Unrelenting coal demand poses challenge to climate goals
Bloomberg News | July 2, 2021 | 

Isaac Plains mine in Queensland, Australia. Image: Golding Contractors

Coal prices across Asia are surging to records, underscoring a challenge for governments seeking a faster energy transition: the dirtiest of fuels they’re racing to phase out is enjoying booming demand.


Power plants are rushing to secure adequate electricity supplies as a hot summer adds to demand from the region’s post-pandemic industrial revival. On top of that, output in some key producer nations has been hurt, while high natural gas costs mean there’s no cheaper alternative for utilities to turn to.

All that has sparked a coal rally in Asia, the center of demand for the fossil fuel. The price of physical coal cargoes in Australia’s Newcastle and China’s Qinhuangdao ports have soared more than 50% this year to their highest ever. Futures are also up, with those in Australia jumping almost 50% and prices in China more than doubling.

“Coal prices just keep on punching higher,” said Sydney-based Peter O’Connor, an analyst at Shaw & Partners Ltd. “We’re close to the top in terms of pricing, but I don’t think we’re there yet.”


The rally is highlighting coal’s enduring role in the world’s energy mix, particularly in Asia’s large and growing economies, despite a broader push for more aggressive action to tackle climate change. Coal accounted for more than a third of global electricity generation in 2019, according to BloombergNEF. The top three consumers — China, India and the U.S. — are all forecast to burn more this year.

“We can see fairly robust pricing toward year-end,” Sakkie Swanepoel, group manager of marketing at Exxaro Resources Ltd., the South Africa-based miner and coal producer, said on a Tuesday conference call. “We do not see prices just falling off the cliff.”

Here’s what’s driving the rally in key markets:
China

Much of the tightness in the market can be traced back to China, which produces and burns half the world’s supply. Power demand is surging as factories take on orders to supply rebounding economies, and domestic mine output has been slowed by safety inspections after a series of deadly accidents and extra scrutiny because of the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th anniversary celebrations.


Power plants are looking to imports to fill the gap, with June deliveries expected to top 30 million tonnes for the first time this year before rising again in July and August, according to analysts at Fengkuang Coal Logistics. The country still refuses to allow Australian purchases amid a geopolitical rift.

Even with government efforts to cool the market — such as releasing stockpiles and pressuring state-owned suppliers not to let bidding get out of hand — prices will hold at elevated levels this summer, especially as the spot market is facing a “pretty serious” shortage, said Huatai Futures Ltd. analyst Wang Haitao.
Australia

Producers have shrugged off the loss of a key export market after diplomatic tensions saw China halt Australian coal purchases from late last year. Cargoes of premium thermal coal have quickly found alternative buyers, while suppliers of mid-quality power station fuel and steel-making coal are poised to benefit as India and parts of Southeast Asia ease Covid-related restrictions, Australia’s government said in a report this week.

Benchmark prices for higher-quality physical coal at Australia’s Newcastle port have jumped 66% this year to a record of $136.38 a tonne, according to China Coal Resource. Newcastle coal futures on Thursday rose to $131.45 a tonne, the highest since March 2011.

Those gains haven’t translated into advances for some Australian producers. Yancoal Australia Ltd. has declined 18% this year to Thursday’s close, while Coronado Global Resources Inc. has slumped 20%. “Coal is going up, and yet people don’t want to invest in coal,” O’Connor said. “There is a dislocation between coal prices and equities.” Companies including Whitehaven Coal Ltd. have also faced lengthy legal battles over expansion plans.
Japan

Some Japanese utilities have boosted spot coal purchases after the country’s Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry ordered them to be prepared for summer demand after winter shortages sent power prices rocketing.

Tohoku Electric Power Co. had to agree to a 60% price bump for its annual coal supply through March 2022 from Glencore Plc. Still, the sky-high coal prices are nowhere near the level they would need to be to cause utilities to switch to liquefied natural gas, where prices have risen by 500% in the past year.


Even in the middle of summer, buyers are already negotiating October-loading cargoes as they seek to secure supplies ahead of winter.
Indonesia

Heavy rains in Indonesia in the beginning of the year curtailed supply in the world’s biggest exporter of power plant coal. The government in April gave miners permission to produce an extra 75 million tonnes for export, on top of the 550 million tonnes it had set as a production quota, but so far supplies are behind pace.


“We don’t know yet if the export target can be achieved,” Indonesia Coal Mining Association Executive Director Hendra Sinadia said in an interview. “Even if prices are good it will also depend on demand and economic recovery in buyer countries amid this pandemic situation.”
India

India, the second-biggest coal user, burns the fuel for about 70% of its power needs and higher prices could ripple across the economy, accelerating inflation, according to Rupesh Sankhe, vice president at Elara Capital India Pvt. in Mumbai.

Coal India Ltd., the top global producer of the fuel, is seeking to win sales as customers switch to domestic sources from higher-cost imports. It’s also debating whether to lift prices for long-term contracts to reflect the surge in global benchmark rates, Chairman Pramod Agrawal said last month.

The producer “has a great chance to win back customers that had switched to imports,” Sankhe said.

(By David Stringer and Dan Murtaugh, with assistance from Krystal Chia, Rajesh Kumar Singh, Eko Listiyorini, Miaojung Lin, Tsuyoshi Inajima and Stephen Stapczynski)

IF AUSTRALIAN MINING COMPANIES DIG COAL IN ALBERTA AND SHIP IT TO JAPAN OR CHINA IT WILL BE LISTED AS AUSTRALIAN COAL

Naura puts UN on two-year deadline to make deep-sea mining rules
MINING.com Editor | July 2, 2021 | 

DeepGreen plans to extract cobalt and other battery metals from the seabed. (Image courtesy of DeepGreen.)

