Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing company, has successfully demonstrated the ability to safely and quickly de-orbit a satellite by using its Terminator Tape Deorbit Module, a lightweight solution for end-of-mission disposal of satellites that helps ensure the long-term sustainability of space operations.
We all know that space junk is becoming more and more of an issue. Our planet is progressively being suffocated by our leftover waste, with the Department of Defense’s global Space Surveillance Network tracking over 27,000 pieces of orbital debris of all sizes. And more than 3,000 inactive satellites only add to the problem, posing an overall threat to space exploration.
It has been theorized that if the risk of colliding with an object grows too high, Earth orbit may actually become inaccessible. Millennium Space Systems has come up with a solution for the inactive satellites that circle our planet by drawing them back to Earth much faster.
In order to demonstrate its technology, the business built and qualified a spacecraft dubbed DragRacer. The spacecraft was designed in under nine months and launched on November 19th, 2020, from Auckland, New Zealand.
It carried two identical satellites to low Earth orbit, where they were deployed simultaneously. One hosted a tether, and the other did not. After eight months, the satellite equipped with the 70 m (66 ft) Terminator Tape burned up upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, while the other satellite will naturally de-orbit on its way back to Earth for at least seven years.
The Terminator Tape works by adding a new surface area that interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere to create drag, which causes satellites to return to Earth faster. When a retired satellite is about to de-orbit, the tape is deployed with a simple mechanism. It’s also light, thus it has little impact on the satellite’s primary mission.
“With drag tape, we significantly reduce the time it remains space debris, and it’s one less piece of debris to track.”, said Patrick Kelly, Ph.D., Dragracer program manager at Millennium Space Systems.
Groups against President Biden’s new coronavirus eviction moratorium appealed one day after a federal judge ruled it could stand, according to reports.
Two chapters of the National Association of Realtors and a group of landlords requested “immediate” action from the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals on Saturday and may get a ruling by the end of next week, according to Politico.
D.C. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, ruled Friday the scaled-back ban could stay in place because of a June appeals ruling that kept the previous version in place and that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t reverse. She did say, however, she believed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had overstepped its authority in issuing the ban.
The moratorium, meant to shield renters struggling during the pandemic, expired at the end of July but the Biden administration reissued the ban after pressure from progressives.
DEROY MURDOCK: BIDEN’S EVICTION MORATORIUM REVEALS REVEALS DEMS’ UTTER CONTEMPT FOR RULE OF LAW, CONSTITUTION
The issue will likely make it to the Supreme Court, Politico reported.
Demonstrators gather during a protest against the expiration of the eviction moratorium outside of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Sunday, Aug. 1, 2021. (Getty Images)
Landlords have railed against the extension, which many have said is helping renters at their expense and in turn leaving them in financial strife.
“Given the President’s statement that this extension of the moratorium and any litigation in its defense are meant to buy time to keep an unlawful policy in place for as long as possible, this Court should issue an immediate administrative order vacating the stay while it considers this motion,” lawyers wrote in the motion, citing a claim Biden made that his extension of the policy would nullify any decision in the courts, according to Politico.
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The three appeals judges are Obama, Trump and Biden appointees.
“The Administration believes that CDC’s new moratorium is a proper use of its lawful authority to protect the public health,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday after the first ruling, according to CNBC. “We are pleased that the district court left the moratorium in place, though we are aware that further proceedings in this case are likely.”
The emergence of a video showing Wayne LaPierre, the polarizing head of the National Rifle Association, shooting but struggling to kill an African bush elephant during a 2013 hunting trip in Botswana drew criticism on Tuesday from conservation groups.
The awkward display — in which Mr. LaPierre shoots at the elephant three times at close range with a rifle while it is still alive after wounding it with an initial shot — was recorded for an outdoor television show that the N.R.A. once sponsored, but the video was never aired. (In the end, the host of the program fired the fatal shot.)
The video was obtained by The New Yorker and The Trace, a nonprofit website funded by Everytown for Gun Safety, a group co-founded by Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who has donated tens of millions of dollars to gun-control groups.
Later in the footage, Mr. LaPierre’s wife, Susan, can be seen shooting another elephant right between the eyes as it approaches her and the guides, who instruct her to fire a second round between its legs to make sure it is dead. She later cuts off part of the elephant’s tail to keep as a memento of the kill.
