Fuel leak forces US company to abandon moon landing attempt
Cape Canaveral, Jan 10: A crippling fuel leak forced a US company on Tuesday to give up on landing a spacecraft on the moon.
Astrobotic Technology's lander began losing fuel soon after Monday's launch. The spacecraft also encountered problems keeping its solar panel pointed towards the sun and generating solar power.
“Given the propellant leak, there is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the moon,” Astrobotic said in a statement.
Astrobotic had been targeting a lunar landing on February 23, following a roundabout, fuel-efficient flight to the moon. It could have been the first US moon landing in more than 50 years, and the first by a private company. A second lander from a Houston company is due to launch next month.
Only four countries have pulled off a successful moon landing.
The company said the new goal was to keep the lander operating as long as possible in space, in order to learn as much as possible for its next mission a year or so from now. Flight controllers managed to keep the spacecraft pointed toward the sun and its battery fully charged, with another 40 hours of operations anticipated.
The Pittsburgh-based company did not elaborate on why the Peregrine lander's propellant system failed just hours into the flight.
NASA paid Astrobotic USD 108 million to fly its experiments to the moon on this mission, part of the agency's commercial lunar programme.
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Madhya Pradesh: BJP leader assaults blind woman in Church
Jabalpur: Anju Bhargava, vice-president of BJP's Jabalpur city unit, has come under sharp scrutiny, creating the ripples of political controvery in Madhya Pradesh, after a video surfaced online showing her physically assaulting a visually impaired woman inside a church.
The New Indian Express has reported that the said incident reportedly took place on Saturday (20 Dec) at a church in the Hawa Bagh area, which comes under the limits of Gorakhpur police station.
The video footage that has circulated widely on Monday shows Anju Bhargava, assaulting the blind woman in the presence of a police officer. In the video, Bhargava is seen shouting at the woman, twisting her arm and forcibly grabbing her face. The victim can be heard pleading to Bhargava to speak to her rather than resorting to physical violence. Also, we can hear Bhargava screaming, “will be blind in her next birth too”
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According to The Indian Express reports, Bhargava entered the church, with members of several Hindutva affiliated organisations, alleging that the visually impaired children were being forced into religious conversion; But, the students present at the church have flatly denied all the allegations.
An unnamed police officer cited in media reports states that there was no evidence to support claims of forced religious conversion. The incident has since intensified political debate in the state, with opposition parties demanding accountability and action against those involved.
