Britain's Prince William has launched an attack on space tourism, urging more attention on problems closer to home ahead of the COP26 climate summit.

The comments by Queen Elizabeth II's grandson were airing in a BBC interview later Thursday, a day after "Star Trek" star William Shatner became a real space traveller on Blue Origin's second crewed mission.

The mission replayed the company's maiden human flight in July, which included its founder Jeff Bezos of Amazon and was seen as a breakthrough for the emerging space tourism sector.

But Prince William said: "We need some of the world's greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live."

Virgin Galactic, which offers a similar experience of a few minutes' weightlessness and a view of the Earth's curvature from the cosmos, launched its founder Richard Branson in July, a few days before Bezos.

As satellites collect larger and larger amounts of data, engineers and researchers are implementing solutions to manage these huge increases.

The cutting-edge Earth science satellites launching in the next couple of years will give more detailed views of our planet than ever before. We'll be able to track small-scale ocean features like coastal currents that move nutrients vital to marine food webs, monitor how much fresh water flows through lakes and rivers, and spot movement in Earth's surface of less than half an inch (a centimeter).

In February of 2013, skywatchers around the world turned their attention toward asteroid 2012 DA14, a cosmic rock about 150 feet (50 meters) in diameter that was going to fly closer to Earth than the spacecraft that bring us satellite TV.

Little did they realize as they prepared for the once-in-several-decades event that another bit of celestial debris was hurtling toward Earth, with a more direct heading. On Feb. 15, 2013, the Chelyabinsk meteor, a roughly 62-foot (19 meter)-diameter asteroid exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, as it entered Earth's atmosphere at a shallow angle. The blast shattered windows and damaged buildings, and nearly two thousand people were hurt, though thankfully no one died.

"It turned out that two completely independent asteroids were coming by that day," said Philip Lubin, UC Santa Barbara professor of physics, and one of the many scientists anticipating 2012 DA14's near-Earth rendezvous. "One of them we knew was going to miss the Earth. The other one, we didn't even know it was coming."

For Lubin and scientists like him, incidents like these underline the importance of robust planetary defense—the detection, tracking, characterization and ultimately defense against potentially dangerous asteroids and comets.

"Star Trek" actor William Shatner finally became a real space traveler on Blue Origin's second crewed mission Wednesday, calling it the most profound experience of his life.

"It was unbelievable," said the 90-year-old Canadian, known to the sci-fi show's legion of "Trekkies" as the daring Captain James T. Kirk, a role he first played more than half a century ago.

He was joined on the 11-minute journey beyond Earth's atmosphere and back again by three others: Blue Origin executive Audrey Powers, Planet Labs co-founder Chris Boshuizen, and Glen de Vries of Medidata Solutions.

A New Shepard rocket took off from the company's West Texas base around 9:49 am (1449 GMT) after experiencing two brief delays, eventually soaring to 66 miles (106 kilometers) above sea level.

Is space really the final frontier? William Shatner is set to find out as he boldly goes where no 90-year-old has gone before. Some 55 years after Captain James T Kirk hit our screens in the original Star Trek, Shatner will launch to the edge of space aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard for a ten-minute sub-orbital flight.

Shatner will become the oldest person to go to space, breaking the record set only recently by 82-year-old Wally Funk, who traveled on the New Shepard's first crewed spaceflight in July. Funk was one of the Mercury 13 women who qualified for spaceflight in the 1960s but never flew.

With commercial spaceflight companies now taking older people to space, it's timely to consider the potential physical impact space flight might have on them.

In just a few days in space, the human body starts to adapt. Astronauts' bones start to lose density and their muscles become smaller and weaker because they're not being used to stand up against gravity or to move around.