Germany's nascent Wagenknecht party eyes European elections

DPA
Sat, January 27, 2024

Sahra Wagenknecht takes part in the founding conference of the new Wagenknecht party, the "Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance - for Reason and Justice". The party was officially founded at the beginning of January with around 450 members. 

Kay Nietfeld/dpa


Germany's newly founded Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) was holding its first party conference in Berlin on Saturday, where it was aiming to hone ambitious plans for the 2024 election year.

The BSW's programme and list of candidates for the European elections in June are to be finalized at the event held in the capital's Kino Kosmos conference centre, once the largest cinema in the former East Germany.

The draft manifesto is sharply critical of the European Union and calls for a departure from the EU's current climate policy, among other contentious points.


Wagenknecht split from the hard-left Die Linke (The Left) party last year and formed the BSW in early January with around 40 people and accepted the first 450 members.

The 54-year-old is the party's co-chair, together with former Die Linke parliamentary group leader Amira Mohamed Ali. Both are due to speak at the party conference.

Former Die Linke member of the European Parliament Fabio De Masi and long-time member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD) Thomas Geisel, the former mayor of Dusseldorf, will be the BSW's lead candidates for the European elections.

The draft European election programme states: "The EU in its current constitution is detrimental to the European idea." Among other things, it criticizes the "regulatory frenzy of the EU technocracy."

If necessary, Germany should not adhere to EU rules, it continues: The BSW is "in favour of the non-implementation of EU regulations at national level if they run counter to economic reason, social justice, peace, democracy and freedom of expression."


More pensions, fewer weapons: New party pitches to save Germany from AfD

Thomas Escritt
Updated Sat, January 27, 2024 




By Thomas Escritt

BERLIN (Reuters) - Promising to rescue Germany from the far right, a new leftist party offered up a populist recipe of high pensions, low defence spending and an end to expensive climate policies in its first outing ahead of regional and European elections this year.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), named after its leader, a popular former leader of the Left party, held its first national congress on Saturday, with delegates turning their fire on the entire political spectrum from left to right.

With the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) gaining around 20% support in national opinion polls as it lures some voters away from the traditional parties that dominate government and opposition, many analysts speculate the BSW, on 8% in polls in one eastern state, could burst the AfD bubble.

The AfD remains behind the opposition conservatives on 31% but is still well ahead of all the three parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's centre-left coalition, who together were polling 32%.

"We fear for democracy, we fear that the anger and disagreement in the country will be seized upon by the AfD," Wagenknecht told Reuters on Saturday. "We don't think people think radical right. They just want a voice that they don't have with other parties."

In some policy areas, little distinguishes it from the AfD: it, too, wants to end weapons deliveries to Ukraine, arguing that they prolong a conflict about whose origins in a Russian invasion nothing was said on stage at the congress.

In a former cinema on East Berlin's Karl-Marx-Allee, she and party colleagues also railed against Chancellor Olaf Scholz's centre-left coalition for being more preoccupied with identity politics than people's material concerns.

The party has a strong base in the former East Germany, where its message of high social spending and a baseline level of financial security despite hard economic times resonates among many.

Wagenknecht, born in eastern Germany to an Iranian father and German mother, cast government and opposition as the agents of the comfortable and wealthy, portraying Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock - the Green economy and foreign ministers - as ignorant, urban scolds pursuing harebrained, expensive schemes.

"Maybe Robert Habeck thinks everyone lives in modern houses or well-insulated lofts, so he thinks it a great idea to make everyone install a heat pump," said Wagenknecht.

The party's first electoral test will come later this year in three state elections in the East, where the AfD is on as much as 31% in opinion polls, making it almost impossible to circumvent in any coalition talks.

Wagenknecht has ruled out working with the AfD, yet while a strong BSW performance could solve one governance conundrum, her foreign policy positions may turn out to be no more palatable to other parties.

(This story has been refiled to correct grammar in paragraph 8)

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by David Holmes)


Scholz’s Coalition Under Pressure as FDP Lags Far-Left Group

Chris Reiter
Sun, January 28, 2024 


(Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition remains under pressure as a voter poll shows the co-ruling Free Democratic Party below a new far-left group and at risk of dropping out of parliament.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, known as BSW, received support from 7% of voters surveyed by INSA for Bild am Sonntag. The party, which held its first convention on Saturday, is planning to challenge in the upcoming European elections.

The pro-business FDP — run by Finance Minister Christian Lindner — fell to 4%, taking it below the hurdle needed to keep a place in parliament for the first time in INSA’s poll since 2015.

Germany’s political landscape is in turmoil amid widespread frustration with Scholz’s coalition. The sputtering economy is adding to the tension and providing an opening for new parties to win support.

In a sign of the concern, a group of more than 50 companies — including Deutsche Telekom AG, Puma SE and Thyssenkrupp AG — issued a joint appeal on mainstream parties to fight the far-right.

“Right-wing extremist forces threaten Germany’s democracy and its economic performance,” the Stiftung KlimaWirtschaft said in a statement.

The far-right AfD, which was the target of mass protests across Germany for the third weekend in a row, slipped one percentage point to 21%. It retained its No. 2 position behind the conservative CDU/CSU bloc, which gained one percentage point to 31%.

Scholz’s Social Democrats also gained one percentage point to 14%, while the co-ruling Greens were steady at 13%. Combined, the three ruling parties have support from just 31% of voters.

Just 21% would vote for Scholz directly if they could, while 28% would prefer CDU chief Friedrich Merz, according to the INSA poll.

(Updates with company appeal beginning in fifth paragraph)
 Bloomberg Businessweek

A prestigious cancer institute is correcting dozens of papers and retracting others after a blogger cried foul

Evan Bush
Updated Fri, January 26, 2024 


The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has requested the retraction of six studies and corrections in another 31 papers after a scathing critique drew attention to alleged errors a blogger and biologist said range from sloppiness to “really serious concerns.”

The allegations — against top scientists at the prestigious Boston-based institute, which is a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School — put the institute at the center of a roiling debate about research misconduct, how to police scientific integrity and whether the organizational structure of academic science incentivizes shortcuts or cheating.

The criticism also spotlights how artificial intelligence is playing a growing role in catching sloppy or dubious science.


The allegations, which concern image duplications and manipulations in biomedical research, are similar to concerns aired last year against former Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who stepped down after an investigation.

