The American space agency Nasa has rolled out its giant new Moon

rocket to prepare it for a maiden flight.

Known as the Space Launch System (SLS), the vehicle was
moved to Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida
ahead of the expected lift-off on 29 August.
The debut outing is a test with no crew aboard, but future
missions will send astronauts back to the lunar surface for
the first time in over 50 years.
The near 100m-tall (328ft) SLS rode an immense tractor to
the pad.
It started moving from its assembly building at Kennedy just
before 22:00 on Tuesday, local time, and had completed the
6.7km (4.2 miles) journey by just after sunrise on
Wednesday morning.
 A guide to Nasa's giant SLS rocket
 Nasa chooses SpaceX to build Moon lander
 Nasa picks astronauts for new Moon missions

IMAGE SOURCE,NASA
Image caption,
No humans are aboard, but sensor-laden mannequins will
record conditions during the mission
This is a key moment for Nasa, which will celebrate in
December the half-century anniversary of Apollo 17, the
very last human landing on the Moon.
The agency has vowed to return with its new Artemis
programme, using technology that befits the modern era
(Artemis was Greek god Apollo's twin sister and goddess of
the Moon).
Nasa sees a return to the Moon as a way to prepare to go
to Mars with astronauts sometime in the 2030s or soon
after.
The SLS will have 15% more thrust off the pad than
Apollo's Saturn V rockets. This extra power, combined with
further enhancements, will allow the vehicle to not only
send astronauts far beyond Earth but, additionally, so much
equipment and cargo that those crews could stay away for
extended periods.
The crew capsule, also, is a step up in capability. Called
Orion, it is much more spacious, being a metre wider, at 5m
(16.5ft), than the historic command modules of the 1960s
and 70s.
"To all of us that gaze up at the Moon, dreaming of the day
humankind returns to the lunar surface - folks, we're here!
We are going back. And that journey, our journey, begins
with Artemis 1," said Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson.
"The first crewed launch, Artemis 2, is two years from now
in 2024. We're hoping that the first landing, Artemis 3, will
be in 2025," he told BBC News.
Nasa has promised that this third mission will witness the
first woman to put her boots down on the Moon's surface.
Once the SLS arrives at its launch pad, engineers will have
just over a week and a half to get the vehicle ready for
flight.
Three possible launch opportunities exist at the end of the
month, starting with Monday 29 August.
If technical issues or inclement weather prevent the rocket
from getting off Earth on this date, a further attempt can be
made on Friday 2 September, and, failing that, on Monday
5 September.
The scope of the mission is to send Orion looping around
the back of the Moon before bringing it home for a
splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off California.
A major objective of the test fight is to check the heatshield
on the capsule can survive the heat of re-entry into Earth's
atmosphere.

IMAGE SOURCE,ESA
Image caption,
Artwork: The conical Orion capsule is pushed through
space by the European Service Module
A key partner on the upcoming mission is Europe.
It is providing the propulsion module that sits on the back of
Orion, pushing it through space.
"More than 10 countries in Europe have been working on
this European Space Agency (Esa) contribution. It's a
hugely important moment for us," explained Siân Cleaver
from aerospace manufacturer Airbus.
"The European Service Module is not just a payload, it's not
just a piece of equipment - it's a really critical element
because Orion can't get to the Moon without us."
Europe hopes its contribution to this and future SLS/Orion
missions will eventually see a European national get to be
part of a lunar surface crew at some point.
For now, it will have to cheer on the British animated
character Shaun the Sheep. A puppet used in the stop-
motion TV films has been placed in the Orion capsule,
complete with an Esa badge and Union flag on its overalls.

