Monday, June 10, 2024

The Security Council should reject categorically Russia’s illegal assault on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure

Peter Thomas -
L o n d o n ,   U K - 


Dame Barbara Woodward DCMG OBE
Statement by Ambassador Barbara Woodward at the UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine.

“We cannot say it enough times. Russia, who use their seat on this Council to opine on and to sit in judgement on other countries on this Council’s agenda, are, as we speak, bombing Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, with no regard for civilian life, in an illegal war of aggression and in defiance of the UN charter. Let me make three specific points.

First, we should all look at the facts. The Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Plant, the largest in Ukraine, was severely damaged in a targeted attack by Russia, and can no longer produce electricity. A breach of the dam would have had even more severe humanitarian consequences. This Council should reject, categorically, Russia’s deliberate and illegal assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Second, Russia’s opening of a new front in the Northeastern region of Ukraine has exacerbated an already desperate humanitarian situation. Over the 10 – 28 May, the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine verified that 45 civilians were killed and 189 injured in the Kharkiv region and city. This includes the devastating attack on a civilian shopping centre on 25 May. Many thousands of people have been evacuated, and IOM estimates the total number of internally displaced to be around 3.5 million.

The UK echoes the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine Denise Brown, who has condemned the repeated attacks in Kharkiv and Kharkivska Oblast. As she said, those fleeing their homes have suffered a new trauma in Kharkiv, having arrived in search of safety. And as ASG Msuya reminded us, this has an especially damaging impact on children in those areas; we should not tolerate children having to grow up under constant bombardment from Russian missiles, drones and shells.

Third, we commend the bravery of humanitarian partners on the ground who are responding to intensification of attacks in the North by supporting evacuations from villages, responding to emergency needs, and improving preparedness measures for future strikes. The UK has committed over $456 million in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and the region and we urge other Member States to continue their support to an appeal that remains only 28% funded according to OCHA’s latest assessment.

Colleagues, only Russia has the ability to address this suffering.

So we echo the calls that we have heard from every member of this Council: for Russia to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law; to cease targeting infrastructure that provides the essential needs for Ukraine’s population; and we call on Russia to withdraw from the internationally recognised territory of Ukraine.”

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon

Shantel Harris -
W a s h i n g t o n ,   D C ,   U S A - 


Credits: NASA/Daniel Rutter
NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places.

SOFIA has detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon’s southern hemisphere. Previous observations of the Moon’s surface detected some form of hydrogen, but were unable to distinguish between water and its close chemical relative, hydroxyl (OH). Data from this location reveal water in concentrations of 100 to 412 parts per million – roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water – trapped in a cubic meter of soil spread across the lunar surface. The results are published in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy.

“We had indications that H2O – the familiar water we know – might be present on the sunlit side of the Moon,” said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now we know it is there. This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration.”

As a comparison, the Sahara desert has 100 times the amount of water than what SOFIA detected in the lunar soil. Despite the small amounts, the discovery raises new questions about how water is created and how it persists on the harsh, airless lunar surface.

Water is a precious resource in deep space and a key ingredient of life as we know it. Whether the water SOFIA found is easily accessible for use as a resource remains to be determined. Under NASA’s Artemis program, the agency is eager to learn all it can about the presence of water on the Moon in advance of sending the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 and establishing a sustainable human presence there by the end of the decade.

SOFIA’s results build on years of previous research examining the presence of water on the Moon. When the Apollo astronauts first returned from the Moon in 1969, it was thought to be completely dry. Orbital and impactor missions over the past 20 years, such as NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, confirmed ice in permanently shadowed craters around the Moon’s poles. Meanwhile, several spacecraft – including the Cassini mission and Deep Impact comet mission, as well as the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 mission – and NASA’s ground-based Infrared Telescope Facility, looked broadly across the lunar surface and found evidence of hydration in sunnier regions. Yet those missions were unable to definitively distinguish the form in which it was present – either H2O or OH.

“Prior to the SOFIA observations, we knew there was some kind of hydration,” said Casey Honniball, the lead author who published the results from her graduate thesis work at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in Honolulu. “But we didn’t know how much, if any, was actually water molecules – like we drink every day – or something more like drain cleaner.”