A biologist and blogger, Sholto David centered attention on Dana-Farber after he highlighted problems in a slew of studies from top researchers.

In early January, David detailed duplications and potentially misleading image edits across dozens of papers produced primarily by Dana-Farber researchers, writing in a blog post that research from top scientists at the institute “appears to be hopelessly corrupt with errors that are obvious from just a cursory reading.”

After the publication of David’s blog, Dr. Barrett Rollins, the institute’s integrity research officer, said in a statement emailed Wednesday that Dana-Farber scientists had requested that six manuscripts be retracted, that 31 manuscripts were in the process of being corrected and that one manuscript remained under examination.

Rollins added that some of the papers flagged by David had already come up in “ongoing reviews” conducted previously by the institute.

“The presence of image discrepancies in a paper is not evidence of an author’s intent to deceive,” Rollins said. “That conclusion can only be drawn after a careful, fact-based examination which is an integral part of our response. Our experience is that errors are often unintentional and do not rise to the level of misconduct.”

Ellen Berlin, a communications director at Dana-Farber, wrote in an email that the allegations all concerned pure, or basic, science, as opposed to studies that led to cancer drug approvals.

“Cancer treatment is not impacted in any way in the review of the Dana-Farber research papers,” Berlin wrote.

David is one of several sleuth scientists who read journal articles to seek out errors or fabrications. He compared his hobby to playing a game like “spot the difference” or completing a crossword.

“It’s a puzzle,” David said in an interview, adding that he enjoys looking at figures that show results of common biology experiments, like those involving cells, mice and western blots, a laboratory method that identifies proteins.

“Of course, I do care about getting the science right,” he said.

Scientific errors in published work has been a focal point in the scientific community in recent years. The website Retraction Watch, a website that tracks withdrawn papers, counts more than 46,000 papers recorded in its database. The organization’s record of withdrawn work stretches back into the 1970s. A 2016 Nature article said more than 1 million papers in the biomedical field are published each year.

The website PubPeer, which allows outside researchers to post critiques of research that has been peer-reviewed and printed in journals, is a popular forum for scientists to flag problems. David said he has written more than 1,000 anonymous critiques on the website.

David said a trail of questionable science led him to Dana-Farber. In a prior investigation, David scrutinized the work of a Columbia University surgeon. He found flaws in the work of collaborators of the surgeon, which ultimately drew his attention toward the leadership team at Dana-Farber.

David said he went through the leadership page of Dana-Farber’s website, checking the work of its top scientists and leaders.

He found a slew of image errors, many of which could be explained by sloppy copy-paste work or a mix-up, but also others where images are stretched or rotated, which is more difficult to explain. Some errors were previously identified on PubPeer by other users. David combined those previous concerns with his own findings in a blog post taking aim at the institute. The Harvard Crimson, a student newspaper, was first to publish a news story about the accusations.

David said images of mice in one paper looked like they had been digitally altered in ways that appeared intentional and could skew takeaways from the paper.

“I don’t understand how that would come as an accident,” David said.

Most of the errors are “less serious” and might have been accidents, he said. Still, the rash of mistakes, to David, indicates a broken research and review process if no one caught them before publication.

“When you spot a duplication, that’s a symptom of a problem,” David said.

Elisabeth Bik, a scientist who investigates image manipulation and research misconduct, said David’s work was credible.

“The allegations he’s raising are exactly the same thing I would raise. They’re spot on,” Bik said.

Bik, who has been doing this type of sleuthing for about 10 years, said she is often frustrated by the lack of response from academic institutions when she flags errors. She said she was glad to see that Dana-Farber responded and had already taken proactive steps to correct the scientific record.

“I’m very pleasantly surprised that the institute is taking action. I hope they will follow through with publishers,” Bik said. “I’ve reported many of these cases where nothing happened.”

In scientific communities, image manipulations have been under close watch, particularly after Stanford University’s Tessier-Lavigne stepped down from his post as the institution’s president after criticism of his past work in neuroscience.

Tessier-Lavigne said he was cleared of fraud or falsifying data himself, but a probe found that members of his lab had inappropriately manipulated research data or engaged in “deficient scientific practices,” according to a report from a panel of outside researchers who evaluated the case.

The report said Tessier-Lavigne’s lab culture rewarded junior scientists whose work produced favorable results and marginalized those who did not, a dynamic that could have caused young scientists to manipulate results and chase favor.

Outside researchers said that type of culture is not uncommon at top institutions, where ambitious professors can lead sprawling laboratories with dozens of graduate students who are eager to please their superiors and who know publishing a splashy paper could rapidly advance their careers.

Some scientists have grown increasingly concerned that limited opportunities for young scientists and a problematic system for publishing scientific work has incentivized corner-cutting for careerism.

“There’s lots of incentive to produce mounds of research and publish in these high impact journals to make your name,” said Dr. Ferric Fang, a microbiologist and professor at the University of Washington. “We’re incentivizing this kind of behavior.”

Problems with images published in research are widespread.

In a 2016 article published in the American Society of Microbiology, Bik and Fang evaluated images from more than 20,600 articles in 40 biomedical journals from 1995 to 2014. They found that about 3.8% of the journal articles contained “problematic figures” and that at least half of those had elements that were “suggestive of deliberate manipulation.”

New tools are helping institutions and sleuths alike root out mistakes and potential misconduct. David used a program called ImageTwin to identify some of the questionable figures from Dana-Farber researchers.

The artificial-intelligence-powered software can ingest a study, analyze its images and in about 15 seconds compare them against one another and also against about 50 million scientific images in its database, according to the ImageTwin’s co-founder Patrick Starke.

The software has been commercially available since 2021. Starke, who is based in Vienna, said a few hundred academic organizations are using the tool to identify problems before publication.

“It’s great if it’s caught and retracted, and it’s even better if it’s not published,” said Starke, who envisions the program used in academics with the same frequency as plagiarism checking tools that analyze text.

But Starke said it will be a challenge to stay ahead of those who cut corners or cheat. Studies have already shown that AI programs can generate realistic looking figures of common experiments like western blots, Starke said. His company is developing tools to look for AI-generated patterns in research images.

