Israel awaits decision on Netanyahu corruption indictment

February 28, 2019

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's attorney general was expected to deliver a much-anticipated decision Thursday on whether to indict Benjamin Netanyahu on a series of corruption allegations, a momentous move that looks to shake up Israel's election campaign and potentially spell the end of the prime minister's illustrious political career.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit's aides said he was prepared to announce his decision after more than two years of intense investigations and deliberations. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement.

Police have recommended indicting Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three different cases. Mandelblit is expected to inform Netanyahu's lawyers he intends to indict pending a final hearing, though the exact charges are not yet clear. The hearing is expected to take place after the April 9 elections.

An indictment would mark the first time in Israeli history that a sitting prime minister has been charged with a crime. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert served time in prison for corruption, but had already resigned by the time he was charged.

Netanyahu doesn't look to go that quietly. He denies any wrongdoing and calls the various allegations a media-orchestrated witch hunt aimed at removing him from office. He has vowed to carry on and is deadlocked in the polls, 40 days before Israelis go to vote.

In a last-ditch effort to prevent the public release of an indictment, Netanyahu's Likud party petitioned the Supreme Court to have it delayed until after the elections. But the court rejected the request Thursday afternoon, potentially clearing the way for an announcement from the attorney general.

Despite opposition calls for Netanyahu to step down, Likud and his other nationalist coalition partners have lined up behind him thus far, all but ruling out sitting in a government led by his primary opponent, retired military chief Benny Gantz.

While Israeli prime ministers are not required by law to resign if charged, the prospect of a prime minister standing trial while simultaneously running the country would be unchartered territory. Mandelblit's decision could either galvanize Netanyahu's hard-line supporters who see him as a victim of an overzealous prosecution or turn more moderate backers against him who have tired of his lengthy rule tainted by long-standing accusations of corruption and hedonism.

Either way, the upcoming elections appear to be morphing into a referendum on Netanyahu as he seeks to become the longest serving premier in Israeli history. Netanyahu have been prime minister since 2009 and served a previous term between 1996 and 1999.

President Donald Trump, with whom Netanyahu has forged a close connection, offered the Israeli leader a boost ahead of the expected announcement. "I just think he's been a great prime minister and I don't know about his difficulty but you tell me something people have been hearing about, but I don't know about that," he said in response to a question in Hanoi, where he was holding a summit with the leader of North Korea.

"I can say this: that he's done a great job as prime minister. He's tough, he's smart, he's strong," Trump said. Netanyahu rushed back Wednesday from a diplomatic mission to Moscow, and a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, to prepare for his expected rebuttal to the charges on Thursday.

The most serious allegations against Netanyahu involve his relationship with Shaul Elovitch, the controlling shareholder of Israel's telecom giant Bezeq. Police recommended an indictment in the case based on evidence collected that confidants of Netanyahu promoted regulatory changes worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Bezeq. In exchange, they believe Netanyahu used his connections with Elovitch to receive positive press coverage on Bezeq's popular subsidiary news site Walla. Police have said their investigation concluded that Netanyahu and Elovitch engaged in a "bribe-based relationship."

Police say they believe there is sufficient evidence to charge Netanyahu and his wife Sara with accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust. They also recommended charges be brought against Elovitch, members of his family and members of his Bezeq management team.

Police have previously recommended indicting Netanyahu on corruption charges in two other cases. One involves accepting gifts from billionaire friends, and the second revolves around alleged offers of advantageous legislation for a major newspaper in return for favorable coverage.

Alan Dershowitz, a prominent American lawyer, has come to Netanyahu's defense, publishing an open letter to Mandelblit in which he warns that an indictment against the prime minister ahead of elections would undermine the democratic process.

"I'm very worried for freedom of the press and freedom of government in Israel if they start indicting people for trying to get good coverage from the media," he told Israel's Army Radio. "I don't know of any other country that has criminalized trying to get good coverage and make that a basis of bribery or any other corruption investigation."

Top centrist Netanyahu rivals unite for Israeli election run

February 21, 2019

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's primary centrist challengers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday they were joining forces ahead of April elections — a dramatic move that shook up the country's political system and created the first credible alternative to Netanyahu's decade-long rule.