The small Pacific island nation of Nauru made waves this week when it notified a United Nations (UN) body of plans to start deep-sea mining, giving the International Seabed Authority (ISA) two years to complete long-running talks on rules governing the new and controversial industry.


Nauru planned to trigger the “two-year rule”, which allows for a mining plan to be approved after two years under whatever rules are in place at that time.

The ISA, headquartered in Jamaica, has drawn up regulations on exploration, but has yet to establish the rules for exploitation needed for mining to go ahead.

Nauru President Lionel Aingimea notified ISA about the mining plans to be carried out by a subsidiary of The Metals Co. in a letter dated June 25, Reuters reported.

Nauru is a sponsoring state for Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Metals Co, formerly known as DeepGreen Metals, which plans to list on the U.S. Nasdaq in the third quarter in a merger with blank-check company Sustainable Opportunities Acquisition Corp (SOAC).

DeepGreen said it believes that producing critical battery metals from polymetallic nodules has the potential to eliminate or dramatically reduce most of the environmental and social impacts associated with traditional mining.

Nauru, with 12,000 inhabitants, said 80% of its land was uninhabitable because of colonial-era phosphate mining and deep-sea mining was more sustainable. The Metals Co has said deep-sea mining would have less impact than mining for battery metals on land.
“Sustainability conundrum”

Some environmentalists have called for a ban on deep-seabed mining that would extract resources including copper, cobalt, nickel, zinc, lithium, and rare earth elements from nodules on the ocean floor.

Sea floor nodules contain battery metals needed to fuel the world’s transition to clean energy, but trawling the sea floor for them is likely to disrupt ecosystems about which there has been scant research, as they are very difficult to reach, according a report commissioned by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy.

The report authored by six academics said deep seabed mining was a “sustainability conundrum.”

The advanced exploration stage Nori Clarion-Clipperton polymetallic project, about 4,000-4,500 metres deep into the northeastern part of the Pacific Ocean is named after the seafloor zone between Hawaii and Mexico, and is part of international waters. The exploration contract is held by NORI, but DeepGreen Metals has exclusive access to the area.

The 4,000-kilometre swath of ocean is known for containing enough nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese to build over 250 million electric vehicle batteries.

The ISA, in a statement, acknowledged Nauru’s letter and said it aimed to resume this year work on mining regulations, which had earlier been delayed due pandemic travel restrictions.

(With files from Reuters)

Cameroon to build railway to Mbalam-​Nabeba project with China-linked firms

Stock Image

Cameroon signed a deal on Friday with two China-linked companies to construct a railway from the coast to a large cross-border iron deposit, the state broadcaster said, even as it faces legal action over the project from Australia’s Sundance Resources.


Sundance has filed for international arbitration and billions of dollars in damages, saying Cameroon and Congo Republic have violated contracts by developing the Mbalam-​Nabeba project with Chinese investors.

Cameroon’s mines minister and transport minister signed the memorandum of understanding to construct the rail link from Mbalam to the southern port of Kribi with representatives of Aust-Sino Resources and Bestway Finance, the state broadcaster CRTV said in a post on Twitter.

The ministries did not respond to a request for comment.

Bestway Finance is registered in Hong Kong. Mining company Aust-Sino is based in Australia, but some of its board members have close links to China, according to its website.

Aust-Sino, which was a major backer of Sundance until last year, did not respond to a request for comment. Bestway could not be reached.

Congo Republic revoked Sundance affiliate Congo Iron’s permit for the Congolese part of the project in December and awarded it to little known company Sangha Mining Development Sasu, which is backed by Bestway.

Mining has yet to start at Mbalam-​Nabeba, which has an estimated 775 million tonnes of iron ore. Over 500 kilometres (310 miles) of rail needs to be built to transport the ore to the coast.

Projects requiring significant infrastructure investment have become more viable due to a surge in iron ore prices, which hit a record high in May as a rebound in demand for the key steel-making ingredient from top consumer China outpaced supply.

(By Josiane Kouagheu and Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Reuters | June 25, 2021 |

Mars Has Amazing Auroras, Images Captured by Probe


Alec G., Tech Times 03 July 2021, 

(Photo : Photo by Lev Fedoseyev\TASS via Getty Images) MURMANSK REGION, RUSSIA - JANUARY 12, 2021: The Northern Lights.


A probe hot amazing photos of Mars' nightside aurora as it studied the Martian atmosphere.

Nightside Aurora Spotted

According to a report by Futurism, the probe was sent by the United Arab Emirates in hopes of studying the Martian landscape. Everything was going as planned, until the unexpected phenomenon shocked the researchers and immediately took still photos to immortalize the event.

The nightside aurora is said to be notoriously hard to detect and let alone take pictures of.

However, as luck would have it, instruments of the scientific vessel were able to catch a glimmer of the aurora that was otherwise proven very difficult to study.

The images were released on Wednesday, June 30, that showed the auroras looking like a shape of bright dots pitted against Mars' dark sky. The discovery only happened by coincidence and was not even part of the science vessel's observation mission.

This discovery sets up the Emirates Mars Mission to possibly encounter more discoveries later this year.

