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Record-setting Polaris Dawn crew safely splashes down in Gulf of Mexico
After setting an altitude record and staging the first non-government spacewalk, billionaire Jared Isaacman and his three crewmates returned to Earth early Sunday, plunging back into the atmosphere aboard their Crew Dragon spacecraft for an on-target splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
With Isaacman and pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet monitoring cockpit displays, flanked by SpaceX medical officer Anna Menon and crew trainer Sarah Gillis, the spacecraft slammed back into the discernible atmosphere and decelerated in a fireball of atmospheric friction, protected by a SpaceX-designed heat shield.
SpaceX
A few minutes later, the spacecraft’s parachutes unfurled and the Crew Dragon settled to a gentle 15-mph splashdown at 3:36 a.m. EDT near Dry Tortugas, about 70 miles from Key West, Florida.
Spectacular, if ghostly, infrared images of the spacecraft during re-entry were captured by a NASA photo-reconnaissance jet and then by an IR camera on a SpaceX recovery ship. Even the crew of the International Space Station got a chance to witness the spacecraft’s fiery re-entry.
“We actually had a pretty neat view of Polaris Dawn entering,” astronaut Mike Barratt radioed flight controllers in Houston. “All of us were more or less crowded in the (multi-window) cupola watching it. That was pretty spectacular for us.”
SpaceX
The SpaceX recovery ship was on the scene within about a half hour to haul the capsule on deck, where support personnel were standing by to help the crew members out of the spacecraft. All four climbed out under their own power after five days in weightlessness, clearly elated and smiling broadly as they greeted the recovery crew.
After routine post-landing medical checks, Isaacman and his crewmates were expected to be flown ashore by helicopter followed by a flight back to the Kennedy Space Center for reunions with family and friends.
The Polaris Dawn mission, financed by Isaacman, in cooperation with SpaceX, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center atop a Falcon 9 rocket early Tuesday. Right off the bat, the crew set a new altitude record for a piloted spacecraft in Earth orbit, reaching a high point, or apogee, of 875 miles.
SpaceX
That’s farther from Earth than anyone has flown since the final Apollo voyage to the moon in 1972.
Early Thursday, the crew set another record when Isaacman and Gillis took turns floating just outside the capsule’s hatch in the first non-government spacewalk ever conducted.
“Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman marveled, taking in a spectacular view of the borderless planet below as he floated through the Crew Dragon’s hatch.
The goal of the brief excursions was to test the SpaceX-designed pressure suits in the harsh environment of space, assessing their mobility and checking the motion of wrist, elbow and shoulder joints to help engineers design improved versions for future flights to the moon and, eventually, Mars.
Along with a full slate of biomedical research, the crew also tested laser communications technology linking the Crew Dragon to the Starlink constellation of commercial internet relay satellites.
SpaceX
“Early this morning via @Starlink space lasers, the Polaris Dawn crew chatted with SpaceX teams over coffee and donuts,” SpaceX posted on X Saturday. “During the 40+ minute uninterrupted video call, Dragon completed half an orbit over the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S., cutting southeast over the Atlantic Ocean and rounding the Cape of Good Hope.”
Earlier in the mission, Gillis, an accomplished violist, participated in what amounted to an international concert, performing composer John Williams’ “Star Wars” song “Rey’s Theme,” accompanied by young musicians in the United States, Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Sweden and Uganda.
The Polaris Dawn mission is the first of three planned by Isaacman, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, in cooperation with Musk.
The second flight will be another Crew Dragon mission while the third will be the first piloted flight of SpaceX’s huge Super Heavy-Starship rocket, now under development in Texas.
It’s not known how much Isaacman is paying for the flights or how much SpaceX funded on its own.
Polaris Dawn is SpaceX’s fifth commercial Crew Dragon flight to orbit and its 14th including NASA missions carrying crew members to the International Space Station. The California rocket builder has now launched 54 men and women to orbit since piloted flights began in May 2020.
Police arrested a man on murder charges this month, 14 years after he allegedly killed a man in Virginia, but the victim’s body has never been found.
Shane Ryan Donahue, a Virginia man, is presumed deceased, the Prince William County Police Department said Tuesday. He was last seen leaving his parents’ home in Nokesville, Virginia, on March 22, 2010. Donahue, 23, was headed to his house in Nokesville, but never made it there.
Donahue was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System after he vanished. According to records, Donahue did not have a car and regularly got rides from friends. He frequented Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Fauquier County, Virginia, and Northern Virginia.