IMAGE SOURCE,NASA
Image caption,
Last man on the Moon: Gene Cernan commanded the
Apollo 17 mission in December 1972
While Nasa is developing the SLS, the American rocket
entrepreneur Elon Musk is preparing an even larger vehicle
at his R&D facility in Texas.
He calls his giant rocket the Starship, and it will play a role
in future Artemis missions by linking up with Orion to get
astronauts down to the surface of the Moon.
Like SLS, Starship has yet to have a maiden flight. Unlike
SLS, Starship has been designed to be totally reusable and
ought therefore to be considerably cheaper to operate.
A recent assessment from the Office of Inspector General,
which audits Nasa programmes, found that the first four
SLS missions would each cost more than $4bn to execute -
a sum of money that was described as "unsustainable".
The agency said changes made to the way it contracts
industry would bring down future production costs
significantly.
EU faces 'awful' winters without gas
cap - minister
By Alys Davies
BBC News

 Published

58 minutes ago

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 Russia-Ukraine war

IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS
Image caption,
Facade lighting of the Frauenkirche, Church of Our Lady, is switched off to save
energy in Dresden, Germany
Belgium's energy minister has warned that EU countries will face "five to ten"
"terrible" winters if nothing is done to reduce natural gas prices.
Calls are mounting for an EU-wide cap on the price of gas and its decoupling
from the price of electricity.
EU states have been struggling with huge energy price hikes since key gas
supplier Russia invaded Ukraine in February, triggering sanctions.
But Germany says it is replenishing its gas stores faster than expected.
Western countries backing Ukraine are trying to cut the amount of Russian gas
and oil they import. Russia, which supplied the EU with 40% of its gas last year,
has in turn restricted supplies.
Belgian Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten wrote on Twitter that gas
prices in Europe needed to be frozen urgently, adding that the link between gas
and electricity prices was artificial and needed to be reformed.
"The next five to ten winters will be terrible if we don't do anything," she said.
"We must act at source, at European level, and work to freeze gas prices."
Electricity prices have also been soaring in Europe, and reached record highs
this week. Gas is a major source of electricity generation.
In Germany, the year-ahead contract for electricity reached €995 (£844; $991)
per megawatt hour on Friday while in France, it rose to €1,130. This represents
a more than tenfold increase in both countries from last year, AFP news agency
notes.
"We have to stop this madness that is happening right now on energy markets,"
Austria's Chancellor Karl Nehammer said.
Electricity prices must go down, he said, calling on the EU to decouple
electricity and gas prices.
"We cannot let [Russian President Vladimir] Putin determine the European
electricity price every day," he added.
 Can the world cope without Russian gas and oil?
Germany - the largest importer of Russian gas in 2020 - has been racing to
bolster its gas reserves before winter despite Russia cutting deliveries.
Its aim is to fill its gas capacity to 85% by October. It has implemented energy-
saving measures to do so.
Economy Minister Robert Habeck said such measures - along with buying gas
from alternative suppliers - had enabled Germany to fulfil its goal sooner than
anticipated.
He estimated that the 85% target could be reached by the start of September.
You may also be interested in:
Media caption,
Serious rationing of energy possible this winter, says IEA head.
Climate change: Russia burns off gas
as Europe's energy bills rocket
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent

 Published

2 days ago

 comments

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 COP26

IMAGE SOURCE,COPERNICUS SENTINEL/SENTINEL HUB/PIERRE MARKUSE

Image caption,
A colourised version of this satellite image captures infrared radiation from the
burning of gas at the Portovaya plant
As Europe's energy costs skyrocket, Russia is burning off large amounts of natural
gas, according to analysis shared with BBC News.
They say the plant, near the border with Finland, is burning an estimated $10m
(£8.4m) worth of gas every day.
Experts say the gas would previously have been exported to Germany.
Germany's ambassador to the UK told BBC News that Russia was burning the
gas because "they couldn't sell it elsewhere".
Scientists are concerned about the large volumes of carbon dioxide and soot it
is creating, which could exacerbate the melting of Arctic ice.
The analysis by Rystad Energy indicates that around 4.34 million cubic metres
of gas are being burned by the flare every day.
It is coming from a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant at Portovaya, north-
west of St Petersburg.
The first signs that something was awry came from Finnish citizens over the
nearby border who spotted a large flame on the horizon earlier this summer.
Portovaya is located close to a compressor station at the start of the Nord
Stream 1 pipeline which carries gas under the sea to Germany.
Supplies through the pipeline have been curtailed since mid-July, with the
Russians blaming technical issues for the restriction. Germany says it was
purely a political move following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
But since June, researchers have noted a significant increase in heat
emanating from the facility - thought to be from gas flaring, the burning of
natural gas.
 What pushed gas prices to extreme highs?
 UK energy bills: 'Lives at risk' without more help

