The Solar Orbiter spacecraft may have discovered what powers solar winds

The spacraft has imaged 'picoflare jets' for the first time.

Mariella Moon
·Contributing Reporter
Fri, August 25, 2023 

ESA/ATG medialab

We know the sun belches out solar winds, but the origin of these streams of charged particles remain a mystery and has been the subject of numerous studies over the past decades. The images captured last year by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument aboard ESA's and NASA's Solar Orbiter, however, may have finally given us the knowledge needed to explain what powers these winds. In a paper published in Science, a team of researchers described observing large numbers of jets coming out of a dark region of the sun called a "coronal hole" in the images taken by the spacecraft.

The team called them "picoflare jets," because they contain around one-trillionth the energy of what the largest solar flares can generate. These picoflare jets measure a few hundred kilometers in length, reach speeds of around 100 kilometers per second and only last between 20 and 100 seconds. Still, the researchers believe they have the power to emit enough high-temperature plasma to be considered a substantial source of our system's solar winds. While Coronal holes have long been known as source regions for the phenomenon, scientists are still trying to figure out the mechanism of how plasma streams emerge from them exactly. This discovery could finally be the answer they'd been seeking for years.

Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, the study's primary author from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, told Space: "The picoflare jets that we observed are the smallest, and energetically the weakest, type of jets in the solar corona that were not observed before...Still, the energy content of a single picoflare jet that lives for about 1 minute is equal to the average power consumed by about 10,000 households in the UK over an entire year."

Chitta's team will continue monitoring coronal holes and other potential sources of solar winds using the Solar Orbiter going forward. In addition to gathering data that may finally give us answers about the plasma flows responsible for producing auroras here on our planet, their observations could also shed light on why the sun's corona or atmosphere is much, much hotter than its surface.

Brazil's Patria wins tender to operate highways in Parana state

Reuters
Fri, August 25, 2023

SAO PAULO, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Brazilian private equity firm Patria Investments Ltd won an auction on Friday to operate a set of highways in the state of Parana in the first tender of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's "growth acceleration" plan.

Patria offered a discount of 18.25% on the maximum toll of the highways, beating its only competitor, a consortium formed by the Equipav group and the Perfin Voyager investment fund, according to Brazil's stock exchange operator, which held the open auction.


The batch of highways is comprised of 473 kilometers (294 miles) of federal and state highways located in the southern Brazilian state.

Under the concession, Patria will have to invest 8 billion reais ($1.64 billion) in the roads over a 30-year period.

President Lula's "growth acceleration" plan was launched earlier this month and foresees 1.7 trillion reais ($347.5 billion) in investments and public-private partnerships.

A second lot of highways in Parana state, comprising 605 kilometers (376 miles), is scheduled to be auctioned on September 29.

($1 = 4.8649 reais) (Reporting by Alberto Alerigi Jr.; Writing by Peter Frontini; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)

US offshore wind pushes ahead despite industry turmoil

Maria Gallucci
Thu, August 24, 2023 

The United States is about to expand its offshore wind ambitions into brand new territory. Next week, the Biden administration is set to hold the first-ever auction for offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Mexico, opening up large swaths of water between New Orleans and Houston to potentially gigawatts’ worth of renewable energy development.

The August 29 auction comes at a deeply ambivalent moment for offshore wind. On the one hand, there’s unprecedented interest in the emerging U.S. industry, which has high potential but so far generates enough electricity to power just 20,000 American homes. On the other hand, developers are facing dire financial conditions that are threatening the viability of several major offshore wind projects.

Offshore wind is expected to be a major piece of the U.S. clean energy mix, particularly in densely populated regions and coastal areas with outsize electricity demand. The technology could potentially meet up to 25 percent of the country’s power needs by 2050 — without substantially impacting wholesale electricity costs, according to a recent study by the University of California, Berkeley. But first, the U.S. has to figure out how to overcome industry challenges and get the turbines it plans to build up and running.

Construction on the nation’s first two commercial-scale wind farms is well underway off the coasts of New York and Massachusetts, and the federal government recently greenlighted two more major projects near New Jersey and Rhode Island. Meanwhile, California, Maine and now Oregon are making progress toward deploying “floating” wind turbines in deep coastal waters.

The U.S. pipeline of offshore wind farms in the planning, permitting or construction phases reached a total of 40 GW last year — nearly a thousand times greater than the nation’s current installed capacity of 42 megawatts (0.042 GW). The stunning jump, which the new lease sale will likely add to, is thanks in large part to ambitious state and federal goals for the electricity source, including the Biden administration’s aspiration of deploying 30 GW of offshore wind nationwide by 2030.

But a barrage of economic and logistical headwinds is battering the industry, raising the risk that the U.S. will miss these targets for deploying offshore wind projects this decade and beyond, analysts say.

Recent supply-chain constraints, rising material costs, higher interest rates and permitting delays have all made it more expensive and less profitable to put towering turbines in coastal waters. Companies are struggling to maintain the financial agreements they signed years ago when market conditions were much more favorable, all while the domestic industry continues to hit new milestones.

Offshore wind isn’t alone in feeling the squeeze. The pace of U.S. solar power and onshore wind installations has also slowed due to supply-chain bottlenecks and backlogged power grids. But owing to the sheer scale of offshore wind projects — which can cost over $1 billion and take more than a decade to develop — the turbulent conditions are dealing a particularly big blow to the perpetually up-and-coming industry.

“The trends that the entire market is dealing with are felt more acutely in offshore wind,” said Benjamin Koenigsberg, who focuses on renewable energy project finance for Norton Rose Fulbright, a global law firm.

Walking away from PPAs

As companies confront the reality of soaring costs and lower returns on investment, several major players are pushing to renegotiate — or outright cancel — the offtake agreements they previously made to supply clean electricity from offshore turbines to onshore power grids.

A power-purchase agreement (PPA) is a long-term contract that electric utilities sign with power suppliers that specifies, among other things, the rate utilities will pay for the electricity and how much of the supply they’ll use. Offshore wind developers need to sign these agreements relatively early in the planning process, in order to secure funding they need to cover the costs of getting wind farms spinning.

