Cremated Remains of NASA Astronaut Recovered After Failed Rocket Launch
More than 100 capsules containing cremated human remains have been recovered after a rocket carrying the ashes for a space memorial service exploded over the New Mexico desert.
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More than 100 capsules containing cremated human remains have been recovered after a rocket carrying the ashes for a space memorial service exploded over the New Mexico desert.
RUSSIA has suffered more than 100,000 casualties in the bloody battle for Bakhmut in the last five months, the White House says.
US intelligence estimates say 20,000 Russian troops have been killed and another 80,000 wounded trying to take the small eastern Ukrainian city that’s seen the fiercest fighting of the war so far.
The smouldering remains of a bombarded and battered Bakhmut[/caption]
Moscow has been fighting a grinding war of attrition in Bakhmut but Ukraine has held on to the small eastern city[/caption]
The US estimates Russia has suffered 100,000 losses, including dead and wounded, in only five months in the small city[/caption]
Ukranian soldiers have been bravely defending Ukraine’s bloodiest frontline[/caption]
In the battered and besieged city in the Donetsk region, which only has a few thousand brave residents left, Russia has been trying to break the stale-mate in a gruelling and heavy-casualty war of attrition.
Yet, Ukraine has held on to the city for dear life and managed to stave off encirclement by a Russian onslaught backed by Wagner mercenaries.
National Security Adviser John Kirby said: “We estimate that Russia has suffered more than 100,000 casualties, including over 20,000 killed in action.
“Russia’s attempt at an offensive in the Donbass, largely through Bakhmut, has failed… Russia has been unable to seize any really strategically significant territory.”
Kirby, citing newly declassified US intelligence, said that about half of those killed were Wagner militia soldiers, which draws much of its ranks from prison populations in Russia.
The US estimates account for losses since the start of December, but the battle for the city has been waging for over nine months.
Kirby continued: “This attempted effort, particularly in Bakhmut, has come at a terribly, terribly high cost. Russia has exhausted its military stockpiles and its armed forces.”
Ukrainian soldiers have previously described the fighting in Bakhmut as a hellscape of World War One-style slaughter as Wagner’s largely convict army was thrown into the “meat grinder” and used as “cannon fodder“.
The fighting has become even more intense in recent months as Bakhmut remains the key battle of the war for Putin.
Yet, even Wagner’s brutal chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has threatened to withdraw his fighters from the city in a move that reflects the growing discontent within Putin’s faltering army.
The warlord pinned Russia’s “unjustified” losses in Bakhmut, which are five times higher than across the rest of Ukraine, on the Kremlin’s failure to provide ample ammunition in a live broadcast.
“It would have been five times fewer if we had more ammunition,” said Prigozhin, accusing Russian soldiers of not providing his men with the necessary equipment.
“Are we going to remain here or not,” asked Prigozhin, before vowing: “We are going to attack Bakhmut to our last bullet, but these munitions are not even enough for a week, mere days.
“And so if the munitions deficit is not addressed we will be required…not to run like cowardly rats [but] to either retreat, or remain to die.”
Kirby did not give estimates of Ukrainian casualties in Bakhmut, stating the reason was because “they are the victims here. Russia is the aggressor.”
The White House, he said, will not put “information in the public domain that makes it any harder” for the close Western ally whose army is being armed and trained by a US-led coalition of countries.
Heroic Ukrainian defenders have held out against relentless waves of attacks for months.
They now control only part of the city, including the vital last supply route to the city known as the “road of life”.
Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukrainian troops in the east said the defending troops “have not allowed the Russians to cut off our logistics”.
Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin near the graves of fallen Wagner mercenaries many of which have been killed in Bakhmut[/caption]
Ukrainian troops have described the ‘hell’ of fighting in Bakhmut, where the life expectancy can be as low as four hours[/caption]
A coalition of advocacy groups has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over its handling of the environmental assessment of SpaceX’s launch plans in southeast Texas. The FAA gave the green-light to SpaceX’s Starship launch program last summer, with the stipulation that the company perform a series of measures to mitigate […]
FAA failed to fully assess environmental effects of Starship, lawsuit alleges by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch
The long-awaited attempt to land a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon seems to have failed, with the fate of…
The post Commercial Moon Landing Attempt Failed: What Happened To The Lunar Craft? appeared first on TechRound.
THE fallout from the nuclear explosion which could have destroyed the unity of European club football is changing the game again.
Drastic action taken by supporters of the Premier League clubs who wanted to join it effectively sank the European Super League.
