SpaceX

The stated goal of the mission was to encourage the democratisation of space by proving that the cosmos are accessible to crews that have neither been handpicked nor in training for years.

The crew vehicle, dubbed Resilience, is set for liftoff from Nasa's Kennedy Space Center atop one of Musk's reusable Falcon 9 rockets, with a five-hour targeted launch window.

The Europa Clipper mission will launch in October 2024 on a Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the total contract worth US$178 million.

The rocket will also carry cotton, a portable ultrasound device and a miniaturised human kidney to study the formation of kidney stones that tend to afflict astronauts in microgravity.

SpaceX boss Elon Musk has proposed an aggressive timeline of getting the first crew to the surface of Mars by 2026.

The rocket exploded a few minutes after landing and was thrown into the air following which it crashed back to the ground.

Executives at Facebook have ordered employees to create a version of Clubhouse, New York Times reports.

This was the second such accident after the last prototype of Starship met a similar fate in December.

In addition to the first commercial mission, SpaceX is scheduled to launch two more crewed flights for Nasa in 2021, and four cargo refuelling missions over the next 15 months.

Satellites are now very small due to components taken directly from consumer electronics such as smartphones.

Tesla billionaire Elon Musk is sending a team to Indonesia in January to look at potential investments.

But SpaceX founder Tesla's Elon Musk says they got all the data they needed.