Just last month, African bush elephants, also known as savanna elephants, were declared endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or I.U.C.N., on the group’s Red List of threatened species. They were previously classified as vulnerable.
“It’s sickening to see LaPierre’s brutal, clumsy slaughter of this beautiful creature,” Tanya Sanerib, the international legal director and a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement on Tuesday night. “No animal should suffer like this.”
Andrew Arulanandam, a managing director of N.R.A. Public Affairs, confirmed the authenticity of the video in a statement on Tuesday night.
“The hunt was fully permitted and conducted in accordance with all rules and regulations,” Mr. Arulanandam said. “The video offers an incomplete portrayal of the experience — and fails to express the many ways this activity benefits the local community and habitat. Such hunts are celebrated in Botswana, where they feed villages, contribute to the economy and culture, and are part of the fabric of the region.”
Wayne LaPierre at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., in February.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Ms. Sanerib said that despite the endangered status of African bush elephants, it is legal to hunt them, with a license, in certain areas of Botswana.
“We’re in the midst of a poaching epidemic,” Ms. Sanerib said, “and rich trophy hunters like the N.R.A. chief are blasting away at elephants while the international community calls for stiffer penalties for poachers — what message does that send? We need to halt all elephant killings or they’ll vanish forever.”
Kathleen Gobush, an affiliate assistant professor of biology at the University of Washington and a member of the African Elephant Specialist Group within the International Union for Conservation of Nature, also condemned Mr. LaPierre’s hunting of the elephant.
“There’s got to be a better way to conserve an endangered species than this — an inhumane show of dominance, and poorly executed at that,” Dr. Gobush said in an email on Tuesday night.
The surfacing of the video came just weeks after Mr. LaPierre, testifying in federal bankruptcy court, acknowledged that he had secretly taken the N.R.A. into bankruptcy as a way to thwart the New York attorney general’s attempt to shut down the organization. It also follows a recent spate of mass shootings and efforts by the Biden administration to curb gun violence.
In the video, Mr. LaPierre, dressed in an N.R.A. baseball cap, is led by guides through Botswana’s Okavango Delta toward an elephant. A guide tells him to wait before shooting, but he fires one round, seemingly unable to hear because he is wearing ear plugs.
The guides point to where he should fire another round to kill the elephant. Mr. LaPierre fires three more times at close range. But the fatal shot is fired by the program’s host.
Later in the video, after Mrs. LaPierre has successfully killed an elephant, she tells the video crew and the guides that she could see how old it was and how wrinkled it was.
“Victory,” she says, after following a guide’s suggestion that she cut off part of the elephant’s tail and keep it as a memento. “That’s my elephant tail. Way cool.”
The U.S. moved closer Thursday toward vaccinating 100 million Americans in a race against an uptick in COVID-19 cases that is fueling fears of another nationwide surge just as the major league baseball season starts and thousands of fans return to stadiums.
More than 99 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and more than 56 million people — 17% of the nation’s population — have been fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A total of 154 million vaccines had been administered as of Thursday. President Joe Biden’s new goal is to give 200 million vaccine doses during his first 100 days in office.
But coronavirus infections are inching up again. The country is averaging 64,000 cases per day this week, up from a daily average of 55,000 infections two weeks ago. Deaths have steadily been averaging about 900 a day.
Officials have warned that they could ban fans from ballparks if the numbers continue to rise. Even before the baseball season got underway Thursday, an opening game was postponed after a player tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Washington Nationals were scheduled to host the New York Mets on Thursday night, but after a Nationals player tested positive for COVID-19, the team canceled the game. It was not immediately rescheduled.
At American Family Field in Milwaukee, Tonia Smith said she didn’t have any safety concerns about returning to the stadium where the Brewers were facing off against the Minnesota Twins. The stadium limited attendance to about 16,000 fans — a quarter of its capacity.
“It was hard to judge how quickly to get here. It’s a different opening day experience. But just having those smells hit you, walking in and having that experience back, it’s invigorating,” said Smith, 45, of Sussex, Wisconsin.
In Chicago, officials warned that they will stop letting baseball fans into Wrigley Field and across town at Guaranteed Rate Field, as well as bars and restaurants, if COVID-19 cases keeps climbing.
The warning was included in a news release issued by the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications on Wednesday, a day before opening day for the Chicago Cubs. Both ballparks will be limited to 25% of their capacity when they open up to fans for the first time since 2019.
