Archaeologists forced by Mideast war to cut short Iraq digs


ByAFP
March 31, 2026


Iraq is home to archaeological sites thousands of years old - Copyright AFP/File Issouf SANOGO

Rose TROUP BUCHANAN

Iraq is home to ruins from some of the world’s earliest civilisations, but teams led by international archaeologists have been forced by drone and rocket attacks in the Middle East war to cut short their expeditions.

Archaeologists told AFP that some of the projects interrupted by the war had been planned for years, but their teams have had to evacuate ancient sites since the United States and Israel attacked Iraq’s neighbour, Iran.

Like other countries around the region, Iraq has become engulfed in the war, bringing to an abrupt end a period of nascent stability.

Iraq’s precious archaeological sites, some dating back thousands of years, had for years faced threats ranging from climate change to successive conflicts.

Under normal circumstances, around 60 international teams would have been working on digs, a government official told AFP, but “all of these missions have left Iraq”.



– ‘Like a musician’ –



Adelheid Otto of Germany’s Ludwig-Maximilians-University started a long-planned dig at ancient Shuruppak, modern-day Tell Fara, on February 28.

That same day, Israel and the US launched strikes against Iran, sparking a war that has dragged Iraqi armed groups into the fray — and cutting short Otto’s work.

“We are Near Eastern archaeologists. So that is our work. That is like a musician who can no longer play an instrument,” she told AFP.

Her team — 18 German archaeologists, geologists, geophysical experts and students and seven Iraqi archaeologists — initially stayed, reasoning travelling the 750 kilometres (460 miles) overland to Turkey was more dangerous.

“After some days we got kind of used to the rockets and drones above our heads,” she said.

But Iraqi officials repeatedly urged them to depart, despite their discovery of ancient cuneiform tablets.

“It is impossible” to leave, she told authorities, insisting on staying extra days. “We have to document it. We have to take photos of everything.”

“I told the students you have to work on all the small finds that we have,” said Otto, 59, who boasts four decades of experience.

“You never know in any of these countries if you will ever return,” she said.



– ‘Guarantors’ –



Many German institutions had just started relaxing travel restrictions to Iraq after a succession of conflicts, including the 2003 US-led invasion and the extremist Islamic State group.

Now, said Otto, archaeologists once again face being shut out.

Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage head Ali Obeid Shalgham told AFP Iraqi security forces were the sites’ “true guarantors”, especially as many are in remote rural areas.

He said the country is installing so-called protective “blue shields” — nicknamed “the Red Cross of heritage” — at archaeological sites.

The presence of foreign teams is “crucial”, said Aqeel al-Mansrawi, an Iraqi landscape archaeologist.

“They work to protect heritage through conservation,” he said.

He also emphasised the training Iraqi experts receive from foreigners, vital after years of isolation and war.

“We are always training a lot of Iraqi archaeologists and colleagues,” said Otto, of the German institute.

“If it would be cut again, it would be terrible,” she said.

Foreign digs must work with Iraqi archaeologists, bringing their international expertise.

Shalgham said the arrangement allows Iraqis “to keep up with global advancements in new technologies and state-of-the-art equipment”.



– ‘Can’t catch a break’ –



Chicago University professor Augusta McMahon was in southern Iraq, working at the 6,000-year-old Nippur site, when the war began.

Having worked in the Middle East for almost four decades, this was her third evacuation.

In 2024, she had to leave Iraq, while in 2011, she left Syria.

“We had pressure from a lot of different directions in terms of having to leave,” she said, with her eight-person team departing under an Iraqi escort on March 10.

“It is quite frustrating, along with everything else, I feel terribly bad for [my] Iraqi colleagues,” she said.

The war has also rippled beyond the immediate: an initiative to finally return the preeminent Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (RAI) conference to Iraq was cancelled by the University of Baghdad.

The city last attempted to host the event in 1990, according to the university, but it was scrapped with the Gulf War.

“Now 36 years later, they finally pulled themselves together… and its cancelled again,” said McMahon, who was due to be presenting.

“It’s like they can’t catch a break.”

Op-Ed: TACO strikes again — ‘Get your own oil’ followed by ‘US will exit in 2-3 weeks’


By Paul Wallis
EDITOR AT LARGE

DIGITAL JOURNAL

March 31, 2026


Asian labourers working in the United Arab Emirates have been caufght up in the Middle East war triggered by the US-Israeli assault on Iran - Copyright AFP Karim SAHIB

You have to wonder how much ego-fodder is involved in this situation. All of a sudden, King Donald the Pointless doesn’t want to play war anymore.

I ran out of scatology for this meaningless, nauseating, useless anti-President during the first “administration”.

So, with due apologies to the English language:

The behavioral pattern is the same again: get into a situation he doesn’t begin to understand, spend billions, put a lot of people at risk, screw up the global economy, and run away. This may be without reopening Hormuz or achieving anything at all. As usual, the problem remains after he’s gone.

Just about everybody on Earth was wondering what the point of the Iran war could possibly be from day one.

US rapid deployment ground forces were on their way to Hormuz yesterday.

Threats to destroy desalination plants were the news yesterday.

Now it’s all over?

No party bags?

Broadway not interested?

No smiling happy snaps with those dead Iranian schoolgirls who’d otherwise be alive right now?

No merch?

Apparently. The “Get your own oil” line came out of the mystic PR sewer that has replaced formal US government announcements a couple of hours ago.

Real governments don’t do business on social media.

Neither does anyone else.

Antagonizing allies is pretty much normal while telling them to open Hormuz themselves. Nobody cares. Relations will get back to something like normal after this obscene idiocy departs. The GOP’s global credibility may now be worth much less than an empty KFC bucket, but they’re going extinct anyway.