But a lot can change in the years after the ink dries on contracts.

“The price that developers had negotiated for that PPA contract is no longer profitable to develop, because the costs have gone up, and the cost of raising the finance for the project has gone up,” said Alon Carmel, an offshore wind expert at PA Consulting Group, a London-based consultancy.

At the same time, he added, companies are paying markedly higher prices at auctions to lease swaths of seabed for future development — a sum that, in the United States, developers must pay entirely upfront.

BloombergNEF, a clean energy research firm, recently looked at how both the recent market turmoil and federal tax incentives have impacted the sector’s levelized cost of electricity — a measure that tabulates the upfront costs, operating expenses and energy performance over a project’s lifetime. Analysts found that the levelized cost of a subsidized U.S. offshore wind project rose to $114.20 per megawatt-hour in 2023, a nearly 50 percent increase from 2021 levels in nominal terms.

All told, about 9.7 GW of proposed U.S. offshore wind farms are “in the queue for renegotiation or cancellation of offtake agreements,” representing more than half of the projects in the pipeline with contracts, according to BloombergNEF.

Avangrid, a U.S. subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, in July agreed to pay roughly $48 million in fines to scrap its PPAs with three utilities for the proposed 1.2 GW Commonwealth Wind project near Massachusetts. The developer says it aims to rebid the project in the hopes of securing a higher price. Avangrid is also reportedly pushing to renegotiate its contract with Connecticut for the proposed 800 MW Park City Wind project.

SouthCoast Wind, a joint venture of Shell and Ocean Wind, is similarly seeking to scrap its PPAs and secure more money for a 2.4 GW offshore wind project near Martha’s Vineyard. The developer had also proposed installing an export cable beneath Rhode Island waters to connect turbines to the Massachusetts grid. But recently, energy regulators in Rhode Island delayed the approval process, saying there was no need to review infrastructure for a “hypothetical” wind farm.

Meanwhile, energy giants Equinor and bp are in the process of renegotiating PPAs for their four proposed offshore wind farms: the 2.1 GW Empire Wind 1 and 2 project, and the 2.4 GW Beacon Wind 1 and 2 project. “This is a pretty fragile time in the offshore wind industry,” Molly Morris, president of Equinor Wind US, recently told Politico.

A particularly poignant example of offshore wind’s give-and-take-away dynamic can be found in federal waters near Rhode Island, where the companies Ørsted and Eversource are developing the Revolution Wind 1 and 2 projects.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Interior Department gave the final go-ahead to the project’s first phase, which is expected to provide more than 700 MW of clean electricity to customers in Connecticut and Rhode Island. (The project secured three separate PPAs in 2018 and 2019.) But when developers proposed a long-term PPA for the second 884 MW phase — one that reflected the current project economics — Rhode Island Energy rejected the bid. The utility argued that rising costs made the Revolution Wind 2 proposal “too expensive” for ratepayers.

Still room for optimism in offshore wind

The imperiled agreements are “not just a U.S. phenomenon,” Carmel noted. “It’s playing out exactly the same way in Europe.” Most recently, the Swedish state-owned utility Vattenfall halted development of a 1.4 GW offshore wind farm planned near Britain, citing inflation and rising costs.

Offshore wind developers around the world are now pressuring government agencies not only to provide more subsidies to offset rising costs but also to accelerate the planning and permitting processes for approving wind farms and facilitating onshore grid connections — enabling projects to be built faster with fewer costly delays.

Koenigsberg said it’s not yet clear when rising costs and soaring interest rates will finally level off. But the outlook may be slightly brighter for future offshore wind projects in the U.S., in part thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.

The landmark climate law includes a provision that allows investors to buy tax credits from clean energy projects on the open market, instead of becoming co-owners of the projects. The new tax-credit transfer provision is expected to drastically lower the barriers to entry and potentially unleash billions of new funding for wind, solar and other carbon-cutting projects, as Canary Media recently reported.

“There’s a lot of optimism that simplifying the [tax equity] structure will further spur development and allow for more types of investors to be interested in and willing to invest in offshore wind,” Koenigsberg said.

He added that the new solicitations for offshore wind areas — including next week’s auction in the Gulf of Mexico — could bring “some level of stabilization” to an industry that right now seems to be in a free fall. By developing new projects on more favorable financial terms, companies can potentially balance out the higher-cost, more complicated initiatives already in the pipeline, he said.

“You have to look at the economies of scale that developers will realize as they bring multiple projects to market,” Koenigsberg said. “This is not a one- or two-year industry; it’s something you need to think about with a broader scope and decades out.”

Why India is becoming a space force to be reckoned with

Rachyl Jones
Thu, August 24, 2023 

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP via Getty Images

India on Wednesday not only completed its first mission to the moon, 54 years after the U.S. first touched down, but it landed on the moon’s south pole—a feat no other country has been able to accomplish.

The mission’s success comes days after a Russian spacecraft crashed into the lunar south pole. The two countries had been racing to put an unmanned spacecraft in that region after scientists discovered traces of water there. The elements of water—hydrogen and oxygen—are essential components to rocket fuel, so harvesting them on the moon could allow spacecrafts to top off their tanks for further exploration, according to the Institute of Physics. The existence of water on the moon could also help sustain astronauts in space for long periods of time, providing a drinking source and supporting the growth of plants for food, it reported. India placed a rover in the region to collect data on the elemental composition of the soil and rocks, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

“This success belongs to all of humanity,” India’s prime minister Narendra Modi said during a webcast of the event.

The feat by the country of 1.4 billion people comes at a time when private, for-profit companies have stolen the spotlight in space exploration. Elon Musk's Space X has a target of sending humans to Mars (though Musk's timeline is in flux), and NASA is currently completely reliant on SpaceX rockets to get its human crews into space.

India is increasingly becoming a major player in the space world, with this mission cementing its place in history. Previously, the U.S., China and the Soviet Union (now Russia) all landed on the moon, though the U.S. is still the only country to touch down with a crew. The prospect of gaining access to water on the moon means these countries and more will be racing for a slice of the action. A new space race has already begun, and India has more up its sleeve.