Justin Deighan, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado as well as the deputy science lead of the mission spoke to Space.com saying, "They're not easy to catch, and so that's why seeing them basically right away with [Emirates Mars Mission] was kind of exciting and unexpected."

He went on and said that the discovery was on their radar but actually being able to witness it for the first time was "a lot of fun."

Read More: NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Detects 'Small Amount of Methane' on the Red Planet--But ESA's Trace Gas Spacecraft Could Not Find It

Auroras on Earth and Mars

Auroras are the creation of the planet's magnetic field as charged particles get sent out into the atmosphere. They alter their own trajectories sporadically, causing the particles to then ionize and create light that we see in a myriad of colors as they mingle with each other.

The auroras on Mars, however, are different to Earth as it doesn't happen in just the north and south poles but appears on every part of the planet.


This happens as the magnetically charged atmosphere of the Red Planet isn't the same as the one located on Earth.


Deighan came to explain it as if taking a bag full of magnets and sprinkling them over the planet, and all of the magnets are pointing in different directions with varying strengths. The scattered magnetic fields then cause the solar wind particles to blast off in different areas that interact with molecules and atoms in the upper atmosphere.
Emirates Mars Mission

The probe used its Ultraviolet Spectrometer to capture the reclusive phenomenon that was originally meant to study the gigantic halo of hydrogen and oxygen surrounding Mars.

The mixture of the two then dissipates towards the outer atmosphere.

Hessa Al Matroushi, the mission's leading figure, said that they didn't anticipate that the instrument could capture such a feat and went on saying that it wasn't designed for it.

However, the accidental mistake is an exciting one for the team as their mission was to capture different sides of the atmosphere of Mars.

The team is excited and hoping for new discoveries that could create newer doors for which they could study in terms of the Martian planet and how solar activity interacts with it regularly.

Read More: Mars Exploration Update: Chinese Rover Zhurong Sends Back First Audio and Video Clips

This article is owned by Tech Times

Proximity to Sun’s Magnetic Field Determines Composition of Rocky Planets, Study Says
Jul 2, 2021 by News Staff / Source



Terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) are differentiated into three layers: a metallic core, a silicate shell (mantle and crust), and a volatile envelope of gases, ices, and, for the Earth, liquid water. Each layer has different dominant elements (e.g., increasing iron content with depth and increasing oxygen content to the surface). University of Maryland’s Professor William McDonough and Tohoku University’s Dr. Takashi Yoshizaki have now developed a model showing that the density, mass and iron content of a rocky planet’s core are influenced by its distance from the magnetic field of the Sun.
A view of the planets of our Solar System. Image credit: Jenny Mottar / NASA.

The new model developed by Professor McDonough and Dr. Yoshizaki shows that during the early formation of our Solar System, when the young Sun was surrounded by a swirling cloud of dust and gas, grains of iron were drawn toward the center by the Sun’s magnetic field.

When the planets began to form from clumps of that dust and gas, planets closer to the Sun incorporated more iron into their cores than those farther away.

The researchers found that the density and proportion of iron in a rocky planet’s core correlates with the strength of the magnetic field around the Sun during planetary formation.

Their study suggests that magnetism should be factored into future attempts to describe the composition of rocky planets, including those outside our Solar System.

The composition of a planet’s core is important for its potential to support life.

On Earth, for instance, a molten iron core creates a magnetosphere that protects the planet from cancer-causing cosmic rays.

The core also contains the majority of the planet’s phosphorus, which is an important nutrient for sustaining carbon-based life.

Using existing models of planetary formation, the scientists determined the speed at which gas and dust was pulled into the center of our Solar System during its formation.

They factored in the magnetic field that would have been generated by the Sun as it burst into being and calculated how that magnetic field would draw iron through the dust and gas cloud.

As the early Solar System began to cool, dust and gas that were not drawn into the Sun began to clump together.

The clumps closer to the Sun would have been exposed to a stronger magnetic field and thus would contain more iron than those farther away from the Sun.

As the clumps coalesced and cooled into spinning planets, gravitational forces drew the iron into their core.



Density of the rocky solar system bodies: uncompressed and solid densities are shown for terrestrial planets and chondrites (gray), respectively; bulk planetary densities are shown for asteroids (blue); for 1 Ceres, its bulk density is a lower limit of its solid density, given its high ice abundance and porosity; the red line shows a fit curve for the planets. Image credit: McDonough & Yoshizaki, doi: 10.1186/s40645-021-00429-4.

When the authors incorporated their model into calculations of planetary formation, it revealed a gradient in metal content and density that corresponds perfectly with what scientists know about the planets in our Solar System.

Mercury has a metallic core that makes up about three-quarters of its mass. The cores of Earth and Venus are only about one-third of their mass, and Mars, the outermost of the rocky planets, has a small core that is only about one-quarter of its mass.

This new understanding of the role magnetism plays in planetary formation creates a kink in the study of exoplanets, because there is currently no method to determine the magnetic properties of a star from Earth-based observations.

“The attributes of our Solar System may be equally applicable to exoplanetary systems,” the researchers said.

“The generation of a planetary magnetosphere, which nurtures life, shapes a planet’s habitability.”

“It is likely that life’s sustainability critically depends on being sited in the Goldilocks zone and having the right amount of metallic core, which contains an appropriate amount of a light element and is not cooling too fast.”

The team’s paper was published in the journal Progress in Earth and Planetary Science.