Nobody will ever forget or forgive this barrage of BS. Crossing one line may be overlooked. Not crossing all of the lines at the same time.

Militarily, absolutely nothing has been achieved, except maybe forcing Iran to drastically update its military museum. The strikes mainly destroyed most of Iran’s non-combat-viable, non-deployable garage sale of a military inventory. A modernized, rearmed Iran could be a much more serious threat.

Happy now?

The really exciting bit is that there are two more years of idiocy to come.

__________________________________________________________

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

‘Is it Kafka?’ US judge baffled by new Pentagon press policy


By AFP
March 30, 2026


The New York Times sued after the Defense Department stripped journalists of press credentials who refused to agree to the more restrictive access policy - Copyright AFP ANGELA WEISS

The New York Times and Trump administration clashed in a federal court on Monday over restrictions imposed by the Pentagon on journalists covering the Defense Department.

Judge Paul Friedman, in response to a lawsuit filed by the newspaper, ruled this month that new Pentagon policies regarding media access were unconstitutional and Times reporters should have their credentials restored.

The Trump administration has said it will appeal the ruling and the Defense Department responded with even tighter rules, closing a press area in the Pentagon called Correspondents’ Corridor and moving reporters to an annex in a separate building.

In addition, under the new policy, “all journalist access to the Pentagon will require escort by authorized Department personnel.”

Theodore Boutrous, a Times lawyer, accused the administration at a hearing before Friedman in a Washington court on Monday of “gaslighting” and “bad faith.”

“We’ve seen this movie before,” Boutrous said. “They made the press credentials that we fought so hard to get back meaningless.”

Julian Barnes, a Times reporter, in a sworn declaration, noted that reporters were unable to access the new press facility on foot and were also not allowed to use a Pentagon shuttle bus.

“How weird is that?” Friedman responded. “Is it Catch 22? Is it Kafka?”

Barnes said Pentagon press accreditation pass holders were ultimately told they would be given permission to ride on the shuttle bus.

The judge, after hearing arguments from the Times and Sarah Welch, a lawyer representing the Justice Department, did not issue an immediate ruling.

US media and a host of other news outlets including AFP declined to sign the new access policy in mid-October, resulting in the loss of their Pentagon credentials.

The restrictions were the latest in a series of measures by President Donald Trump and top officials against journalists and outlets that are often derided as “fake news” when their reporting displeases the administration.

Air Canada CEO to retire after row over English-only condolence message


By AFP
March 30, 2026


Air Canada says its chief executive will retire by the end of the third quarter, after backlash over his failure to issue condolences in both French and English for a fatal airport disaster - Copyright AFP/File TIMOTHY A. CLARY

Beiyi SEOW

Air Canada said Monday that CEO Michael Rousseau will retire later this year, an announcement following controversy over his failure to issue condolences both in English and French for a fatal airport disaster.

Rousseau had sparked controversy by issuing an English-only video message to express condolences after a deadly collision late on March 22 between an Air Canada jet and a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

Canada has two official languages — English and French — and media reports noted that one of the pilots killed in the accident was from French-speaking Quebec.

Rousseau has informed the company’s board that he will retire by the end of the third quarter, the airline said, adding that work is underway to choose his successor.

“The Board will consider a number of performance criteria in assessing candidates including the ability to communicate in French,” Air Canada said in the statement.

Until he steps down, Rousseau is set to continue leading the company and serving on its board.

Air Canada is the country’s largest airline and is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec — Canada’s traditionally French-speaking region. The company is required to offer services in both languages.



– ‘Lack of judgement’ –



Rousseau had earlier issued an apology over his English-only message, saying he was saddened that his limited French “has diverted attention from the profound grief of the families.”

“Despite many lessons over several years, unfortunately, I am still unable to express myself adequately in French,” he said in a statement.

He added: “I sincerely apologize for this, but I am continuing my efforts to improve.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has also criticized the CEO’s conduct, saying he was “very disappointed, as others are, rightly so, in this unilingual message.”

Carney added that the message showed a “lack of judgement and a lack of compassion.”

Similarly, Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand told AFP on the sidelines of the G7 foreign ministers meeting in France that all Canadian leaders, including corporate bosses, should speak both official languages.

“Canada is a bilingual country,” she said.

In 2021, Rousseau also issued an apology over his lack of French proficiency.

At the time, he apologized for causing offense by giving a speech almost entirely in English, pledging to improve his French.

After remarks to business groups and comments to journalists that he had managed to get by without French for years, Rousseau faced backlash from politicians.

Quebec is the only Canadian province that is primarily Francophone.

Op-Ed: No Kings goes global, FOX says it’s communist-backed, while America goes down the drain


By Paul Wallis
EDITOR AT LARGE

DIGITAL JOURNAL
March 29, 2026


Demonstrators are seen rallying in Los Angeles at a 'No Kings' protest in June 2025 -- and they will hit the streets again on October 18, 2025 - Copyright AFP/File ETIENNE LAURENT

The third No Kings rally in 14 months is bigger than ever.

The world agrees. There are even protests in Italy, France, Germany, the UK, and Portugal.

There’s even a No Kings in Puerto Rico, which someone called a “trash island” during the 2024 election.

There’s a reason for this, and it’s much deeper than just today or the last 10 years.

Americans in general don’t like American politics, and historically they rarely have. They don’t trust it. They all truly hate the ongoing horror story that the country has become. That’s getting on people’s nerves to an intolerable level. The one thing they don’t want to see is the absolute, total failure to address all issues.

This isn’t about ideology.

It’s about reality.

America isn’t yet a true has-been country, but you can see echoes from other former top dog countries. You also can’t avoid American nostalgia for a second. It’s everywhere. It condenses into “Things used to be great”. There’s a very sour, multi-generational taste in people’s mouths. America simply doesn’t like total failure, particularly in large doses.

