DUBAI – The United Arab Emirates has selected the first Arab woman to train as an astronaut, as the Gulf country rapidly expands into the space sector to diversify its economy. Emirati national Nora al-Matrooshi, a 27-year-old mechanical engineering graduate currently working at Abu Dhabi’s National Petroleum Construction Company, will join NASA’s 2021 Astronaut Candidate…

Later this decade, NASA astronauts are expected to touch down on the lunar surface for the first time in decades. When they do, according to an announcement made by the agency, they’ll be riding inside SpaceX’s Starship vehicle.

NASA’s award of a $2.9 billion contract to build Starship, first reported by the Washington Post on April 16 and later confirmed by NASA, is a huge achievement for the space company founded and run by billionaire Elon Musk, as well as a massive blow to the hopes of its rivals.

The lander: SpaceX bills Starship as a next-generation spacecraft meant to take humans to the moon and, one day, Mars. Measuring around 160 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter, Starship is a reusable vehicle that’s designed to take off and land on the ground vertically. The plan is for it to launch separately and station itself in lunar orbit until NASA astronauts arrive aboard the agency’s Orion crew capsule. Starship would simply ferry astronauts to the moon’s surface and back.

Surprising selection: Last year, NASA awarded three different groups contracts to further develop their own proposals for lunar landers: $135 million to SpaceX, $253 million to defense company Dynetics (which was working with Sierra Nevada Corporation), and $579 million to a four-company team led by Blue Origin (working with Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Draper).

SpaceX didn’t just receive the least amount of money—its proposal also earned the worst technical and management ratings. NASA’s associate administrator (now acting administrator) Steve Jurczyk wrote (pdf) that Starship’s propulsion system was “notably complex and comprised of likewise complex individual subsystems that have yet to be developed, tested, and certified with very little schedule margin to accommodate delays.” The uncertainties were only exacerbated by SpaceX’s notoriously poor track record with meeting deadlines.

What changed: Since then, SpaceX has gone through a number of different flight tests of several full-scale Starship prototypes, including a 10-kilometer high-altitude flight and safe landing in March. (It also exploded a few times.) According to the Washington Post, documents suggest NASA was enamored with Starship’s ability to ferry a lot of cargo to the moon (up to 100 tons), not to mention its $2.9 billion bid for the contract, which was far lower than its rivals’.

“This innovative human landing system will be a hallmark in spaceflight history,” says Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s program manager for the lunar lander system. “We’re confident in NASA’s partnership with SpaceX.”

Project Veritas Founder James O’Keefe filed a lawsuit on April 19 alleging that Twitter had defamed him by claiming that he operated fake accounts on the platform. The lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court of New York in Westchester County, claims that Twitter knowingly defamed O’Keefe in a statement the company issued explaining his permanent suspension from the platform. “The false accusation that Mr. O’Keefe operated ‘fake accounts’ is particularly damaging for Mr. O’Keefe because Mr. O’Keefe is a journalist. As such, his reputation for transparency and accurate reporting is fundamental to his profession,” the lawsuit states. Twitter permanently banned O’Keefe on April 15 without advance notice or an explanation. Shortly after, the social media giant had disseminated a statement to journalists accusing O’Keefe of “operating fake [Twitter] accounts.” Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. At the time of his suspension from the platform, O’Keefe had …