_____

W.F. McDonough & T. Yoshizaki. 2021. Terrestrial planet compositions controlled by accretion disk magnetic field. Prog Earth Planet Sci 8, 39; doi: 10.1186/s40645-021-00429-4

Were Scientists Wrong About the Planet Mercury? Its Big Iron Core May Be Due to Magnetism!

By UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND JULY 3, 2021


New research shows the sun’s magnetic field drew iron toward the center of our solar system as the planets formed. That explains why Mercury, which is closest to the sun has a bigger, denser, iron core relative to its outer layers than the other rocky planets like Earth and Mars. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

New research from the University of Maryland shows that proximity to the sun’s magnetic field determines a planet’s interior composition.

A new study disputes the prevailing hypothesis on why Mercury has a big core relative to its mantle (the layer between a planet’s core and crust). For decades, scientists argued that hit-and-run collisions with other bodies during the formation of our solar system blew away much of Mercury’s rocky mantle and left the big, dense, metal core inside. But new research reveals that collisions are not to blame—the sun’s magnetism is.

William McDonough, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland, and Takashi Yoshizaki from Tohoku University developed a model showing that the density, mass and iron content of a rocky planet’s core are influenced by its distance from the sun’s magnetic field. The paper describing the model was published on July 2, 2021, in the journal Progress in Earth and Planetary Science.


“The four inner planets of our solar system—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—are made up of different proportions of metal and rock,” McDonough said. “There is a gradient in which the metal content in the core drops off as the planets get farther from the sun. Our paper explains how this happened by showing that the distribution of raw materials in the early forming solar system was controlled by the sun’s magnetic field.”

McDonough previously developed a model for Earth’s composition that is commonly used by planetary scientists to determine the composition of exoplanets. (His seminal paper on this work has been cited more than 8,000 times.)

McDonough’s new model shows that during the early formation of our solar system, when the young sun was surrounded by a swirling cloud of dust and gas, grains of iron were drawn toward the center by the sun’s magnetic field. When the planets began to form from clumps of that dust and gas, planets closer to the sun incorporated more iron into their cores than those farther away.

The researchers found that the density and proportion of iron in a rocky planet’s core correlates with the strength of the magnetic field around the sun during planetary formation. Their new study suggests that magnetism should be factored into future attempts to describe the composition of rocky planets, including those outside our solar system.

The composition of a planet’s core is important for its potential to support life. On Earth, for instance, a molten iron core creates a magnetosphere that protects the planet from cancer-causing cosmic rays. The core also contains the majority of the planet’s phosphorus, which is an important nutrient for sustaining carbon-based life.

Using existing models of planetary formation, McDonough determined the speed at which gas and dust was pulled into the center of our solar system during its formation. He factored in the magnetic field that would have been generated by the sun as it burst into being and calculated how that magnetic field would draw iron through the dust and gas cloud.

As the early solar system began to cool, dust and gas that were not drawn into the sun began to clump together. The clumps closer to the sun would have been exposed to a stronger magnetic field and thus would contain more iron than those farther away from the sun. As the clumps coalesced and cooled into spinning planets, gravitational forces drew the iron into their core.

When McDonough incorporated this model into calculations of planetary formation, it revealed a gradient in metal content and density that corresponds perfectly with what scientists know about the planets in our solar system. Mercury has a metallic core that makes up about three-quarters of its mass. The cores of Earth and Venus are only about one-third of their mass, and Mars, the outermost of the rocky planets, has a small core that is only about one-quarter of its mass.

This new understanding of the role magnetism plays in planetary formation creates a kink in the study of exoplanets, because there is currently no method to determine the magnetic properties of a star from Earth-based observations. Scientists infer the composition of an exoplanet based on the spectrum of light radiated from its sun. Different elements in a star emit radiation in different wavelengths, so measuring those wavelengths reveals what the star, and presumably the planets around it, are made of.

“You can no longer just say, ‘Oh, the composition of a star looks like this, so the planets around it must look like this,’” McDonough said. “Now you have to say, ‘Each planet could have more or less iron based on the magnetic properties of the star in the early growth of the solar system.’”

The next steps in this work will be for scientists to find another planetary system like ours—one with rocky planets spread over wide distances from their central sun. If the density of the planets drops as they radiate out from the sun the way it does in our solar system, researchers could confirm this new theory and infer that a magnetic field influenced planetary formation.

Reference: “Terrestrial planet compositions controlled by accretion disk magnetic field” by William F. McDonough and Takashi Yoshizaki, 2 July 2021, Progress in Earth and Planetary Science.
DOI: 10.1186/s40645-021-00429-4

Mining brines from dormant volcanoes could provide the metals needed for a sustainable future

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | July 4, 2021 |

Volcano. (Image from Pxhere, CC0).

Scientists at the University of Oxford are proposing the idea of sustainably extracting copper, gold, zinc, silver and lithium from brines trapped in porous rocks at depths of around 2 kilometres below dormant volcanoes.


In a paper published in the journal Open Science, the researchers explain that the gases released by magma beneath volcanoes are rich in metals. As the pressure drops, the gases separate into steam and brine. Most metals dissolved in the original magmatic gas become concentrated in the dense brine, which in turn gets trapped in porous rock. The less-dense and metal-depleted steam continues up to the surface, where it can form fumaroles, such as those seen at many active volcanoes.

According to the team led by petrologist Jon Blundy, this trapped, subterranean brine is a potential ‘liquid ore’ containing a slew of valuable metals, including gold, lithium and several million tonnes of copper, all of which could be exploited by extracting the fluids to the surface via deep wells.

