Good morning.
Thursday, Pi Day, in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 50. Sunrise is 7:05 and sunset 7:01 for 11h 55m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 23.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1903, Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge becomes the first national (federal) wildlife refuge in the U.S.:
Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge is a United StatesNational Wildlife Refuge (NWR), and part of the Everglades Headwaters NWR complex, located just off the western coast of North Hutchinson Island in the Indian River Lagoon east of Sebastian, Florida. The refuge consists of a 3-acre (12,000 m2) island that includes an additional 2.5 acres (10,000 m2) of surrounding water and is located off the east coast of Florida of the Indian River Lagoon. Established by an executive order of President Theodore Roosevelt on March 14, 1903, Pelican Island was the first National wildlife refuge in the United States.[3] It was created to protect egretsand other birds from extinction through plume hunting. The oldest government wildlife refuge of any kind in North America is the Lake Merritt Bird Refuge in Oakland, California. Oakland Mayor Samuel Merritt declared it a wildlife refuge for migrating birds in 1869. In 1870, the state of California designated Lake Merritt a state game refuge.
Today has begun as a gain for American technology, as SpaceX has conducted its third launch of Starship. Kenneth Chang and Michael Roston report Here is what to know about Thursday’s SpaceX launch:
SpaceX launched Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, on a journey part of the way around Earth. It was the rocket’s third test flight.
The nearly 400-foot-tall vehicle is being built to carry astronauts to the moon for NASA, and perhaps someday to send humans to Mars.
The vehicle flew twice last year from a SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Both flights ended within minutes, resulting in explosive events, providing useful data for SpaceX’s engineers as they aim to complete a full mission.
During this third trip, SpaceX is hoping to achieve a better performance for the rocket, reaching higher altitudes and perhaps even speeds that would be capable of carrying the vehicle to orbit.
Here’s what else you need to know about the flight:
- The launch began at 9:25 a.m. Eastern time, more than an hour into a 110-minute launch window that started at 8 a.m. Later starts during test flights are not uncommon. The company said it needed to clear boats from a safety zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and weather conditions did not prevent a liftoff.
….
- The Starship system consists of two stages — the Super Heavy rocket booster and the upper-stage spacecraft, which is also called Starship. The company intends both to be fully reusable in the future.
The ship was likely lost well after launch, but for today, it was the launch and higher altitude that mattered (as they were the key hurdles of this phase of the project).
Tornado in northeast Kansas captured on video: