Month: March 2022

The moon is about to get walloped by nearly 3 metric tons of space junk, a punch that will carve out a crater that could fit several semitrailer trucks.

The leftover chunk of a rocket will smash into the far side of the moon at 9,300 kph (5,800 mph) on Friday, away from telescopes' prying eyes. It may take weeks, even months, to confirm the impact through satellite images.

It's been tumbling haphazardly through space, experts believe, since China launched it nearly a decade ago. But Chinese officials are dubious it's theirs.

No matter whose it is, scientists expect the object to carve out a hole 10 to 20 meters (33 to 66 feet) across and send moon dust flying hundreds of kilometers across the barren, pockmarked surface.

Not hard to follow

Low-orbiting space junk is relatively easy to track. Objects launching deeper into space are unlikely to hit anything, and these far-flung pieces are usually soon forgotten by everyone except a handful of observers who enjoy playing celestial detective on the side.

SpaceX originally took the rap for the upcoming lunar litter after asteroid tracker Bill Gray identified the collision course in January. He corrected himself a month later, saying the "mystery" object was not a SpaceX Falcon rocket upper stage from the 2015 launch of a deep space climate observatory for NASA.

Gray said it was likely the third stage of a Chinese rocket that sent a test sample capsule to the moon and back in 2014. But Chinese ministry officials said the upper stage had reentered Earth's atmosphere and burned up

But there were two Chinese missions with similar designations — the test flight and 2020's lunar sample return mission — and U.S. observers believe the two are getting mixed up.

The U.S. Space Command, which tracks lower space junk, confirmed Tuesday that the Chinese upper stage from the 2014 lunar mission never deorbited, as previously indicated in its database. But it could not confirm the country of origin for the object about to strike the moon.

"We focus on objects closer to the Earth," a spokesperson said in a statement.

Gray, a mathematician and physicist, said he's confident now that it's China's rocket.

"I've become a little bit more cautious of such matters," he said. "But I really just don't see any way it could be anything else."

Another crater

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics supported Gray's revised assessment, but noted: "The effect will be the same. It'll leave yet another small crater on the moon."

The moon already bears countless craters, ranging up to 2,500 kilometers (1,600 miles). With little to no real atmosphere, the moon is defenseless against the constant barrage of meteors and asteroids, and the occasional incoming spacecraft, including a few intentionally crashed for science's sake. With no weather, there's no erosion, so impact craters last forever.

China has a lunar lander on the moon's far side, but it will be too far away to detect Friday's impact just north of the equator. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will also be out of range. It's unlikely India's moon-orbiting Chandrayaan-2 will be passing by then, either.

"I had been hoping for something [significant] to hit the moon for a long time. Ideally, it would have hit on the near side of the moon at some point where we could actually see it," Gray said.

Reexamining the origins

After initially pinning the upcoming strike on Elon Musk's SpaceX, Gray took another look after an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory questioned his claim. Now, he's "pretty thoroughly persuaded" it's a Chinese rocket part, based not only on orbital tracking back to its 2014 liftoff, but also data received from its short-lived ham radio experiment.

JPL's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies endorses Gray's reassessment. A University of Arizona team also recently identified the Chinese Long March rocket segment from the light reflected off its paint during telescope observations of the careening cylinder.

It's about 12 meters (40 feet) long and 3 meters (10 feet) in diameter. It does a somersault every two to three minutes.

Gray said SpaceX never contacted him to challenge his original claim. Neither have the Chinese.

"It's not a SpaceX problem, nor is it a China problem. Nobody is particularly careful about what they do with junk at this sort of orbit," Gray said.

Tracking deep space mission leftovers like this is hard, according to McDowell. The moon's gravity can alter an object's path during flybys, creating uncertainty. And there's no readily available database, McDowell noted, aside from the ones he, Gray and a couple of others have "cobbled together."

"We are now in an era where many countries and private companies are putting stuff in deep space, so it's time to start to keep track of it," McDowell said. "Right now there's no one, just a few fans in their spare time."