Retired military chief Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party, said they would present a joint list for the upcoming vote that "will constitute the new Israeli ruling party." In a joint statement, the two said they were "motivated by national responsibility."

"The new ruling party will bring forth a cadre of security and social leaders to ensure Israel's security and to reconnect its people and heal the divide within Israeli society," they said, in a dig at Netanyahu.

A formal announcement was expected later in the day, with the two naming their full list and new name for their joint party. The development instantly injected a threat to topple the long-serving Netanyahu. Recent polls suggest that together, Gantz and Lapid could surpass Netanyahu's ruling Likud to become Israel's largest faction after the April 9 vote. Under their unity arrangement, the two agreed to a rotation leadership should they come to power under which Gantz would first serve as prime minister and would then be replaced by Lapid after two and a half years.

Following them in the joint list would be a pair of other former military chiefs, Moshe Yaalon and Gabi Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi has long been working behind the scenes to make the union happen, urging the major players to put their egos aside in favor of the bigger challenge ahead. He announced he was joining the new party himself because of the "pivotal moment and the national task at hand."

Even if the joint list surpasses Likud at the ballot box, it is not guaranteed to form the next government unless it can garner a parliamentary majority by forming a collation with other parties. But the dramatic merger seems enough to make the election a real fight for Netanyahu.

"For the first time since 2009, we have a competitive race for the premiership and this is the result of the emergence of this new centrist force," said Yohanan Plesner, a former lawmaker and president of the non-partisan Israel Democracy Institute.

"There are now, as a result of this unification, two, I would say, legitimate major parties ... (but) it's not a done deal," Plesner said. "I think Netanyahu is still more likely to win and to emerge as prime minister at the end of this election campaign, but it is a competitive race."

Netanyahu, who is embroiled in multiple corruption allegations and faces a potential impending indictment, has taken a hard turn to the right in recent days to shore up his nationalistic base. On Wednesday, he postponed a trip to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin to stay home and reach a preliminary election deal with two fringe religious-nationalist parties in a bid to unify his hard-line bloc.

Netanyahu's Likud party announced it would reserve the 28th spot on its parliamentary list for the pro-settler Jewish Home party and grant it two Cabinet ministries in a future government if it merges with the extremist Jewish Power party. Jewish Power is comprised of hard-line religious nationalists who have cast themselves as successors to the banned Kahanist movement, which dreamed of turning Israel into a Jewish theocracy and advocated forced removal of Palestinians.

Among the prominent figures in the joint Jewish Home-Jewish Power list are Bezalel Smotrich, a self-avowed "proud homophobe," Itamar Ben Gvir, an attorney who has made a career defending radical Israeli settlers implicated in West Bank violence, and Benzi Gopstein, leader of an extremist anti-assimilation group whose Twitter handle translates to "Kahane was right."

The late American-born Rabbi Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League is considered a terrorist organization by the FBI. Netanyahu's courting of such forces drew sharp condemnations from much of the Israeli mainstream, with Gantz accusing him of losing touch "with his Zionism and with his dignity."

The flurry of developments comes ahead of a Thursday night deadline for parties running for the April 9 parliamentary elections to submit their lineups. The maneuvers seemed to have spurred others to pursue unification moves as well, as a previously fragmented political landscape begins to come together, six and half weeks before election day.

Tamar Zandberg, head of the dovish Meretz party, called on the Labor party to merge with it to create a united front on the left as well. "Congratulations to the union in the center that will provide an alternative to Likud," she said. "Opposite the prospect of a Likud-Kahanist government we need a center-left government."

Amid loss of leaders, unknown militant rises in Philippines

February 22, 2019

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Unlike many of his slain comrades, the touted new leader of the Islamic State group in the southern Philippines lacks the bravado, clan name or foreign training. Not much is known about Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, but the attacks attributed to him heralding his rise are distinctly savage: A deadly bombing, which authorities say was a suicide attack by a foreign militant couple, blasted through a packed Roman Catholic cathedral in the middle of a Mass.

The Jan. 27 attack, which killed 23 people and wounded about 100 others on southern Jolo Island, and another suspected suicide bombing on nearby Basilan Island last July that officials said he masterminded, put Sawadjaan in the crosshairs of the U.S.-led global campaign against terrorism. It also comes at a time when the Islamic State group's last enclave in eastern Syria is near its imminent downfall, signaling an end to the territorial rule of the self-declared "caliphate" that once stretched across much of Syria and Iraq.