The Trump administration is also pretty unpopular for a so-called “grassroots populist movement” even at the scripted-hicks level.

In no sense of the word is this administration anything like a real government. It’s a mess.

The purpose of government is to run countries, not destroy them.

A chronically sick, 95% broke, hyper overstressed country can’t be “great”.

Things are now definitely not “great” for those wondering, and they’re getting worse.

Failure can’t hide. Neither this administration nor the previous Trump administration can pretend to have delivered on any of its platforms. More priority is given to tax cuts for the rich than to any other issue. DOGE effectively gutted the Federal government. Tariffs have been a disaster, cranking up domestic prices while Americans struggle with daily expenses.

ICE is far less effective and far more expensive in its role than any other administration’s anti-illegal immigrant initiatives. Check any stats you can find. The FCC is a political muppet. The FAA is looking like an old theme park. Foreign affairs now consist of wars and very deeply offended trading partners and allies. Even food and water are big daily issues.

No Kings is simply calling it like it is.

America’s previously influential, now ridiculous mass media aren’t helping. Everything is downplayed. From mass layoffs to the sheer absurdity of replacing trained people with unreliable technologies, there’s a buzzword for everything, but no substance.

The No Kings rally got a response from FOX, which somehow managed to glue together some sad little coverage, calling it a communist plot. This recycled 1950s kitsch is pure McCarthyism, finding Reds Under Beds on a routine basis.

American media believes itself. Nobody else does. But if someone in American media says there are Reds Under Beds, there must be Reds Under Beds just because it says so.

As a matter of fact, the American socialist reaction would be called mainstream in any country on Earth but America. Definitely not “socialism” in any form.

The Constitution, when it was written, was one of the most advanced constitutions in history, and it still is in so many ways. Nobody else even thought of the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. They didn’t put it in their constitutions, either. America did. It was a sort of 1776 version of socialism before even the word socialism really existed. Inalienable rights were something new and truly revolutionary then.

The No Kings rallies are simply the Constitution at work.

_____________________________________________________________

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

Critics Blast ‘Clueless’ New York Times for Dismissive Coverage of Historic No Kings Protests

“The NY Times saves its harshest skepticism for progressives,” said one critic.


Protesters gather in Times Square during the ‘’No Kings’’ national day of protest in New York, United States, on March 28, 2026.
(Photo by Jerome Gilles/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Mar 29, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The New York Times is drawing criticism for publishing articles that downplayed the significance of Saturday’s No Kings protests, which initial estimates suggest was the largest protest event in US history.

In a Times article that drew particular ire, reporter Jeremy Peters questioned whether nationwide events that drew an estimated 8 million people to the streets “would be enough to influence the course of the nation’s politics.”
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“Can the protests harness that energy and turn it into victories in the November midterm elections?” Peters asked rhetorically. “How can they avoid a primal scream that fades into a whimper?”

Journalist and author Mark Harris called Peters’ take on the protests “predictable” and said it was framed so that the protests would appear insignificant no matter how many people turned out.

“There’s a long, bad journalistic tradition,” noted Harris. “All conservative grass-roots political movements are fascinating heartland phenomena, all progressive grass-roots political movements are ineffectual bleating. This one is written off as powered by white female college grads—the wine-moms slur, basically.”

Media critic Dan Froomkin was event blunter in his criticism of the Peters piece.

“Putting anti-woke hack Jeremy Peters on this story is an act of war by the NYT against No Kings,” he wrote.

Mark Jacob, former metro editor at the Chicago Tribune, also took a hatchet to Peters’ analysis.

“The NY Times saves its harshest skepticism for progressives,” he wrote. “Instead of being impressed by 3,000-plus coordinated protests, NYT dismisses the value of ‘hitting a number’ and asks if No Kings will be ‘a primal scream that fades into a whimper.’ F off, NY Times. We’ll defeat fascism without you.”

The Media and Democracy Project slammed the Times for putting Peters’ analysis of the protests on its front page while burying straight news coverage of the events on page A18.

“NYT editors CHOSE that Jeremy Peters’s opinions would frame the No Kings demonstrations and pro-democracy movement to millions of NYT readers,” the group commented.

Joe Adalian, west coast editor for New York Mag’s Vulture, criticized a Times report on the No Kings demonstrations that quoted a “skeptic” of the protests without noting that said skeptic was the chairman of the Ole Miss College Republicans.

“Of course, the Times doesn’t ID him as such,” remarked Adalian. “He’s just a Concerned Youth.”

Jeff Jarvis, professor emeritus at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, took issue with a Times piece that offered five “takeaways” from the No Kings events that somehow managed to miss their broader significance.

“I despise the five-takeaways journalistic trope the Broken Times loves so,” Jarvis wrote. “It is reductionist, hubristic in its claim to summarize any complex event. This one leaves out much, like the defense of democracy against fascism.”

Journalist Miranda Spencer took stock of the Times’ entire coverage of the No Kings demonstrations and declared it “clueless,” while noting that USA Today did a far better job of communicating their significance to readers.

Harper’s Magazine contributing editor Scott Horton similarly argued that international news organizations were giving the No Kings events more substantive coverage than the Times.

“In Le Monde and dozens of serious newspapers around the world, prominent coverage of No Kings 3, which brought millions of Americans on to the streets to protest Trump,” Horton observed. “In NYT, an illiterate rant from Jeremy W Peters and no meaningful coverage of the protests. Something very strange going on here.”

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SPACE/COSMOS

Artemis will take NORTH Americans to the moon for the 1st time since 1972. Why has it been so hard to go back?

Five reasons human space flight is a bigger challenge today than it was during the Apollo era.

Andrew Romano, Reporter
Tue, March 31, 2026 

Updated Tue, March 31, 2026
Yahoo 


Astronaut Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin during an Apollo 11 moon walk in 1969.(Heritage Space/Heritage Images via Getty Images)

On Sept. 12 1962, President John F. Kennedy famously declared that the United States would “go to the moon … and do it first, before this decade is out.”

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,” Kennedy said, “not because they are easy but because they are hard.”

Then America followed through. Less than seven years later, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended from their lander and left humankind’s first lunar footprints.

Today that pace of progress might seem impossible. On April 1, NASA is scheduled to launch Artemis II — America’s first crewed lunar spaceflight in more than a half century. Its mission is clear-cut: Send four astronauts around the moon and back in 10 days.

But Artemis II’s mission is also … familiar. In 1968, three Apollo 8 astronauts circled the moon without landing, then traveled back to Earth.

In other words, NASA already pulled off a version of Artemis II nearly 60 years ago — and did so without the long delays that have plagued Artemis II itself (which was previously scheduled to lift off, and then delayed, almost every year since 2021).

How can going to the moon be so difficult if we already did it? Here are five reasons human space flight is such a big challenge today.
Rustiness

The last time humans set foot on the moon was in 1972, with Apollo 17. That was also the last crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit — period. Even uncrewed lunar landers fell out of favor soon after, with more than 35 years elapsing between one successful robotic landing on the moon’s surface (the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976) and the next (China’s Chang’e 3 in 2013).

“There were decades when people were not developing landers,” one expert told the Guardian in 2024. “The technology is not that common that you can easily learn from others.”

Turns out that it’s hard to resume human space exploration after a multi-decade hiatus — especially when complex new technologies need to be integrated with older ones.

“We stopped, and then we forgot,” Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, recently told Scientific American. Just because you ran an Olympic marathon 50 years ago, Pace went on to explain, doesn’t mean you could do it again tomorrow.

The Space Launch System (SLS), with the Orion crew capsule, at Kennedy Space Center in 2026.(Steve Nesius/Reuters)

Ambition

Despite some superficial similarities, the Artemis program isn’t really Apollo, part two. Apollo sought to put people (briefly) on the moon. Artemis aspires to establish a permanent base there — a base that astronauts can later use as a stepping stone to Mars.

That’s a much more ambitious goal, and it defines every facet of Artemis: the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that propels the astronauts beyond Earth’s atmosphere; the Orion spacecraft in which the four of them can spend 21 days; separate next-generation space suits for launch and entry as well surface exploration; robotic landers carried on commercial rockets that deliver equipment to the moon itself; and finally, the reusable rocket-and-human-lander system — either SpaceX’s Starship or Blue Origin's Blue Moon — that will eventually orbit the moon and dock with Orion before transporting the Artemis crew to and from the surface.

In short, there are more moving parts now than there were in the 1960s, which means more potential delays.

Motivation

In the 1960s, the U.S. was competing with the Soviet Union in an existential space race. Cold War conventional wisdom decreed that whichever superpower arrived on the moon first would reinforce its military dominance — and project precisely the kind of soft power that could sway newly independent countries to choose democracy over communism.

There’s a certain clarity about one-on-one competition, and the U.S. immediately mobilized around beating the Soviets to the moon. Now that clarity is gone. In its place is a more nebulous (and less pressing) objective: international cooperation in the name of scientific discovery. Japan, Canada, the United Arab Emirates and the European Space Agency are all collaborating with the United States on Artemis.

As a result, one president’s spaceflight plans are often canceled by the next, only to be resurrected later in a different form, and delays accrue while countries do the important work of getting on the same page about the future of space and contributing hardware to the cause.

Money

Between 2012 and 2025, the U.S. spent roughly $93 billion on the Artemis program. Total spending is expected to top $105 billion by 2028, the year the first Artemis astronauts are supposed to land on the moon.

That’s no small sum. But Apollo cost more than three times as much: about $320 billion in today’s dollars, according to the Planetary Society. Likewise, about 4% of the federal budget went to NASA in the Apollo era. Today the space agency is lucky to get 1%.

Experts say that shift is sensible. “There’s no reason to spend money like it was a war,” John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University and founder of the Space Policy Institute, told Scientific American. “There’s really no national interest or political interest that provides the foundation for that kind of mobilization at this point.”

But sensible or not, less funding almost always means slower progress.

Left to right, the Artemis II crew at Kennedy Space Center in 2025: pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of CSA (Canadian Space Agency), commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialist Christina Koch.(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)More
Safety

Given the scientific, cooperative nature of today’s moon missions — not to mention all the advances in computer modeling since the 1960s — it would be irresponsible for NASA not to consider every possible safety consequence of Artemis — to the astronauts themselves and to the broader environment.

This wasn’t quite the case during the Apollo era. Back then, swashbuckling fighter pilots were converted to astronauts and rocketed into space much in the way they’d previously been deployed to war: with the knowledge that they were doing something very, very dangerous. The risk was worth the reward (i.e., winning the space race).

But today engineers can run detailed simulations on Orion’s materials and the stresses the capsule will be under, including high temperatures and intense acceleration forces — and that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for years.

Even then, Artemis I — an uncrewed moon-orbiting mission launched in 2022 — showed that Orion’s heat shield broke down differently than predicted; that bolts on the spacecraft faced “unexpected melting and erosion”; and that the power system experienced anomalies that could endanger the future crew.

It took time for NASA to resolve these issues — just as it will take time to address any issues with, say, Orion’s life support systems that arise during its first crewed mission. Building earthbound infrastructure is slower and more expensive today than it was in the 1960s; so too is exploring the cosmos.

Some would argue that the tradeoff is worth it. “For Artemis, having a more robust rocket system, asking people what they think, keeping people safer and working with global partners are probably better for this world — even if they don’t result in expedience off-world,” Scientific American concluded in its recent story on the subject.

Put another way: At least NASA is still doing hard things, even if they’ve gotten (a lot) harder.

Why are NASA's Artemis astronauts wearing orange? What are they bringing to space? What to know about the preparation for their moon mission.

The custom suits are equipped with survival gear in case the crew has to exit the spacecraft after splashdown — and are easily visible in the ocean.

Dylan Stableford, Reporter
Updated Tue, March 31, 2026
Yahoo 



Left to right: Artemis II NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.(Frank Michaux/NASA)More


The four astronauts preparing to take part in NASA’s Artemis II moon mission will be wearing bright orange spacesuits on the Orion spacecraft for this week’s historic launch.

Officially called the Orion Crew Survival System, NASA says the spacesuits can help keep astronauts alive if they lose cabin pressure.

“Astronauts could survive inside the suit for up to six days as they make their way back to Earth,” the space agency explains on its website.



The suits are also equipped with survival gear should they have to exit the spacecraft after splashdown.

Each suit comes with its own life preserver that includes a personal locator beacon, a rescue knife, and a signaling kit with a mirror, strobe light, flashlight, whistle and light sticks.


And the reason they’re neon orange? “To make crew members easily visible in the ocean,” NASA says.

The astronauts will also be equipped with another spacesuit “that functions as a self-contained personal spaceship,” and is designed to be worn outside the spacecraft.
When is Artemis II scheduled to launch?

A full moon is seen shining over NASA's Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft at Kennedy Space Center on Feb. 1.(ASSOCIATED PRESS)More

After weeks of delays, NASA is targeting April 1 for the launch of the Artemis II mission — the first U.S. human lunar spaceflight in over 50 years.

The countdown clock officially started on Monday afternoon, and a two-hour launch window opens Wednesday at 6:24 p.m. ET, with additional launch opportunities through Monday, April 6.

The crew — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — won’t be landing on the moon. Instead, they’ll venture 600,000 miles around the moon and will return at 30 times the speed of sound, according to NASA.

During their 10-day trip, they’ll test life support systems in the Orion capsule for future crewed missions to the moon’s surface. A moon landing would occur during Artemis III, which is targeted to launch in 2027.
How else is the crew preparing for the mission?

The Artemis II crew arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday and have been in quarantine ahead of launch.

The four astronauts have spent months getting to know each other while preparing for the launch, which Wiseman says has helped him as the mission's commander.

“I can just watch my crewmates here. I know their facial expressions. They know mine,” Wiseman said during a virtual press conference on Sunday. “We know when we're tense. We know when an immediate decision needs to be made.”

Wiseman also said that the crew has practiced restraint.

“We try to remind ourselves — every single time we fly, we say, ‘No fast hands in the cockpit,’” he explained. “You do not want to do anything too quick in this vehicle. You need to take your time. You need to process everything.”

He added: “We're going to go slow and we have the ultimate trust in each other. And that's how we will get through this.”

Is the crew bringing anything special to space?

The astronauts will have a mascot named Rise, designed by Lucas Ye, a second-grader from Mountain View, Calif., which will serve as a zero-gravity indicator to visually indicate when they are in space.

Ye’s design was selected from more than 2,600 submissions from over 50 countries, according to NASA.

Inside the mascot is an SD card with the names of more than 5.6 million people who participated in the “Send Your Name With Artemis” campaign.
What will the crew eat?

The quality of airline food is often the butt of jokes, but NASA’s menu for the Artemis crew is enough to make even Earth-bound diners jealous.

A total of 189 unique food items will be brought along for the journey, including beef brisket, macaroni and cheese and cobbler. The food brought on board isn’t just chosen for its taste, however. It’s carefully chosen to meet the astronaut’s needs.

“Food selections are developed in coordination with space food experts and the crew to balance calorie needs, hydration, and nutrient intake while accommodating individual crew preferences,” NASA wrote.

Everything also needs to last without being refrigerated, and be easy to prepare and safe to eat in microgravity — that means minimal crumbs. Even with those restrictions, NASA is able to send a surprising variety of options, including 10 different drinks; five hot sauces; nine condiments, spreads and spices; and a variety of sweets.
Why does NASA want to go to the moon again?

The Artemis program is NASA’s long-term mission to return humans to the moon to establish a continuous human presence. The goal is to develop a lunar settlement at its south pole, a region where it’s believed water ice is abundant and could be used for drinking, breathing and as a source for rocket fuel.

Another long-term mission of Artemis is to lay the foundation for future crewed missions to Mars. The program is building on the legacy of the Apollo-era missions to the moon in the late 1960s and early ’70s. The Artemis program is named for the ancient Greek goddess of the moon — the twin sister of Apollo.

“It is our strong hope that this mission is the start of an era where everyone — every person on earth — look at the moon and think of it as also a destination,” Koch said.

Scientists Investigating Whether Object NASA Is Approaching Is Core of Destroyed Planet

Victor Tangermann
Tue, March 31, 2026
FUTURISM

Researchers tried to figure out whether asteroid 16 Psyche, which NASA is visiting in 2029, is the remnant of a planet's core.
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Scientists are studying the asteroid 16 Psyche to determine if it is a core of a planetesimal or a homogeneous mixture of iron and rock.See more


Scientists have long been intrigued by an enormous potato-shaped asteroid, dubbed 16 Psyche, that they suspect to be teeming with metal — and therefore potentially worth a ludicrous amount of money to future asteroid mining operations.

The 173-mile object, which orbits the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, features two enormous crater-like depressions, which researchers say could be closely related to its still largely unknown origin story.

In a new paper published in the journal JGR Planets, an international team of researchers tried to get to the bottom of one of the key questions regarding 16 Psyche that remains unanswered. Is it a core of a planetesimal, a billions-of-years-old building block of a planet, in which case it would have a “large metallic core buried under rocks,” or is it a “homogeneous mixture of iron and rock?”

