Things To Do In SW Florida

Hyatt Hotels aims to offer top-notch services to guests at its Central Florida locations and to make sure its more than 1,400 employees feel cared for, too.

The effort to keep employees happy and thriving in their workplace earned Hyatt Hotels the distinction of being the Orlando Sentinel’s 2024 Top Workplaces in Central Florida in the large business category for the second year in a row.

“Hyatt’s purpose is to care for people so that they can be their best,” said Lauren Vogel, an assistant director of human resources. “Our purpose is always going to be at the forefront of our mind, with every conversation we have. Whether it’s with a colleague or a guest, any decision that we make and any time we encounter a colleague, we want to make sure that we have that purpose in our minds.”

To keep employees happy and engaged, Vogel said Hyatt provides numerous opportunities for colleagues to connect, such as bringing in food trucks on Fridays.

There are also several opportunities for employees to be recognized by the company, with each area Hyatt holding its own annual awards banquet. read more

CAPE CANAVERAL — The two astronauts stuck at the International Space Station since June welcomed their new ride home with Sunday’s arrival of a SpaceX capsule.

SpaceX launched the rescue mission on Saturday with a downsized crew of two astronauts and two empty seats reserved for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will return next year. The Dragon capsule docked in darkness as the two craft soared 265 miles  above Botswana.

NASA switched Wilmore and Williams to SpaceX following concerns over the safety of their Boeing Starliner capsule. It was the first Starliner test flight with a crew, and NASA decided the thruster failures and helium leaks that cropped up after liftoff were too serious and poorly understood to risk the test pilots’ return. So Starliner returned to Earth empty earlier this month.

The Dragon carrying NASA’s Nick Hague and the Russian Space Agency’s Alexander Gorbunov will remain at the space station until February, turning what should have been a weeklong trip for Wilmore and Williams into a mission lasting more than eight months. read more

SpaceX celebrated the first human spaceflight from its Cape Canaveral launch site on Saturday, and while the two humans aboard the Crew Dragon Freedom are safely on their way to the International Space Station, a problem arose with the rocket’s second stage that prompted the company to shut down future launches for now.

“After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn,” SpaceX posted on X. “As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause.”

SpaceX and Boeing Starliner saga continues with Crew-9 launch to ISS

The first victim of the shutdown was a planned launch Sunday from California of a Falcon 9 with a plan to send up the OneWeb Launch 20 mission for EutelsatGroup.

The Federal Aviation Administration still has that launch on its operations plan advisory for as early as Oct. 1, but the last two times SpaceX had an “off-nominal” issue with a Falcon 9 launch, the FAA had grounded the rocket. read more