Employing this method could potentially reduce the cost of mining and ore processing. In addition to this, since geothermal power would be a significant by-product of this green-mining approach, operations would be carbon-neutral.

TRAPPED, SUBTERRANEAN BRINE IS A POTENTIAL ‘LIQUID ORE’ CONTAINING A SLEW OF VALUABLE METALS

“Active volcanoes around the world discharge to the atmosphere prodigious quantities of valuable metals,” Blundy said in a media statement. “Green mining represents a novel way to extract both the metal-bearing fluids and geothermal power, in a way that dramatically reduces the environmental impact of conventional mining.”

To reach this conclusion, the researcher and his team at Oxford joined forces with Russian colleagues and worked on drill cores from a number of deep geothermal systems located in Japan, Italy, Montserrat, Indonesia and Mexico.

Using volcanology, hydrodynamic modelling, geochemistry, geophysics and high-temperature experiments, they were able to confirm their predictions of metal-rich brines.

The scientists say that geophysical surveys of volcanoes show that almost every active and dormant volcano hosts a potentially exploitable ‘lens’ of metal-rich brine. This means that metal exploration may not be limited to relatively few countries such as Chile, the DRC, or the US, as it is currently because volcanoes exist all around the world.
The risks

There are risks to this proposal, though. The main ones are related to the technology that has to be used as the process involves drilling into rock at 2 kilometres depth and at temperatures of more than 450°C. On top of this, the extracted fluids are corrosive, which places limits on the types of drilling materials and they tend to dump their metal load in the well-bore, a problem known as ‘scaling.’

These limitations mean that more research needs to be done around the dynamics of fluid flow and pressure-temperature control in the well-bore and that there will be a need to develop resistive coatings to prevent well-bore corrosion.

Luckily, many of these challenges are already being addressed through deep, hot geothermal drilling projects. In some cases these projects have reached temperatures over 500 °C; and occasionally they have tapped into small pockets of molten rock, for example in Iceland and Hawaii.

The latter challenge, however, is being addressed already as the Oxford team has patented an idea for fluid extraction that guarantees that the fluids continue to flow into the well once drilled, taking into account the permeability and porosity of hot, ductile rock.

Whether there is a risk of triggering volcanic eruptions, the researchers say it is very small, but must be assessed even though they are not planning to drill into magma itself, but into the hot rocks above the magma chamber, which greatly reduces the risk of encountering magma.

The scientists have spent the last five years de-risking the concept, and are now ready to drill an exploratory well at a dormant volcano. This will clarify many of the risks and challenges associated with the technique and will herald a new advance in the understanding of volcanoes and their bounty of energy and metals.

In their view, a working ‘brine mine’ could be 5-15 years away, depending on how well the challenges can be addressed.

 

NASA Continues to Try to Rescue Failing Hubble Space Telescope

TOPICS:Hubble Space TelescopeNASA

By MATT WILLIAMS JULY 4, 2021

This illustration shows the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in its high orbit 600 kilometers above Earth. Credit: European Space Agency

Things are not looking very good for the Hubble Space Telescope right now. On Sunday, June 13^th, the telescope’s payload computer suddenly stopped working, prompting the main computer to put the telescope into safe mode. While the telescope itself and its science instruments remain in working order, science operations have been suspended until the operations team can figure out how to get the payload computer back online.

While attempting to restart the computer, the operations team has also tried to trace the issue to specific components in the payload computer and switch to their backup modules. As of June 30th, the team began looking into the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) and the Power Control Unit (PCU). Meanwhile, NASA is busy preparing and testing procedures to switch to backup hardware if either of these components are the culprit.

The payload computer is part of the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit, where it is responsible for controlling and coordinating the scientific instruments aboard the spacecraft. The current issues began when the main computer stopped receiving the “keep-alive” signal from the payload computer – which lets the main computer know that everything is working.

That’s when the operations team began investigating different pieces of hardware on the SI C&DH as the possible source. Based on the available data, the team initially thought that the problem was due to a degrading memory module and tried to switch to one of the module’s multiple backups – but met with failure. On the evening of Thursday, June 17^th, another attempt was made to bring both modules back online, but these attempts also led to failure.

At that point, they began looking into other possibles sources of the shutdown, like the Standard Interface (STINT) hardware. This component is responsible for bridging communications between the computer’s Central Processing Module (CPM), which they began investigating as well. Now, the team is investigating the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) and a power regulator within the Power Control Unit (PCU).

Whereas the CU/SDF sends and formats commands and data while the PCU is designed to ensure a steady voltage supply to the payload computer’s hardware. If either of these systems is responsible for the shutdown, then the team must once again go through an operations procedure to switch to the backup units. This time, however, the procedure is more complex and risky than the ones the team executed last time.

Mainly, switching to the backup CU/SDF or backup power regulator requires that several other hardware boxes need to be switched to their backups because of the way they are connected to the SI C&DH unit. The last time the operations team performed this task was back in 2008, which was the last time the CU/SDF module failed. This is what prompted the final servicing mission in 2009, which replaced the entire SI C&DH unit.

Given the complexity of switching multiple systems over to their backups, the operations team is currently reviewing and updating all of Hubble‘s operations procedures, commands, and all other items relating to switching to backup hardware. When they are finished (expected for next week) the team will run a high-fidelity simulator to test their plan of execution and see if they can pull it off.