For Wrigley Field, that means little more than 10,000 fans in the stands. Many more are expected to watch the game from nearby bars and restaurants. Guaranteed Rate Field is home to the White Sox.
Meanwhile, states are doubling their efforts to vaccinate as many people as possible by expanding eligibility and touting the vaccines as essential to getting the country back to normal.
As of Thursday, anyone 50 or older is eligible for a vaccine in California, the country’s most populous state with 40 million people.
In Michigan, which has the country’s highest new case rate over the past week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer doubled the state’s daily COVID-19 vaccination goal to 100,000 shots as the state faces a third surge in cases.
Michigan’s direct allotment of doses will total about 620,000 next week, a record. That is 12%, or roughly 66,000, more than this week and includes a substantial boost in the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The state added 6,000 cases Thursday for the second day in a row. Its seven-day average, 5,061, has grown six-fold over nearly six weeks.
Michigan also reported its first confirmed case of a coronavirus variant that was initially identified in Brazil. The infection arose in a resident of Bay County, where local health officials were investigating the person’s exposure history.
The state previously reported finding variants that were first identified in Britain and South Africa.
“It is now even more important that Michiganders continue to do what works to slow the spread of the virus,” the governor said in a statement, citing wearing masks, keeping social distance, avoiding crowds, washing hands and getting a vaccine.
While some states are struggling to meet vaccine demand, others report that a significant portion of their populations are hesitant to get the vaccine.
In Iowa, about a third of the state’s adult population, roughly 800,000 people, will not commit to getting a vaccine, which prompted Gov. Kim Reynolds to plead with them to consider it for everyone’s sake.
Iowa’s virus activity has increased in recent weeks specifically among spring break travelers ages 18 to 29.
The state is expected to get nearly 161,000 vaccine doses next week, the largest weekly supply so far, Reynolds said. That will enable the state to open vaccination appointments broadly to all adults beginning Monday although a few counties already have expanded their vaccination eligibility.
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Associated Press writer Steve Megargee in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci drew backlash on Wednesday for admitting that the Biden administration has to make a “judgment call” when it comes to COVID travel guidance.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced new health guidelines for vaccinated people Monday, but made no mention of travel.
The guidelines, which were supposed to be released last week, originally included recommendations about traveling but senior health officials decided to remove that section, according to Politico.
During an appearance on CNN, Fauci was pressed about what “science” is preventing the Biden administration from declaring that Americans with both doses of the COVID vaccine can travel safely.
FAUCI DEFENDS HARRIS ‘STARTING FROM SCRATCH’ CLAIM, NOW KNOCKS TRUMP VACCINE ROLLOUT
“From the Biden administration, they say that they will make its decisions based on science,” CNN anchor John Berman asked. “What’s the science behind not saying it’s safe for people who have been vaccinated, received two doses, to travel?”
“You know, that’s a very good question, John,” Fauci responded. “And the CDC is carefully heading in that direction … They’re being careful, understandably. They want to get science, they want to get data, and then when you don’t have the data and you don’t have the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call. And I think that’s what you’re going to be seeing in the next weeks.”
Fauci later insisted that guidance on travel and other activities will “imminently be coming out.”
“Fire Fauci,” Ben Shapiro exclaimed on Twitter “All he has done for weeks is undermine the incentive structure for getting vaccinated — the measure that spells the end of the pandemic.”
“Fauci’s house of cards is crashing,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., tweeted.
“This kind of attitude actually hurts the fight against vaccine hesitancy….” NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck reacted.
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“The Infallible Fauci is a fraud and should be ignored at this point. Go live your lives instead of praying at the alter of overpaid government stooges who are drunk on power they never intend to give away,” the “Rubin Report” host Dave Rubin wrote.
“The guy is a fraud. Maybe he wasn’t when it started, but he is now,” National Review senior writer David Harsanyi similarly expressed.
Fox News’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
London — The front pages of Britain’s newspapers were dominated on Monday by Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, despite the fact that the majority of the British public had not been able to watch it yet. The interview was broadcast in the U.K. on Monday evening at 9 p.m. local time.
“It was both everything we had come to expect — and not what we were expecting at all,” Camilla Tominey wrote in Britain’s conservative-leaning Telegraph Newspaper. “Make no mistake, this was a pregnant woman blaming the institution — and those within it — for failing to help her at her lowest ebb.”
“Whatever the royal family was expecting from this interview, this was worse,” Valentine Low wrote in an op-ed in The Times newspaper, another right-leaning publication.
