Year: 2022

A Franco-U.S. satellite is due for launch this week on a mission to survey with unprecedented accuracy nearly all water on Earth’s surface for the first time and help scientists investigate its impact on Earth’s climate. For NASA and France’s space agency CNES, which have worked together in the field for 30 years, it’s a landmark scientific mission with a billion-dollar budget. French President Emmanuel Macron went to NASA’s Washington headquarters at the end of November alongside U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. He highlighted the liftoff — scheduled for early Thursday on the U.S. West Coast — of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission to monitor the levels of oceans, lakes and rivers, including in remote locations. Its predecessor, TOPEX/Poseidon, launched in 1992, was also a Franco-U.S. joint venture that measured ocean surface to an accuracy of 4.2 centimeters (1.7 inches). It aided the forecast of the 1997-1998 El Nino weather phenomenon and improved understanding of ocean circulation and its effect on global climate. The 2.2-metric ton SWOT mission will be put into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The satellite’s primary payload is an innovative instrument to measure the height of water called KaRin, or Ka-band radar interferometer. Its two antennas, separated by a big boom, create parallel swaths of data. “We’re going to get 10 times better resolution than with current technologies to measure sea-surface height and understand the ocean fronts and eddies that help shape climate,” said …

The United States Department of Energy on Tuesday is expected to announce that its scientists have been able to engineer a nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than it consumed, a landmark achievement in a decadeslong search for a way to generate clean and waste-free nuclear power. The pending announcement, first reported by the Financial Times and subsequently confirmed by other media organizations, will identify the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California as the site of the experiment. On Monday, the department announced that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm would announce “a major scientific breakthrough” at a news conference Tuesday. The announcement comes at a time when the Biden administration has directed renewed effort and funding to the development of clean power generation, with a particular emphasis on fusion energy. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act contained significant funding for research in the field. Just because scientists have been able to engineer an energy-positive fusion reaction does not mean that any meaningful changes to the way humans generate power are on the horizon. Experts said that while the work is important, daunting technological barriers remain in the way of systems that could deploy fusion energy at scale. A long journey Scientists have long known that when two atoms are fused together to form a new element, large amounts of energy are released. The sun, for example, is essentially an enormous fusion reactor in which superheated particles come together with tremendous force, forming new particles …

On the 50th anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 17 mission – the last to land astronauts to the lunar surface – the agency’s Artemis 1 Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, ending a 26-day test flight of NASA’s next generation system designed to take people back to the moon. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more. Videographer: Kane Farabaugh, Adam Greenbaum Produced by: Kane Farabaugh …

French President Emmanuel Macron says free condoms will be available in pharmacies for any adult up to the age of 25 starting next year. The new measure comes as the rate of sexually transmitted diseases and inflation are both on the rise in France. Originally, Macron announced that the condoms would be available to people between the ages of 18 to 25, but he was challenged on social media about not making the condoms available to minors and he decided to expand the program to anyone up to the age of 25.  Girls and women already receive free birth control in France.  Some information in this report came from The Associated Press. …

Industry executives have joined activists and negotiators from nearly 200 countries at this month’s U.N. nature summit in Montreal, where negotiations on a global pact to protect nature could lead to tougher disclosure requirements for businesses. Sectors such as mining, agriculture, oil and fashion are under scrutiny at the COP15 talks, due to their heavy impact on nature with activities that can contaminate soil, foul waterways or pollute the air. As negotiators work to agree on conservation targets by the summit’s scheduled end on December 19, momentum is building for a measure to require businesses to disclose their harm to the environment. The measure, as currently drafted, would also ask companies to halve those negative impacts by 2030, which could mean additional costs for businesses, said Franck Gbaguidi, senior analyst for energy, climate and resources at the Eurasia Group risk advisory. But a weak deal without global agreement on how businesses should behave could also raise company costs — by opening the door to a global patchwork of different biodiversity regulations and requirements that makes compliance more difficult, Eurasia Group said in a policy statement. Here is a look at how key sectors could be affected by the COP15 talks: Fashion/Retail Fashion and retail are facing pressure from consumers and governments to reduce waste and emissions throughout their operations. For them, a strong deal that forces all companies to report any harm would work toward assuaging some consumer concerns. In a letter to world governments in October, more than 330 …

