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Kenyan authorities say a record drought that wiped out millions of livestock and has millions of people in need of food aid is also forcing tens of thousands of children in herder communities to drop out of school. Kenya declared a national disaster from the drought in September last year, but it could also be looking at a disaster for education.
Ahmed Hussein reports from Wajir County, Kenya.
Content TypePackage
LanguageEnglish
Transcript/ScriptThe Week in Space {03 Nov 2022}
HEADLINE: SpaceX Scores Style Points, Sends Secret Satellites to Space
TEASER: Two boosters used in the company's launch land back at Florida's Cape Canaveral in almost perfect sync
PUBLISHED AT: 11/3/2022 at 3:45pm
BYLINE: Arash Arabasadi
CONTRIBUTOR:
DATELINE: Washington
VIDEOGRAPHER: AP/ SPACEX/ NASA TV/ REUTERS/ NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI
SCRIPT EDITORS: MAS, Reifenrath
VIDEO SOURCE (S): AP/ SPACEX/ NASA TV/ REUTERS/ NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI
SCRIPT EDITORS: MAS, Reifenrath
PLATFORMS (mark with X): WEB __ TV X RADIO __
TRT: 3:10
NOTE: PART DO NOT OBSCURE LOGO
VID APPROVED BY: MAS
TYPE: TVPKG
UPDATE:))
((INTRO))
[A private spaceflight giant has a busy week sending satellites into orbit. Plus, massive meteor strikes on Mars, and the Pillars of Creation get an eerie makeover. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.]]
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((NARRATOR))
We begin this week on a launchpad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. There, private spaceflight company SpaceX launched another batch of 53 satellites to join its Starlink global broadband internet service. The company has thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit. SpaceX says it was the eighth blastoff and landing of this Falcon (nine) booster. After completing its mission, the reusable booster landed on the drone ship named “Of Course I Still Love You.”
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SpaceX followed that launch days later with this one from Florida’s Cape Canaveral. There, the company launched the Falcon Heavy — known as the world’s most powerful active rocket — for the first time in three years. Three Falcon (nine) boosters, strapped side-by-side, form a Falcon Heavy. The two side boosters landed back at Cape Canaveral — in near-perfect sync. The trip carried U.S. Military satellites and was the first Falcon Heavy mission since 2019.
((mandatory cg: NASA TV))
((NARRATOR))
Meanwhile on Mars, NASA’s InSight lander, which touched down in 2018, will run out of power and stop work in the next month or two. This, as scientists detailed a massive meteor strike that gouged out parts of the planet’s surface.
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NASA says the high point of this discovery is the presence of water ice near the equator. Water ice is frozen water as opposed to other frozen compounds found in the cold of space.
[RADIO TRACK: Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, Lori Glaze, speaking on an agency feed as carried by Reuters.]
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((Voice of Lori Glaze, NASA))
“This is really an exciting result. We know, of course, that there’s water-ice near the poles on Mars, but in planning for future human exploration of Mars, we’d want to land the astronauts as near to the equator as possible and having access to ice at these lower latitudes. That ice could be converted into water, oxygen, or hydrogen, ((and)) that could be really useful.”
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((NARRATOR))
InSight detected more than 13-hundred marsquakes in its time on the Red Planet. Once it runs out of power, NASA says it will lose communications with the craft.
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((NARRATOR))
Also this week, NASA released this eerie image of the Pillars of Creation. This one, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI.
((mandatory cg NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI))
((NARRATOR))
Unlike the previous image captured by Webb’s NIRCam ((Near Infrared Camera)), the MIRI image filters out existing stars, revealing layers of dust and gas that will eventually form new stars, giving the Pillars of Creation their name.
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((NARRATOR))
Finally this week, NASA said goodbye to a spaceflight giant. The headquarters building at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, was instrumental in developing and testing the massive Space Launch System, or SLS rocket, that will one day launch the Artemis program to space. Commonly known as Building 42-hundred, it spent about 60 years as the center’s base of operations, but renovations were cost prohibitive. And so NASA said goodbye to the building where engineers designed the Saturn (five) rocket that carried the first humans to the moon. Building 42-hundred went out with a bang at a controlled implosion Saturday.
Arash Arabasadi, VOA News.
NewsML Media TopicsArts, Culture, Entertainment and Media
NetworkVOA
Location (dateline)
in Washington D.C.
Embargo DateNovember 3, 2022 16:19 EDT
Byline
Arash Arabasadi, VOA News.
Brand / Language ServiceVoice of America - English
