A Japanese spacecraft has successfully touched down on an asteroid some 280 million kilometres from the Earth, on a mission to collect material that could provide clues about the origin of life and the solar system.
Data from the probe, Hayabusa2, showed changes in speed and direction, indicating it had landed on the distant Ryugu asteroid and was blasting back to its orbiting position, officials from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said on Thursday.
A live webcast of the control room showed dozens of JAXA staff members nervously monitoring data ahead of the touchdown before exploding into applause after receiving a signal from the probe, Hayabusa2, that it had landed.
Japan‘s spacecraft was due to fire a bullet at the asteroid to stir up surface matter, which the probe will then collect for analysis back on Earth.
The asteroid is thought to contain relatively large amounts of organic matter and water from some 4.6bn years ago when the solar system was born.
Hayabusa2 will eventually fire an “impactor” to blast out material from underneath Ryugu’s surface, allowing the collection of “fresh” materials unexposed to millennia of wind and radiation.
Scientists hope those samples may provide answers to some fundamental questions about life and the universe, including whether elements from space helped give rise to life on Earth.
After the landing, the probe was to return to its orbit above Ryugu, with further touchdowns planned for later in the year.
Communication with Hayabusa2 is cut off at times because its antennas are not always pointed towards Earth and it could take several more days to confirm the bullet was actually fired to allow the collection of samples.
Photos of Ryugu – which means “Dragon Palace” in Japanese and refers to a castle at the bottom of the ocean in an ancient Japanese tale – show an asteroid shaped a bit like a spinning top with a rough surface.
JAXA staff applauded as a signal sent from space indicated the Hayabusa2 spacecraft had touched down [ISAS/JAXA via AP]
The mission has not been completely plain sailing and the probe’s landing was originally scheduled for last year.
But it was pushed back after surveys found the asteroid’s surface was more rugged than initially thought, forcing JAXA to take more time to find a suitable landing site.
The Hayabusa2 mission, with a price tag of around 30bn yen ($270m), was launched in December 2014 and is scheduled to return to Earth with its samples in 2020.
Hayabusa2 observes the surface of the asteroid with its camera and sensing equipment but has also dispatched two tiny MINERVA-II rover robots as well as the French-German robot MASCOT to help surface observation.
Scientists are already receiving data from these probes deployed on the surface of the asteroid.
At about the size of a large fridge, Hayabusa2 is equipped with solar panels and is the successor to JAXA’s first asteroid explorer, Hayabusa – Japanese for falcon.
That probe returned from a smaller, potato-shaped, asteroid in 2010 with dust samples despite various setbacks during its epic seven-year Odyssey and was hailed as a scientific triumph.
President Donald Trump’s silence is notable for a president who never hesitates to spout off about issues large and small. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
But when it comes to those insulting MAGA-ites, Trump relishes jumping in.
When Chicago police accused actor Jussie Smollett of fabricating a story about being attacked by MAGA-loving bigots, President Donald Trump was quick to weigh in. “What about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!?” he wrote on Twitter.
And when Catholic high school student Nick Sandmann filed a lawsuit against The Washington Post this week over its coverage of last month’s confrontation between the teenager and a Native American elder, Trump couldn’t help himself. “Go get them Nick,” he declared. “Fake News!”
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But more than 24 hours after news broke that a Coast Guard officer — an avowed white nationalist — was allegedly plotting to kill Democratic politicians and journalists, Trump has, at least so far, not said a word.
Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “The president and the entire administration have condemned violence in all forms as we have stated many times.” Sanders did not respond to questions about whether Trump planned to tone down his rhetoric.
Trump’s silence is notable for a president who never hesitates to spout off about issues large and small, from Venezuelan politics to “Saturday Night Live.” It reflects a deep sensitivity by the president and his aides to accusations that his verbal assault on the free press, personalized attacks on political targets and racially charged language could incite violence. But it also illustrates a tactic that those who know Trump say he has used for decades to shape coverage while tearing down his opponents — comment on the issues he wants to amplify and get covered, while ignoring those that don’t fit his preferred narrative.
“Long before he arrived at the White House, President Trump learned to use media coverage to build a brand and shape positive narratives,” said a former White House official, who was granted anonymity to characterize the president’s approach to the media.