The U.S. Department of Energy said Sunday it would announce a “major scientific breakthrough” this week, after media reported a federal laboratory had recently achieved a major milestone in nuclear fusion research. The Financial Times reported Sunday that scientists in the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) had achieved a “net energy gain” from an experimental fusion reactor. That would represent the first time that researchers have successfully produced more energy in a fusion reaction — the same type that powers the Sun — than was consumed during the process, a potentially major step in the pursuit of zero-carbon power. Energy Department and LLNL spokespeople told AFP they could not comment or provide confirmation regarding the FT report, but said US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm would “announce a major scientific breakthrough” on Tuesday. The LLNL spokesperson added that their “analysis is still ongoing.” “We look forward to sharing more on Tuesday when that process is complete,” she said. The fusion reaction that produced a 120 percent net energy gain occurred in the past two weeks, the FT said, citing three people with knowledge of the preliminary results. The Washington Post later reported two people familiar with the research confirmed the development, with a senior fusion scientist telling the newspaper, “To most of us, this was only a matter of time.” Nuclear fusion is considered by some scientists to be a potential energy of the future, particularly as it produces little waste and no greenhouse gases. “If this fusion energy breakthrough …

One of the challenges of fighting climate change is balancing the need to shift to cleaner sources of energy in the future with the need to keep the lights on in the here and now. It’s no different for Indonesia, with its rapidly growing economy, as VOA’s Yuni Salim explains in this report narrated by Nova Poerwadi. …

NASA’s Orion capsule made a blisteringly fast return from the moon Sunday, parachuting into the Pacific off Mexico to conclude a test flight that should clear the way for astronauts on the next lunar flyby. The incoming capsule hit the atmosphere at Mach 32, or 32 times the speed of sound, and endured reentry temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) before splashing down west of Baja California near Guadalupe Island. A Navy ship quickly moved in to recover the spacecraft and its silent occupants — three test dummies rigged with vibration sensors and radiation monitors. NASA needed a successful splashdown to stay on track for the next Orion flight around the moon, currently targeted for 2024. Four astronauts will make the trip. That will be followed by a two-person lunar landing as early as 2025. Astronauts last landed on the moon 50 years ago Sunday. After touching down on Dec. 11, 1972, Apollo 17’s Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent three days exploring the lunar surface, the longest stay of the Apollo era. They were the last of the 12 moonwalkers. …

One of China’s top health experts has warned of a surge in COVID-19 cases, state media said Sunday, in the wake of the government’s decision to abandon its hardline coronavirus strategy. Shops and restaurants in Beijing are deserted as the country awaits a spike in infections following the decision to reduce the scope of mandatory testing, allow some positive cases to quarantine at home and end large-scale lockdowns. Top epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan told state media in an interview published Sunday that the Omicron strain of the virus prevalent in China was highly transmissible and could lead to a surge in cases. “The [current] Omicron mutation… is very contagious… one person can transmit to 22 people,” said Zhong, a leading advisor to the government throughout the pandemic. “Currently, the epidemic in China is… spreading rapidly, and under such circumstances, no matter how strong the prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain.” The easing of China’s so-called “zero-COVID” policy followed nationwide protests against harsh virus rules that had battered the economy and confined millions to their homes. But the country is now facing a surge of cases it is ill-prepared to handle, with millions of elderly still not fully vaccinated and underfunded hospitals lacking the capacity to take on huge numbers of patients. The country has one intensive care unit bed for 10,000 people, Jiao Yahui, director of the Department of Medical Affairs at the National Health Commission, warned Friday. She said 106,000 doctors …

