The US shuttle Discovery touched down in Florida on Saturday, capping a successful 14-day mission to deliver and open Japan’s first space laboratory at the International Space Station (ISS). Under a sunny sky, the orbiter carrying seven astronauts landed right on time at 11:15am at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral after gliding over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula as it plunged toward Earth. “Beautiful landing, Mark, and congratulations on a great mission,” a mission control official told Discovery commander Mark Kelly. “It’s great to be back, and it’s great for all of us to be part of a big team that made the station a little bit bigger, a little bit more capable,” Kelly replied. After traveling 217 orbits and 9.2 million kilometers around Earth, Discovery plunged toward the planet at more than 20 times the speed of sound before slowing down for its landing. A double sonic boom signaled the shuttle’s imminent arrival. Three minutes before landing, Kelly took the shuttle off auto-pilot and steered it toward Kennedy’s landing strip number 15. NASA had given the shuttle the green light to wrap up its two-week journey and return to Earth after it determined that the loss of a small clip from its rudder posed no risk during landing. The agency has kept a close eye on the shuttle’s protective thermal layer since a crack in Columbia’s heat shield caused the orbiter to explode as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in February 2003, killing its seven astronauts. Discovery undocked from the ISS on Wednesday about 344km above the South Pacific east of Australia. The shuttle’s main task was to deliver, open and outfit the 11.2m long, 4.4m wide main module of the Japanese Kibo laboratory, which became the station’s biggest facility. At a press briefing after the landing, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide described his feelings when Discovery left the ISS and the Kibo lab he had known and monitored back at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. “When we went to close the hatch, that was a tender moment, it was kind of sad,” he said. Kibo — which means “Hope” in Japanese — represents Japan’s and Asia’s first major contribution to the orbiting international station, which already has modules from the US, Russia and the European Space Agency. Shuttle Endeavour had already brought the bus-sized lab’s storage room in March. The third and final part of the lab — an outdoor facility that will allow experiments to be exposed to the effects of space — will be delivered next year. When completed, Kibo will allow astronauts to carry out experiments in medicine, biology and biotechnology, material production and communications, both in a pressurized environment and completely exposed to space.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
STILL AFLOAT: Satellite images show that a Chinese ship damaged in a collision earlier this month was under repair on Hainan, but Beijing has not commented on the incident Australia, Canada and the Philippines on Wednesday deployed three warships and aircraft for drills against simulated aerial threats off a disputed South China Sea shoal where Chinese forces have used risky maneuvers to try to drive away Manila’s aircraft and ships. The Philippine military said the naval drills east of Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) were concluded safely, and it did not mention any encounter with China’s coast guard, navy or suspected militia ships, which have been closely guarding the uninhabited fishing atoll off northwestern Philippines for years. Chinese officials did not immediately issue any comment on the naval drills, but they
POWER CONFLICT: The US president threatened to deploy National Guards in Baltimore. US media reports said he is also planning to station troops in Chicago US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to deploy National Guard troops to yet another Democratic stronghold, the Maryland city of Baltimore, as he seeks to expand his crackdown on crime and immigration. The Republican’s latest online rant about an “out of control, crime-ridden” city comes as Democratic state leaders — including Maryland Governor Wes Moore — line up to berate Trump on a high-profile political stage. Trump this month deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, in a widely criticized show of force the president said amounts to a federal takeover of US capital policing. The Guard began carrying
Ukrainian drone attacks overnight on several Russian power and energy facilities forced capacity reduction at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and set a fuel export terminal in Ust-Luga on fire, Russian officials said yesterday. A drone attack on the Kursk nuclear plant, not far from the border with Ukraine, damaged an auxiliary transformer and led to 50 percent reduction in the operating capacity at unit three of the plant, the plant’s press service said. There were no injuries and a fire sparked by the attack was promptly extinguished, the plant said. Radiation levels at the site and in the surrounding
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