Source: Voice of America

A Texas judge on Wednesday blocked the state from investigating the parents of a transgender teenager over gender-confirmation treatments but stopped short of preventing the state from looking into other reports about children receiving similar care.

District Judge Amy Clark Meachum issued a temporary order halting the investigation by the Department of Family and Protective Services into the parents of the 16-year-old girl. The parents sued over the investigation and Republican Governor Greg Abbott's order last week that officials look into reports of such treatments as abuse.

Meachum wrote that the parents and the teen "face the imminent and ongoing deprivation of their constitutional rights, the potential loss of necessary medical care, and the stigma attached to being the subject of an unfounded child abuse investigation."

Meachum set a March 11 hearing on whether to issue a broader temporary order blocking enforcement of Abbott's directive.

'Unfathomably cruel'

The lawsuit marked the first report of parents being investigated following Abbott's directive and an earlier nonbinding legal opinion by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton labeling certain gender-confirmation treatments as "child abuse." The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal sued the state Tuesday on behalf of the teen.

"We appreciate the relief granted to our clients, but this should never have happened and is unfathomably cruel," Brian Klosterboer, ACLU of Texas attorney, said in a statement. "Families should not have to fear being separated because they are providing the best possible health care for their children."

Spokespersons for Abbott's and Paxton's offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday night. A spokesperson for DFPS said there would be "deliberate discussions" about next steps.

The ruling came as President Joe Biden's administration announced new steps to protect transgender children and their families in response to Abbott's order. Biden condemned state laws targeting transgender people in his State of the Union address Tuesday.

"Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the governor's actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points," the president said in a statement Wednesday night. "These actions are terrifying many families in Texas and beyond. And they must stop."

Meachum issued the order hours after attorneys for the state and for the parents appeared before her via Zoom in a brief hearing.

Paul Castillo, Lambda Legal's senior counsel, told Meachum that allowing the order to be enforced would cause "irreparable" harm to the teen's parents and other families.

"It is unconscionable for DFPS to still pursue any investigation or inflict more trauma and harm," Castillo said in a statement after the judge's ruling.

The groups also represent a clinical psychologist who has said the order will force her to choose between reporting her clients to the state or facing the loss of her license and other penalties.

Ryan Kercher, an attorney with Paxton's office, told Meachum that the governor's order and the earlier opinion don't require the state to investigate every transgender child receiving gender-confirmation care.

Restrictions meet opposition

Abbott's directive and the attorney general's opinion go against the nation's largest medical groups, including the American Medical Association, which have opposed Republican-backed restrictions filed in statehouses nationwide.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday encouraged anyone targeted by a child welfare investigation because of Abbott's order to contact the agency's civil rights office. The department also released guidance saying that despite the order in Texas, health care providers are not required to disclose private patient information regarding gender confirming care.

Arkansas last year became the first state to pass a law prohibiting gender confirming treatments for minors, and Tennessee approved a similar measure. A judge blocked Arkansas' law, and the state is appealing.

The Texas lawsuit does not identify the family by name. The suit said the mother works for DFPS on the review of reports of abuse and neglect. The day of Abbott's order, she asked her supervisor how it would affect the agency's policy, according to the lawsuit.

The mother was placed on leave because she has a transgender daughter, and the following day, she was informed her family would be investigated in accordance with the governor's directive, the suit said. The teen has received puberty-delaying medication and hormone therapy.

DFPS said Tuesday that it had received three reports since Abbott's order and Paxton's opinion but would not say whether any resulted in investigations.

At Wednesday's hearing, Castillo said he was aware of at least two other families being investigated. He also said some medical providers have stopped providing prescriptions for gender confirming care because of the governor's order.

Source: Voice of America

Major League Baseball has canceled opening day, with Commissioner Rob Manfred announcing Tuesday the sport will lose regular-season games over a labor dispute for the first time in 27 years after acrimonious lockout talks collapsed in the hours before management's deadline.

Manfred said he is canceling the first two series of the season that was set to begin March 31, dropping the schedule from 162 games to likely 156 games at most. Manfred said the league and union have not made plans for future negotiations. Players won't be paid for missed games.