Since Hubble first launched in 1990, it has taken over 1.5 million images, and more than 600,000 of those were taken since its last servicing mission in 2009. These images are some of the most breathtaking views of the Universe ever taken and have led to substantial discoveries about the nature of our Universe. Here at home, it has deepened our understanding of the Kuiper Belt and Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) like Pluto and Eris.

In 2014, it also observed the farthest object to ever be visited by a spacecraft – the Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) Arrokoth, which the New Horizons mission made a close pass with on Jan. 1^st, 2019. It also observed aurora in the atmospheres of Jupiter, and Saturn, as well as Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Hubble is also responsible for providing the data that led astronomers to conclude that Ganymede likely contains a large saltwater ocean in its interior.

Beyond the Solar System, Hubble has aided in the first atmospheric studies of exoplanets, helped constrain the size and mass of the Milky Way, the evolution of galaxies over time, revealed the accelerating expansion of the Universe (leading to the theory of Dark Energy), and aided in the study of Dark Matter. These and other accomplishments are all part of Hubble‘s legacy as it celebrates being in space for 31 years, 2 months, and either days.

I think I speak for everyone when I wish Hubble a speedy recovery and hope it has a few more years left in her!

Originally published on Universe Today.

Burned churches stir deep Indigenous ambivalence over faith of forefathers

Firefighters inspect the damage at the burned-out Roman Catholic St Jean Baptiste church in Morinville, Alberta, Canada. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

After hundreds of unmarked graves were found at Canada’s former Catholic-run residential schools, churches in First Nations territories have been destroyed by suspected arson

Leyland Cecco
Sun 4 Jul 2021

For more than a century, the clapboard church set amid rolling hills in western Canada has been a spiritual home to the Upper Similkameen Indian Band.

To build St Anne’s, residents of Chuchuwayha Indian Reserve #2 travelled 40 miles to the closest town, hauling lumber back to their community by horse and wagon.

To reach its pews, generations of congregants would travel miles by foot, past ponderosa pine and sagebrush.

But early last Saturday, thick smoke filled the air and flames ripped through the ageing wooden structure near Hedley in British Columbia. By the time local fire crews arrived, the church had been reduced to a pile of ash.

Fire destroys a Catholic church in Morinville, Alberta, this week. Photograph: Diane Burrel/Reuters

The community’s fire chief said nothing could be done to save the wooden building. Police say the fire that destroyed the church was suspicious and probably deliberately set. It was the fourth Catholic church on First Nations territory destroyed by fire in less than a month.

“The church meant so much to all of us, especially our ancestors,” Carrie Allison, an elder who helped maintain the church, said in a statement. “When your hurt turns to rage it is not healthy for you or your community.”

As Canada grapples with the discovery of more than 1,000 unmarked graves of Indigenous children at the sites of former residential schools, many have directed their grief and anger at the Catholic church, which ran more than half of the schools across the country.

Disease and hunger were rife at the schools, and survivors have described physical and sexual abuse, often at the hands of priests and Catholic laypeople.

In recent weeks, nearly two dozen churches have been burned or vandalized across the country – eight of which occurred in First Nations territories.

Justin Trudeau joined Indigenous leaders and provincial officials in condemning what are widely suspected to be acts of arson.

“I can’t help but think that burning down churches is actually depriving people who are in need of grieving and healing and mourning from places where they can grieve and reflect and look for support,” the prime minister said on Friday.


Canada must reveal ‘undiscovered truths’ of residential schools to heal

But for many Indigenous people, churches summon contradictory and conflicting emotions: they are the spaces built by their ancestors where generations were baptised and buried, but they also represent the destruction of Indigenous culture and more than a century of fear and physical abuse.

From the 19th century until the 1990s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were obliged to attend state-funded schools in a campaign to forcibly assimilate them into Canadian society. More than half were run by the Catholic church; thousands of children died of disease, neglect and other causes.

“Those innocent souls were scarified for colonialism,” said Amelia McComber, an Indigenous practitioner and theologian. “And that sacrifice has become the focal point of the hurt and the trauma that has gone on for generations in our communities.”

Entering the schools, children were forbidden to speak their mother tongue, and forced to convert to Christianity. Generations later, many of Indigenous people in Canada still identify as Christian.

“We are a spiritual people and that spirituality was transferred to Christ, because that was the only way our people could pray [in the residential schools]. That was the only way that they could worship,” said McComber.

A man sits and prays at the field where the remains of over 750 children were buried on the site of the former Marieval Indian residential school in Cowessess First Nation, Saskatchewan, last month. Photograph: Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty Images

Some have suggested that First Nations communities should consider cutting all ties with a religion they say was imposed on them.

“It is a legitimate debate for First Nations to talk about removing Catholic churches from our territories, and establishing our own faith as the official religion,” tweeted the writer Robert Jago. “Canada and [First Nations] – these aren’t 100% separate societies – but religion is one of the places they are, or should be.”

But as more churches are burned or vandalized, Indigenous leaders have pleaded for the buildings – many more than a century old – to be spared, despite the anger.

“I can understand it. I don’t like the church. I don’t believe in the church,” chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band told the National Post, after the church in his community was destroyed. “Many residential school survivors hate the church with a passion – but I have never heard any of them ever suggest people turn to this … I talk to a lot of residential school survivors and, sure, there is a lot of hatred and bitterness and anger – but that still doesn’t mean you go and do arson.”

For Allison, a survivor of the Kamloops Indian residential school, the fire has only worsened the pain.

“I think of all our ancestors that helped to build St Anne’s, looking over us and watching all their hard work and the place they cherished burn to the ground,” she wrote. “A lot of us suffered, but this is not how we do things, and this is not our way. It makes me so sick, sad, and I can only hope I do not know you. I feel sorry for you, and I hope you’re satisfied.”