“If photos of faces can be realistically made by AI, it’s probably happening already in scientific literature,” Bik said. “That’s the next level of cheating. I’m not sure if we’re even ready for that.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Science sleuths are using technology to find fakery and plagiarism in published research

CARLA K. JOHNSON
Updated Sun, January 28, 2024 


Sleuthing Scientist  Sholto David

A sign hangs from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Aug. 18, 2022, in Boston. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute announced it’s requesting six retractions and 31 corrections of scientific papers after a British blogger flagged problems in early January 2024.

 (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

Allegations of research fakery at a leading cancer center have turned a spotlight on scientific integrity and the amateur sleuths uncovering image manipulation in published research.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, announced Jan. 22 it's requesting retractions and corrections of scientific papers after a British blogger flagged problems in early January.

The blogger, 32-year-old Sholto David, of Pontypridd, Wales, is a scientist-sleuth who detects cut-and-paste image manipulation in published scientific papers.

He's not the only hobbyist poking through pixels. Other champions of scientific integrity are keeping researchers and science journals on their toes. They use special software, oversize computer monitors and their eagle eyes to find flipped, duplicated and stretched images, along with potential plagiarism.

A look at the situation at Dana-Farber and the sleuths hunting sloppy errors and outright fabrications:

WHAT HAPPENED AT DANA-FARBER?

In a Jan. 2 blog post, Sholto David presented suspicious images from more than 30 published papers by four Dana-Farber scientists, including CEO Laurie Glimcher and COO William Hahn.

Many images appeared to have duplicated segments that would make the scientists' results look stronger. The papers under scrutiny involve lab research on the workings of cells. One involved samples from bone marrow from human volunteers.

The blog post included problems spotted by David and others previously exposed by sleuths on PubPeer, a site that allows anonymous comments on scientific papers.

Student journalists at The Harvard Crimson covered the story on Jan. 12, followed by reports in other news media. Sharpening the attention was the recent plagiarism investigation involving former Harvard president Claudine Gay, who resigned early this year.

HOW DID DANA-FARBER RESPOND?

Dana-Farber said it already had been looking into some of the problems before the blog post. By Jan. 22, the institution said it was in the process of requesting six retractions of published research and that another 31 papers warranted corrections.

Retractions are serious. When a journal retracts an article that usually means the research is so severely flawed that the findings are no longer reliable.

Dr. Barrett Rollins, research integrity officer at Dana-Farber, said in a statement: “Following the usual practice at Dana-Farber to review any potential data error and make corrections when warranted, the institution and its scientists already have taken prompt and decisive action in 97 percent of the cases that had been flagged by blogger Sholto David."

WHO ARE THE SLEUTHS?

California microbiologist Elisabeth Bik, 57, has been sleuthing for a decade. Based on her work, scientific journals have retracted 1,133 articles, corrected 1,017 others and printed 153 expressions of concern, according to a spreadsheet where she tracks what happens after she reports problems.

She has found doctored images of bacteria, cell cultures and western blots, a lab technique for detecting proteins.

“Science should be about finding the truth,” Bik told The Associated Press. She published an analysis in the American Society for Microbiology in 2016: Of more than 20,000 peer-reviewed papers, nearly 4% had image problems, about half where the manipulation seemed intentional.

Bik's work brings donations from Patreon subscribers of about $2,300 per month and occasional honoraria from speaking engagements. David told AP his Patreon income recently picked up to $216 per month.

Technology has made it easier to root out image manipulation and plagiarism, said Ivan Oransky, who teaches medical journalism at New York University and co-founded the Retraction Watch blog. The sleuths download scientific papers and use software tools to help find problems.

Others doing the investigative work remain anonymous and post their findings under pseudonyms. Together, they have “changed the equation” in scientific publication, Oransky said.

“They want science to be and do better,” Oransky said. “And they are frustrated by how uninterested most people in academia — and certainly in publishing — are in correcting the record.” They're also concerned about the erosion of public trust in science.

WHAT MOTIVATES MISCONDUCT?

Bik said some mistakes could be sloppy errors where images were mislabeled or “somebody just grabbed the wrong photo.”

But some images are obviously altered with sections duplicated or rotated or flipped. Scientists building their careers or seeking tenure face pressure to get published. Some may intentionally falsify data, knowing that the process of peer review — when a journal sends a manuscript to experts for comments — is unlikely to catch fakery.

“At the end of the day, the motivation is to get published,” Oransky said. “When the images don’t match the story you’re trying to tell, you beautify them.”

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Scientific journals investigate errors brought to their attention but usually keep their processes confidential until they take action with a retraction or correction.

Some journals told the AP they are aware of the concerns raised by David's blog post and were looking into the matter.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

ICYMI

Earth’s Forces Are Causing This Massive Plate to Split in Two

Darren Orf

POP MECH
Sat, January 27, 2024

Earth’s Forces Are Splitting This Plate in Two

www.anotherdayattheoffice.org - Getty Images


For decades scientists have been trying to understand the geologic forces driving the creation of the Himalayas, the worlds tallest mountain chain.


A new study from an international team of scientist argues that a part of the Indian Plate, which has formed the mountains by crashing into the Eurasian Plate, is actually splitting apart in a process known as “delamination.”


Understanding this process could help scientists understand the geology of this region while also grasping the potential dangers for future earthquakes.

Few places in the world are as awe-inspiring as the Himalayas, a geographic wonder some 52 million years in the making. During the middle of the Eocene epoch, the Indian Plate (which was then an island) crashed into the Eurasian Plate and eventually formed the world’s highest mountains. For decades, some scientists have argued that the Indian Plate has resisted a deep plunge into the mantle (a.k.a. subducting) and is instead scraping along horizontally under the Eurasian Plate—the other tectonic plate that makes this mountainous masterpiece possible. However, an opposing faction insists that the Indian Plate is in fact subducting beneath the Eurasian plate and melting into magma.

But an international team of geodynamicists have instead decided to tread a third path, borrowing wise words from a famous meme: “why not both?” Their new study argues that the Indian Plate lying under the region of Tibet is experiencing a process known as delamination, where the top of the plate is rubbing along the Eurasian plant while the bottom part splits off and subducts into the mantle.

Understanding the dynamics at play some 60 to 125 miles below these mountains can help scientists paint a more accurate picture of how the Himalayas have formed while understanding the possible earthquake threats to the region. The researchers originally presented their findings in December of 2023 at the American Geophysical Union conference and published a non-peer reviewed preprint in the ESS Open Archive.