The mission has been twenty years in the making. Then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, announced his ambitions for India to go to the moon during his Independence Day speech in 2003. Its first mission was five years later, when the ISRO successfully placed a ship in the moon’s orbit for 312 days. It then attempted to land and deploy a rover in 2019, but an error in the software caused the landing spacecraft and rover to crash. The organization improved the tech from its second mission for the Chandrayaan-3—the third and most recent trip—including adding stronger legs on the landing machine, removing an engine and lengthening the energy-supplying solar panels, according to the Times of India. The country also became the first to enter Mars’ orbit on the first try in 2014.

The ISRO’s future space plans largely revolve around the moon—literally. It is preparing a joint flight with Japan, where India will supply the landing machine. The two countries first agreed to work together in 2017. Japan will provide the unmanned launch spacecraft and the rover, which will explore the moon’s south pole. There is no set date for launch.

India also wants to send a manned spacecraft to the moon. The ship, which can hold three passengers, was originally planned to launch in 2021, but delays have pushed that date. Jitendra Singh, India’s Union Minister of State for science and technology, wants it to take off in 2024, but he plans to send two unmanned spaceships first to test for safety, the Economic Times reported. A successful landing with passengers would make India second only to the U.S. to complete such an operation.


Even as India sends its tricolor flag to remote extra-terrestrial locations, a thriving private space industry is also taking root within the country. According to a recent New York Times article, there are at least 140 registered space startups in India. And while the ISRO budget was less than $1.5 billion in the past fiscal year, the private space sector is currently worth more than $6 billion, according to the report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

in this commentary are solely those of the author.

Opinion
India's moon landing advances science, the global community

Mariel Borowitz, Georgia Institute of Technology
Fri, August 25, 2023

A simulated image is played on screen during live telecast of the landing of Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the south pole of the Moon at the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) center in Bengaluru on Wednesday. India became the first nation to land on the south pole region of the moon. Photo courtesy of Indian Space Research Organization


Aug. 25 (UPI) -- India made history as the first country to land near the south pole of the Moon with its Chandrayaan-3 lander on Wednesday. This also makes it the first country to land on the Moon since China in 2020.

India is one of several countries -- including the U.S. with its Artemis program -- endeavoring to land on the Moon. The south pole of the Moon is of particular interest, as its surface, marked by craters, trenches and pockets of ancient ice, hasn't been visited until now.

The Conversation U.S. asked international affairs expert Mariel Borowitz about this moon landing's implications for both science and the global community.

Why are countries like India looking to go to the Moon?

Countries are interested in going to the Moon because it can inspire people, test the limits of human technical capabilities and allow us to discover more about our solar system.

The Moon has a historical and cultural significance that really seems to resonate with people -- anyone in the world can look up at the night sky, see the Moon and understand how amazing it is that a spacecraft built by humans is roaming around the surface.

The Moon also presents a unique opportunity to engage in both international cooperation and competition in a peaceful, but highly visible, way.

The fact that so many nations - the United States, Russia, China, India, Israel - and even commercial entities are interested in landing on the Moon means that there are many opportunities to forge new partnerships.

These partnerships can allow nations to do more in space by pooling resources, and they encourage more peaceful cooperation here on Earth by connecting individual researchers and organizations.

There are some people who also believe that exploration of the Moon can provide economic benefits. In the near term, this might include the emergence of startup companies working on space technology and contributing to these missions. India has seen a surge in space startups recently.

Eventually, the Moon may provide economic benefits based on the natural resources that can be found there, such as water, helium-3 and rare Earth elements.

Are we seeing new global interest in space?

Over the last few decades, we've seen a significant increase in the number of nations involved in space activity. This is very apparent when it comes to satellites that collect imagery or data about the Earth, for example. More than 60 nations have been involved in these types of satellite missions. Now we're seeing this trend expand to space exploration, and particularly the Moon.

In some ways, the interest in the Moon is driven by similar goals as in the first space race in the 1960s -- demonstrating technological capabilities and inspiring young people and the general public. However, this time it's not just two superpowers competing in a race. Now we have many participants, and while there is still a competitive element, there is also an opportunity for cooperation and forging new international partnerships to explore space.

Also, with all these new actors and the technical advances of the last 60 years, there is the potential to engage in more sustainable exploration. This could include building Moon bases, developing ways to use lunar resources and eventually engaging in economic activities on the Moon based on natural resources or tourism.

How does India's mission compare with Moon missions in other countries?

India's accomplishment is the first of its kind and very exciting, but it's worth noting that it's one of seven missions currently operating on and around the Moon.

In addition to India's Chandrayaan-3 rover near the south pole, there is also South Korea's Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, which is studying the Moon's surface to identify future landing sites; the NASA-funded CAPSTONE spacecraft, which was developed by a space startup company; and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The CAPSTONE craft is studying the stability of a unique orbit around the Moon, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is collecting data about the Moon and mapping sites for future missions.

Also, while India's Chandrayaan-2 rover crashed, the accompanying orbiter is still operational. China's Chang'e-4 and Chang'e-5 landers are still operating on the Moon as well.

Other nations and commercial entities are working to join in. Russia's Luna-25 mission crashed into the Moon three days before the Chandrayaan-3 landed, but the fact that Russia developed the rover and got so close is still a significant achievement.

The same could be said for the lunar lander built by the private Japanese space company ispace. The lander crashed into the Moon in April 2023.

Why choose to explore the south pole of the Moon?

The south pole of the Moon is the area where nations are focused for future exploration. All of NASA's 13 candidate landing locations for the Artemis program are located near the south pole.

This area offers the greatest potential to find water ice, which could be used to support astronauts and to make rocket fuel. It also has peaks that are in constant or near-constant sunlight, which creates excellent opportunities for generating power to support lunar activities.

The Conversation

Mariel Borowitz is an associate professor of international affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions expressed

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

Robert Lea

SPACE.COM
Fri, August 25, 2023 

This view of the Moon's cratered South Pole was seen by NASA's Clementine spacecraft in 1996.