WHY CANADA IS NOT THE USA

The billionaire and the socialist: No longer the odd couple, believe it or not

BRENT JANG
VANCOUVER
PUBLISHED 1  JULY 3, 2021

B.C. billionaire Jim Pattison, left, and former B.C. premier Glen Clark in 2007.

For Glen Clark, a former B.C. premier, NDP politician and union organizer, redemption came from an unexpected place.

A conflict-of-interest scandal had forced him to resign as premier in 1999, although he kept his seat in the B.C. legislature for another 21 months. In the spring of 2001, he opted not to seek re-election in his riding of Vancouver-Kingsway.

With his political career in tatters and the NDP nearly wiped out by the Liberals in the provincial election in May, 2001, Mr. Clark’s employment prospects appeared limited. At the time, he had criminal charges hanging over him for alleged breach of trust and accepting a benefit. He would later be found not guilty.

Dave Barrett, who served as B.C. premier from 1972 to 1975, phoned Jim Pattison, the billionaire owner of the Vancouver-based Jim Pattison Group, to recommend that he hire Mr. Clark.

Mr. Pattison went with his instincts. Instead of waiting for the outcome of the court case, he took Mr. Clark at his word. “Before I hired him, I asked him a lot of questions and he answered all the questions, and based on what he told me, I believed him,” Mr. Pattison told The Globe and Mail. “I hired him at the time because I thought that he would work out okay with us, and it turned out he did.”


In 2001, exactly 20 years ago as of Saturday, Mr. Clark joined Pattison Group’s sign division as a regional manager. The alliance between the two men has since grown into a flourishing business dynamic. Mr. Clark lacked corporate credentials when he joined the company, but he learned quickly. He became the conglomerate’s president in 2011 and then added the title of chief operating officer in 2017.

Mr. Clark and Mr. Pattison began as a corporate odd couple. Media coverage in the early years pointed out the stark contrasts between the two men. “Yeah, the billionaire and the socialist,” Mr. Clark, now 63 years old, said during an interview.

It would be oversimplifying to portray Mr. Clark solely as the trade unionist and Mr. Pattison as the capitalist. “They’re both kind of self-made out of East Vancouver,” said Bill Tieleman, a communications consultant and former BC NDP strategist who worked for Mr. Clark in 1996 in the premier’s office.

On closer examination, he added, the two men complement each other, and each has a strong work ethic. “There was never a question of them getting along,” Mr. Tieleman said.

This spring, Mr. Clark and Mr. Pattison made a visit together to one of Pattison Group’s newest holdings: a Quality Foods grocery store in Parksville on Vancouver Island.

The trip, for the purpose of taking a close-up look at this new part of Mr. Pattison’s sprawling business empire, underscored the bond between the two men.

The conglomerate’s eclectic assets today include supermarket chains under the Quality Foods and Save-On-Foods banners, car dealerships, billboard advertising, Guinness World Records, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Great Wolf Lodge, Canadian Fishing Co., and a broadcasting unit with more than 45 radio stations.

Normally, Mr. Pattison and Mr. Clark would have cut a ribbon to open the Quality Foods store and encouraged local fanfare. But with COVID-19 restrictions still in effect, they wanted to avoid drawing a big crowd of shoppers. Instead, they took a corporate jet to Vancouver Island and arranged to be driven to Parksville two days before the grand opening. In late March, the store manager held a scaled-back ceremony with the mayor of Parksville, after Mr. Pattison and Mr. Clark had already left.

Whenever possible behind the scenes, Mr. Pattison and Mr. Clark strive to maintain the tradition of pressing the flesh with managers and employees at the local level. It’s a practice they’ve kept up during the pandemic, despite the necessity of masks and physical distancing.

“You can’t really find out what’s going on, sitting at a desk in Vancouver,” Mr. Clark said. “You can read the statistics and all the financial statements, but you really don’t get a feel for the company until you go talk to people. That may well be old-fashioned, but that’s certainly our core principle.”

On their trips together, Mr. Clark and Mr. Pattison take time to check out not only wholly owned assets but also companies in which Mr. Pattison has significant equity stakes. Among his holdings are 51 per cent of lumber producer Canfor Corp. and 38 per cent of coal-export operator Westshore Terminals Investment Corp.

Pattison Group is a holding company that promotes decentralization, placing responsibility on the leader of each operation to run a tight ship. “We really believe that the heart of the company is the operations,” Mr. Clark said. “We want to talk to the operators, we want to visit the people. We really try hard to visit as many as we can every year. That’s why I’m on the road a lot.”

Mr. Clark has toured more than 200 grocery stores that belong to Pattison Group. “I’ve been to every one of them,” he said. “That’s the most fun part of the job.”

He oversees several of the company’s divisions, including Ripley’s, whose oddity-filled museums have been hurt by pandemic-related shutdowns. Pattison’s grocery chains and car dealerships, meanwhile, have prospered during the pandemic.

Mr. Clark thrived on toiling through long days in his political life. He has learned that, in the corporate world, the pace can be just as gruelling, especially when reporting directly to the boss. Mr. Pattison, who turned 92 last October, still works seven days a week as the owner, chairman and chief executive officer of Pattison Group.

Mr. Pattison’s roots are humble. He was born in Saskatchewan. His parents moved to Vancouver’s working-class east side when he was five years old.