Uefa has initiated another attempt to appease the self-identified elite six of England[/caption]
One or two further attempts to appease the self-identified elite six of England were aborted.
Then along came another, this time initiated by Uefa with a body named the European Club Association — which they arrogantly describe as the “Heart of Football”.
My immediate reaction is that their heart already requires a transplant.
No question, Uefa were spooked by the discovery that ESL clubs were about to wreck their structure.
And with Fifa also sniffing around the multi-billions of our continent’s leading leagues, the ECA was born.
The motto should have been “More for the few”.
And last week an antidote to the ECA was introduced, the Union of European Clubs, which quickly brought applause from hundreds of neglected also-rans.
Sorry about the rash of ‘E’ initials. Only the mobile phone company EE have more.
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In their case they stand for “Everything Everywhere” which is rather appropriate for Uefa and Fifa, people who have plans for dictatorship of the people’s game.
It’s no accident that Manchester City and United, Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool and Chelsea, six promoters of the aborted Super League, are the only full English members of the ECA.
They have the votes to make the important decisions. The rest could simply be referred to as ‘observers’ but are politely called ‘associate members’.
Some Prem clubs outside the top six have agreed to be ‘associate members’, as have other clubs throughout Europe.
Among their ranks are mighty Valletta of Malta, average crowd 1,000; Vikingur of the Faroe Islands, average about 400; and Kairat of Kazakhstan, individual plastic seats for a 23,000-capacity crowd.
On a geographical note, 85 per cent of Kazakhstan is in Asia and has a border with China. In my book, that is not Europe.
Vikingur, Kairat and Valletta, and many others among the 110 full members, are not the kind of opposition — or should I say allies? — the Glazers or Abu Dhabi signed up for.
They expected Juventus, Real Madrid or Barcelona.
But this trio are absent from the ECA, presumably keeping their powder dry while hoping for a miraculous ESL rebirth.
LaLiga president Javier Tebas, fast becoming the voice of the thousand-plus clubs outside the ECA, said: “I’m fed up with hearing that the ECA represents the European clubs. It represents the elite clubs in Europe.
“We try to defend solidarity but that is not just ten per cent of the clubs. It has to be everyone.
“Is the ECA open? Not to vote and not for decision-making. Which is what is really necessary.”
The ECA was created to appease the richest.
They signed a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with Uefa and have a say in how the money from competitions is dished out.
And surprise, surprise, it’s not distributed fairly!
The Champions League will expand next year and Fifa have announced an overblown Club World Cup in 2025.
And guess where both finals are due to be held.
You got it, the USA, one of the host nations for the 2026 World Cup.
All for the same reason millions of the ‘huddled masses’ first arrived in New York: money.
And that is what the ECA are all about.
Thirty per cent of Champions League prize money is based on a club’s historical European performances, enhancing the already huge financial disparities between and within leagues.
I doubt this will change, no matter how worthy the Union of European Clubs is.
A Japanese company likely crashed a spacecraft into the moon as it attempted a soft landing Tuesday, causing an abrupt end to its five-month journey from launch pad to the lunar surface.
The company, ispace, invited the world to watch alongside its Tokyo-based mission control through a livestream of the event on April 25. The nail-biting landing sequence lasted about an hour as the robotic spacecraft performed a braking engine burn and followed automated commands to adjust the Hakuto-R lander’s orientation and speed to touch down.
As the spacecraft descended, mission control had communication with it. But after the maneuvers were completed, the team lost contact with the lander. With a room full of visibly disappointed engineers, ispace officials said they had to assume the landing was unsuccessful. But they’ll continue to investigate the status of the lander, said Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace.
“At this moment, what I can tell is we are very proud of the fact that we have already achieved many things during this Mission 1,” he said. “We acquired actual flight data during the landing phase. That is a great achievement for the future missions.”
Though 60 years have passed since the first uncrewed moon landings, it remains a daunting task, with less than half of missions succeeding. Unlike on Earth, the moon’s atmosphere is very thin, providing virtually no drag to slow a spacecraft down as it approaches the ground. Moreover, there is no GPS system on the moon to help guide a craft to its landing spot. Engineers have to compensate for these shortcomings from 239,000 miles away.
“We cannot emulate all the environment of the moon on the Earth before the mission,” Hakamada told Mashable in an interview hours after the event, still without an update on the lander’s status. “So we have to rely on all the simulations and then a lot of assumptions.”
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This is not the first time the private sector has attempted to get to the moon. For example, in 2019 an Israeli nonprofit and company collaborated on the $100 million Beresheet mission, which crashed on the lunar surface after an orientation component failed. The mishap potentially scattered some intriguing artifacts on the lunar surface in the process.