The case stumped investigators, who followed a number of leads over the years. This spring, detectives reactivated the investigation and started looking at every detail of the case from scratch, officials said. They revisited people who had been interviewed during the initial investigation and reviewed “digital evidence in greater detail due to advances in analytical technology and modern police investigative practices,” according to a news release.
Officers said Donahue was last seen leaving his parents’ home with Timothy Sean Hickerson, now a 43-year-old Florida resident. Investigators connected Hickerson to a burglary at Donahue’s home that happened just days before the Virginia man disappeared.
Detectives got an arrest warrant this month and, with the help of Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson was taken into custody in Palm Coast, Florida. Hickerson was charged with murder and burglary, is now set to be extradited to Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump, an avowed proponent of tax cuts, is floating the idea of reversing a measure passed during his tenure in the White House that effectively raised taxes for many U.S. homeowners.
In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump suggested he would scrap a $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes (SALT) that was passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a massive revamp that he has said boosted economic growth.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, Trump said in the post he would “get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more,” although he stopped short of offering details. Trump made the post ahead of a speech he’s giving Wednesday at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Trump’s new proposal for getting rid of his $10,000 SALT deduction cap comes as the presidential hopeful is pitching several additional tax cuts that would, if enacted, reduce taxes for major groups of voters. He’s also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, a pledge that could get support from the nation’s senior citizens, as well as to end income taxes on tipped workers and on overtime pay, ideas that would help lower- and middle-income Americans.
Yet Trump’s reversal on the SALT deduction has sparked skepticism from lawmakers as well as economists and policy experts.
“So … now Trump is against the SALT tax cap which *checks notes* is a key part of the — only — major piece of legislation passed during his administration?” noted Chris Koski, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, on X.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Nassau, Queens, said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “happy that the former president is saying that he has finally reversed his devastating decision in 2017 to cap the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction.” He also urged Trump to convince Republican lawmakers to vote to restore the full deduction “if he is truly serious.”
The SALT deduction cap “has been a body blow to my constituents for the past 7 years,” Suozzi added.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote on X,”Donald Trump took away your SALT dedications and hurt so many Long Island families. Now, he’s coming to Long Island to pretend he supports SALT. It won’t work.”
Asked for details about Trump’s proposal to restore the SALT writeoff, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told CBS MoneyWatch: “While his pro-growth, pro-energy policies will make life affordable again, President Trump is also going to quickly move tax relief for working people and seniors.”
Here’s what to know about the SALT deduction.
What is the SALT deduction?
The state and local tax deduction allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct property taxes, sales taxes and state or local income taxes from their federal income taxes. Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there was no limit on how much people could deduct through the SALT deduction.
But the 2017 tax overhaul passed under Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 – a blow to many homeowners in states with high property taxes, many of which are Democratic leaning. At the time of the law’s passage, the Treasury Department estimated that almost 11 million taxpayers in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey would forfeit $323 billion in deductions.
Who benefits from the SALT deduction?
Homeowners with high property taxes, such as people in New York, New Jersey and California, were the biggest beneficiaries of the the full SALT deduction.
But some experts also noted that the SALT deduction primarily put more money in the pockets of higher-earning Americans. About 80% of the full SALT deduction had helped people earning more than $100,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation.
What happened after Trump capped the SALT deduction at $10,000?
The limit has increasingly impacted middle-class homeowners across the U.S. because of rising property taxes and incomes. Some lawmakers have also sought to either repeal or increase the SALT cap, but none of those efforts have borne fruit.
Earlier this year, some lawmakers sought to double the SALT deduction cap to $20,000 for married couples, with the change retroactive for the 2023 tax year. But that bill was blocked in the House in February.
Won’t the SALT deduction cap expire anyway?
Yes, the SALT deduction cap is a provision that’s due to expire in 2025, as are many other parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, such as a reduction of the individual tax brackets. But Trump has previously indicated he wants to extend the provisions in his signature tax law.
How much would it cost the U.S. to repeal the SALT deduction cap?
It won’t be cheap, according to the the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on budget and policy issues.
Eliminating the $10,000 deduction limit “would increase the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) by $1.2 trillion over a decade,” the group estimates, adding that such a measure would be a “costly mistake.”
Extending the TCJA’s tax cuts would increase the nation’s deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade, the group estimates. By adding in a expiration or repeal of the SALT deduction cap, that would grow to $5.1 trillion, it added.
“Lawmakers should not extend the TCJA without a plan to – at a minimum – offset the costs of extension, but ideally the plan would raise revenues relative to current law and help put the nation’s debt on a better trajectory,” the group said in a statement.
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