But while some of Britain’s right-leaning press has been critical of the royal couple over the interview, especially given the timing of its broadcast as the prince’s grandfather Prince Philip is in the hospital, the BBC’s royal correspondent said the sit-down with Oprah had, “upended the narrative created by Britain’s best-selling newspapers.”
The U.K.’s biggest-selling newspapers, including The Sun and the Daily Mail tabloids, have published numerous negative stories about Meghan since her relationship with Harry became public.
With the interview, BBC correspondent Jonny Dymond said Harry and Meghan had “revealed the terrible strains inside the palace. They have drawn a picture of unfeeling individuals lost in an uncaring institution. They have spoken of racism within the Royal Family. This was a devastating interview.”
Meghan says royals discussed son’s skin color…
01:01
One member of Britain’s opposition shadow cabinet said the palace, which recently announced that it was investigating allegations that Meghan bullied former staff, should also look into the allegations of racism made by her during the interview.
“I would expect them to be treated by the palace with the utmost seriousness, and fully investigated,” Shadow Education Secretary Kate Green told Sky News.
Afua Hirsch, author of the book “Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging,” wrote in an op-ed in the New York times that Meghan’s “treatment has proved what many of us have always known: No matter how beautiful you are, whom you marry, what palaces you occupy, charities you support, how faithful you are, how much money you accumulate or what good deeds you perform, in this society racism will still follow you.”
Left-wing commentator Owen Jones said: “Meghan Markle’s interview hasn’t just exposed the truth about the monarchy, a shadowy institution shrouded in secrecy despite supposedly embodying the nation. It’s currently exposing everyone who doesn’t care about either racism or suicide.”
Piers Morgan, who co-anchors one of Britain’s most-watched morning shows, questioned the context of the conversation about skin color that Meghan outlined, suggesting it might not have been racist at all.
His guest, TV-host Trisha Goddard, said: “What gets me is why is everybody else such an expert about racism against Black people? I’m sorry, Piers, you don’t get to call out what is and isn’t racism against Black people.”
.@TrishaGoddard says @piersmorgan can call out whatever he wants but he doesn’t get to say what ‘is and isn’t racism against black people.’
He responds he’s calling out Meghan’s ‘incendiary charge of racism against the Royal Family’.
Nadine White, race correspondent for Britain’s Independent newspaper, wrote on Twitter: “Worst royal crisis since The Abdication of 1936… and racism is undeniably at the core… While we are here, let’s normalise reporting about race in the media!”
The montage of celebrities gushing over New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D., as he received an Emmy award in November sparked a new wave of conservative mockery on Monday.
Cuomo rode high in 2020 for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic in spite of his state leading the nation in deaths, but he is now under fire from both parties over his administration’s suspected cover-up of nursing home fatalities from the virus.
Cuomo received the Founders Award “in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world” at the International Emmy Awards ceremony on Nov. 23, and liberal celebrities like Ben Stiller, Spike Lee, and Robert de Niro heaped praise upon him in a pre-recorded video.
TWITTER USERS TRASH SNL FOR IGNORING CUOMO’S NURSING HOME SCANDAL: ‘WAS IT TOO EASY?’
The briefings “gave us hope, gave us clarity, gave us the truth, and gave us something we were not getting from Washington: leadership,” comedian Billy Crystal said. “You are the epitome of New York tough.”
Stiller said “I look up to you” and mentioned he reached out to Cuomo’s younger brother, CNN host Chris Cuomo, for advice on what good-natured jokes to make about him.
“You are the man,” actress Rosie Perez said. “We were all in a crisis, in a panic, and every single day you came on the airwaves, and you offered your strength, your leadership, your direction, and your caring, and your heart.”
“Thank you for your leadership during these trying times,” de Niro said.
But with Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic in the state under a new light, with reports on what some Republicans are calling obstruction of justice, conservatives heaped scorn upon Cuomo and his Hollywood fans.
TUCKER CARLSON: FROM ANDREW CUOMO TO THE LINCOLN PROJECT, MEDIA PROTECTED THE WORST OF POLITICS
“What if I told you celebrities were dumb?” Tablet’s Noam Blum wrote.
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Fourteen Democratic New York state Senators have joined Republicans in seeking to strip Cuomo of his emergency powers granted during the pandemic, amid separate bipartisan calls for a federal investigation into his administration.