Movement of the Indian Plate over the course of 110 million years. Utrecht University

While this tectonic unzipping has been theorized and even recreated using computer models, this is the first time scientists have caught a plate in the act of delaminating. “We didn’t know continents could behave this way and that is, for solid earth science, pretty fundamental,” Douwe van Hinsbergen, a geodynamicist from Utrecht University, told Science.

So, how exactly were they able to discern the geophysical turbulence toiling under the Himalayas? Stanford geophysicst Simon Klemperer became interested in a zone near Bhutan in northeastern India—the subduction zone curves there due to the Indian plates un-uniform composition. Klemperer took a series of isotope measurements of helium (specifically, helium-3) that surfaced in nearby springs. After collecting samples from some 200 springs across some 600 miles, they found a stark line where mantle rocks (subduction) met crust rocks (no subduction). However, a trio of springs south of this line instead contained mantle signatures—in other words, the Indian Plate was likely splitting in two.

In addition, earthquake analysis from hundreds of seismic stations also appeared to highlight two “blobs” that likely point to a lower slab separating from a higher slab.

Even though this drama has been unfolding for millions of years, scientists are only just beginning to discover the complex dynamics of what forms land masses around the world. Understanding how and why plates sometimes undergo this “why not both” behavior will help better predict earthquake dangers in both “the roof of the world”and the rest of fault lines—anywhere that an unstoppable force seemingly meets an immovable object.

SPACE NEWZ

Iran launches three satellites into orbit, further heightening tensions with West

Iran on Sunday said it simultaneously launched three satellites into orbit, nearly a week after the launch of a research satellite by the Revolutionary Guards drew Western criticism.

Issued on: 28/01/2024

This photo released by the Iranian Defense Ministry on January 28, 2024 claims to show a satellite carrier being launched at the Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Iran's rural Semnan province. 

AP
By:NEWS WIRES
ADVERTISING

"Three Iranian satellites have been successfully launched into orbit for the first time," state TV reported.

The satellites were carried by the two-stage Simorgh (Phoenix) satellite carrier and were launched into a minimum orbit of 450 kilometres (280 miles), it added.

The Mahda satellite, which weighs around 32 kilogrammes and was developed by Iran's Space Agency, is designed to test advanced satellite subsystems, the official IRNA news agency said.

The other two, Kayhan 2 and Hatef, weigh under 10 kilogrammes each and are aimed to test space-based positioning technology and narrowband communication, IRNA added.

Last week, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sent the research satellite Soraya into space.

Britain, France, and Germany condemned that launch in a statement rejected by Iran as "interventionist".

Western governments including the United States have repeatedly warned Iran against such launches, saying the same technology can be used for ballistic missiles, including ones designed to deliver a nuclear warhead.

Iran has countered that it is not seeking nuclear weapons and that its satellite and rocket launches are for civil or defence purposes only.

The Islamic republic has struggled with several satellite launch failures in the past.

The successful launch of its first military satellite into orbit, Nour-1, in April 2020 drew a sharp rebuke from the United States.

Tehran has been under crippling US sanctions since Washington's 2018 withdrawal from a landmark nuclear deal which granted Iran sanctions relief in return for curbs on its nuclear activities designed to prevent it from developing an atomic warhead.

Iran has always denied any ambition to develop nuclear weapons capability, insisting that its activities are entirely peaceful.

(AFP)

Did Lockheed Martin Just Delay America's Return to the Moon?

Rich Smith, The Motley Fool
Sun, January 28, 2024

Five years ago, then-President Donald Trump promised to put Americans back on the moon by 2024. Five years later, American astronauts are still cooling their heels down here on Earth. Although Artemis I successfully took off and flew to the moon in 2022, it didn't land on the moon, and there were no astronauts on board.

Now it looks like we'll need to wait until 2026 (at the earliest) before we can land on the moon.

Image source: Getty Images.

When are we back on the moon, NASA?

So what's the hold up? First and foremost, it's a question of getting the several parts needed for a moon landing in place: a Lunar Gateway space station in orbit around the moon, an Orion space capsule with astronauts to dock with it, and a SpaceX-built Human Landing System (HLS) to carry those astronauts down to the moon and then back up to the Gateway.

Also needed before a moon landing can happen: Testing.

Several pieces of the whole apparatus need to be tested before the moon landing can happen. SpaceX must prove its Starship can get to orbit and then to the moon. HLS will need to prove it can land on the moon and launch itself back up to the Gateway. And an Artemis II mission will need to be flown -- with astronauts on board this time -- to the moon and back to Earth.

Simply put, there's a lot of work that still needs to be done for Project Artemis to work. Too much work to accomplish a moon landing this year, or even next year, at the rate things are progressing. Recognizing this, NASA finally gave in earlier this month and admitted "we must be realistic."

A 2024 moon landing isn't going to happen. Nor a landing in 2025. And so NASA is moving the goalposts out to 2026.
A new lunar calendar

As NASA associate administrator Jim Free described earlier this month, the new plan is to shift Artemis II (the crewed mission to circle the moon and land back on Earth) out one year, to 2025, and Artemis III (the crewed mission to land on the moon and then come back to Earth) to 2026. A fourth crewed mission, Artemis IV, will return to the moon for a second landing in 2028.

Free explained that, in addition to all the other issues noted above, NASA also needs to practice fuel transfers in orbit (to gas up Starship for its trip from Earth orbit to the moon). A NASA contractor also needs more time to develop next-generation space suits for the astronauts. Finally, and most worrisome, are issues with the Orion spaceship that Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) built to carry astronauts from Earth to the Lunar Gateway and then back from the Gateway to land on Earth.
The trouble with Orion

Returning to Earth after the Artemis I flight, Lockheed Martin's Orion space capsule lost part of its heat shield during reentry. NASA spent much of 2023 trying to discover "a root cause" to the heat shield's issues and hasn't figured out a fix just yet.

Additional issues were noted with batteries in the space capsule's abort system, as well as design flaws in circuitry controlling motor valves in the spacecraft. Curiously, Ars Technica reported this valve circuitry is the "pacing issue" determining when Orion is ready to fly for Artemis II. But anything related to heat shields raises echoes of the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when a damaged heat shield doomed the spacecraft upon reentry.

