NASA’s first chance at launching American astronauts into space from US soil in nine years has been postponed due to the threat of the launch triggering lightning strikes.
The launch would have seen the bullet-shaped Dragon capsule lift off from the same site as the Apollo moon missions decades ago.
The capsule was sitting atop a Falcon 9 rocket, both of them engineered by Elon Musk’s SpaceX team, before the call came through to abort the mission.
US hits 100,000 coronavirus deaths milestone. According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center the death toll climbed to 100,047 on Friday morning (AEST), accounting for more than 28 per cent of the world’s confirmed tally.
The accuracy of the numbers has been debated in the US.
The most recent death data is gathered through searches of preliminary reports that doctors send to state and local health departments. Those numbers appear on different websites, including those of government agencies, some news organisations and the widely shared Johns Hopkins site.
Also, US President Donald Trump has threatened to regulate or shut down social media companies, a day after Twitter attached a warning to some of his tweets prompting readers to fact check the president’s claims.
Mr Trump has again accused Twitter of bias, tweeting: “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”
The president, who has more than 80 million followers on Twitter, then added: “Clean up your act, NOW!!!!”
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