While burning off gas is common at processing plants - normally done for
technical or safety reasons - the scale of this burn has confounded experts.
"I've never seen an LNG plant flare so much," said Dr Jessica McCarty, an
expert on satellite data from Miami University in Ohio.
"Starting around June, we saw this huge peak, and it just didn't go away. It's
stayed very anomalously high."
Miguel Berger, the German ambassador to the UK, told BBC News that
European efforts to reduce reliance on Russian gas were "having a strong
effect on the Russian economy".
"They don't have other places where they can sell their gas, so they have to
burn it," he suggested.

IMAGE SOURCE,ARI LAINE

Image caption,
This photo was taken by Finnish citizen Ari Laine on 24 July at a distance of
around 23 miles (38km) from the Portovaya facility
Mark Davis is the CEO of Capterio, a company that is involved in finding
solutions to gas flaring.
He says the flaring is not accidental and is more likely a deliberate decision
made for operational reasons.
"Operators often are very hesitant to actually shut down facilities for fear that
they may be technically difficult or costly to start up again, and it's probably the
case here," he told BBC News.
Others believe that there could be technical challenges in dealing with the large
volumes of gas that were being supplied to the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Russian energy company Gazprom may have intended to use that gas to make
LNG at the new plant, but may have had problems handling it and the safest
option is to flare it off.
It could also be the result of Europe's trade embargo with Russia in response to
the invasion of Ukraine.
The sudden silencing of Guantanamo's
artists
By Joel Gunter
BBC News

 Published

3 hours ago

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 War in Afghanistan (2001-present)

Image caption,
A sketch by Muhammad al-Ansi, stamped with approval for release from the
prison at Guantanamo

A few weeks ago, Khalid Qasim got some news he'd been waiting 20 years for. He
had been cleared for release from the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
By that point, Qasim had been in Guantanamo nearly half his life, aged 23 to
43. Like almost all the men sent there, he has never been charged with a crime.
His release order does not mean freedom, yet. It is merely the starting gun on a
long process of resettlement that, going by previous resettlements, could take
years. Where he will be sent, neither he nor his lawyers know.
While he waits, Qasim will paint.
IMAGE SOURCE,AFP
Image caption,
A painting by Khalid Qasim of a remembered scene from his home in Yemen

During his long detention, Qasim has created scores of intricate paintings and
other artworks, from seascapes, to scenes of fire, to a series of lone candles
that commemorate the men who died in Guantanamo.
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"The easiest way to explain it is that it's a way of telling others about what I
feel," Qasim said, via his lawyer. "It's a feeling I have. It's a part of me. I'm
putting Guantanamo on canvas."
Qasim rarely puts Guantanamo on canvas in a literal sense. He is drawn to
images of the sea, to images of ships and trees. He paints abstracts in vivid
colours and still life scenes with deep blacks and dark expanses. He has used
coffee and gravel from the exercise yard to create textures and ready-to-eat
meal boxes to make mixed-media work.
"This is my life," Qasim said, of his art. "It was my life here."
But when Qasim is transferred out of Guantanamo, in months or years, he will
not, as things stand, be allowed to take his art. It will remain the property of the
US government, which may store or destroy it.
Keeping his art in Guantanamo would be "the same as keeping me here",
Qasim said.
"The art I made is me," he said. "If they keep my art here, my soul will stay
here."
Image caption,
Khalid Qasim, 2016

This was not always the case. Until the end of 2017, Guantanamo detainees
were allowed to take their art with them when they were released, or give it to
their lawyers to take out.
The artists could bring their work to meetings with their lawyers, who would
submit it along with their meeting notes to a "privilege team", which assesses
everything leaving Guantanamo for classified material or national security
issues.
Artwork deemed sensitive - paintings depicting torture, for example, or hunger
strikes - was not allowed out, but otherwise the privilege team gave the art back
to the lawyers to take away.
Then in late 2017, under the Trump administration, it became clear that art was
no longer being allowed out. Like lots of things in the world of Guantanamo,
there was no official notification to the lawyers, no memo. Artwork was all of a
sudden simply bounced back from the privilege team to the detainees.
Image caption,
Khalid Qasim created nine solitary candles for the nine men to died in
Guantanamo