A recent U.S. Department of Defense report to Congress said without elaborating that it believed Sawadjaan was the "acting emir," or leader, in the Philippines of the Islamic State group, also known by its acronym ISIS. It added that no actual leader is confirmed to have been designated by the main ISIS command in the Middle East as of late last year.

Philippine Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano, however, said intelligence indicated that Sawadjaan, a Jolo-based commander of the brutal Abu Sayyaf extremist group, was installed as ISIS chief in a ceremony last year. Three other extremist groups were recognized as ISIS allies, he said.

Founded in the early 1990s as an offshoot of the decadeslong Muslim separatist rebellion in the south, the Abu Sayyaf lost its commanders early in battle, sending it to a violent path of terrorism and criminality. It has been blacklisted, along with ISIS-linked local groups, as a terrorist organization by the United States.

Now in his 60s, Sawadjaan is a late bloomer in the terrorism underworld. His turn at the helm came after dozens of commanders, some initially aligned with the al-Qaida movement and later with ISIS, were killed or captured in decades of military offensives. The biggest battle loss came in 2017 when several foreign and local commanders were killed as troops quelled a five-month siege by hundreds of militants in southern Marawi city.

Among those killed was Isnilon Hapilon, a fierce Abu Sayyaf leader, who was the first ISIS-designated leader in the Philippines. "I think Sawadjaan rose in rank because of seniority and there were no other leaders left. Almost everyone had been wiped out," said Ano, a former military chief who oversaw the Marawi offensives and now supervises the national police as interior secretary.

Largely confined to Jolo's poverty-wracked mountain settlements all his life, Sawadjaan was not the well-connected and media-savvy strategist foreign groups would normally ally with to expand their reach. His rise shows how ISIS would latch on desperately to any militant who could provide a sanctuary and armed fighters as its last strongholds crumble in Syria, Ano said.

"For the ISIS to perpetuate their terror actions, they need a base, they need people. That's the role of Sawadjaan," Ano told The Associated Press in an interview. He estimated that Sawadjaan commands about 200 combatants and followers.

Sawadjaan was born to a peasant family in predominantly Muslim Jolo and only likely finished grade school. Poverty drove him to work as a lumberjack in the jungles off Patikul town, where he married a woman from Tanum, the mountain village where he would base his Abu Sayyaf faction years later, a military officer, who has closely monitored the Abu Sayyaf, told the AP on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his work.

As an elderly villager, he served as a local mosque preacher, earning him the religious sobriquet "hatib," or sermon leader in Arabic, the officer said. Sawadjaan first took up arms as a member of the Moro National Liberation Front, the largest Muslim secessionist group in the south of the largely Roman Catholic country, which went on to sign a 1996 Muslim autonomy deal with the government, according to the officer.

His commander was Radulan Sahiron, the locally popular one-armed rebel who broke away from the MNLF in 1992. They joined the Abu Sayyaf, which had just been organized by a Libyan-educated local militant, said MNLF leader Yusop Jikiri.

Sawadjaan would later part ways with Sahiron, including over Sahiron's refusal to accomodate foreign militants for fear they're a magnet for military airstrikes, said Abu Jihad, a former militant who has met Sawadjaan and was captured by troops. Abu Jihad described Sawadjaan as a folksy village elderly, who constantly lugged an M-16 rifle in his hinterland community but was friendly to visitors.

When fellow militants kidnapped a visiting American Muslim convert, Jeffrey Schilling, for ransom in August 2000, Sawadjaan stayed in the background but helped gather bamboos that were used to build huts for the militants and their hostage, Abu Jihad said.

"He can discuss local issues but didn't have any wisdom on jihad," he told AP by phone, referring to the militants' concept of holy war. "He's very accommodating. He's the type who will not be hard to sway."

Sawadjaan collaborated with diverse outlaws, both Islamic extremists and brigands, Ano said. He harbored the foreign couple, believed by Philippine officials to be Indonesians, who detonated the bombs in the Jolo cathedral last month, as well as a militant believed to be an Arab known as Abu Kathir al-Maghribi, who died in the van blast that also killed 10 government militiamen and villagers in Basilan last year, Ano added.