News of the alleged domestic terror plot comes the same week that the president has ramped up his criticism of the media, insisting that The New York Times is “a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE,” despite warnings from the newspaper’s publisher that such rhetoric puts journalists in danger. He also went after The Washington Post’s fact checker, a section that tracks Trump’s misstatements.
People close to the president argue that Trump shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of a small group of disturbed individuals who happen to support him. And Trump’s allies don’t believe he has any intention of curbing his criticism of the press. They also note that some members of the Trump administration have been targeted by the president’s critics, including Sanders, who was asked to leave a restaurant, and senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, who recently disclosed that she was assaulted at a restaurant last year.
The president regularly fumes in public and in private about negative coverage of him, and he also believes there’s a political utility to undercutting the reporters who cover him, according to people who know him. It’s a strategy he’s been turning to most of his adult life, dating to his time in New York, where he would regularly engage with — and spar with — tabloid reporters.
“So, to a large extent he does it naturally, but his use of the media is also a product of a deliberate strategy to advance his own ideas and undercut contrary narratives,” the former White House official said.
Trump has often avoided engaging in a fulsome debate about the impact of his rhetoric, including after Cesar Sayoc’s October 2018 arrest for mailing a series of bombs to some of Trump’s political opponents.
After the incident, Trump called for unity during a rally in Wisconsin, saying, “No nation can succeed that tolerates violence or the threat of violence as a method of political intimidation, coercion, or control. We all know that. Such conduct must be fiercely opposed and firmly prosecuted.”
But the next day, he blamed the media. “A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,” he tweeted. “It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!”
Watchdog groups continue to have deep concerns about the president’s attacks on the press. They warn his rhetoric is being repeated by dictators around the world.
“It’s irresponsible and dangerous,” said Alexandra Ellerbeck, the North America program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists. “When we talk to journalists, they feel less safe than they used to.”
A January CPJ analysis found that Trump sent more than 1,300 tweets critical of the media since becoming a presidential candidate. Though Trump tweets less overall as president than he did as a candidate, CPJ found that Trump tweets critical of the press have nonetheless increased during the first two years of his presidency.
At the same time, the number of journalists imprisoned around the world on false news charges has risen to 28, compared with nine two years ago, according to a December 2018 report from CPJ.
Even U.S. journalists have faced violence and intimidation in recent months. In June 2018, a gunman killed five employees at the Capital Gazette in Maryland when he opened fire in the newsroom. CNN evacuated its New York office due to a bomb threat in December 2018. And earlier this month, a Trump supporter shoved a BBC cameraman at a rally.
Trump has occasionally made light of some of these violent incidents, joking last fall about a Republican congressman convicted of assault for body-slamming a reporter.
Still, most analysts are careful about directly blaming Trump for violence against journalists.
“I think it’s very difficult to draw a bright line between what comes out of the president’s mouth or his Twitter account and action from other individuals,” said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But that doesn’t mean we should accept a normalization of this rhetoric.”
Trump’s allies have pounced on journalists and others who were quick to connect Trump to the Smollett and Covington Catholic incidents, arguing that the president’s critics are so eager to cast the president and his supporters in a negative light that they don’t wait for all the facts to emerge.
But others haven’t exhibited the same caution when it comes to finger-pointing. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, who has publicly sparred with the president, didn’t hold back on Thursday morning.
“This is pretty simple,” Scarborough said. “It’s all on the president’s shoulders, it’s all the president’s fault, and he sits there with his mouth shut for once in his life, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t tweet anything — which of course makes it even more on him.”
Scarborough was among the members of the media on the hit list of U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson, who was arrested earlier this month, according to authorities. Others included MSNBC hosts Chris Hayes and Ari Melber, and CNN’s Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo and Van Jones.
Scarborough and others have noted that news of the alleged plot to kill Democratic politicians and journalists broke just hours after New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger chastised Trump for calling the Times the “enemy of the American people” after it published an account of the president’s efforts to undercut the investigations encircling him.