After making a close pass at the moon and venturing further into space than any previous habitable spacecraft, NASA’s Orion capsule is due to splash down Sunday in the final test of a high-stakes mission called Artemis. As it hurtles into Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 kph, the gumdrop-shaped traveler will have to withstand a temperature of 2,800 degrees Celsius — about half that of the surface of the sun. Splashdown in the Pacific off the Mexican island of Guadalupe is scheduled for 1739 GMT (9:39 am local time). Achieving success in this mission of just over 25 days is key for NASA, which has invested tens of billions of dollars in the Artemis program due to take people back to the moon and prepare for an onward trip, someday, to Mars. So far, the first test of this uncrewed spacecraft has gone very well. But it is only in the final minutes of this voyage that the true challenge comes: seeing if Orion’s heat shield, the biggest ever built, actually holds up. “It is a safety-critical piece of equipment. It is designed to protect the spacecraft and the passengers, the astronauts on board. So the heat shield needs to work,” said Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin. A first test of the capsule was carried out in 2014 but that time the capsule stayed in Earth’s orbit, so it came back into the atmosphere at a slower speed of around 32,000 kph. Choppers, divers and boats A U.S. …

A Japanese space startup launched a spacecraft to the moon Sunday after several delays, a step toward what would be a first for the nation and for a private company. Ispace Inc’s HAKUTO-R mission took off without incident from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after two postponements caused by inspections of its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. More than a hundred people at a viewing party in Tokyo roared in applause when the rocket fired and lifted into the dark skies. “I’m so happy. After repeated delays, it’s good that we had a proper launch today,” said Yuriko Takeda, a 28-year-old worker at an electronics company who joined the gathering. “I have this image of the American flag from the Apollo landing, so while this is just the launch, the fact that it’s a private company going there with a rover is a really meaningful step.” The national space agencies of the United States, Russia and China have achieved soft landings on Earth’s nearest neighbor in the past half century, but no companies have. Mission success would also be a milestone in space cooperation between Japan and the United States at a time when China is becoming increasingly competitive and rides on Russian rockets are no longer available in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It would also cap a space-filled few days for Japan, after billionaire Yusaku Maezawa revealed on Friday the eight crew members he hopes to take on a SpaceX flyby of the moon as soon as next year. …

The U.S. is closely monitoring Chinese activities that potentially threaten American assets in space as debris rapidly accumulates in low Earth orbit, the head of United States military operations in space said Friday. Commander of U.S. Space Command Army Gen. James Dickinson also cheered the overwhelming passage in the United Nations of a resolution that countries not conduct direct-ascent antisatellite tests that create vast fields of space debris, which endanger satellites and space stations. Of the four countries that have conducted such ASAT tests, the United States was the only one that voted in favor, while China and Russia voted no and India abstained. “We can’t continue to contribute to the debris that we find in the space domain,” Dickinson said in a telephone news conference with reporters in Asia. Most of that debris lies in crucial low Earth orbit, which has become “congested, competitive and contested,” he said. Even tiny shards of metal can pose a danger and the number of objects is growing rampantly. Space Command is now tracking more than 48,000 in near Earth orbit, including satellites, telescopes, space stations and pieces of debris of all sizes, up from 25,000 just three years ago, Dickinson said. China in 2003 became the third government to send an astronaut into orbit on its own after the former Soviet Union and the United States. Its program has advanced steadily since. The Chinese space program drew rare international criticism after it conducted an unannounced test in 2007 in which it used …

Hate mealy apples and soggy french fries? Science can help. Restaurants, grocers, farmers and food companies are increasingly turning to chemistry and physics to tackle the problem of food waste. Some are testing spray-on peels or chemically-enhanced sachets that can slow the ripening process in fruit. Others are developing digital sensors that can tell — more precisely than a label — when meat is safe to consume. And packets affixed to the top of a takeout box use thermodynamics to keep fries crispy. Experts say growing awareness of food waste and its incredible cost — both in dollars and in environmental impact — has led to an uptick in efforts to mitigate it. U.S. food waste startups raised $300 billion in 2021, double the amount raised in 2020, according to ReFed, a group that studies food waste. “This has suddenly become a big interest,” said Elizabeth Mitchum, director of the Postharvest Technology Center at the University of California, Davis, who has worked in the field for three decades. “Even companies that have been around for a while are now talking about what they do through that lens.” In 2019, around 35% of the 229 million tons of food available in the U.S. — worth around $418 billion — went unsold or uneaten, according to ReFed. Food waste is the largest category of material placed in municipal landfills, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which says rotting food releases methane, a problematic greenhouse gas. ReFed estimates 500,000 pounds of food …

A winter storm packing high winds and potentially several feet of snow blew into the Sierra Nevada on Saturday, triggering thousands of power outages in California, closing a mountain highway at Lake Tahoe, and prompting an avalanche warning in the backcountry. The storm is expected to bring as much as 1.2 meters of snow to the upper elevations around Lake Tahoe by Monday morning, the National Weather Service said. A 400-kilometer stretch of the Sierra from north of Reno to south of Yosemite National Park was under a winter storm warning at least until Sunday. “Travel will be very difficult to impossible with whiteout conditions,” the weather service said in Reno, where rain started falling Saturday. A flood advisory was in effect from Sacramento to the California coast near San Francisco. The U.S. Forest Service issued an avalanche warning for the backcountry in the mountains west of Lake Tahoe where it said “several feet of new snow and strong winds will result in dangerous avalanche conditions.” A stretch of California Highway 89 was closed because of heavy snow between Tahoe City and South Lake Tahoe, California, the highway patrol said. Interstate 80 between Reno and Sacramento remained open, but chains were required on tires for most vehicles. More than 30,000 customers were without power in the Sacramento area at one point Saturday morning. It had been restored to all but about 3,300 by midday. But forecasters warned winds gusting up to 80 kph could bring down tree branches and power …

The World Health Organization says the arrival of one of three trial Ebola vaccines in Uganda Thursday “marks a historical milestone in the global capacity to respond to outbreaks.” The 1,200 doses of the Sudan ebolavirus vaccine arrived “just 79 days after the outbreak was declared on 20 September,” the WHO said. “Uganda is showing that life-saving research can be promptly organized in the midst of an outbreak,” said Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng Acero, Uganda’s minister of health. In contrast, WHO said that “To start Phase 3 trials in Guinea during the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2015, it was 7 months from declaration to arrival of vaccines. This was a great achievement and set historical records at the time.” The vaccine for the Sudan ebolavirus is one of the three candidates recommended for the trial by an independent WHO expert panel. The other two will be added to the trial when the doses arrive. …

While China is beginning to loosen its COVID-19 restrictions, medical practitioners there are preparing for a possible onslaught of COVID cases, which analysts predict could be just weeks away. China had one of the toughest anti-COVID policies in the world. Its zero-COVID campaign put anyone with COVID in a hospital or locked them up in their residences. In a change announced Saturday, officials said truck drivers and ship crews transporting anti-virus goods domestically would no longer be stopped at checkpoints to confirm their COVID-negative status. The move comes as people in China are stockpiling masks, food and medicine, fearing a next wave of COVID cases as restrictions are loosened. Demonstrations across China in recent days, protested the government’s handling of the COVID crisis as people tired of lockdowns and constantly changing restrictions. People watching the World Cup for example, have seen that most of the rest of the world is living with COVID and has avoided the harsh restrictions imposed on Chinese residents. …