"My deepest hope is we get an agreement quickly," Manfred said. "I'm really disappointed we didn't make an agreement."

After the sides made progress during 13 negotiating sessions over 16 1/2 hours Monday, the league sent the players' association a "best and final offer" Tuesday on the ninth straight day of negotiations.

Players rejected that offer, setting the stage for MLB to follow through on its threat to cancel opening day.

"Not a particularly productive day today," Manfred said.

At 5:10 p.m., Manfred issued a statement that many fans had been dreading: Nothing to look forward to on opening day, normally a spring standard of renewal for fans throughout the nation and some in Canada, too.

The ninth work stoppage in baseball history will be the fourth that causes regular season games to be canceled, leaving Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium as quiet in next month as Joker Marchant Stadium and Camelback Park have been during the third straight disrupted spring training.

"The concerns of our fans are at the very top of our consideration list," Manfred said.

The lockout, in its 90th day, will plunge a sport staggered by the coronavirus pandemic and afflicted by numerous on-field issues into a self-inflicted hiatus over the inability of players and owners to divide a $10 billion industry. By losing regular-season games, scrutiny will fall even more intensely on Manfred, the commissioner since January 2015, and Tony Clark, the former All-Star first baseman who became union leader when Michael Weiner died in November 2013.

"Manfred gotta go," tweeted Chicago Cubs pitcher Marcus Stroman.

Past stoppages were based on issues such as a salary cap, free-agent compensation and pensions. This one is pretty much solely over money.

This fight was years in the making, with players angered that payrolls decreased by 4% from 2015 through last year, many teams jettisoned a portion of high-priced veteran journeymen in favor of lower-priced youth, and some clubs gave up on competing in the short term to better position themselves for future years.

The sport will be upended by its second shortened season in three years. The 2020 schedule was cut from 162 games to 60 because of the pandemic, a decision players filed a grievance over and still are litigating. The disruption will create another issue if 15 days of the season are wiped out: Stars such as Shohei Ohtani, Pete Alonso, Jake Cronenworth and Jonathan India would be delayed an extra year from free agency.

Players would lose $20.5 million in salary for each day of the season that is canceled, according to a study by The Associated Press, and the 30 teams would lose large sums that are harder to pin down. Members of the union's executive subcommittee stand to lose the most, with Max Scherzer forfeited $232,975 for each regular-season day lost, and Gerrit Cole $193,548.

Scherzer and free-agent reliever Andrew Miller were present for talks. Both stopped to sign autographs for fans as they left Roger Dean Stadium, the vacant spring training home of the St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins where negotiations have been held since the start of last week.

The first 86 games of the 1973 season were canceled by a strike over pension negotiations, the 1981 season was fractured by a 50-day midseason strike over free agency compensation rules that canceled 713 games, and a strike that started in August 1994 over management's attempt to gain a salary cap canceled the final 669 games and led to a three-week delay of the 1995 season, when schedules were cut from 162 games to 144.

Players and owners entered deadline day far apart on many key issues and unresolved on others. The most contentious proposals involve luxury tax thresholds and rates, the size of a new bonus pool for pre-arbitration players, minimum salaries, salary arbitration eligibility and the union's desire to change the club revenue-sharing formula.

While the differences had narrowed in recent days, the sides remained apart, with how far apart depending on the point of view.

MLB proposed raising the luxury tax threshold from $210 million to $220 million in each of the next three seasons, $224 million in 2025 and $230 in 2026. Players asked for $238 million this year, $244 million in 2023, $250 million in 2024, $256 million in 2025 and $263 in 2026.

MLB proposed $25 million annually for a new bonus pool for pre-arbitration players, and the union dropped from $115 million to $85 million for this year, with $5 million yearly increases.

MLB proposed raising the minimum salary from $570,500 to $675,000 this year, with increases of $10,000 annually, and the union asked for $725,000 this year, $745,000 in 2023, $765,000 in 2024 and increases for 2025 and 2026 based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners.

Source: Voice of America