A video obtained by police officials showed al-Maghribi in Sawadjaan's camp last year before the foreign militant reportedly carried out the suicide attack in Basilan. The video was seen by The AP. His daughter married a Malaysian militant known as Amin Baco, who has ISIS connections. His younger brother, Asman, also belonged to the Abu Sayyaf, according to a confidential police profile of Sawadjaan.

Sawadjaan and his men would later be implicated in the kidnappings of a German couple, two Canadian men, Schilling and a Jordanian journalist, Baker Atyani. Most were ransomed off or escaped but the Canadian men were separately beheaded on video by one of Sawadjaan's militant nephews, Ben Yadah, according to military and police officials.

In the more than a year of jungle captivity under Sawadjaan's group starting in June 2012, Atyani got a deep insight into the Abu Sayyaf and the man who sheltered other militants from Indonesia and Malaysia and fostered banditry in the blurry underworld of Islamic extremism in the volatile south. Atyani is believed to have been freed in exchange for ransom.

"It's all money-driven, it's not an ideology," Atyani said. "However, he has sympathy for those who are allegedly fighting for a cause."

FIFA's record finances reignites World Cup pay parity debate

March 07, 2019

LONDON (AP) — When world soccer executives receive FIFA's annual report this year, they will see that $753,000 is funding a women's league in Colombia, $588,197 is helping female players in New Zealand and girls in Botswana are benefiting from $341,600.

That's merely a snapshot of the $270.3 million that the body that governs world soccer has invested in projects worldwide between 2016 and 2018. Four years since police raided the hotel and offices of soccer officials and FIFA's Zurich headquarters in 2015 in a scandal that threatened the organization's existence, FIFA is awash with cash. People with knowledge of FIFA's finances told The Associated Press that in the four-year period covering the 2018 World Cup, FIFA's reserves soared to $2.74 billion and revenue rose to $6.4 billion. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the financial results remain confidential.

Now, the organization is eager to show that handouts no longer line the pockets of its top managers. Rather, the money is being used to build stadiums, train coaches and provide more playing opportunities. But while the annual report underscores FIFA's financial vitality, it also highlights the glaring disparity between men and women's soccer.

Last summer's World Cup is a good example: France banked $38 million from FIFA for winning the championship, but the women's champion this July will earn just $4 million. U.S. coach Jill Ellis, who is leading her team's title defense in France, said she is disappointed with the financial rewards.

"You want to make sure there is a fair apportionment of winnings going out," Ellis said. Most upsetting to critics is the fact that the financial gulf appears to be growing. FIFA has doubled the overall prize money fund to $30 million since the last Women's World Cup in Canada in 2015. But that total amount is less than the $40 million increase that men's World Cup prize money will get in 2022 — for a total of $440 million in prize money.

"The difference between the men's and women's prize money is ridiculous," said Tatjana Haenni, who stepped down as FIFA head of women's soccer in 2017. "It's really disappointing the gap between the men's and women's World Cups got bigger. It sends the wrong message."

The world players' union said the disparity is a reflection of FIFA's priorities as well as of the status of women's soccer . "In most countries, the pace of change has not been fast enough nor the changes progressive enough to make up for decades of neglect of the women's game," FIFPRO said in a statement to the AP. "Even today women's football remains an afterthought for many of football's male administrators and the game lags embarrassingly behind other more progressive sports and industries.

"Most troubling of all is that the gender gap in football is even widening in some areas, including the share of FIFA World Cup prize money." FIFA President Gianni Infantino has said critics are "perfectly justified" and have a "fair point."

"We need to try to find what is the most balanced way and I think we made a step and there will be many more steps going ahead," Infantino said in October before his ruling council approved the 2019 Women's World Cup prize scale. "Maybe one day women's football will generate more than men's football."

Exactly how much money women's soccer generates is unclear, as much of FIFA's revenue comes from top sponsors who are signed up for both World Cups. "That's something never really analyzed," said Haenni, who spent 19 years at FIFA. "What is the potential value of the Women's World Cup? Nobody knows the Women's World Cup commercial value because it's not sold separately. This is something that should at least be discussed."

