In the fast developing field of private photography from orbit, the episode suggests a new frailty for any efforts at state censorship.
After years of sitting on the sidelines of the space business, some of Japan's largest industrial and electronics companies are joining forces in the country's first commercial venture to launch private satellites into orbit, Government and industry executives say.
Garriott says he began funding space tourism research in the 1990s, hoping to be the first private citizen in orbit.
But contrary to popular grumblings, it is not the providence of NASA to get private citizens into orbit (it'd be nice, of course, but NASA is ultimately a science-driven organization).
NASA's decision to buy an inflatable new room for the International Space Station may push the module's builder —commercial spaceflight company Bigelow Aerospace — one step closer to establishing its own private stations in orbit.
Early this morning, a capsule designed and launched by a private company began orbiting the Earth, making its roughly 75-hour way to the International Space Station for a docking on Friday morning.
In October, China's first private rocket failed to reach orbit, and earlier in the year one of its two orbiting space stations, Tiangong-1, fell back to Earth.
On December 3rd, also for the first time, a privately financed and built rocket put a private commercial satellite into orbit.
A successful mission would reinforce NASA's efforts to turn over basic transportation to low-Earth orbit to private companies.
Plans by the Nasa space agency to ferry astronauts into orbit on private craft have slipped until at least the spring of 2019.
Mr. Humphrey, 57, who is British, and Ms. Yu, 60, who is a Chinese-born, naturalized American, fit easily into the orbit of private investigators who must be part gumshoe, part financial analyst.
