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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
At a calligraphy class in Hanoi, Hoang Thi Thanh Huyen slides her brush across the page to form the letters and tonal marks of Vietnam’s unique modern script, in part a legacy of French colonial rule. The history of romanized Vietnamese, or Quoc Ngu, links the arrival of the first Christian missionaries, colonization by the French and the rise to power of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It is now reflected in the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers. A month after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited,
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