What it means to investors

Right now, that means that Lockheed Martin is primarily responsible for delaying Artemis II and by extension Artemis III, thus postponing America's return to the moon. But these may not be the only delays investors need to worry about when figuring when future spaceflights will launch and when the tens of billions of dollars of expected future revenues will roll in.

After Orion's problems are fixed, attention should shift to SpaceX, its Super Heavy booster rocket, and its Starship spacecraft. Can SpaceX get Starship into orbit without blowing up? Can it figure out the mechanics of orbital fuel storage and refueling? Can it launch enough times to get enough fuel in orbit to tank up not one but two separate HLS landers for their trips to the moon?

And can it do all of the above in time for a 2026 moon landing?

So far, SpaceX is saying it can do all of this, and NASA takes SpaceX at its word. If the company succeeds, it will win the honor of landing astronauts on the moon for the first time in a half century and increase its technological lead over the rest of the space industry. It will also open the floodgates for contracts to flow to a whole host of space companies involved in Project Artemis.

Despite the delays, it's only a matter of time.

NASA Curious Whether Astronauts Will See Strange Flashes of Light on the Moon

Victor Tangermann
Sat, January 27, 2024 


Moon Flash

During NASA's Apollo 17 mission just over half a century ago, astronauts saw strange flashes of light while orbiting the Moon.

"Hey, I just saw a flash on the lunar surface!" astronaut Harrison Schmitt, the twelfth person to set foot on the Moon, told support crew member Gordon Fullerton.

"It was a bright little flash right out there near that crater," Schmitt added. "Then there is another one north of it. Fairly sharp one north of it is where there was just a pin prick of light."

While scientists have long speculated that the flashes could have been the result of meteors raining down on the Moon or cosmic rays hitting the crew's eyes, we have yet to capture direct evidence of them — something the scientific community is hoping will change during NASA's crewed Artemis 2 mission around the Moon.

Photo Opp

As Space.com reports, the space agency is working on coming up with photography assignments for the crew of four, which will be sent into a lunar orbit before making their long return inside an Orion spacecraft sometime next year (if everything goes according to plan.)

"We have been working with the Artemis 2 crew to identify imaging and observation targets/plans for them during their journey to and from the moon," Artemis 3 project scientist Noah Petro told Space.com.

According to the report, around five ping-pong ball-sized meteoroids impact the lunar surface every hour. Fortunately, the probability of one of these particles striking an astronaut are exceedingly slim.

While Apollo 17 astronauts didn't manage to capture these pricks of light, which last a fraction of a second, that could soon change. NASA Meteoroid Environments Office lead William Cooke told Space.com that "you would need a video camera to record them. The odds of catching a flash in a short exposure still image are vanishingly small."

"While we don't expect the crews to photograph any flashes," Petro told the publication, "their photos and descriptions of the surface and lunar environment will be an important addition to lunar science."

And perhaps astronauts during Artemis 3, NASA's official return to the lunar surface, will finally be able to catch these strange flashes on tape as well.

More on Artemis: Congress Terrified China Will Beat the United States to the Moon

'Trainwreck' galaxy reflects the aftermath of a violent galactic collision (image)

Robert Lea
Sat, January 27, 2024 

The twisted galactic disk of NGC 4753 as seen by the Gemini South Telescope.

A team of astronomers became a crew of cosmic crash scene investigators while studying wreckage left behind by two galaxies that smashed into one another over 1 billion years ago.

The scientists used the Gemini South Telescope to investigate the twisted galactic disk of the galaxy NGC 4753, located around 60 million light-years from Earth, seeing it in more detail than ever before. The team paid particular attention to a complex network of dust tracks that appear to twist around the heart, or galactic nucleus, of NGC 4753.

Galaxies come in four main shapes: Lenticular, elliptical, irregular and spiral, like the Milky Way. While NGC 4753 is classified as a lenticular galaxy, however, the merger with a smaller dwarf galaxy 1.3 billion years ago has left its disk of stars and dust with a twisted shape that fits it into the aptly named subclass of "peculiar" galaxies.

"Galaxies that gobble up another galaxy often look like train wrecks, and this is a train-wreck galaxy," Tom Steiman-Cameron, team leader and a senior research scientist at Indiana University, said in a statement.

Related: Astronomers accidentally discover 'dark' primordial galaxy with no visible stars

NGC 4753 was first discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel in 1784; it's located in the constellation of Virgo. The galaxy is situated in the NGC 4753 Group of galaxies which, in turn, is part of the Virgo II cloud of 100 galaxy clusters that sits on the southern edge of the Virgo supercluster of galaxies.

The twisted dust lanes of NGC 4753 have long been a source of fascination for astronomers. In 1992, a team of scientists, also led by Steiman-Cameron, determined that this mystifying feature is the result of a lenticular galaxy colliding with a gas-rich dwarf galaxy.

Such a collision would have injected the lenticular galaxy with a massive amount of gas, triggering bouts of intense star formation called "starbursts" and filling NGC 4753 with vast amounts of dust.

As the dwarf galaxy mixed into the larger lenticular galaxy with its stars spiraling toward its galactic center, the accumulated dust spread would've spread out into a disk-like structure.

A fascinating phenomenon called "differential precession," caused by the angle at which the two galaxies collided, would have then taken over to wind the dust into a more intriguing shape.

The easier way to picture precession is to think of a child's spinning top. Imagine what it would look like if you set it spinning, then viewed it aerially. As the top slows and loses momentum, the top of the top — for lack of a better word — would start to wobble, and its angle of orientation would changes. That's a simple precession analog.

The precession experienced by NGC 4753 is called "differential" because it varied across the galaxy according to its distance from the galactic nucleus. It would've been faster at the heart of the galaxy and slower at its edges. This galactic wobble, scientists say, had twisted up the dust into the twirling lanes we see today.

"For a long time, nobody knew what to make of this peculiar galaxy," Steiman-Cameron said. "But by starting with the idea of accreted material smeared out into a disk and then analyzing the three-dimensional geometry, the mystery was solved. It's now incredibly exciting to see this highly-detailed image by Gemini South 30 years later."

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Steiman-Cameron also points out that, though the trainwreck galaxy NGC 4753 appears to be unique, this may be the result of the angle at which astronomers view it from Earth. He added that if this peculiar lenticular galaxy was viewed from above, it would likely appear like any other spiral galaxy.