For one of ispace’s payload customers, a failed landing would mean the indefinite postponement of another dream: the first Arab moon mission. The ispace lander was supposed to deliver the United Arab Emirates’ Rashid rover to the moon, which would explore the Atlas Crater. Along with the Emirati rover, a Japanese space program robot was on board.
Hakuto-R is the first of many other commercial missions that are expected to attempt this feat soon, many of which are an outgrowth of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program. The program was established in 2018 to recruit the private sector to help deliver cargo to the moon. Ispace couldn’t directly participate in the NASA program because it isn’t an American company, but it is collaborating on one of the contracts led by Draper Technologies in Massachusetts, expected to land on the moon in 2025.
These upcoming missions will support the U.S. space agency’s lunar ambitions, shipping supplies and experiments to the surface ahead of astronauts’ arrival in 2025 or later. They’re also expected to kickstart a future cislunar economy, referring to the business potential of ventures on the moon and in the space between Earth and the moon.
“The environment has changed since I established this company 13 years ago,” Hakamada said. “This is a great market opportunity for a company like us.”
The executive said he wasn’t deterred by the uncertain outcome of the company’s first attempted landing. The data will help the business prepare for its next two upcoming missions, he said.
And he had no regrets about allowing the general public to watch the attempt in real time.
“We tried to be transparent to the world. That will, we believe, (help us) gain more trust in our business and technology,” Hakamada said. “Many people will be given the impression that this is real, and this will pave the way for the greater development of the cislunar ecosystem.”
Which will be the first to make the journey intact? The commercial race is on, with many more opportunities approaching.
“History can be made only by those who (face) challenges, and challenges will not be possible without taking a risk,” said Yuichi Tsuda, a professor of astronautical science at Tokyo University, during the live broadcast. “The risk can be taken only by those who dream. So ispace teams, you are all excellent dreamers.”
This story has been updated from a previous version to include an interview with ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada.
The report “analyzes a series of global climate indicators — including levels of planet-heating pollution, sea level rise and ocean heat — to understand how the planet is responding to climate change and the impact it is having on people and nature.”
CNN’s conclusion? “The world just failed its annual health checkup.”=
– Oceans reached record high temperatures, with nearly 60% experiencing at least one marine heatwave.
– Global sea levels climbed to the highest on record due to melting glaciers and warming oceans, which expand as they heat up.
– Antarctica’s sea ice dropped to 1.92 million square kilometers in February 2022, at the time the lowest level on record (the record was broken again this year).
– The European Alps saw a record year for glacier melt, with Switzerland particularly badly affected, losing 6% of its glacier volume between 2021 and 2022.
– Levels of planet warming pollution, including methane and carbon dioxide, reached record highs in 2021, the latest year for which there is global data…
Last year, climate change-fueled extreme weather “affected tens of millions, drove food insecurity, boosted mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in loss and damage,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. In 2022, China had its most extensive and long-lasting drought on record. Droughts also affected East Africa, with more than 20 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing acute food insecurity as of January this year. Many western and southern US states experienced significant drought and Europe’s punishing heatwave is estimated to have led to 15,000 excess deaths. In Pakistan, record-breaking rainfall left huge swaths of the country underwater, killing more than 1,700 people, with almost 8 million displaced, and causing $30 billion in damages…
Last year is unlikely to be an outlier, as temperatures continue their upwards trajectory. The past eight years were the hottest on record, despite three consecutive years of the La Niña climate phenomenon, which has a global cooling effect. The global average temperature last year climbed to about 1.15 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to the report, as the world continues its march towards breaching 1.5 degrees of warming for the first time. With the predicted arrival later in the year of El Niño, which brings warmer global temperatures, scientists are deeply concerned that 2023 and 2024 will continue to smash climate records. The hottest year on record, 2016, was the result of a strong El Niño and climate change, said Baddour. “It is only a matter of time before that record is broken….”
“The droughts and level of heatwaves that we saw throughout 2022 were quite remarkable,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, told CNN. “This is really a wake up call that climate change isn’t a future problem, it is a current problem. And we need to adapt as quickly as possible,” she added.
Omar Baddour, head of the Climate Monitoring and Policy Division at the WMO, also told CNN that “Communities and countries which have contributed least to climate change suffer disproportionately.”
And for more bad news, CNN notes a report from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found Europe experienced its hottest summer ever recorded, unprecedented marine heatwaves in the Mediterranean sea, and widespread wildfires.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.