Put differently, could 16 Psyche be the ancient exposed remains of a planetary core whose crust and mantle were blown off, or is it a separate primordial lump of far less dense and potentially riddled-with-holes rock that either started out metal-rich or became blended with metal after colliding with other asteroids?

While the latest paper doesn’t necessarily exclude any of these possibilities — its simulations support both hypotheses — the goal was to know what to look out for once NASA’s mission to the space rock, which launched in October 2023, arrives roughly three and a half years from now.

Once there, the spacecraft could finally allow us to solve the mystery surrounding 16 Psyche’s history once and for all. As Universe Today points out, 16 Psyche’s size makes it far more approachable than the thousands of miles we’d have to drill into the Earth. (So far, we’ve only made it around 0.2 percent of the way to our own planet’s center.)

For their paper, the researchers took into consideration 16 Psyche’s unusual dented shape, previous findings that concluded it may be teeming with metal material, and its porosity.

“Large impact basins or craters excavate deep into the asteroid, which gives clues about what its interior is made of,” said first author and University of Arizona doctoral candidate Namya Baijal in a statement. “By simulating the formation of one of its largest craters, we were able to make testable predictions for Psyche’s overall composition when the spacecraft arrives.”

“One of our main findings was that the porosity — the amount of empty space inside the asteroid — plays a significant role in how these craters form,” she added. “Porosity is often ignored because it’s difficult to include in models, but our simulations show it can strongly affect the impact process and shape of craters left behind.”

A more porous asteroid would theoretically feature deeper and steeper-sided craters on its surface. The researchers are hoping that close-up observations by NASA’s Psyche mission could allow them to determine its porosity and therefore infer if its interior is metal clad in rock, or a more homogenous mix of both.

To explain their line of thinking, the researchers used the unusual metaphor of an abandoned pizza parlor.

“The cooks have long left, but you can look at what’s left behind — the ovens, scraps of dough, the toppings — and make inferences about how the pizzas were made,” said coauthor and University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory professor Erik Asphaug in a statement. “We can’t get to the cores of Earth or Mars or Venus, but maybe we can get to the core of an early asteroid.”

The team came up with two possible interior structures.

“One is a layered structure with a metallic core and a thin, rocky mantle, which likely formed if a violent collision stripped away the outer layers,” Baijal explained. “The other is a uniform mixture of metal and silicate, created by a more catastrophic impact that mixed everything together, like some metal-rich meteorites found on Earth.”

By simulating a series of asteroid belt collisions with objects of varying sizes, they tried to reproduce the known dimensions of 16 Psyche’s craters.

“We found that an impactor about three miles across would create a crater of the right dimensions,” Baijal said. “The crater’s formation is consistent with both scenarios of Psyche’s makeup.”

In short, while we’re only inching closer to answering the question of whether 16 Psyche is the ancient remains of a planetary core, we’ll be ready when NASA’s mission gets there.

“When the spacecraft arrives at Psyche in a few years, the geochemists, geologists and modelers on the team will all be looking at the same object and trying to interpret what we see,” said Asphaug.

“This work gives us a head start,” he added.



Oops! NASA Once Lost a $125 Million Spacecraft Because Engineers Forgot to Convert to Metric

Elizabeth Rayne
Tue, March 31, 2026



Epic math fail doomed a NASA spacecraft

NASA - Getty Images


Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

The Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) launched in late 1998 and was predicted to reach Mars nine months later. But that never actually happened.


As the MCO approached Mars, it ventured far too close and either burned up in the atmosphere or was lost to another orbit.


NASA’s postmortem later found that the failure of the mission was a result of their contractor, Lockheed Martin, neglecting to convert to metric units in the software.

December 11, 1998—launch day for the Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) and the accompanying Polar Lander, both of which were part of a larger NASA initiative known as Mars Surveyor ’98. NASA had commissioned Lockheed Martin to design and build the MCO, which was was destined to gather data on Martian weather while communicating with the Polar Lander.

There was just one problem: The orbiter would never reach Mars.

Superficially, everything seemed to be going according to plan. Lockheed Martin was at the design helm, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was overseeing every aspect of the project. The MCO was equipped with eight thrusters intended to boost it into Mars orbit. It also had reaction wheels that could adjust its altitude and orientation, though they occasionally overdid the momentum, resulting in the MCO needing an angular momentum desaturation (AMD) event to reset itself. Once in orbit, the MCO was supposed to beam data back to specialized software on Earth, which would figure out its position and plan any necessary AMD events for the near future.

That communication was crucial, as it is for all active space missions. But soon after launch, software problems began to arise. During the journey, which was projected to last nine and a half months, the MCO’s software began acting up, requiring ground navigation data to be emailed to NASA for solutions. Even with corrections to the software, however, the MCO was still transmitting nonsensical data back to Earth.

In September of 1999, engineers computed and executed the final planned Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM-4) to refine the Mars Climate Orbiter’s approach to Mars. The intended trajectory would have produced a first periapsis (closest position to Mars) of about 140 miles (226 km) above the planet after orbit insertion. But navigators determined that the spacecraft’s predicted closest approach was lower than expected, revealing a serious trajectory error. The planet’s gravity was beginning to pull the orbiter in.

By the morning of September 23, 1999, the MCO had vanished with no way to reestablish communication. So…what happened?

According to NASA’s initial postmortem analysis, the spacecraft was only about 35 miles (57 km) from the ruddy surface of Mars when contact was lost. Engineers concluded that the orbiter either burned up in the Martian atmosphere or skipped off the atmosphere and was lost in space. When the agency investigated the following month and found a data issue, they noticed something suspicious about the small forces software that had been responsible for determining the MCO’s position and AMD: while everything else used metric units, this software was using Imperial units.