In pursuing his entrepreneurial dreams, Mr. Pattison ended up three courses short of earning a commerce degree from the University of British Columbia. In the summer of 1948, at the age of 19, during a break from studies at UBC, he landed a job that required wearing rubber coveralls while washing used cars with a hose.

At Fred Richmond Motors in Vancouver, he seized an opportunity when the manager allowed him to also sell used cars on the lot, as long as the lone salesman wasn’t on duty. “The first week that I was washing cars, I sold three,” Mr. Pattison said.

He started a single Pontiac and Buick dealership in Vancouver in 1961. Since then, Pattison Group has grown by leaps and bounds. Last year, it had $12.7-billion in revenue, with 51,000 employees across 565 locations worldwide.

Mr. Pattison’s confidence in his staff has been paid back in loyalty. His longest-serving employee is Maureen Chant, who has been his administrative assistant since 1963.

Over the decades, Mr. Pattison has become a notable philanthropist in Canada. In 2017, he donated $75-million to the St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation in Vancouver and $50-million to help build a new children’s hospital in Saskatoon.

“Jimmy Pattison believes in sharing the wealth. He just wants to do it on his own terms,” Mr. Tieleman said. “And he has maintained pretty good relations with organized labour, not that there haven’t been differences in bargaining and issues.”

Mr. Clark was born in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island and raised on Vancouver’s east side. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Simon Fraser University and graduated with a master’s degree in community and regional planning from UBC.

A former union organizer, he parlayed his backing from the labour movement into winning a seat in the B.C. legislature at the age of 28 in 1986. As B.C. finance minister in the early 1990s, he got to know the buzz in the businesses community.

“He would go to meetings with businesspeople and they would be prepared to be anywhere from skeptical to downright negative,” Mr. Tieleman recalled. “But I can certainly remember meetings where business leaders were just stunned how much he knew about their business. He’s always been a super quick study.”

In the summer of 2002, nearly 14 months after Mr. Clark joined Pattison Group, a B.C. Supreme Court judge cleared him of all criminal charges. He remains a supporter of the BC NDP and has never renounced his social democratic ideals.

He said he admires his boss’s tenacity and is grateful for the opportunity Mr. Pattison gave him to transition into a second career after the rough and tumble of politics. “No one offered me a job, because I obviously had to clear my name. Then Jimmy phoned and invited me down and it was fantastic that he offered me a job,” he recalls. “I had a mortgage to pay and I didn’t have much prospects.”

Despite the mutual admiration, Mr. Pattison cautioned against speculating on succession planning, dismissing the notion that any specific person is in line to take over as CEO. Industry insiders say various scenarios are possible, with several candidates capable of leading Pattison Group when the time comes to pass the torch.

The car salesman turned billionaire emphasized that, as a private company, Pattison Group won’t be telegraphing what exactly happens next. He did say he has no regrets about his decision two decades ago to place his trust in Mr. Clark.

“Well, it’s worked out certainly from our company’s point of view. It’s worked out fine,” Mr. Pattison said. “I just can’t say anything negative about Glen. He’s a hard worker and people like him. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t do anything different.”

Hubble telescope spots red, white and blue stars in sparkly cluster


By Tariq Malik 

It's a festive view for the Fourth of July.

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a close-up of the open star cluster NGC 330 in the Small Magellanic Cloud. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Kalirai, A. Milone)

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a dazzling view of a distant star cluster, one filled with stars that sparkle in red, white and blue, unveiled just in time for the Fourth of July U.S. holiday.

The photo, which NASA and the European Space Agency released July 2, shows the open star cluster NGC 330, a group of stars located about 180,000 light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way, in the constellation Tucana, the Toucan.

"Because star clusters form from a single primordial cloud of gas and dust, all the stars they contain are roughly the same age," NASA and ESA officials wrote in an image description. "This makes them useful natural laboratories for astronomers to learn how stars form and evolve."



This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the full view of the brilliant open star cluster NGC 330 in the Small Magellanic Cloud based on archived observations from 2018. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Kalirai, A. Milone)

Astronomers used archived observations from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in 2018 to create this image to support two different studies aimed at understanding how star clusters evolve and how large stars can grow before they explode as supernovas.


"The most stunning object in this image is actually the very small star cluster in the lower left corner of the image, surrounded by a nebula of ionised hydrogen (red) and dust (blue)," ESA officials said in a separate image description. " Named Galfor 1, the cluster was discovered in 2018 in Hubble's archival data, which was used to create this latest image from Hubble."

Scientists studying Galfor 1 will have to wait until NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope (while will launch later this year) can observe it to determine its surrounding nebula has a bow shock feature, ESA added.

The criss-cross patterns of the brilliant stars here are actually an artifact of Hubble itself. They're called diffraction spikes and form when starlight reflects off the four vanes supporting Hubble's secondary mirror, ESA officials said.

While Hubble's view of NGC 330 may add some sparkle to those celebrating the Fourth of July holiday, American astronauts in space have no such luck. They'll be working through the holiday weekend to prepare a visiting SpaceX Dragon cargo ship for its return to Earth on Tuesday (July 6).

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 and captured stunning photos of the universe for over 30 years. The iconic observatory is currently offline due to a computer glitch, with NASA working to activate a backup computer in the hopes of restoring Hubble to good health.

Tariq Malik
SPACE.COM EDITOR IN CHIEF — Tariq joined the Space.com team in 2001 as a staff writer, and later editor, covering human spaceflight, exploration and space science. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.