Australian scientists have discovered a deep-ocean sharks’ graveyard containing the fossilized teeth of the ancient ancestor of the megalodon shark. They have also found a new species of shark. The discoveries were made across two expeditions on the research vessel (RV) Investigator, which is operated by Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or the CSIRO. It has explored Australia’s newest marine sanctuaries; the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Marine Park in the remote Indian Ocean, and the Gascoyne Marine Park off the coast of Western Australia. At depths of more than 5 kilometers, researchers have recovered remnants of ancient and modern sharks, including the teeth of a 12-meter-long shark that was the closest known relative to the mighty megalodon. It’s considered to have been one of the most powerful predators ever, but it died out about 3.5 million years ago. The voyage’s chief scientist, John Keesing, told VOA that significant discoveries have been made. “From the greatest depths, so this is around 5,000 meters, we have trawled up recent and fossil sharks’ teeth,” he said. “So, the ones we have found on this trip are from great white sharks and mako sharks. Out of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands they found similar to that but in addition, fossil teeth from a relative of one of the largest-ever sharks, the megalodon. So, that is the ancestor of modern sharks.” The search areas in the Indian Ocean are known to have some of the world’s most diverse marine life, but …

 This past year has seen a horrific flood that submerged one-third of Pakistan, one of the three costliest U.S. hurricanes on record, devastating droughts in Europe and China, a drought-triggered famine in Africa and deadly heat waves all over. Yet this wasn’t climate change at its worst. With all that death and destruction in 2022, climate-related disaster damages are down from 2021, according to insurance and catastrophe giant Swiss Re. That’s the state of climate change in the 2020s that $268 billion in global disaster costs is a 12% drop from the previous year, where damage passed $300 billion. The number of U.S. weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage is only at 15 through October and will likely end the year with 16 or 17, down from 22 and 20 in the last two years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But because of Hurricane Ian, overall damage amounts are probably going to end up in the top three in American history. Weather disasters, many but not all of them turbocharged by human-caused climate change, are happening so frequently that this year’s onslaught, which 20 years ago would have smashed records by far, now in some financial measures seems a bit of a break from recent years. Welcome to the new abnormal. “We’ve almost gotten used to extremes. And this year compared to many years in the past would be considered a pretty intense year, but compared to maybe the most extreme years, like …

As the global program for distributing COVID-19 vaccinations to low and middle-income countries is set to be phased out after next year, experts are warning of a messy transition to ensure countries with the lowest inoculation rates are protected against the coronavirus and new variants are prevented. The sunsetting of COVAX was agreed to earlier this week in a meeting of the board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization known as GAVI. The alliance is the driving force behind the international vaccine-sharing mechanism, along with the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). GAVI said COVAX has enough capacity to continue through 2024. At that point, it plans to phase out the program to 37 developing countries while continuing to provide COVID vaccine doses and the funds to deliver them to 54 of the world’s poorest countries who still want them up to 2025, alongside other vaccines it provides. “While COVAX continues to have in place plans for worst-case scenarios, the board agreed, in principle, to explore integrating future COVID-19 vaccinations into GAVI’s core programming,” it said in a statement. Experts say demand for COVID vaccines has significantly dropped worldwide and GAVI shifting focus away from broad COVID vaccination coverage makes sense. However, they warn of a messy transition from the global emergency coordination mechanisms that were set up quickly at the start of the pandemic toward a longer-term COVID management initiative. “There will be major questions coming from the transition, including how many …

Populations of a vulnerable species of marine mammal, numerous species of abalone and a type of Caribbean coral are now threatened with extinction, an international conservation organization said Friday.  The International Union for Conservation of Nature announced the update during the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP15, conference in Montreal. The union’s hundreds of members include government agencies from around the world, and it’s one of the planet’s widest-reaching environmental networks.  The IUCN uses its Red List of Threatened Species to categorize animals approaching extinction. This year, the union is sounding the alarm about the dugong — a large and docile marine mammal that lives from the eastern coast of Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.  The dugong — a relative of the manatee — is vulnerable throughout its range, and now populations in East Africa have entered the red list as critically endangered, IUCN said in a statement. Populations in New Caledonia have entered the list as endangered, the group said.  The major threats to the animal are unintentional capture in fishing gear in East Africa and poaching in New Caledonia, IUCN said. It also suffers from boat collisions and loss of the seagrasses it eats, said Evan Trotzuk, who led the East Africa red list assessment.  “Strengthening community-led fisheries governance and expanding work opportunities beyond fishing are key in East Africa, where marine ecosystems are fundamental to people’s food security and livelihoods,” Trotzuk said.  The IUCN Red List includes more than 150,000 species. The list sometimes …