Lockheed Martin’s use of the wrong units in its software meant that the MCO was not even close to the trajectory it was supposed to be on. While NASA required Lockheed Martin to convert its measurements to metric units, the agency never verified which measurement system the company had employed before sending the MCO off to Mars, and there was reportedly no response from upper management when navigation staff voiced their concerns during the mission.

Investigators claimed that NASA was the party responsible for the failure of the mission, rather than Lockheed Martin. They stated that NASA officials had rushed everything to the detriment of the mission, neglecting to thoroughly test the small forces software as they should have, and that it was impossible to tell whether the systems engineering team had validated and verified the software to begin with.

Unfortunately, no matter whose fault it was, the Mars Polar Lander bore the brunt of the unit-conversion failure. Not long after this simple error pulled it disastrously away from its intended orbit, it was doomed to crash and bur



Starlink Satellite Explodes In Orbit, Yet Another Moment Of SpaceX Engineering Excellence

Ryan Erik King
Tue, March 31, 2026



The Headquarters of SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, with a Falcon 9 booster in March 2024. - Sven Piper/Getty Images

There are roughly 10,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit, making it a crowded place due to Elon Musk's business ventures.

It would be ideal if satellites in a massive communications constellation didn't just spontaneously explode, but here we are. SpaceX announced that one of its Starlink satellites "experienced an anomaly on-orbit" on Sunday, which is a gentle way of saying that it blew to smithereens. This isn't the first time an Elon Musk internet box has detonated in low Earth orbit, with a similar incident in December. I would be surprised if Sunday's explosion was the last.

SpaceX claimed that the loss of Starlink satellite 34343 poses no new risk to the International Space Station or NASA's planned launch of Artemis II this week. According to The Verge, the incident created a debris field of "tens of objects." The debris should burn up in the atmosphere in a few weeks. Starlink satellites are already designed to die and completely disintegrate at the end of their service life. Hopefully, the debris doesn't cause any chaos in orbit before re-entry.

Space may be a near-perfect vacuum, but it isn't empty

Illustration concept of a fleet of Internet Starlink satellites in orbit above planet Earth. A line of communication satellites with the sun in the horizon. - xnk/Shutterstock

There are roughly 10,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit, over a third of all the tracked objects in that part of space. Low Earth orbit is a crowded place, largely due to the business ventures of Elon Musk. It could get even worse. SpaceX filed a request with the Federal Communications Commission in January to launch one million AI data centers into orbit. Ignoring the fact that energy and cooling needs make that harebrained scheme impossible for even a single data center, the constellation would cut Earth off from the rest of space.

It would only be a matter of time before a SpaceX orbital data center exploded, spraying debris into neighboring data centers and triggering a chain reaction. The theoretical scenario was first posited in the 1970s by NASA scientists Donald Kessler. A Kessler syndrome event would destroy every satellite in low Earth orbit and smother the planet in a cloud of debris, making space launches impossible. While experimental technologies are being developed to capture space debris, it has already impacted human spaceflight: a Chinese crewed capsule was deemed unsafe following a debris strike in orbit last year.

Newsom Tears Into Trump as Cost of His Golfing Habit Exposed

Vic Verbalaitis
Sun, March 29, 2026 

DAILY BEAST


Fred Greaves / Fred Greaves/REUTERS(Fred Greaves)


Donald Trump’s highest-profile online critic took aim at his favorite hobby as the price of his presidential pastime was laid bare.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to a post on X on Sunday that detailed how much Trump’s love of golf has cost American taxpayers—over $100 million so far during his second term in office, according to HuffPost.

“$100 million — not spent on food assistance, health care, housing, or veterans,“ Newsom’s press office wrote. ”Just golf!”

The Democratic governor called out the president's apparent lack of priorities. / Gov. Gavin Newsom/X

The Daily Beast reached out to the White House and Newsom’s office for comment.

HuffPost reported on Saturday that the president’s love of golf has cost taxpayers over $101.2 million since he began his second term last year, which is already two-thirds of his first term total of $151.5 million.

Trump and his golf buddy, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has bragged about influencing the president's decision to start an armed conflict with Iran. / Lindsey Graham/X

Trump, 79, is reportedly on pace to spend $300 million of taxpayer funds on golfing by the end of his second term, after Saturday morning marked his 110th visit to the links since entering office 14 months ago, according to the outlet.

The president has even spent time on the weekends golfing since he launched his war against Iran.

Thirteen American service members have been killed so far as a result of the conflict since it began on Feb. 28, and nearly 2,000 people have died in Iran, according to the most recent figures.

On March 1, the president addressed the nation and said that “there will likely be more” Americans who die as a result of the conflict.

The Pentagon has mobilized thousands of American troops to the region in preparation for an anticipated weeks-long ground assault, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The Pentagon mobilized thousands of troops from the 82nd Airborne Division, the Army's elite rapid-response unit, to the Middle East last week. / Roberto Schmidt / Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images

Newsom has not let up on his trolling of his Republican rival throughout his second term.

On Saturday, the California Democrat called out the White House’s bizarre “OnlyFarms” website, a parody of the popular adult creator platform OnlyFans.

“The White House spent more time launching a parody porn website than lowering your gas prices this week,” Newsom wrote on X. / X

“The White House spent more time launching a parody porn website than lowering your gas prices this week,” he wrote on X.

Another consequence of Trump’s surprise war, which has no confirmed timeframe other than when the president “feels it in his bones,” has been the skyrocketing of domestic gas prices.

 Unless People Support Me, Trump Habitually Warns, 'We Won't Have a Country Anymore'

Jacob Sullum
Tue, March 31, 2026 

President Donald Trump frequently warns that the country will be destroyed if certain events occur, such as losing elections or allowing unauthorized residents to stay in the U.S.