India's Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully landed near the moon's south pole on Wednesday (Aug. 23). The Indian Space Research Organization (IRSO) mission not only made history because it saw the nation become the fourth to successfully land on the moon — after the Soviet Union, the U.S. and China — but also because it named India the first to land at the southern lunar pole.

The lander's arrival was marked on the ISRO Twitter account with words from Chandrayaan-3 on the lunar surface: "I reached my destination, and you too!'

But IRSO's mission, which has since deployed a robotic rover to begin exploring the lunar south pole, isn't exactly alone in its goals.

Around 2025, as part of its Artemis 3 mission, NASA plans to have humans step foot on the moon for the first time in 50 years. That journey is also set to include the first woman and person of color to make the trip. But even before that, the U.S. space agency's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) is expected to explore the southern pole in 2024 during a 100-day-long mission.


And China, with its burgeoning space industry, isn't going to be left out of this lunar south pole action. The country's space agency plans to send the Chang'e 7 mission there in 2026 along with a new moon rover.

So why is all this interest in the lunar south pole heating up? Well, ironically, it's primarily due to something very cool.

Related: See 1st photos of the moon's south pole by India's Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander
The lunar south pole's most precious commodity

Interest in the lunar south pole as a landing site is mainly driven by the fact that scientists know the region hosts water in the form of ice. Water is, of course, essential for life as we know it — but it also has other uses. For instance, it can act as a coolant for equipment and even provide rocket fuel. The latter could be especially useful for a staging mission to Mars launched from the moon someday.

What this means is, as space agencies start thinking about sustainability in space as well as the next era of crewed space missions, the ability to harvest water in-situ on the moon for drinking, cooling machinery, or even breaking down into hydrogen and oxygen to provide breathable air or fuel is of immense value.

Additionally, water on the moon is of pure scientific value. It can be used as a record of geological activity on the moon, such as lunar volcanoes, and even act as an asteroid strike tracker.

While water has been detected across the surface of the moon, the majority of water ice signals come from the poles.

A view of the moon's surface at the lunar south pole obtained by the LRO (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio)

At the lunar south pole, only elevated peaks are lit by the sun. This is because the sun is always positioned around the horizon due to the moon's tilt. More low-lying areas are permanently shrouded in shadow, and are quite literally referred to as permanently shadowed regions (PSRs).

Temperatures in PSRs can drop to as low as -418 degrees Fahrenheit (-250 degrees Celsius), which is so frigid its colder than Pluto — but this means it's also an ideal spot to maintain water ice.

Any water molecules that enter a PSR region are immediately frozen. They're also trapped because it is simply too cold for them to evaporate. This water content then falls to the surface, where it gets mixed with lunar soil. That process results in the growth of large "pockets" of water and soil at the moon's south pole.


An artist's illustration of NASA's LCROSS mission to crash two probes into the moon and kick up moon dirt on Oct. 9, 2009.


Related Stories:

— What's next for India's Chandrayaan-3 mission on the moon?

— India's historic Chandrayaan-3 moon landing celebrated by ISS astronauts

— India's Chandrayaan-3 moon rover Pragyan rolls onto the lunar surface for 1st time

ISRO was integral in first detecting such lunar water to begin with when, in 2008, its Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft carried a NASA-provided science instrument called the Moon Mineralogical Mapper (M3) to lunar orbit. This determined the existence of water ice inside craters at the moon's south pole.

The following year, in 2009, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) purposefully slammed a dark crater at the lunar south pole with the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). This created a plume of debris that LCROSS jetted through, enabling it to detect water ice that had been hidden in darkness.

There was a small concern, however, that the molecule hydroxyl (OH) was confused to be the water molecule (H2O). This fear was allayed in 2020 when it was revealed that data from NASA's Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) telescope confirmed the first unambiguous detection of water at the lunar south pole.

Based upon SOFIA data, scientists estimated there could be as much as 12 ounces of water for every one cubic meter (just over 35 cubic feet) of lunar soil at the southern pole of the moon.

According to the Planetary Society, when considering Chandrayaan-1 and LRO data, the two lunar poles harbor over 600 million tons of water ice. That's enough to fill around 240,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

And this, experts say, is a low-end estimate.

Thus, with such an incredibly valuable resource located around the lunar south pole, it is a wonder space agencies haven't already swarmed to get some space probes there well before ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 mission soft-landed this week.

As it turns out, there is a very good reason for this.
Why haven't we landed at the lunar pole before?

Landing near the lunar south pole is not easy, and part of the reason for this is tied to what makes landing there so desirable in the first place. The shadowy nature of the lunar south pole that helps preserve water ice means a soft landing there is tricky.

Most lunar descent vehicles rely on cameras to guide their final approach to the lunar surface, ensuring to avoid obstacles and hazards such as boulders or craters.

Landing is risky even on well-lit regions of the moon. Just one chance encounter between a boulder big enough to tip a spacecraft and a lander would end in disaster for the mission.

Therefore, the risk increases substantially in the shadowy lunar south pole.

Such risk, in fact, is also magnified by the fact that the lunar south pole lacks large expanses of flat terrain as are found at the moon's equator, for instance. Terrain at both lunar poles is known to be heavily cratered as well as more likely to be sloped and rocky.

A sequence of image of the moon's surface taken by India's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft during its descent to the lunar south pole.

Moreover, the south pole of the moon can't even be seen from Earth.

This means scientists' knowledge of it comes entirely from spacecraft orbiting the moon like the LRO, which has collected precise information about the region and its terrain.

Any lunar craft that seeks to land at the south pole must also be able to withstand the incredibly cold temperatures found there. Further, the lack of sunlight creating those temperatures delivers another issue, too: A lunar rover that strays into one of the many PSRs at the south pole of the moon will be out of contact with the sun, meaning it can't rely on solar power to operate and must instead have a nuclear power source.

As if all of that wasn't enough, PSRs are also out of the line of sight of Earth, meaning relaying messages to and from mission control in the shadowy regions is challenging to say the least.

Future missions like will take the mapping of the terrain of the lunar south pole to a whole new level, with the VIPER mission in particular hunting for resources that could be mined and exploited by the crew of the Artemis program.