Chinese boats are decimating West Africa’s fish stocks and fishing communities in the Gulf of Guinea, say environmental groups. The Institute for Security Studies, a South African think tank, said the communities could be losing more than $2 billion each year to illegal fishing, mainly from Chinese-owned boats. Beninese fisherman Geoffroy Gbedevi said it’s getting harder to feed his daughter and pregnant wife. He said the community is suffering and the number of fish being caught is much lower than it used to be. “Nothing is going the way it used to,” he said. Yaya Toshu Koma Benoit is a community leader in Grand Popo, a small fishing town in Benin close to the border with Togo, where houses are empty as community members have been forced to leave to find work elsewhere. He blamed the problem in part on techniques that catch fish before the fish are fully developed. “That’s why there are no more fish,” he said. “If we can ban this practice, that’s good. There are lots of fishermen who use smaller mesh nets, so there are not many fish left.” The Environmental Justice Foundation said illegal fishing boats in Ghana use Ghanaian flags, but 90 percent were traced to Chinese owners. Steven Trent of the Environmental Justice Foundation called for “basic measures to introduce transparency.” “Cars have a number plate as an identifier,” he said. “Put very simply, give each of these vessels what we call a unique vessel identifier to get rid of all these …

A report released Friday by the World Health Organization indicates high levels — above 50% — of bacterial resistance to treatment around the world, based on data collected from 87 countries since 2020. The study, called the Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System report, found levels of resistance above 50% were reported in bacteria such as Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter spp, which frequently cause bloodstream and surgical wound infections in hospitals, as well as pneumonia. These life-threatening infections require treatment with powerful, “last resort” antibiotics, such as carbapenems. However, the study also found 8% of bloodstream infections caused by these bacteria were reported to be resistant to carbapenems, increasing the risk of death due to unmanageable infections.   The study found that while most treatment-resistance trends have remained stable over the past four years, bloodstream infections due to drug-resistant e-coli, salmonella and gonorrhea have increased by at least 15% compared to rates in 2017. In a statement, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said “antimicrobial resistance undermines modern medicine and puts millions of lives at risk.” He called for more microbiology testing and higher-quality data across all countries, “not just wealthier ones.” The study also calls for more research to identify the reasons behind increased antimicrobial resistance and how it might be related to increased hospitalizations and greater use of antibiotic treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic. …

COVAX, the global program for distributing COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries, will soon be integrated into more routine vaccination programs, Gavi said Thursday. Gavi, the nonprofit vaccine alliance that provides an array of vaccines to developing countries, said its board agreed during a meeting in Geneva to phase out COVAX after 2023, stressing that the COVID-19 vaccine would still be made available to less well-off countries, alongside other vaccines. “While COVAX continues to have in place plans for worst-case scenarios, the board agreed, in principle, to explore integrating future COVID-19 vaccinations into Gavi’s core programming,” it said in a statement. The aim, it said, is “to improve synergies, be more responsive to countries’ needs,” and to reduce the current burden on countries of having a specialized emergency response in place. It has taken the lead on the COVAX initiative, alongside the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. The global scheme has so far shipped more than 1.86 billion COVID-19 vaccinations doses to 146 territories, with the focus on providing donor-funded jabs to the 92 weakest economies. “The support is continuing in 2023,” Gavi’s head of resource mobilization, Marie-Ange Saraka-Yao, told AFP. “Then, of course, depending on how the pandemic evolves, the plan will be to really bring it into the more regular program,” she said, adding that this was what countries were asking for. “It doesn’t disappear, but it is really integrated.” Acute pandemic phase ‘fading’ This would allow people to combine getting a COVID-19 vaccine …