If Iran's leaders continue to resist U.S. demands, President Donald Trump warned on Sunday night, "they're not going to have a country." That remark was ominous in the context of a war that has included a huge military deployment, attacks on thousands of targets, threats to destroy civilian infrastructure, and the possibility of a ground invasion. But Trump frequently has deployed similar language much less credibly, warning Americans that they "won't have a country anymore" if certain things are allowed to happen.

Much like his notion of what constitutes a "national emergency," Trump's perception of existential threats to the republic is highly idiosyncratic. It includes concerns, such as crime and terrorism, that are plausible but fall far short of threatening to destroy the country. It includes illegal immigration, which Trump has long portrayed as inherently dangerous, regardless of whether unauthorized residents are committing crimes or making an honest, peaceful living. It includes Democratic electoral victories. It even includes constitutionally protected criticism of Trump.

If we don't "get tough and smart" on Islamic terrorism, Trump warned on Twitter in January 2016, "we won't have a country anymore!"



The threat to national security includes "anyone who has entered the United States illegally, who is subject to deportation," Trump emphasized at a rally in Phoenix that August. "That is what it means to have laws and to have a country. Otherwise we don't have a country."


Just as defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016 was essential to preserving the country, allowing Joe Biden to take office after he won the 2020 election would have cataclysmic consequences, Trump repeatedly warned. "We won't have a country if it happens," he told the crowd at the Ellipse during the "Save America" rally that preceded the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. "We're going to have somebody in there that should not be in there, and our country will be destroyed, and we're not going to stand for that….If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

Trump portrayed the stakes in similarly dramatic terms when he ran for president in 2024. "We won't have a country anymore" unless I am elected, he declared at dozens of campaign rallies.

"The most important day in the history of our country is going to be November 5," Trump said in March 2024, when he was still expecting a rematch with Biden. "Our country is going bad. And it's going to be changed on November 5, and if it's not changed we're not going to have a country anymore."

After Biden left the race, Trump made it clear that Kamala Harris would be similarly disastrous as president. "We're not going to let this country be destroyed," he said at a Las Vegas rally in September 2024. "We got to get this border fixed. We got people coming in that have never even dreamed about being in this country, and they're coming in totally unchecked. Nobody has any idea where the hell they come from. Kamala would be the president of invasion."

Harris "will surrender our country," Trump warned. "She has already let in 21 million people. And if she gets four more years in America, our country will be obliterated. The 21 million people will be hundreds of millions of people who will come in from all over the world, which is where they're coming from now. You'll have 150 million more people. You won't have a country anymore. You're pretty close to not having one."

Trump's statistics may have been off a bit, since the estimated number of unauthorized U.S. residents, including people who entered the country prior to the Biden administration, was around 11 million at the time. And we never got a chance to see whether that population would grow by 1,300 percent under a Harris administration. But even after we dodged that bullet, the country still was not safe, according to Trump, who perceived another existential threat in a three-minute video that six Democratic members of Congress produced last November.

That video, which featured two senators and four representatives, reminded U.S. military personnel of their duty to "refuse illegal orders." The Trump administration is "pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens," the legislators said. "We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military, but that trust is at risk." Although "we know this is hard," they added, "your vigilance is critical," and "we have your back."

Trump was irked by those words, which he said must be punished in the interest of national survival. "It's called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL," he wrote on Truth Social. "Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand—We won't have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET."

The Justice Department tried to deliver on Trump's threat. But a federal grand jury rejected a proposed indictment—a striking rebuke, since grand jurors, who hear only the government's side of a case, almost always approve charges recommended by federal prosecutors. Two days later, in a separate case involving the Defense Department's attempt to punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D–Ariz.) for participating in the video, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the retired naval officer's criticism of Trump was "unquestionably protected" by the First Amendment.

The unifying theme in Trump's warnings about the nation's imminent demise is that America's continued existence depends on supporting him: electing him, praising him, and backing his policies. Americans who oppose Trump therefore are betraying their country, which helps explain his habitual accusation that his critics are guilty of treason.

Both rhetorical tics reflect the narcissistic authoritarianism that underlies much of what Trump says and does, whether it is declaring nonexistent crises, waging war without congressional approval, summarily executing suspected cocaine smugglers, asserting unlimited tariff authority, attempting to rewrite statutes or the Constitution by presidential decree, demanding impeachment of judges who rule against him, using the criminal justice system to punish his foes, or threatening people who say things he does not like with deportation, regulatory penalties, grant revocations, or other unpleasant consequences. As Trump sees it, extreme measures are necessary when the fate of the nation is at stake, which it always seems to be.

Trump says government will have to 'force ourselves' on Los Angeles during World Cup

Reuters
Tue, March 31, 2026 

WASHINGTON, March 31 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday told reporters the ‌government will have to "force ourselves" on ‌Los Angeles when the World Cup happens, saying ​he did not want any crime or problems.

"We're gonna have to do something when it comes World Cup time, and we're ‌gonna have to ⁠force ourselves upon them, which we have the right to do, ⁠because we don't want to have any crime, we don't want to have any ​problems," Trump ​told reporters at ​the Oval Office.

Trump ‌has touted crackdown on crime in several cities, including Washington, where he mobilized hundreds of federal agents and thousands of soldiers to the nation's capital.

The soccer World Cup, ‌one of the globe's ​biggest sporting events, will ​be held in ​June and July this year ‌across three countries - the ​United States, ​Canada and Mexico.

Spokespeople for the LA mayor and California's governor did not immediately ​respond to ‌requests for comments.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; ​Writing by Daphne Psaledakis; editing by ​Michelle Nichols, Bhargav Acharya)