Then the privilege team began marking the descriptions of the art in the
lawyers' notes as classified. "Now they are not even allowed to bring the art to
the meetings," said Mark Maher, who represents Khalid Qasim.
In response, four lawyers penned a letter to military officials asking for the ban
to be overturned - pointing out that convicted US state and federal prisoners
were permitted to make, send out, exhibit and sell their art. The lawyers got no
reply.
"If they have a reason I would love to hear it," said Maher. "I don't know what
the justification could be for not allowing this art out into the world. We have
requested that the men be allowed to leave with it, and the response we've had
has been silence."

Inside the walls of Guantanamo, Moath al-Alwi has finished a new ship. It is
called Eagle King, and it is his biggest and most intricate yet, with anchors,
decks, an array of masts and sails and an eagle atop the bow rigging with its
wings spread wide.
Al-Alwi, a Yemeni, has for the past few years been making remarkable model
boats and galleons from found prison materials - sails cut from old T-shirts,
rigging from unravelled prayer caps, a steering wheel made from a bottle cap,
connected by dental floss to a shampoo bottle rudder.
Before Eagle King was complete, al-Alwi's biggest model was Giant. When he
finished Giant's sails and fastened its rigging, "the most beautiful thing
happened", al-Alwi said, in a conversation relayed by his lawyer. "I felt as if I
were in the middle of the ocean. I felt waves hitting the ship from every
direction, and I felt I was rescuing myself."
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
Image caption,
Giant, by Moath al-Alwi, on display at the John Jay College, New York

Al-Alwi was cleared for release earlier this year, but he cannot go home
because the US deems Yemen unstable, so a third country will have to be
found. He will likely follow other former detainees into a restrictive environment
in an unfamiliar country, while his models remain in Guantanamo or are
destroyed.
As well as Eagle King, al-Alwi has completed work on another new boat, this
one called Hope. No photographs of it exist, and his lawyer's descriptions of it in
her notes have been classified. But al-Alwi was able to describe it in an
unclassified phone call. It is smaller than his large galleons, he said. The
colours are softer - pastels. He has drawn flowers and doves on the sails.
"Despite being in prison, I try as much as I can to get my soul out of prison," he
said. "I live a different life when I am making art; it makes me live within my
soul. It makes me feel free."
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
Image caption,
A Guantanamo release stamp on the sail of a ship made by Moath al-Alwi

The trouble began with a show in New York. Before the rule change in 2017, Al-
Alwi's lawyer, a New Yorker named Beth Jacob, had been taking large volumes
of art with her when she left Guantanamo, from al-Alwi and her other artist-
clients.
Ark was the first model she took out. When she submitted it to the privilege
team, unlike with paintings there was no convenient back side of a canvas to
stamp, so they used one of the ship's sails. It did not bother al-Alwi. "I wanted
the prison stamp to be clear on the sail so people would know the ship comes
from Guantánamo," he said.
Jacob bought an extra seat on her commercial flight home from Miami and
contacted the airline in advance to clear it, but she was still thrown off the flight
with the model - told only that the pilot refused to fly with it.
Image caption,
Ghaleb al-Bihani, 2015

Next came Giant, which was even bigger. Instead of attempting to board a
commercial flight back to New York, Jacob drove Giant to her daughter's tiny
studio apartment in Miami Beach, where it sat for months in its carry case,
wrapped in blankets, a seat for the cats, until an Israeli clarinettist from her
daughter's orchestra agreed to drive it up north, as he was going anyway.
The artwork slowly accumulated in Jacob's office, out of sight, until 2017, when
she invited a friend of a friend, Erin Thompson, a professor of art crime at John
Jay College in New York, to take a look.
"I assumed it would be work about Guantanamo, scenes of life there. Instead
I'm seeing all these beautiful melty, dreamy landscapes and seascapes,"
Thompson recalled. "I had to know more."
So Jacob put a call out on a Guantanamo lawyers' email group, and other
lawyers with filing cabinets full of art responded. Thompson decided to put on a
show at the college. "I thought the art was beautiful and I wanted other people
to have the same reaction," she said.
Image caption,
A ship in stormy seas, painted by Khalid Qasim