One of FIFA's main sponsors is listening. Credit card giant Visa said last week that it would support "women's football with a marketing investment equal to our support of the men's FIFA World Cup in Russia." It did not disclose any figures.

Visa is one of the sponsors that stuck with FIFA through its corruption scandal, calling for the departure in 2015 of Sepp Blatter, FIFA's then-president who was eventually banned for financial misconduct.

After being elected as Blatter's successor in 2016, Infantino said "FIFA was clinically dead as an organization." Now, the Swiss-Italian has the budget is in a healthy state, and is due to be re-elected unopposed in June to a four-year term.

The 2015-18 finances exceed the forecasts that were presented to the FIFA Congress in June. While FIFA projected cash reserves to increase to $1.653 billion in the 2018 World Cup cycle, they had grown to $2.74 billion at the end of 2018, according to the people with knowledge of the finances.

Following the corruption scandal of 2015, FIFA had modestly aimed to raise $5 billion by the end of last summer's World Cup in Russia — a projection later increased to $6.1 billion. Those expectations were eclipsed when the four-year cycle ended with revenues of $6.4 billion, according to the people with knowledge of the financial report, which shows a profit of around $1 billion.

Haenni noted the challenge lies in ensuring that FIFA's riches don't all go to men's soccer. "Some federations won't have proper structures for the women's teams," Haenni said. "You want to know where the money is going and linked to creating a more balanced environment for women's teams."

IOC revokes shooting event status over Pakistan visa refusal

February 22, 2019

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — The International Olympic Committee has revoked the Olympic qualification status of a 25-meter shooting event in New Delhi because Indian officials refused to grant entry visas to two Pakistani athletes and an official.

The IOC said Thursday it was informed on Monday that the Indian government authorities did not grant entry visas to the Pakistani delegation for the 25-meter rapid-fire pistol event at the ISSF World Cup, where two places at next year's Tokyo Olympics were meant to be at stake.

The IOC said it only withdrew the Olympic qualification status from the competition in which the two Pakistani athletes were supposed to participate. There are 500 athletes from 61 countries who are already in India for other World Cup events.

"Since becoming aware of the issue, and in spite of intense last-minute joint efforts by the IOC, the ISSF (International Shooting Sport Federation) and the Indian NOC (National Olympic Committee), and discussions with the Indian government authorities, no solution has been found to allow the Pakistani delegation to enter India in time to compete," the IOC said in a statement.

It did not say whether Pakistani athletes were entered in any other events at the competition. In a statement to the Press Trust of India news agency, Rajeev Mehta, the secretary general of the Indian Olympic Association, said Friday the IOA would approach the government again about the visas.

"It is a dangerous situation for all sport in the county," Mehta was quoted as saying. "In addition to not being able to host events in India, there may be problems for our athletes to take part in international events."

The IOC said the situation goes against the fundamental principles of the Olympic Charter to not discriminate against any athlete. The visa refusal comes amid escalated tensions between the two countries following last week's deadly suicide bombing in Kashmir against Indian paramilitary troops. At least 40 Indian soldiers were killed in Thursday's attack, which New Delhi blamed on Islamabad.

Since independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, which is divided between the two but claimed by each in its entirety.

China's Largest Solid-Fuel Rocket Scheduled for First Launch in 2019

Beijing (Sputnik)
Mar 07, 2019

Chinese legislators have urged the country to formulate its own space law to boost the development of commercial space and pay more attention to the outflow of talent.

China's private space sector will embrace more opportunities in 2019. The country should complete its laws and regulations on the private space sector to support its commercial development, Hu Shengyun, a senior rocket engineer at China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation and deputy to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) from Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, told the Global Times.

The value of commercial space travel in China is projected to reach 30 billion yuan ($4.6 billion) annually by 2020, Hu said.

Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun, who is also an NPC deputy, told media that China is the only space power without its own space law, suggesting that promoting legislation on space will guarantee the rights of private companies on utilizing space resources.

Lei also suggested the government relax its market access to private companies and promote the sharing of space infrastructure. Around 29 countries have space laws or regulations.

Space agencies used to be sponsored by governments. Commercial upstarts have joined the competition since the beginning of the century. In 2017, among the 443 satellites launched globally, 267 were commercial satellites, and 26 out of the 91 rockets used to launch these satellites were from private companies, Bingdian Weekly reported in September 2018.