“The phrase ‘enemy of the people’ is not just false, it’s dangerous. It has an ugly history of being wielded by dictators and tyrants who sought to control public information. And it is particularly reckless coming from someone whose office gives him broad powers to fight or imprison the nation’s enemies,” Sulzberger wrote. “As I have repeatedly told President Trump face to face, there are mounting signs that this incendiary rhetoric is encouraging threats and violence against journalists at home and abroad.”
Eminem’s tweet prompted a response from some of The Punisher’s cast, like Amber Rose Revah, who played Dinah Madani in the series.
Also speaking up was Floriana Lima, who took on the role of Krista Dumont.
It might come as a surprise that Eminem is a fan of the Netflix show, but he definitely has a connection to the series.
The rapper appeared in a one-off issue with The Punisher in 2009, where they buddied up to take on Barracuda. It was released to help promote Eminem’s album Relapse.
As Disney gears up to launch its own streaming service, Marvel series have slowly disappeared from Netflix. Other Marvel series, like Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and Daredevil, were cancelled last year.
It’s unclear if these shows will continue on Disney’s service, and as Marvel Television executive producer Jeph Loeb explained, these cancellations were all Netflix’s decision.
“Our Network partner may have decided they no longer want to continue telling the tales of these great characters… but you know Marvel better than that,” he wrote in a blog post.
Plants on Earth have flourished for hundreds of millions of years, yet President Donald Trump’s pick to lead his new climate team insists that they need more carbon dioxide to thrive.
Princeton physicist and carbon dioxide-advocate William Happer has been selected to head the brand new Presidential Committee on Climate Security, reports The Washington Post. The atomic scientist — who achieved recognition for his work on atomic collisions and telescope optics, not climate science — maintains that the planet’s atmosphere needs significantly more CO2, the potent greenhouse gas that U.S. government scientists — and a bevy of independent scientists — have repeatedly underscored is stoking accelerating climate change.
Because plants use carbon dioxide to live, Happer has said “more CO2 is actually a benefit to the Earth,” asserted that Earth is experiencing a “CO2 famine,” and concluded that “If plants could vote, they would vote for coal.”
Earth and plant scientists, however, find Happer’s insistence that the plant kingdom would benefit from increased carbon dioxide wrong-headed and lacking evidence, at best. For reference, Earth’s CO2 concentrations have skyrocketed in the last century, and are now at their highest levels in at least 800,000 years — though other measurements show CO2 levels are higher than they’ve been in 15 million years.
“The idea that increased CO2 is universally beneficial [to plants] is very misguided,” Jill Anderson, an evolutionary ecologist specializing in plant populations at the University of Georgia, said in an interview.
Animation showing the evolution of global mean temperature vs. carbon dioxide concentration since 1850, now updated to include 2018.
Though 2018 is a bit cooler than recent years, it still is one of the warmest years ever and lies close to the trend line of #GlobalWarming. pic.twitter.com/eK7zvUqWyT
“It’s a silly argument,” added Britton Stephens, a senior scientist in the Earth Observing Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in an interview.
Both independent academic institutions and government agencies around disparate parts of the globe have concluded more carbon dioxide will “bring many negative impacts” to plant environments, Stephens emphasized. “If someone is going to claim it’s good, it’s incumbent upon them to show evidence.”
Reached by email, Happer said he would like to chat about the benefits of carbon dioxide in the future, but such requests must now be sent through (and vetted) by the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC responded by saying that “At the moment, a discussion on this topic is not possible.
“If we were to hold other environmental factors completely constant, some plants would do well, some plants would do worse, and some would outcompete other plants,” said Anderson.
But this is a reality that doesn’t exist.
“We know that CO2 isn’t increasing in isolation,” said Anderson. Eighteen of the last 19 years have been the warmest on record. Both wild plants and crops are experiencing increased flooding, heat waves, and pestilence.
“CO2 does “fertilize” plants and by itself causes plants to grow faster, but unchecked CO2 release into the atmosphere will lead to reduced yields and the consequences could be catastrophic,” Thomas Sharkey, a plant biochemist at Michigan State University, said over email.
Baseball spring training starts this week.
Predicting today whether CO2 in 2100 will be ~1000 ppm, or only half that, is like guessing who will play in the World Series in October.
