NASA spacecraft rams distant asteroid in test of Earth defense
A NASA spacecraft successfully crashed into an asteroid approximately 7 million miles from Earth in a test to determine if the impact can nudge the space rock slightly off course.
NASA launched its DART spacecraft in November 2021 with the express purpose of colliding with an asteroid about the size of a football stadium at 14,000 miles per hour.
The mission is NASA’s first demonstration of the agency’s planetary-defense initiative to protect Earth from the possibility of a hazardous collision with an asteroid. This particular asteroid, called Dimorphos, is not headed toward our planet but was singled out by NASA to test a deflection technique. If measurements show the asteroid’s course was even slightly altered,NASA will deem the mission a success.
It will take days or weeks before astronomers know if DART’s impact did its job, but a camera onboard the spacecraft captured a close-up view of the asteroid moments before the crash. A separate spacecraft, deployed from DART prior to impact, also captured images of the collision, and NASA has said it will share those images in coming days.
If in the future a hazardous asteroid is spotted heading toward Earth, it’s possible that NASA or some other space agency could send a spacecraft to ram it just as DART has done. Such an impact could impart just enough momentum to slightly change the asteroid’s trajectory so that, over time, it whizzes safely by Earth.
Dimorphos is actually an asteroid moonlet, orbiting around a much larger asteroid named Didymos, thus the name DART: Double Asteroid Redirection Test.
—Bloomberg News
New Mexico district attorney may charge Alec Baldwin in ‘Rust’ shooting
The New Mexico state district attorney could file criminal charges against four people, including actor Alec Baldwin, for the fatal shooting on the movie set of “Rust.”
In a recent letter to the state’s finance board, Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said as many as four people could face criminal charges in connection with the accident last year that claimed the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza.
The letter, first reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican, indicated that her office is considering charges, including homicide as well as gun violations, against four individuals.
“One of the possible defendants is well-known movie actor Alec Baldwin,” the district attorney wrote in a letter dated Aug.30 and viewed by the Los Angeles Times. She did not identify other individuals who might be charged.
“If charges are warranted, the (1st Judicial District attorney) anticipates prosecuting up to four individuals. My expenses for the ‘Rust’ (case) will begin immediately and will be costly,” she wrote.
The emergency request for funding could not wait until the next legislative session because “the evidence has just been returned,the state is ready to make charging decisions in the ‘Rust’ case,” she wrote.
Baldwin’s phone, one of the outstanding pieces of evidence in the case, has been handed over to prosecutors, ABC News reported.
Representatives of the New Mexico district attorney’s office and Baldwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Baldwin has repeatedly denied culpability in the shooting.
—Los Angeles Times
Edward Snowden granted Russian citizenship as whistleblower faces espionage charges
Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted citizenship to whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has been living there since2013 when he leaked information about U.S. surveillance programs.
Snowden, 39, was one of more than 70 foreigners granted citizenship Monday, just as Russia has begun drafting citizens to the front lines in its invasion of Ukraine.
The former NSA contractor faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted of espionage charges in the U.S. for leaking top-secret NSA surveillance to the media.
He was granted permanent residency in Russia in 2020 without renouncing his American citizenship.
In a 2017 documentary by Oliver Stone, Putin said he did not consider Snowden a traitor.
“He did not betray the interests of his country, nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people,” he said. “The only thing Snowden does, he does publicly.”
—New York Daily News
Cubans said yes to same-sex marriage, but referendum results sent a message to the government
Six decades after Fidel Castro imprisoned gay men in forced labor camps and later sent them to Florida during the Mariel boatlift, Cuban same-sex couples will be able to marry and adopt children, after voters on the island ratified a new family code with 67% of the vote in a controversial referendum Sunday.
The new code was ratified with only 47% of eligible voters casting a Yes vote, or 3,936,790 ballots out of the 8,447,467 eligible voters. Total participation, the government said, was 74%, an unusually high abstention rate for Cuba, where the government traditionally pressures citizens to vote.
While widely perceived as a victory by LGBTQI activists, the results also carry a stark message of disapproval for the current government headed by Miguel Díaz-Canel, who repeatedly said a Yes vote was a show of support for the revolution and socialism.
The new family code expands the rights of same-sex couples, who can now marry and adopt children. It includes several other measures, such as recognizing children and teenagers’ “progressive autonomy” and the possibility of expanding a family through a surrogate mother.
“I’m thrilled,” said Maykel González Vivero, an LGBTQI activist and editor of the independent magazine Tremenda Nota. “I think that a new, important phase began in which we are going to have the chance to not only live in equal conditions with the rest of the citizens but also to access practical benefits that we have demanded for so long, that people in the past didn’t have and died without them.”
Ahead of the referendum, Díaz-Canel acknowledged the new family code clashed with the machismo still alive in Cuban society and said he didn’t expect it to be approved “in a unanimous vote.”
—Miami Herald