Thompson's exhibition brought together 36 pieces of work by current and

former detainees. Al-Alwi's model ships were there, and some of Qasim's
seascapes. The exhibition was modestly attended. "The show opened with like,
two newspaper articles. I was doing things like begging my dentist to come,"
Thompson said.
Her dentist didn't come, but the US Department of Defense took notice, and
apparently became concerned that some of the art was available for sale. (The
exhibition catalogue stated that the only work potentially available for sale was
by former, not current, detainees.)
About two weeks after Thompson's exhibition, the Guantanamo art policy
suddenly changed. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to the Miami Herald at
the time that the change stemmed from a concern about sales, but otherwise
the government has said virtually nothing. The Pentagon told the BBC only that
detainee art was "considered the property of the US Government and, as such,
will remain in the custody of the JTF [Joint Task Force - which runs the prison]
at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility".
Image caption,
Abstract, Khalid Qasim, 2016

Since the ban was put in place, one detainee has been able to leave the prison
with his art. The rule was waived for Ahmed al-Darbi - a confessed al-Qaeda
member - in exchange for his co-operation testifying, the Pentagon said at the
time. But for the others, their work remains the property of the government.
What puzzles Thompson and Jacob is why the authorities would be concerned
about former detainees making money. The whole idea was that the men were
supposed to start supporting themselves after release, Jacob said. "If a guy
gets a job, are they worried about him making money? If a guy sells a picture,
isn't that a plus?"
Neither the lawyers nor Thompson ever heard from the government about
sales. Thompson did hear from some relatives of 9/11 victims. She got some
complaints, she said, but also encouragement. A group of 9/11 widows got in
touch to thank her for getting the prison back in the news, at a time when
people had all but forgotten about it, and Thompson took them on a tour of the
gallery.
No one would have taken any real notice of the exhibition if the defence
department hadn't reacted by banning artwork leaving the prison, Thompson
said.
"Of course then it became a big story," she said. "And lots of people came to
the show."
Image caption,
Djamel Ameziane, 2010

There are still 39 detainees in Guantanamo, and they are still allowed to make
art. But they cannot show it or keep it. A group of former detainees is preparing
to publish an open letter on their behalf to the US president, Joe Biden, asking
him to overturn the Trump-era ban.
"Art helped us to survive at Guantanamo, to overcome the hardship and
difficulties. It was our only escape from the prison's pain and loneliness," the
letter will say. "We painted the sea, trees, the blue sky, ships, we painted our
hope, fear, dreams, and our freedom."
The detainees have the support of various artists and curators. "It makes a
huge difference if the public understands that these men are poets, painters,
writers, thinkers, that they are people," Laurie Anderson, the American artist,
told the BBC.
"They have experienced great suffering and they have processed that suffering
and found a way to express it," she said. "And it benefits the American public to
see that."
Image caption,
Ahmed Rabbani, a 20-year detainee, paints tea scenes, where he can imagine
gathering with family

Inside Guantanamo, the ban has had a discouraging effect on the artists, said
Ahmed Rabbani, a 20-year detainee and painter who is awaiting transfer.
"Before the rule changed, I would make one piece a week, sometimes more
than one a week," Rabbani said. "Now when I create a new piece, I get
disappointed and discouraged. If I can't take it with me, why make it?"
Rabbani is a skilled painter who has painted vivid scenes of tea settings with no
people present - scenes he can populate in his imagination with his absent
friends and family. Sometimes there are empty plates, references maybe to his
hunger strike protests against torture. And, of course, he has painted the sea.
Al-Alwi, the shipbuilder, has recently begun to paint too. He has created a
series of four pieces he calls The Story of My Imprisonment. No one outside the
prison has seen them, but he described them over the phone. He said he had
painted a man standing alone on a beach, through various phases of his life, as
the moon rose and fell. By the third painting, the man had died. In the fourth, a
boat finally arrived at the shore.
"When the boat came, they did not find the man, but they saw the tomb and put
some flowers next to it," Al-Alwi said. "They left a note that it was too late."