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https://www.nationthailand.com/international/international-news/40019708

The pilot of a small plane who threatened to intentionally crash into a Walmart in Mississippi has landed in a field, local media reported on Saturday.

Earlier, the police department in Tupelo, Mississippi said they had been talking directly to the pilot and had evacuated the Walmart and a gas station.

Tracking data from Flightradar24.Com shows how the pilot flew around in circles over tupelo for hours before landing.

The Daily Journal, citing multiple sources, said the plane was down in Ashland, a sparsely populated part of Mississippi, and the pilot was still alive.

An image on social media from the Starkville Daily News showed a small plane in a field.

Published : September 04, 2022

By : Reuters

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https://www.nationthailand.com/international/international-news/40019707

For the second time in a week, Nasa on Saturday aborted an attempt to launch its giant, next-generation rocketship, citing a stubborn fuel leak that the space agency said could delay the debut mission of its moon-to-Mars Artemis program by at least several weeks.

Preflight operations were called off for the day about three hours before the 2:17 p.m. EDT (1817 GMT) liftoff time targeted of the 32-story-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion capsule from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The uncrewed test flight, aimed at launching the capsule out to the moon and back, was to have marked the inaugural voyage of both the SLS and Orion a half-century after the last lunar mission of Apollo, the forerunner of the Artemis program.

The countdown was scrubbed after Kennedy Space Center technicians made several failed attempts to fix a “large” leak of supercooled liquid hydrogen propellant being pumped into the rocket’s core-stage fuel tanks, agency officials said.

The initial launch try on Monday was likewise foiled by technical problems, including a different leaky fuel line, a faulty temperature sensor and cracks found in insulation foam.

Mission managers proceeded with a second launch attempt on Saturday once the earlier issues had been resolved to their satisfaction. Nasa had reserved another backup launch time, for either Monday or Tuesday, in case a third try was needed.

But after a review of data from the latest difficulties, Nasa concluded the hydrogen leak was too tricky and time-consuming to finish troubleshooting and fix on the launch pad before the current launch period allotted to the mission expires on Tuesday.

The delay means the earliest opportunity to try flying the rocket again would come during the next launch period that runs Sept. 19-30, or during a subsequent October window, an associate Nasa administrator, Jim Free, told reporters at a late-afternoon briefing.

He said the postponement also would involve rolling the spacecraft off the launch pad and back into its assembly building at some point, under space center “range” rules limiting how long a rocket may remain at the tower before liftoff.

Launch-day delays and technical snags are not uncommon in the space business, especially for new rockets such as Nasa’s Space Launch System, a complex vehicle with a set of pre-liftoff procedures that have yet to be fully tested and rehearsed by engineers without a hitch.

On average, the odds of scrubbing a launch on any given day for any reason, including foul weather, are about one-in-three.

The last-minute setbacks on the launch pad come at the tail end of a development program more than a decade in the making, with years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns under Nasa’s respective SLS and Orion contracts with Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp.

MOON TO MARS

Apart from its technical challenges, Artemis I signals a major turning point for Nasa’s post-Apollo human spaceflight program after decades focused on low-Earth orbit with space shuttles and the International Space Station.

Named for the goddess who was Apollo’s twin sister in ancient Greek mythology, Artemis aims to return astronauts to the moon’s surface as early as 2025, though many experts believe that time frame will likely slip.

Twelve astronauts walked on the moon during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the only spaceflights yet to place humans on the lunar surface. But Apollo, born of the U.S.-Soviet space race during the Cold War, was less science-driven than Artemis.

The new moon program has enlisted commercial partners such as SpaceX and the space agencies of Europe, Canada and Japan to eventually establish a long-term lunar base of operations as a stepping stone to even more ambitious human voyages to Mars.

Getting the SLS-Orion spacecraft launched is a key first step. Its first voyage is intended to put the 5.75-million-pound vehicle through its paces in a rigorous test flight push.

Published : September 04, 2022

By : Reuters

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https://www.nationthailand.com/international/international-news/40019706

Tens of thousands of passengers travelling to the United Kingdom from the French port of Calais faced up to six hours of delay on Saturday night in the latest disruption to hit the border between France and Britain this year.

Tense arguments over queue jumping erupted and passengers started directing traffic themselves amid an apparent absence of staff to control the flows of cars during one of the busiest days of the year.

One passenger, Elizabeth Goodfellow, said that 16 lanes of traffic were being channelled into seven French border control posts, causing substantial delays.

Crossings between Calais and Dover have been complicated ever since Britain left the European Union in 2022.

Port officials on both sides say that stepped-up border controls planned for 2023 risk adding to the time each vehicle spends at checkpoints.

In July, tens of thousands of passengers travelling from Dover to France faced massive delays amid British claims of insufficient French staff on hand to check passports of departing travellers.

Published : September 04, 2022

By : Reuters