Nonetheless, the consequences of our CO2 emissions over the next few decades are profound. pic.twitter.com/pUf5VVlBAk
Sharkey noted that pollen production — which is necessary for making seeds — is sensitive to even small increases in the average temperature.
“The negatives far outweigh the positives,” added Stephens.
As might be evident to anyone alive on the planet, plants flourish today and have flourished for hundreds of millions of years, so Happer’s suggestion that the planet’s vegetation is in need of more carbon dioxide is bizarre.
“Obviously plants were doing just fine historically,” said Anderson. “There’s no indication plants are increasing their performance and doing better now than historically.”
A NASA graph showing skyrocketing CO2 levels.
Image: nasa
A recent NASA study found that Earth’s overall greening over the last two decades — which is to say the increase in area covered by green leaves — is largely due to major tree planting programs and agricultural expansion in China and India. And some new regions of the planet are greening as the planet warms, like vast swaths of the northern tundra. But globally, the jury’s still out on whether increased carbon dioxide is having a measurable influence on plant growth.
“This is not a huge signal that everyone can see,” said Stephens.
There are extremely conspicuous climate signals, however, that everyone can see. One of the most widely-predicted consequences of a warming climate, stoked by historically-high carbon dioxide emissions, is increased fire weather. The California town of Paradise fell victim to profoundly dried-out vegetation and hot temperatures this past November. The forests had been turned to tinder, waiting to burn.
Is more CO2 really good for plants?
“Tell that to the trees in Paradise, California,” said Stephens.
#NEBHInjuryReport Brad Stevens on Gordon Hayward (ankle): “He felt decent after he worked out today, but not quite good enough to play. We’ll reassess tomorrow.”
#NEBHInjuryReport Brad Stevens on Gordon Hayward (ankle): “He felt decent after he worked out today, but not quite good enough to play. We’ll reassess tomorrow.”
#NEBHInjuryReport Brad Stevens on Gordon Hayward (ankle): “He felt decent after he worked out today, but not quite good enough to play. We’ll reassess tomorrow.”
#NEBHInjuryReport Brad Stevens on Gordon Hayward (ankle): “He felt decent after he worked out today, but not quite good enough to play. We’ll reassess tomorrow.”
#NEBHInjuryReport Brad Stevens on Gordon Hayward (ankle): “He felt decent after he worked out today, but not quite good enough to play. We’ll reassess tomorrow.”
The United States will leave around 200 troops in Syria for a period of time, the White House has announced, as President Donald Trump pulled back from a complete withdrawal of forces.
In a surprise declaration, Trump in December said the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group had been defeated in Syria and ordered the withdrawal of the 2,000 US soldiers from the war-torn country.
But the president has been under pressure from multiple advisers to adjust his policy, which was fiercely criticised, including by members of his own Republican party.
Critics have decried a number of possible outcomes from a precipitous withdrawal, including a Turkish attack on US-backed Kurdish forces – Washington’s main ally in the fight against ISIL – and a resurgence of the armed group.
“A small peacekeeping group of about 200 will remain in Syria for a period of time,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.
The decision was announced after Trump spoke by phone to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A White House statement said the two leaders agreed, regarding Syria, to “continue coordinating on the creation of a potential safe zone”.
Turkey wants to set up a safe zone with logistical support from allies and says it should be cleared of the US-backed Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara considers a “terrorist” group.
US troops withdrawal from Syria ‘will be gradual’ process (1:52)
A senior US administration official said Trump’s decision had been in the works for some time. It was unclear how long the 200 troops would be expected to remain in the area or where exactly they would be deployed.
Leaving even a small group of US troops in Syria could pave the way for European allies to commit hundreds of troops to help set up and observe a potential safe zone in northeast Syria.
“This is a clear direction to our allies and coalition members that we will be on the ground in some capacity,” the senior administration official told Reuters news agency.
On Thursday, acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan met with his counterpart from Belgium. Before the meeting, Didier Reynders, Belgium’s minister of defense, was asked whether he would be open to keeping troops if there were no American forces left.
“We are waiting for preparation of the withdrawal of US troops and we are waiting now for more discussions,” he said.
Until now, European allies have balked at providing troops unless they received a firm commitment that Washington was still committed to the region.
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