This means that the incredible and fascinating features may not be rare so to speak, but merely accessible to us thanks to our unique edge-on perspective from Eart

Space shuttle Endeavour soaring into place at final museum home

Rong-Gong Lin II
Sat, January 27, 2024 

The space shuttle Endeavour is wrapped in protective shrink wrap and is parked next to its external fuel tanks as it awaits being lifted by a 450-foot crane and placed next to its fuel tanks next week at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Barring weather delays, the space shuttle Endeavour will undergo its final, historic lift starting Monday night, a maneuver no other retired orbiter has undergone.

Plans for the coming move — setting into place the crown jewel of the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center — have been in the works for more than a decade. First, a pair of cranes will hoist the shuttle from a horizontal position to a vertical one; the spacecraft will be attached to a sling, a large metal frame that'll support it during the move. An 11-story crane will lift the tail of Endeavour, while a 40-story crawler crane — about the height of City Hall — will lift the nose.

Once the shuttle is pointed toward the stars, the shorter crane will be disconnected, leaving the taller crane to gently swing the orbiter to its final position and lowering it to be affixed with the giant orange external tank. The external tank is attached to twin solid rocket boosters, which are connected to the exhibit's foundation.

Once complete — and the rest of the museum is constructed in the coming years — L.A. will be home to the only retired space shuttle displayed in a full-stack arrangement as if ready for launch.

A 2012 file photo shows the space shuttle Endeavor on L.A. streets en route to the California Science Center. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

There will be two parts to the move. The first — the so-called "soft mate" — is scheduled to begin around 10 p.m. Monday and could take hours.

"That's the part of lifting it into the building and getting it close to the orbiter," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center.

The second part will be to "capture" Endeavour to the external tank.

"It is extremely sensitive to get it in exactly the right position," Rudolph said. "It puts all the attached hardware in the right place on the orbiter. And several of the pieces inside the orbiter that it attaches to are very fragile, so they will do this very slowly."

Once that is done, everything will still need to be tightened, Rudolph said, but the move will effectively be complete. It's believed that by Thursday, everything will be "hard mated, meaning everything will be torqued, bolted as it will be forever. And the sling will come off, and we'll say, 'Done,' " he said.

The schedule could change because of weather, as strong winds would force a postponement of the move.

Read more: Space shuttle Endeavour makes one more voyage to its final destination at a new space center

Nothing should change after that until the museum opens the payload bay doors in a few years when Endeavour is ready for public display, Rudolph said.

There are different challenges lifting the shuttle than the external tank, which was completed earlier this month. The tank is so large that, as it was lowered, there was less than an inch of space between it and the solid rocket boosters.

With the Endeavour orbiter — the last space shuttle ever built — crews will need to maneuver an object with a 78-foot wingspan and get "everything absolutely level and aligned properly, and extremely gently," Rudolph said.

"There are a few places where there's some challenging parts in the lowering of it because of the tight fit with the wings and vertical stabilizer," he said. "And then the challenge is actually bringing the orbiter — 'capturing it' — at the three attach points."

Because Endeavour is essentially a glider with a massive wingspan, it'll be difficult to guide it down if there are strong winds.

"Wind and wings don't go well on a crane," Rudolph said.

"This has never been done like this before, with cranes and outside and at a construction site," he said.

When the shuttle was stacked with its external tank and solid rocket boosters at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the assembly was done inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building — one of the largest by volume in the world, rising more than 50 stories and equipped with plenty of cranes and platforms from which to work.

Read more: Mission accomplished: Space shuttle Endeavour's giant orange fuel tank moved into viewing spot in L.A.

Beginning Monday night, the space shuttle Endeavour will be lifted by a 450-foot crane and placed next to its fuel tanks. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

In Los Angeles, crews have had to painstakingly build up, take down and reformat scaffolding to enable them to make the proper connections.

There have been last-minute changes too. During the arrival of the external tank, there were times when the crew "had to scurry up and remove some scaffolding pieces and reconfigure it while we were doing the lowering," Rudolph said.

The main lift of the orbiter is likely to take one night. By contrast, the external tank lift took two nights. The first was delayed by winds, although crews were able to begin the lift before stopping work mid-morning. On the second night, the tank was able to be lowered further, in between the solid rocket boosters.

Officials hope to livestream the latest lift. A livestream for raising the external tank was scrapped because of technical difficulties, and officials are working to iron out those problems ahead of Monday's orbiter move.

Read more: A successful liftoff: Space shuttle Endeavour's rockets are installed

A veteran of 25 space trips from 1992 to 2011, Endeavour made its last flight in 2012, ending a cross-country journey at Los Angeles International Airport before undertaking a three-day trek along city streets to the California Science Center. For 11 years, Endeavour was displayed in a temporary hangar, the Samuel Oschin Pavilion, as the museum worked on a permanent home. Endeavour was taken off display Dec. 31.

The full-stack configuration is so tall that the new museum will rise 20 stories to make room for it.

To keep views unobstructed, the building has been engineered with no vertical supports except its walls. It will feature a a diagonal grid developed by engineering firm Arup and covered by a stainless-steel facade. Such "diagrids" have been used in other tall buildings, including the 46-story Hearst Tower in New York City, the iconic 40-story ovular Gherkin skyscraper in London and a section of the egg-shaped London City Hall.

Once the shuttle full stack is in place, the rest of the museum will be built around it. It could be a few years before it is open to the public, given the construction schedule and additional time needed to install exhibits.

NASA orbiter spies Japan's struggling SLIM moon lander on lunar surface (photo)

Brett Tingley
Fri, January 26, 2024 

A small white dot on the surface of the moon.


A NASA orbiter caught sight of Japan's SLIM moon lander on the lunar surface after its historic touchdown.

SLIM, or the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, is operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). It touched down on the moon in a precision landing on Jan. 19, making Japan the fifth country to make a soft landing on the lunar surface behind India, China, the United States and Russia (then the Soviet Union).

From its orbit 50 miles (80 km) above the moon's surface, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) was able to see SLIM resting at its landing site. "Bright streaks on the left side of the image are rocky material ejected from the nearby, relatively young Shioli crater," NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which manages LRO, wrote in a statement.