Additionally, orbiters around the moon are scoping out the orb's perilous polar regions for suitable landing zones to limit, if not eliminate altogether, the risks of setting down without threatening mission failure.

And, to paint a picture of these risks, there is at least one space-faring nation that has recently become all too aware of the turmoil that may happen at the lunar south pole.

Just days before the landing of Chandrayaan-3, Russia had planned to make its glorious return to the moon's surface after 47 years with Luna-25, which launched on Aug. 10. But on Aug. 19, Roscosmos announced via its Telegram feed that it had lost contact with the mission.

Luna-25 spacecraft had crashed into the moon's surface during landing preparations.

If it had been successful, Luna-25 would have hunted through the soil of the lunar south pole looking for water ice. “It’s hugely disappointing,” Open University planetary scientist Simeon Barber told Nature.

“It highlights that landing on the moon is not easy.”


India’s robotic lander touches down on the moon, lifting spirits at home and abroad
Alan Boyle
Wed, August 23, 2023 

Indian mission controllers cheer the successful touchdown of the Vikram lunar lander. (ISRO via YouTube)

A robotic Indian lander set down safely on the moon today, setting off a wave of pride that reached from Mission Control in Bengaluru to Seattle’s tech community.

“India is now on the moon,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said over a video link moments after the landing at 6:03 p.m. Indian Standard Time (5:33 a.m. PT). He went on to say that “this success belongs to all humanity.”

A roomful of mission controllers in Bengaluru cheered when the landing was confirmed at the end of a six-week-long space odyssey. “This will remain the most memorable and happiest moment for all of us,” said Kalpana Kalahasti, associate project director for the Chandrayaan-3 mission at the Indian Space Research Organization.

Today’s touchdown added India to an exclusive club of moon-landing nations that also includes the U.S., Russia and China. India’s Vikram lander is the first robotic probe to visit the moon’s south polar region, which is thought to be prime territory for human exploration and settlement.

Soon after the landing, Vikram sent back an image showing its surroundings — including one of the lander’s legs and its shadow:

The lander also returned imagery showing the deployment of its Pragyan rover, which sparked a fresh round of cheers at Mission Control:

Chandrayaan-3 is designed to study the composition of lunar soil as well as the thermal and seismic environment at the landing site, using instruments aboard the Vikram lander as well as the Pragyan rover. Scientists hope the data will shed light on the availability of water ice near the lunar south pole.

But today, the scientific angle was overshadowed by the boost to India’s national prestige. The elation that Indians felt was particularly high — coming four years after the Chandrayaan-2 mission’s lander crashed into the lunar surface, and four days after Russia’s Luna-25 lander met a similarly ignominious fate.

One of Chandrayaan-3’s fans is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who was born in Hyderabad, India, and came to the United States more than 30 years ago.

“What an exciting moment for India — and the future of space exploration,” Nadella said in a congratulatory post on X / Twitter.

S. Somasegar, a managing director at Seattle-based Madrona Group, passed along his congratulations as well.

“This is proud moment and another huge step forward as far as advances in science and space go. I am sure every Indian, and for that matter, everybody in the world is genuinely excited when we make significant progress and do something which hasn’t happened before,” Soma, who traces his roots to the Indian coastal city of Puducherry, told GeekWire in an email. “ISRO has had a fantastic track record of making space-related scientific breakthroughs in a cost-effective way, and this is another example of that.”

Samir Bodas, CEO and co-founder of Bellevue, Wash.-based Icertis, told GeekWire in an email that India’s success in space resonated deeply with him.

“As an entrepreneur, I’m always inspired by great achievements like the Chandrayaan-3 moon landing,” said Bodas, who grew up in Pune and still has family there. “As someone with deep ties to India, I’m thrilled and overjoyed to experience this moment of great pride and celebration for all Indians.”

This year is a big one for robotic moon missions: In addition to the failed Russian landing and the successful Indian landing, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is due to launch its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, as early as this weekend.

Meanwhile, two commercial U.S. probes are being readied for launch with NASA’s backing. Houston-based Intuitive Machines says its IM-1 lunar lander could begin its mission as early as Nov. 15 with a launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. And Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic says its Peregrine lander is ready to head for the moon with a boost from United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, currently set for its first liftoff late this year.

Both of those missions will target the lunar south polar region, where reserves of water ice in permanently shadowed craters could theoretically provide drinkable water, breathable oxygen and burnable hydrogen fuel for future explorers and settlers. NASA is planning to send astronauts to the region for the Artemis 3 mission in the mid-2020s.

There’s more to come from India as well: ISRO is getting ready to launch a sun-observing mission called Aditya-L1 next month. It’s also ramping up its Gaganyaan human spaceflight program — and talking with Japan’s space agency about LUPEX, an international robotic mission to the lunar south polar region.

“I am confident that all countries in the world, including those from the global south, are capable of achieving such feats,” Modi said. “We can all aspire for the moon, and beyond.”
More from GeekWire:

Taiwan's semiconductor sector faces offshore production dilemma as island struggles for water, power, people

South China Morning Post
Fri, August 25, 2023 at 3:30 AM MDT·7 min read

A US$40 billion compound in the United States to be operated from 2025 by Taiwan's flagship semiconductor manufacturer may help its hosts win a race with mainland China for chip superiority, but has the potential to undermine the tech-reliant island economy.

Offshoring chip production could undo Taiwan's semiconductor world dominance unless the industry solves a series of difficult problems at home, analysts said.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's largest contract chip maker, will operate the site in Arizona, while it also plans to expand into Japan and Germany.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

TSMC had a revenue of US$75 billion in the past financial year and its own network of lesser-known Taiwanese suppliers, but if they left, part of Taiwan's economy could be affected.

"At the core of this question is TSMC's ability to remain the unassailable leader of the world's semiconductor manufacturing process," said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council advocacy group.

"If that continues, Taiwan's chip ecosystem remains central to the world's commercial needs.

"There are some challenges, however, that relate more to public policy. Water and land issues impacting new investment are real and need to be managed in a way that prioritises the needs of the economy."