SOFIA offered a new means of looking at the Moon. Flying at altitudes of up to 45,000 feet, this modified Boeing 747SP jetliner with a 106-inch diameter telescope reaches above 99% of the water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere to get a clearer view of the infrared universe. Using its Faint Object infraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST), SOFIA was able to pick up the specific wavelength unique to water molecules, at 6.1 microns, and discovered a relatively surprising concentration in sunny Clavius Crater.

“Without a thick atmosphere, water on the sunlit lunar surface should just be lost to space,” said Honniball, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Yet somehow we’re seeing it. Something is generating the water, and something must be trapping it there.”

Several forces could be at play in the delivery or creation of this water. Micrometeorites raining down on the lunar surface, carrying small amounts of water, could deposit the water on the lunar surface upon impact. Another possibility is there could be a two-step process whereby the Sun’s solar wind delivers hydrogen to the lunar surface and causes a chemical reaction with oxygen-bearing minerals in the soil to create hydroxyl. Meanwhile, radiation from the bombardment of micrometeorites could be transforming that hydroxyl into water.

How the water then gets stored – making it possible to accumulate – also raises some intriguing questions. The water could be trapped into tiny beadlike structures in the soil that form out of the high heat created by micrometeorite impacts. Another possibility is that the water could be hidden between grains of lunar soil and sheltered from the sunlight – potentially making it a bit more accessible than water trapped in beadlike structures.

For a mission designed to look at distant, dim objects such as black holes, star clusters, and galaxies, SOFIA’s spotlight on Earth’s nearest and brightest neighbor was a departure from business as usual. The telescope operators typically use a guide camera to track stars, keeping the telescope locked steadily on its observing target. But the Moon is so close and bright that it fills the guide camera’s entire field of view. With no stars visible, it was unclear if the telescope could reliably track the Moon. To determine this, in August 2018, the operators decided to try a test observation.

“It was, in fact, the first time SOFIA has looked at the Moon, and we weren’t even completely sure if we would get reliable data, but questions about the Moon’s water compelled us to try,” said Naseem Rangwala, SOFIA’s project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. “It’s incredible that this discovery came out of what was essentially a test, and now that we know we can do this, we’re planning more flights to do more observations.”

SOFIA’s follow-up flights will look for water in additional sunlit locations and during different lunar phases to learn more about how the water is produced, stored, and moved across the Moon. The data will add to the work of future Moon missions, such as NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), to create the first water resource maps of the Moon for future human space exploration.

In the same issue of Nature Astronomy, scientists have published a paper using theoretical models and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data, pointing out that water could be trapped in small shadows, where temperatures stay below freezing, across more of the Moon than currently expected. The results can be found here.

“Water is a valuable resource, for both scientific purposes and for use by our explorers,” said Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. “If we can use the resources at the Moon, then we can carry less water and more equipment to help enable new scientific discoveries.”

SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center. Ames manages the SOFIA program, science, and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association, headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute at the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is maintained and operated by NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703, in Palmdale, California.

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Vice President’s Discussion with Higher Education Leaders

Shantel Harris -
W a s h i n g t o n ,   D C ,   U S A - 


Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States
Vice President Mike Pence led a discussion with higher education leaders from across the country to discuss the all-of-America approach to respond to COVID-19 and drive America’s phased economic revival. Vice President Pence, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx discussed best practices to get students back to school in the Fall.

They discussed guidance released by President Trump and the CDC which calls upon colleges and universities to develop, implement and maintain a plan to ensure the health and safety of students, faculty and staff. The Vice President thanked everyone on the call for their hard work in accomplishing this goal.

President Trump’s leadership and the efforts of the American people have saved lives, slowed the spread of the coronavirus and allowed states to begin opening up. These college and university leaders discussed possible options to re-open their campuses for students, faculty and staff safely and responsibly. Many participants on the call discussed working groups they developed on campus to provide data-driven strategies for re-opening. Participants discussed the importance of opening and maintaining research labs to assist with COVID-19 research, testing and tracing.

The discussion provided insight into a new chapter of re-opening America, and what colleges and universities are doing to meet their individual needs, aligned with state leadership. The Vice President thanked the group for their commitment to safely re-open their institutions, and indicated he looked forward to additional updates on progress in the near future.

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