CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A daredevil billionaire rocketed back into orbit Tuesday, aiming to perform the first private spacewalk and venture farther than anyone since NASA’s Apollo moonshots.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’re sending you hugs from the ground,” Launch Control radioed after the crew reached orbit. “May you make history and come home safely.”

Isaacman replied: “We wouldn’t be on this journey without all 14,000 of you back at SpaceX.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Experts say the Kremlin could include artificial intelligence (AI) in efforts to manipulate November’s presidential elections through influence schemes. 

The U.S. Department of Justice last week revealed indictments that were part of an ongoing investigation into alleged Russian government plots to try and influence American voters through a variety of disinformation campaigns. 

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed a major crackdown on influence pushed through state-run media and other online platforms – part of a campaign called “Doppleganger.” He focused on employees of Russian state-controlled media outlet RT, but other indictments released this week showed a wider scope and complexity to Russia’s initiatives.

The U.S. also seized more than two dozen internet domains related to the operation and the establishment of an Election Threats Task Force, which includes FBI Director Christopher Wray and top Justice Department officials, according to CBS News. 

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“This is deadly serious, and we are going to treat it accordingly,” Garland said while announcing the indictment alongside Wray on Wednesday.

Those indictments included the alleged use of AI tools used to create social media profiles “posing as U.S. (or other non-Russian citizens)” and create the impression of “a legitimate news media outlet’s website.” 

“Among the methods Doppelganger used to drive viewership to the cybersquatted and unique media domains was the deployment of “influencers” worldwide, paid social media advertisements (in some cases created using artificial intelligence tools), and the creation of social media profiles posing as U.S. (or other non-Russian) citizens to post comments on social media platforms with links to the cybersquatted domains,” the indictment stated. 

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Russia’s “Doppleganger” operation seeks to use deep fake content along with other methods to manipulate November’s presidential elections through influence schemes. (iStock)

The U.S. Department of the Treasury expanded on these allegations in an announcement that designated 10 individuals and two entities under the Office of Foreign Assets Control, allowing the U.S. to impose visa restrictions and a Rewards for Justice reward of up to $10 million relating to such operations. 

The Treasury reported that Russian state-sponsored actors have used generative AI deep fakes and disinformation “to undermine confidence in the United States’ election process and institutions.” 

The Treasury named Russian nonprofit Autonomous Non-Profit Organization (ANO) Dialog and ANO Dialog Regions as using “deep fake content to develop Russian disinformation campaigns,” including “fake online posts on popular social media accounts …. that would be composed of counterfeit documents, among other material, in order to elicit an emotional response from audiences.”

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ANO Dialog in late 2023 allegedly “identified U.S., U.K. and other figures as potential targets for deepfake projects.” The “War on Fakes” website served as a major outlet to disseminate this fake information, which also used bot accounts that targeted voting locations in the U.S. 2024 election.

Investigative journalist Christo Grozev believes the Kremlin was “losing to the West” in the early months of the invasion of Ukraine, which prompted the decision to use AI and “all kind of new methods to make it indistinguishable from the regular flow of information.” (Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Unfinished Live)

In an interview for PBS News Hour, Belgian investigative journalist Christo Grozev revealed that complaints over the “global propaganda effort by Russia” – which the Kremlin was “losing to the West” in the early months of the invasion of Ukraine – prompted the decision to use AI and “all kind of new methods to make it indistinguishable from the regular flow of information.” 

“They plan to do insertion of advertising, which is in fact hidden as news, and in this way bombard the target population with things that may be misconstrued as news, but are in fact advertising content,” Grozev explained. 

“They plan to disguise that advertising content on a person-to-person level as if it is content from their favorite news sites,” he warned. “Now, we haven’t seen that in action, but it’s an intent, and they claim they have developed the technology to do that.”

“They’re very explicit that they’re not going to use Russia-related platforms or even separate platforms,” he added. “They’re going to infiltrate the platform that the target already uses. And that is what sounds scary.”

The largest increases in emissions of the greenhouse gas come from China and Southeast Asia.

Concentrations of methane are rising at an unprecedented pace, jeopardising global climate goals, according to researchers.

The potent greenhouse gas, the second-largest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide, has increased by 20 percent over the past two decades despite global efforts to curb it, according to a study published by the Global Carbon Project.

In the past five years, methane concentrations have surged faster than “in any period since record-keeping began”, the study said. Increases are being primarily driven by coal mining, oil and gas production and use, cattle and sheep ranching, and decomposing food and organic waste.

In 2020, 41.8 million tonnes of methane entered the atmosphere, double the average amount added yearly in the 2010s, and over six times the average in the previous decade.

“Anthropogenic emissions have continued to increase in almost every other country in the world, with the exception of Europe and Australia, which show a slow declining trend,” Global Carbon Project’s executive director, Pep Canadell, told the AFP news agency.

The largest increases have come from China and Southeast Asia and are primarily linked to coal extraction, oil and gas production and landfills, the researchers found.

Rising methane pollution undermines efforts to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F), the study warns.

Global pledges ‘a mirage’?

The recent spike in emissions of the gas comes despite the “Global Methane Pledge“, which saw 150 countries commit to work towards cutting 2020 global emissions levels by 30 percent by 2030.

The goals of the pledge, notably not signed by China, Russia or India, “seem as distant as a desert oasis”, said Rob Jackson from Stanford University, the lead author of the study, which appeared in Environmental Research Letters. “We all hope they aren’t a mirage.”

Despite failing to sign the 2021 pledge, China plans to host a joint summit with the United States on greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide later this year at the United Nations climate change conference, raising hopes of broader climate action.