After its chip sector took off in the 1980s, making Taiwan a magnet for customers including Apple and Qualcomm, it supplies around 60 per cent of the world's semiconductors.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's plant in Phoenix. Photo: Matt Haldane alt=Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's plant in Phoenix. Photo: Matt Haldane>

But US President Joe Biden is aiming to expand the US semiconductor industry through the Chips and Science Act, which was signed into law last year. The law targets manufacturing and supply chains, with a focus on research and development.

In July, Germany proposed a US$22 billion plan to improve its semiconductor manufacturing, as well as other elements of its hi-tech industry.


South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy also said in July it had identified "specialised complexes" for semiconductors, with deregulation and tax incentives being considered.

"The escalating trade tensions between China and the United States, along with other geopolitical issues, have prompted governments worldwide to recognise the importance of possessing their own semiconductor manufacturing facilities," said Joanne Chiao, an analyst with the Taipei-based market research firm TrendForce.

Taiwan can stay ahead of the US, Germany, South Korea, and mainland China even while TSMC and its suppliers move offshore, but only if it offers the right incentives for the US$150 billion industry at home, analysts said.

Curbs imposed by the US and allies, including Japan, on chip-making equipment sold to mainland China have accelerated a tech self-sufficiency drive by Beijing over the past three years.

In that vein, Chinese companies have stepped up development of components and equipment.

But chip makers in Taiwan have little land for expansion, while a series of droughts have prompted a search for new water sources.

The costs of imported fossil fuel, plus their potential greenhouse effects, further vex the industry, and a declining birth rate threatens to sap the workforce.

"We just can't provide chip makers with a perfect environment to keep them," said Kent Chong, managing director at professional services firm PwC Legal in Taipei.

During a drought in 2021, the government rationed water near a TSMC plant, but spared the company and other major manufacturers.

A new Taiwan factory of TSMC's scale would increase daily water intake by 118,000 metric tonnes, the Taiwanese news outlet Commonwealth estimated. It said that amount equals 7 per cent of Kaohsiung's water consumption.

Chip makers, though, are unable to increase renewable energy because Taiwan's electricity provider relies mostly on fossil fuels despite investment in offshore wind power.

In March, the island closed one of its three nuclear power plants over public safety concerns.

Last year, renewables made up 8.6 per cent of its energy supply, with 9.1 per cent from nuclear power.

Access to power "remains dogged by under investment", Hammond-Chambers added.

A population decline that began in 2020 also has the potential to limit the number of engineers, with any solutions requiring "significant reforms to Taiwan's immigration laws", according to Hammond-Chambers.

To secure power as Taiwan tries to derive one-fifth of its energy from renewable sources by 2025, TSMC said in April it had signed a 20,000 gigawatt hour joint procurement contract with a subsidiary of the Taipei-based ARK Solar Energy.

More than a dozen TSMC suppliers are expected to participate, the firm said.

On Wednesday, the Taiwan Water Resources Agency said an industrial park in the southern city of Kaohsiung would rely on recycled water to "assure stable supplies".

TSMC's Kaohsiung plant will need more water following "production adjustments", the agency added.

The government-run Taiwan Power Company last year approved an issue of corporate bonds of NT$18.8 billion (US$592 million) to stabilise power supplies with upgrades at three power plants.

To plug talent shortages, Taiwanese officials announced last year they would seek 400,000 people from overseas, including 40,000 professionals.

"I think Taiwan's government is very supportive of the whole [integrated circuit] industry," said Albert Liu, the Taiwanese founder of Kneron, a California-based artificial intelligence chip designer which employs 180 people in Taiwan.

Liu believes Taipei may offer support, including possible tax incentives.

Other countries could take a while to build up semiconductor "clusters" with raw materials, equipment suppliers, chip factories and end customers, Chiao added.

"Taiwan has been deeply engaged in semiconductor manufacturing for several decades, and the formation of semiconductor clusters did not happen overnight," she said.

Chiao acknowledged that "demand for talent and workforces" are among the most "crucial" issues.

The Industrial Development Bureau under Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs declined to comment.

It, though, still might make more sense to allow the Taiwan chip sector to expand overseas, given constraints on the island, plus geopolitical pressures, analysts said.

If mainland China takes military action against Taiwan, chip technology could easily be transferred to other locations with Taiwan-operated factories, said Chong at PwC Legal in Taipei.

Mainland China sees self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway territory that must be unified, by force if needed. Relations have deteriorated over the past seven years.

US officials have asked South Korea and Japan since February to apply for a cut of the US$50 billion that Washington has set aside as part of the Chips and Science Act to revitalise its chip sector.

To help TSMC and its Taiwanese suppliers in the US, Washington is also discussing a deal to avoid double taxation with Taipei, a move which could encourage investment.

"[We] welcome positive dialogue on the issue of double taxation", a TSMC spokeswoman said in mid-August.

TSMC owned 30 per cent of the world's non-memory chip market last year, up from 26 per cent in 2021.

"[A taxation deal] implies that Taiwan and the US will be more linked economically, making capital, investment, production, and people move more freely between the two economies," said Hu Jin-li, an Institute of Business and Management professor at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taipei.

"This is, of course, a gravity that economically pulls Taiwan to the US side."

Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

THE ICC IS IN THE HAGUE

Dutch supreme court: Israeli military immune from prosecution in Netherlands
Reuters
Fri, August 25, 2023 

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz speaks to the media after casting his ballot on the day of Israel's general election outside a polling station in Rosh Ha'ayin

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch supreme court ruled on Friday that two Israeli former military commanders, including ex-defence minister Benny Gantz, are immune from civil prosecution in the Netherlands in a case brought over the deaths of six Palestinians in an Israeli air strike.

The ruling upheld a December 2021 Dutch appeals court finding that Gantz - a career soldier turned politician - and ex-air force commander Amir Eshel, as then-high-ranking Israeli officials carrying out government policy, could not be held liable in a Dutch civil case, "irrespective of the nature and seriousness of the conduct alleged against them".

