what the surface of the moon looks like or feels like, trying to figure out the impacts of the regolith, how the dust interacts with materials, the temperatures under the surface, stuff like that," Allensworth said.

Japan's ispace wants people to live on the moon

Both Texas companies' moon landers are funded in part through NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

The third mission en route to the moon, though, is from the Japanese company ispace.

The company's Hakuto-R spacecraft previously tried to land on the moon in 2023, but ispace reported that the lander had miscalculated its altitude when it detected an unexpected crater rim on the lunar surface, causing it to plummet and crash.

Ispace is trying again with a new mission carrying a lander and a micro-rover. The mission, called M2, launched aboard the same Falcon 9 rocket as the Firefly Blue Ghost spacecraft on January 15. M2 is taking a more leisurely route to the moon, though, with its landing set for May or June. The new lander is named RESILIENCE.

Ispace touts a future where the moon and its water resources support "construction, energy, steel procurement, communications, transportation, agriculture, medicine, and tourism."

The ispace website also advocates for permanent human residence on the moon, saying that "by 2040 the moon will support a population of 1,000, with 10,000 people visiting every year."

It's going to take a lot more moon missions to bring that vision to life. For now, for all three missions, just sticking the landing would be a huge achievement.

• Norway's melting glaciers are revealing objects from the Stone Age, Iron Age, Medieval, and Viking eras.
• Some ancient artifacts are mysteries, but they still indicate trade routes through the mountains.
• Here's what Norway's glacial archaeologists found in the meltiest part of last summer.

Mysterious and fascinating artifacts are surfacing on melting glaciers across the planet.

From ancient human remains to strange wooden tools and statues, these objects are drawing archaeologists into the high, frozen mountains each year.

Norway is at the forefront of this emerging field of research, called glacial archaeology. With about 4,500 artifacts discovered, the country claims more than half of the planet's glacial archaeology findings, according to Espen Finstad, who co-leads the Norwegian program, called Secrets of the Ice.

Archaeologists there are piecing together clues about ancient industries and trade routes across the glaciers.

They just had one of their best field seasons yet. Here's what they found.

People have trekked over Norway's glaciers for thousands of years to sell and buy goods.

Ancient hunting, travel, and trade routes crossed the mountains between the Norwegian coast and inland areas since the Stone Age.

"We are lucky that some of these trade routes have gone over ice," Finstad told Business Insider.

Objects that ancient travelers left behind were frozen into the ice for centuries — until recent decades.

As humans have burned fossil fuels for energy, releasing heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, global temperatures have been rising for decades. Glaciers everywhere are melting, releasing the ancient artifacts preserved inside them.

Some of these objects look familiar, like this mitten.

Others, like this whisk, are quite different from what we know today.

The Lendbreen ice patch is the most fruitful site the archaeologists visit.

"There are so many treasures in the ice there," Finstad said.

Lendbreen was a common travel route during the Viking and Medieval eras. The archaeologists go there almost every year.

In the summer of 2024, heavy melting meant lots of new discoveries.

"The melting really came rapidly at the end of the season," Finstad said.

Finstad's team of about seven archaeologists visited nearly a dozen sites across the mountains to search for artifacts.

At Lendbreen, they used pack horses to bring gear up to the site and set up their camp.

They stayed there about nine days, Finstad said.

Their findings included "two of the best-preserved arrows we ever found," Finstad said.

One of them was just lying on top of the ice, waiting to be found. Usually there's a little excavation involved, but the archaeologists simply picked this arrow up.

"It's very seldom to find them that well preserved on the ice. So it was kind of a gift. It was very beautiful," Finstad said.

Arrows are abundant in the glaciers because reindeer hunting was "almost like an industry" in the Iron and Medieval Ages, Finstad said.

People hunted for their own food, of course, but also to sell in a market.

Arrows can hold clues about past societies.

For example, some arrowheads found on the glaciers have tips made from river mussels that must have come from far away, cluing researchers in to just how far people were traveling and trading over the ages.

Some of the prehistoric arrows Finstad's team found last season were so well-preserved they still had fletching.

Fletching is delicate and doesn't usually last thousands of years. These were rare findings.

Some items they find are just "strange," Finstad said.

Small bits of wood, leather, and textile are often impossible to identify.

Finstad estimated they had found about 50 such mysterious, small objects at Lendbreen in 2024.

"It's all kind of small things, daily life things from the Viking Age or older, which you don't find in other archaeology contexts at least in Norway, because it's gone. It degrades," Finstad said.

Heavy snow cut off the archaeologists' efforts — but now they know where to look this summer.

"We are excited to go back," Finstad said.

• The Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace is flying its first moon mission, called Blue Ghost.
• New photos show how far the spacecraft is traveling for its moon landing attempt on March 2.
• Photos like these are rare since NASA ended the Apollo program 52 years ago, but a new era is beginning.

A new mission to land on the moon is beaming back stunning photos that put our world into perspective.

Look closely at the above image. There are two worlds in the photo. The moon is a tiny dot in the distance, visible below Earth.

The photo comes from the uncrewed Blue Ghost spacecraft, built by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace. The mission is en route to descend to the lunar surface on March 2.

Success would make Firefly the second private company to ever land on the moon, just one year after a historic touchdown by Intuitive Machines.

The mission is a harbinger of a new era in space, where companies race to the moon to build the infrastructure for a future economy of lunar tourism, mining, and exploration.

Photos from the Blue Ghost spacecraft

The below image, which Firefly released on February 12, shows Earth reflecting off the spacecraft's solar panel. Believe it or not, the moon is in this photo, too. See it?

On its way to the moon, the spacecraft has crossed over 715,000 miles in space.

As it crept closer to the moon, the spacecraft conducted a critical engine burn to insert itself into lunar orbit, where it's set to hang out until it's time for landing.

A few hours after the burn, the spacecraft sent its first up-close images of the moon.

"I almost started crying because we're finally at the moon," Ray Allensworth, the director of Firefly's spacecraft program, told Business Insider.

Looking at the photos is "really surreal," she said.

Blue Ghost has 10 experiments and plans to capture a lunar sunset

Blue Ghost is carrying 10 experiments and instruments for NASA, including a system to collect samples of moon dust and a radiation-tolerant computer that will test whether the technology can survive the extreme radiation on the moon.

If the mission successfully lands on the moon, its payloads are set to operate for about 14 days, which is a complete lunar day.

If all goes to plan, one of its final acts will be to capture the lunar sunset, studying how the sun causes moon dust to levitate, a mysterious phenomenon observed by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.

Until then, Blue Ghost is orbiting the moon while its human operators prepare for landing.

Photos from fresh new spacecraft headed to the moon have been scarce since NASA ended the Apollo program, with no US moon landings since 1972 until last year's Intuitive Machines mission. These images could become common again, though, if Firefly has its way.

"Ultimately, our goal is that we're going to the moon at least yearly and hopefully increase that cadence over time," Allensworth said.