Related: Japan's SLIM moon lander photographed on the lunar surface — on its nose (image)

NASA's images show SLIM's landing site both before and after the probe's touchdown. One of the images, seen below, is a composite that removes features that are the same in both the before-landing and after-landing images. In turn, it allows us to see changes in reflectance on the lunar surface, caused by the lander's engine exhaust, to stand out.


the grey surface of the moon with a white circle indicating where a lunar lander's engine blew away dust

SLIM accomplished its main goal of landing at a chosen site with near-pinpoint accuracy, touching down within 328 feet (100 meters) of its target despite ending up upside down due to an engine failure during descent.

an animation showing the grey surface of the moon before and after a small speck appears

Because of its orientation, SLIM is unable to use its solar panels to generate electricity, meaning the probe is relying fully on its battery. On Monday (Jan. 21), the lander's battery dipped to 12% capacity, triggering a power down "to avoid being unable to restart for a recovery operation due to over-discharge," SLIM team members stated on X.

SLIM as seen by LEV-2 on the moon after landing on its nose

— 'We proved that you can land wherever you want.' Japan's SLIM moon probe nailed precise lunar landing, JAXA says

— Why Chandrayaan-3 landed near the moon's south pole — and why everyone else wants to get there too

— Not dead yet: Japan prepares for possible recovery of SLIM moon lander

Nevertheless, JAXA scientists are hopeful that, if sunlight shines on the lander from the lunar west, SLIM's solar panels might be able to absorb enough sunshine to generate power and recover.

It's not all bad news, though. In addition to sticking its landing, SLIM was able to deploy two mini-rovers it carried to the moon, called EV-1 ("Lunar Excursion Vehicle" 1) and LEV-2. Both are operating as planned, and the ball-like LEV-2 was even able to snap a picture of its upside-down host.

Video appears to show Ukraine's new 'Ironclad' drone vehicle machine-gunning a Russian outpost

Nathan Rennolds
Updated Sun, January 28, 2024 


Video footage shows Ukraine's new "Ironclad" combat drone in action.


It portrays the vehicle firing its M2 machine gun on a Russian outpost.


The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense shared the video on X, formerly Twitter.

Video footage released by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense earlier this month appears to show Ukraine's new "Ironclad" combat drone vehicle in action against Russian forces.

The video, which the ministry shared on X, formerly Twitter, bears the insignia of Ukraine's 5th Separate Assault Brigade, and it appears to show the remotely controlled drone firing its M2 machine gun on a Russian outpost.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, said in a Facebook post in September that the military was using the drone to "assault enemy positions, conduct reconnaissance and provide fire support to the military."

"This is a revolutionary product from Ukrainian engineers at Roboneers that changes the way warfare is conducted and helps save the most valuable thing - the lives of our military," Fedorov said.

He continued that the drone can hit speeds of more than 12 mph and comes with a Shablya M2 machine-gun turret, adding that it also had "an armored shell that protects it from small arms."

Screenshot from the video.Ukrainian Ministry of Defense

The Shablya system is a remotely operated "combat platform" designed to be attached to certain vehicles or objects, the manufacturer, Roboneers, says on its website.

The manufacturer says the system can rotate 360 degrees and detect human-sized targets up to 1,800 meters, or around 5,900 feet, away. It also features a thermal-imaging camera.

The prevalent use of drones and technological advances has marked the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has repeatedly turned to Iranian-made Shahed "kamikaze" drones in its attacks on Ukraine.

Ukraine has also looked to develop drones that can attack enemy positions from land and sea.

In July, Ukraine unveiled a new sea drone designed to limit the Russian fleet's operations in the Black Sea to CNN. The report said the drone was packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives and could hit targets 500 miles away.

One video shared on X also highlighted how Ukrainian soldiers were building their own "kamikaze" ground drones, with the footage appearing to show a vehicle strapped with 55 pounds of explosives traveling through over "4 km of enemy-controlled territory" to take out a road bridge.

But drone warfare has arguably ground the war to a halt, especially along the eastern front and the Dnipro River, where fighting has been particularly fierce in recent months.

"Nobody really knows how to advance right now. Everything gets smashed up by drones and artillery," Gleb Molchanov, a Ukrainian drone operator, told The Guardian.

"It's a war of armor against projectiles. At the moment, projectiles are winning," he added.



ECOCIDE

Ukraine appears to be attacking Russia's oil-and-gas industry with small, cheap drones that can bypass its air defenses

Alia Shoaib
Updated Sun, January 28, 2024 


Firefighters extinguish oil tanks at a storage facility in the Bryansk Region in Russia on January 19, 2024.Russian Emergencies Ministry/Reuters

Oil and gas facilities in Russia have caught fire in recent weeks following suspected drone attacks.


Ukraine appears to be targeting energy infrastructure to hamper Russian supply lines.


Russia's air-defense systems have proven to be less effective against small drones.

Ukraine appears to be targeting Russia's oil-and-gas industry with small, cheap drones as it seeks to disrupt Russian supply lines.

Fires have broken out at several Russian energy-infrastructure locations over the past few weeks following suspected drone strikes, including at a Rosneft oil refinery in Tuapse, a Rosneft storage facility in Klintsy, and Novatek's Baltic Sea Ust-Luga terminal.

Videos posted on social media appeared to show fires at facilities in Tuapse and Klintsy.

Ukraine is likely targeting the facilities to disrupt Russia's military operations.

"Strikes on oil depots and oil storage facilities disrupt logistics routes and slow down combat operations," Olena Lapenko, an energy security expert at the Ukrainian think tank DiXi Group, told The New York Times.

"Disruption of these supplies, which are like blood for the human body, is part of a wider strategy to counter Russia on the battlefield," Lapenko added.

The strikes also aim to damage a lucrative industry that the West's economic sanctions have not badly hampered. Lapenko told The Times that Moscow had made more than $400 billion from oil exports since the war started in February 2022.

But the attack on the Baltic Ust-Luga terminal and bad weather in the region have helped disrupt Russia's seaborne crude shipments, which fell to their lowest rate in almost two months, Bloomberg reported.

If the attack is confirmed to have been carried out by Ukraine, it would show Kyiv can hit targets deeper inside Russian territory than usual with what are thought to be domestically produced drones, Reuters reported.