The plaintiff, Ismail Ziada - a Dutch national of Palestinian origin - said he lost his mother, three of his brothers, his sister-in-law and his nephew in the attack, which took place in Islamist Hamas-ruled Gaza in 2014 when Gantz was Israeli armed forces' commander-in-chief.

In the suit, Ziada sought unspecified damages against Gantz under Dutch universal jurisdiction rules, which allows countries to prosecute serious offences committed elsewhere.

There is no further appeal possible against the supreme court's decision.

Human rights groups have accused both sides of war crimes during the seven-week war in Gaza in 2014.

According to U.N. figures, about 2,200 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed in that conflict, including up to 1,500 civilians. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel also died, according to Israeli military and health officials.

(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout and Stephanie van den Berg; editing by Mark Heinrich)

US, EU slam far-right Israeli minister’s ‘racist’ claim his rights outweigh that of Palestinians

Kareem Khadder, CNN
Fri, August 25, 2023

Atef Safadi/AFP via Getty Images


The United States and European Union Friday slammed comments by far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir that his right to life outweighs Palestinians’ right to freedom of movement in the occupied West Bank.

“We strongly condemn Minister Ben Gvir’s racist, destructive comments on the freedom of movement of Palestinian residents of the West Bank,” a US State Department spokesperson said.

“Such messages are particularly damaging when amplified by those in leadership positions… President [Joe] Biden and Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken have been clear that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve to enjoy equal measures of freedom and security.”

The European Union also strongly condemned the remarks, saying: “All human beings are equal and should be treated the same way.”


Ben Gvir said Wednesday on Israel’s Channel 12 that his right, his wife’s right and his children’s right to walk through the streets of the West Bank was “much more important” than “Arabs’ right to movement and travel – excuse me, Mohammed, but this is the reality. This is the truth. My right to life outweighs your right to move on the streets.”

The “excuse me, Mohammed,” remark was addressed to Palestinian-Israeli journalist Mohammed Magadli, who was sitting across from him in the interview.

Ben Gvir’s far-right Jewish Power party draws support mainly from Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, and Ben Gvir is himself a settler.

The EU said in its condemnation of Ben Gvir that “settlements are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two state solution impossible.” Israel argues the settlements are not illegal because it claims the West Bank is disputed, not occupied, territory.

The United States frequently says that it considers settlements in the area Israel captured in 1967 to be an obstacle to peace.

Palestinians want the West Bank to be part of a future Palestinian state.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it “condemns in the strongest terms the racist and heinous remarks made by Israel’s fascist Minister Itamar Ben Gvir… Israel’s systematic hate speech, provocative rhetoric, violence and dehumanization of the Palestinian people across decades are fomenting mass violence at unprecedented levels,” and called for sanctions on Ben Gvir and other Israeli officials “for inciting violence and destruction and knowingly leading and contributing to the mass persecution of the Palestinian people.”

A Top Israeli Official Finally Admitted the Truth About Justice in Israel

Ella Sherman
Thu, August 24, 2023 



A top Israeli official has admitted that Israeli rights take priority over the rights of Palestinians.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir confessed on Wednesday that he believes his family’s rights are more important than the freedom of movement for Palestinians in the West Bank—exposing the truth of the two-tiered system of justice.

“Sorry Mohammad, but that’s just the reality,” Ben-Gvir told journalist Mohammad Magadli on Channel 12 News. “My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs,” he added, using another name for the occupied West Bank.

Ben-Gvir’s entitled statement came after Magadli asked him about violent crime and terrorism and the Israeli government’s failure to address it.


This isn’t the first time Ben-Givir has expressed anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab views: He has been convicted of eight charges for inciting racism and supporting Kach, a right-wing anti-Palestinian terrorist organization in Israel.

Bella Hadid an ‘Israel-hater’, says country’s far-Right security minister

Fri, August 25, 2023

Bella Hadid has been a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights - Eric Gaillard/Reuters

Bella Hadid, the supermodel, has been called an “Israel-hater” by the country’s far-Right security minister.

In an interview with N12 News earlier this week, Itamar Ben-Gvir said the right to life and movement for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank trumped the right to movement for Palestinians.

Hadid – whose father is Palestinian and who has been a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights – criticised his comment on Instagram, on which she has almost 60 million followers.

“In no place, no time, especially in 2023, should one life be more valuable than another’s. Especially simply because of their ethnicity, culture or pure hatred,” she wrote on Thursday.

Mr Ben-Gvir responded in a statement calling Hadid an “Israel hater” and said she had shared only a segment of the interview on her social media account in order to portray him as a racist.

Israel rejects suggestions that it maintains an apartheid system over Palestinians.

On Thursday, the Palestinian foreign ministry condemned Ben-Gvir’s comments as “racist and heinous” and said they “only confirm Israel’s apartheid regime of Jewish supremacy”.

Itamar Ben-Gvir’s comments were called ‘racist and heinous’ by the Palestinian foreign ministry - Amir Cohen/Reuters

Palestinians have long railed against travel restrictions, including checkpoints, imposed on them by Israel in the West Bank, an area where they exercise limited self-rule and which they seek as part of a future state.

Ben-Gvir, who lives in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near the West Bank city of Hebron, said in the interview the curbs were needed to protect his family’s security.

“My right, my wife’s right, my children’s right to travel on the roads of Judea and Samaria is more important than the right to movement for Arabs,” he said, referring to the West Bank by its biblical Hebrew name.

Violence in the West Bank has surged over the past 15 months, with frequent Israeli military raids, Palestinian street attacks and Jewish settler assaults on Palestinian villages. Since January, at least 188 Palestinians and 35 people in Israel have been killed in hostilities.

Ben-Gvir, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition, has past convictions of support for terrorism and anti-Arab incitement. He has said his views have become more moderate since joining the government, without going into further detail.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war and has continued to expand dozens of settlements deemed illegal by the United Nations and most countries – a view Israel disputes.

Supermodel Bella Hadid criticized Israel's far-right security minister. Now he's lashing out at her

ISABEL DEBRE
Updated Fri, August 25, 2023 








TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s far-right national security minister lashed out at supermodel Bella Hadid on Friday for criticizing his recent fiery televised remarks about Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

In an interview earlier this week with Israel’s Channel 12 following two deadly Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the occupied territory, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir argued that his right to freedom of movement as a Jewish settler outweighs the same right for Palestinians.