Hu also said the Kuaizhou-11, China's largest solid-fuel carrier rocket is scheduled to make its maiden launch this year.

The new type solid-fuel carrier rocket series Kuaizhou is the country's first carrier rocket for commercial purposes, and the Kuaizhou-11 is much larger than the Kuaizhou-1.

Kuaizhou is a low-cost solid-fuel carrier rocket with high reliability and a short preparation period. With a lift-off mass of 78 tons, the rocket was designed to launch low-Earth and Sun-synchronous orbit satellites.

Hu also suggested the country pay more attention to the exodus of space talent. State-owned space enterprises are losing a large number of scientific and technological talent, which should be given more attention, Hu said.

The China Association for Science and Technology recently released a report on people working in the science and technology fields in China. The report found that the average annual salary was 91,000 yuan in 2016. Some 33.5 percent of them are living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Although their average salary has increased by 22.7 percent compared with 2012, their satisfaction with their salary has dropped. That's because their salary has not kept pace with those in other fields, the report said.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Chinas_Largest_Solid_Fuel_Rocket_Scheduled_for_First_Launch_in_2019_999.html.

SpaceX set for historic Crew Dragon test flight

MARCH 1, 2019
By Brooks Hays

March 1 (UPI) -- SpaceX is ready for Saturday's inaugural test flight of the Crew Dragon, the next step in a mission to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 2:49 a.m. ET Saturday.

According to the latest update from the meteorologists at the U.S. Air Force 45th Space Wing, there is an 80 percent chance of favorable weather conditions for Saturday morning's launch window.

On Wednesday night, program officials announced a successful initial safety check and confirmed the timing of the historic test flight.

"Our Demo-1 launch readiness review is complete, and we are still 'go' for launch," the commercial crew program announced on Twitter.

The uncrewed flight, or Demo-1 mission, will provide SpaceX an opportunity the demonstrate the reliability of its rocket launch system and the safety of its crew module.

"The uncrewed flight tests are a great dry run for not only our hardware, but for our team to get ready for our crewed flight tests," Kathy Lueders, manager of the commercial crew program, said in a news release. "NASA has been working together with SpaceX and Boeing to make sure we are ready to conduct these test flights and get ready to learn critical information that will further help us to fly our crews safely. We always learn from tests."

NASA contracted SpaceX and Boeing to build spacecraft to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Because both companies are behind schedule, there is added pressure for a flawless test flight.

At the beginning of last year, NASA announced SpaceX and Boeing would complete test flights for their commercial crew spacecraft, Crew Dragon and Starliner, in August.

NASA said then the first Crew Dragon test flight would happen in November, with Starliner's maiden voyage happening in late 2018 or early 2019.

Summer and fall came and went with neither spacecraft leaving the ground.

Spacecraft building and launch delays are common but any more setbacks and NASA might find itself without a way to get its astronauts to the ISS and back.

Crew Dragon and Starliner were commissioned to replace the Space Shuttle, which was retired in 2011. NASA and its astronauts rely on Russian rockets and crew capsules to get to and from the ISS -- an agreement with Roscosmos that ends in early 2020.

"We believe it's a national imperative to return the flight of American astronauts on American rockets on American soil," NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs told The Atlantic earlier this year.

Though uncrewed, Saturday's Demo-1 test flight will feature a single spacesuit-wearing astronaut dummy. The weighted dummy will help engineers replicate the conditions of a crewed flight and measure the physical experience of the ride aboard the Crew Dragon.

"We'll measure the responses on the human body, obviously, and measure the environment. We want to make sure that everything is perfect for the safety of the astronauts," Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, told reporters last week.

After launching and separating from the rocket, Crew Dragon will travel to the space station, where it will dock and remain for five days. During the flight, engineers will test a variety of systems and components: the module's environmental control systems, solar arrays, electrical power systems, communication systems, propulsion systems and more.

After five days at its docking port, the module will be released. Next week, the craft will de-orbit and splash down into the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast, where it will be promptly retrieved by SpaceX.

The launch, docking and return will all be streamed live on NASA TV.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2019/03/01/SpaceX-set-for-historic-Crew-Dragon-test-flight/6861551313169/.