To add insult to injury, a military source claimed that Ukraine sent a drone flying over President Vladimir Putin's palace during an attack on a St. Petersburg oil depot.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his purported secret palace in Valdai, Russia.Getty Images, Navalny.com

En route, one of the drones that flew 775 miles into Russian airspace traveled over one of Putin's palaces in Valdai, an unnamed special-services source told the Ukrainian news agency RBC.

The vast woodland complex, next to Lake Valdai, halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, is one of Putin's favorite boltholes.
Why Ukraine can embarrass Russia's air-defense systems

Russia's air-defense systems have proven to be less effective against small drones because they struggle to detect them.

"Russia boasted of having layered defenses before the war, the sensor electronic warfare, different missile batteries, kinetic batteries, radars, that can sort of identify and interdict the threat," Samuel Bendett, an analyst and expert in unmanned and robotic military systems at the Center for Naval Analyses, previously told Business Insider.

But "most of these defenses were built to identify and destroy larger targets like missiles, helicopters, aircraft. Many were not really geared towards identifying much smaller UAVs," or unnamed aerial vehicles, he added.
'Bringing the detonator'

Ukrainian soldiers build homemade drones.Ignacio Marin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Forbes noted that Ukraine's effective approach reflected a drone-warfare strategy of "bringing the detonator," or the tactic of using small amounts of drone-carried explosives to detonate larger amounts of explosive materials in or on the targets, which are often aircraft, vehicles, fuels, and ammunition dumps.

T.X. Hammes, a research fellow at the National Defense University, wrote that small, low-cost drones with a minimal bomb load could wreak havoc if used against flammable targets.

"Even a few ounces of explosives delivered directly to the target can initiate the secondary explosion that will destroy the target," Hammes wrote.

Ukrainian forces are using 'flocks' of FPV drones led by 'queen' drone to attack Russian positions, soldier says

Rebecca Rommen
Sat, January 27, 2024 

Ukrainian forces are using "flocks" of FPV drones led by "queen" drones, a Russian soldier said.

It may allow smaller drones to land and conserve battery power.

FPV drones have been particularly crucial to Ukraine's war effort.

Ukrainian forces are using "flocks" of FPV (first-person-view) drones led by "queen" drones to attack Russian positions, a Russian serviceman said in an interview with Russian newspaper Izvestia.



In a video shared on X, formerly Twitter, by a military blogger, the soldier described an encounter with a swarm of drones led by a "repeater drone queen."

He said Ukrainian forces sent a "large wing with a repeater" that broadcasted a signal to a group of smaller FPV drones flying underneath it.

These then dropped onto Russian positions, he added.

"A flock of around 10—the Queen is somewhere above at a high altitude in a small detection range. It brings the flock of drones, which then descend onto positions and start working," he said.

Izvestia correspondent Dmitry Zimenkin, who interviewed the soldier, said the tactic allowed Ukrainian drone operators to "land and wait" with their smaller drones, "saving batteries," Newsweek reported.

"When a large mother drone spots targets, the kamikazes take off, sometimes several meters from the target, and attack. If the Queen is eliminated, then her entire flock can be neutralized," Zimenkin said, per Newsweek.

FPV drones have been used by both Russian and Ukrainian forces since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and they have proved to be an effective and low-cost weapon.

They have been particularly crucial to Ukraine's war effort, enabling Ukrainian drone squads to attack deep into Russian territory while helping to limit losses to their ground forces.

But drone warfare has meant both sides are struggling to make any advances, Gleb Molchanov, a Ukrainian drone operator, told The Guardian.

"It's a war of armor against projectiles. At the moment, projectiles are winning," he added.

Germany electricity grid deficiencies leading to wasted power

DPA
Sun, January 28, 2024

Wind turbines rotate in a wind field at Hauke-Haien-Koog on the North Sea coast. Axel Heimken/dpa

Germany's North Sea wind turbines are unable to deliver all the power they could produce to where it is needed most in the south of the country, grid operator Tennet told dpa on Sunday.

Grid bottlenecks led to a decline in power transmitted to 19.24 terawatt-hours (TWh) over the course of 2023, some 9% down on the year. The figure is equivalent to demand from around 6 million households.

"Owing to the continuing numerous bottlenecks in the electrical grid on land, the [power from] large windfarms in the North Sea increasingly has to be scaled back," Tennet chief executive Tim Meyerjürgens said.

Another factor is that there are hardly any large conventional power stations in northern Germany that can reduce their output instead, he noted. "This affects not only the electricity feed-in quantities, but also hits price setting," Meyerjürgens said.

He called for greater urgency in expanding the grid, with the construction of major so-called "electricity highways."

Tennet put total onshore and offshore wind power generation at 148.97 TWh in 2023, up 26.18 TWh on the 2022 figure. Power generated on the North Sea fell back by some four percentage points to 13% of the total.

Baltic Sea wind turbines, which fall into the part of the grid operated by the company 50 Hertz, generated 4.17 TWh last year, 0.55 TWh more than in 2022.

North Sea windfarm potential output rose by 70 megawatts (MW) last year to 7,106 MW, with the highest feed-in of 6,491 MW recorded on April 1.

By contrast, Tennet's North Sea output off the Dutch coast saw potential output rise 3,220 MW to 5,622 MW, with 11.54 TWh transmitted over the year. The figure was 3.63 TWh more than in 2022, as the commissioning of grid connections and the increased number of wind turbines took effect.

German economists and companies in the sector predict that billions of euros will be needed over the years ahead to stabilize the grid. They point to delays in expanding the grid and lack of renewable generation in the south of the country where many major industries are based.

These factors demand costly "grid bottleneck management," they say.

While no figures are available for 2023 as a whole, the Federal Network Agency put costs for the first half at more than €1.6 billion ($1.7 billion). The figure for 2022 came in at €4.2 billion, caused in part by a rise in the natural gas price.

Tennet predicts that it will be 10 years before interventions – known as redispatching – to stabilize the grid can be cut to a minimum.

As a result of the imbalance between the north and the south of Germany, conventional power stations powered by fossil fuels in the south have to be used, producing power that is much more expensive than that produced by renewables in the north.

A Federal Network Agency spokesman said almost 3% of renewable power went to waste in 2022.

"While the costs for redispatching are expenditure that is lost and have no economic benefit, investment in power infrastructure will pay off over the long term," a Tennet spokeswoman said.