“My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria, is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs,” Ben-Gvir said on Wednesday, using the biblical name for the West Bank. "The right to life comes before freedom of movement.”

Addressing Mohammad Magadli, a well-known Israeli-Arab television host who was in the studio, Ben-Gvir added: “Sorry, Mohammad. But that’s the reality.”


His statement drew widespread criticism as commentators seized on it as proof of allegations that Israel was turning into an apartheid system that seeks to maintain Jewish hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Protesters thronged outside Ben-Gvir’s home in a West Bank settlement on Friday to condemn his remarks. The catchphrase “Sorry, Mohammad” became meme fodder for social media as critics posted it alongside videos of Israeli violence against Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Ben-Gvir's comments in a statement Friday night, saying that Israel “allows maximum freedom of movement” in the West Bank. Palestinian militants, Netanyahu said, “take advantage of this freedom of movement to murder Israeli women, children, and families by ambushing them at certain points on different routes.”

“This is what Minister Ben-Gvir meant when he said 'the right to life precedes freedom of movement,” Netanyahu added.

There are at least 645 physical barriers restricting Palestinian movement in the West Bank, according to U.N. monitors. Over half the barriers, the agency says, have a “severe impact on Palestinians” by preventing access to city centers, major roads, farmland, and other services.

Some 30 people have been killed by Palestinian attacks against Israelis since the start of this year, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Nearly 180 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank during that time, most of whom Israel says were militants.

Hadid, a world-famous supermodel and social media influencer whose father is Palestinian, shared an excerpt from Ben-Gvir’s interview with her 59.5 million followers on Instagram on Thursday, writing: “In no place, no time, especially in 2023 should one life be more valuable than another’s. Especially simply because of their ethnicity, culture or pure hatred.”

She also posted a video from leading Israeli rights group B'Tselem showing Israeli soldiers in the southern West Bank city of Hebron telling a resident that Palestinians are not permitted to walk on a certain street because it is reserved for Jews. “Does this remind anyone of anything?” she wrote.

Ben-Gvir responded angrily on Friday to Hadid's post.

“I invite you to Kiryat Arba, to see how we live here, how every day, Jews who have done nothing wrong to anyone in their lives are murdered here,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Ben-Gvir lives in the settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron, the largest Palestinian city.

Earlier this week, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on an Israeli car near Hebron, killing an Israeli woman and seriously wounding the driver. That attack came just days after a Palestinian shooting attack killed an Israeli father and son in the northern Palestinian town of Hawara.

Ben-Gvir acknowledged the backlash but doubled down on his original statement.

“So yes, the right of me and my fellow Jews to travel and return home safely on the roads of Judea and Samaria outweighs the right of terrorists who throw stones at us and kill us," he wrote.

Ben-Gvir has been convicted in the past of inciting racism and of supporting a terrorist organization. He was known as an admirer of rabbi Meir Kahane, who was banned from Parliament and whose Kach party was branded a terrorist group by the United States before he was assassinated in New York in 1990. Kach wanted to strip Arab Israelis of their citizenship, segregate Israeli public spaces, and ban marriages between Jews and non-Jews.

Before joining politics, Ben-Gvir hung a portrait in his living room of a Jewish man who fatally shot 29 Palestinians in the West Bank in 1994.

A once-marginal far-right activist, Ben-Gvir now wields significant power as the national security minister overseeing the Israeli police force in Netanyahu's government.

Israel far-right minister spars with supermodel Bella Hadid over Palestinian rights

Reuters
Updated Fri, August 25, 2023




JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday defended comments by his far-right national security minister that had sparked a row with U.S. supermodel Bella Hadid and drawn condemnation as racist from the Palestinians and Washington.

In an television interview on Wednesday, Itamar Ben-Gvir said that the right to life and safe travel of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank trumped the right to freedom of movement for Palestinians.

Bella Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, responded a day later, telling her near 60 million followers on Instagram: "In no place, no time, especially in 2023 should one life be more valuable than another's" - prompting a rebuke in turn from the minister on Friday.

Palestinians have long railed against restrictions, including checkpoints and travel permits, imposed on them by Israel in the West Bank, where they exercise limited self-rule and which they seek as part of a future state. The United Nations has documented 645 Israeli movement obstacles across the West Bank as of August, more than half of which it said have a severe impact on Palestinians.


Ben-Gvir, who lives in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near the West Bank city of Hebron, told N12 News on Wednesday: "My right, my wife's right, my children's right to travel on the roads of Judea and Samaria is more important than the right to movement for Arabs," referring to the West Bank by its biblical Hebrew name.

On Friday, he responded to Hadid's post, calling her an "Israel hater" and saying she had shared only a segment of the interview on her social media account in order to portray him as a racist.

Netanyahu in a statement said that Israel "allows maximum freedom of movement" for both Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank while implementing security measures to prevent Palestinian attacks.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry on Thursday condemned Ben-Gvir's remarks on N12 News as "racist and heinous" and the U.S. State Department on Friday called his comments "inflammatory" and "racist".

Violence in the West Bank has surged over the past 15 months, with frequent Israeli military raids, Palestinian street attacks and Jewish settler assaults on Palestinian villages.

Since January, at least 188 Palestinians and 35 Israelis and foreigners have been killed in hostilities.

On Monday, a suspected Palestinian drive-by shooting killed an Israeli woman near the settlement when Ben-Gvir lives. In another part of the West Bank, Israeli soldiers shot and critically wounded a Palestinian man who appeared to be running away from them towards another wounded man.

A member of Netanyahu's religious-nationalist coalition, Ben-Gvir has past convictions for support for terrorism and anti-Arab incitement. He says his views have become more moderate since joining the government, without going into further detail.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. It has continued to expand dozens of settlements that are deemed illegal by the United Nations and most countries, a view Israel disputes.

(Reporting by Henriette Chacar; Additional reporting by Rami Ayyub; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Giles Elgood)