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Jeanetically superior morning to everyone
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Aug 2, 2025
Fireflies, Meteors, and Milky Way
Taken on July 29 and July 30, a registered and stacked series of exposures creates this dreamlike view of a northern summer night. Multiple firefly flashes streak across the foreground as the luminous Milky Way arcs above the horizon in the Sierra de Órganos national park of central Mexico, The collection of bright streaks aligned across the sky toward the upper left in the timelapse image are Delta Aquariid meteors. Currently active, the annual Delta Aquarid meteor shower shares August nights though, overlapping with the better-known Perseid meteor shower. This year that makes post-midnight, mostly moonless skies in early August very popular with late night skygazers. How can you tell a Delta Aquariid from a Perseid meteor? The streaks of Perseid meteors can be traced back to an apparent radiant in the constellation Perseus. Delta Aquariids appear to emerge from the more southerly constellation Aquarius, beyond the top left of this frame. Of course, the bioluminescent flashes of fireflies are common too on these northern summer nights. But how can you tell a firefly from a meteor? Just try to catch one.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Crew-11 Docks to Station Aboard SpaceX Dragon
August 2, 2025
NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov arrived at the International Space Station as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the orbiting complex at 2:27 a.m. EDT on Saturday.
Following Dragon’s link up to the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module, the crew members aboard Dragon and the space station will begin conducting standard leak checks and pressurization between the spacecraft and the station in preparation for hatch opening scheduled for approximately 4:15 a.m.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/08/02/crew-11-docks-to-station-aboard-spacex-dragon/
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/crew-11/
https://www.nasa.gov/mission/nasas-spacex-crew-11/
Senators Alsobrooks, Schiff Demand End to NASA Cuts, Reassert Congress’ Sole Power to Authorize Science Funding
August 1, 2025
Letter From Senators Representing Space Innovation Hubs Comes as Bipartisan Senate Rejects Proposed Gutting of Space Budget for Upcoming Fiscal Year
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Senators Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and other Senators representing space and science innovation hubs across the nation demanded that the Trump administration halt any preemptive cuts to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Science programs, justify impoundments of NASA funding from the past six months, and abide by Congress’ set funding levels for the current and future fiscal years to prevent irrevocable harm to America’s space innovation and scientific workforce.
“Trump’s witch hunt of scientists continues — now at NASA. The scientists and researchers working in Maryland at NASA Goddard and other NASA innovation hubs across the country are leading the way in climate research, earth science, and space exploration.
If we want to remain a global leader in STEM and discovery, we should be investing in NASA — not slashing it. These cuts are shameful and wrong,” said Senator Alsobrooks.
“We cannot afford to prematurely gut funding for scientific excellence and technological innovation, which NASA has worked for decades to cultivate – especially when doing so would harm American jobs and progress,” the Senators wrote.
The letter to recently-installed Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy condemns the President and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought’s illegal impoundment of funding approved by a bipartisan Congress for the current fiscal year, and highlights that even proposed cuts from the President’s Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) budget request have further imperiled jobs and American competitiveness in space innovation in states across the U.S.
“Amidst the threat of looming cuts, NASA has already lost over 2,000 senior-level employees at NASA centers in Maryland, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Alabama, and Ohio.
These losses will deprive NASA of key expertise on science, human space flight, and mission support. In blatant violation of law and complete disregard for the authority of Congress, the President’s budget request has already done significant damage to American space exploration and innovation,” the Senators wrote.
The letter comes as the Senate has advanced in recent weeks its bipartisan NASA funding bill which rejects the deep cuts proposed by President Donald Trump in his FY26 budget.
The President’s proposed budget would have slashed NASA’s overall funding by 25 percent, including a 47 percent cut to NASA Science funding, the smallest proposed NASA operating budget since 1961.
The letter was also signed by Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawai’i), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).
The Senators who signed the letter all represent states that will bear a heavier burden from cuts to NASA funding.
https://www.alsobrooks.senate.gov/press-releases/senators-alsobrooks-schiff-demand-end-to-nasa-cuts-reassert-congress-sole-power-to-authorize-science-funding/
https://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/511/202507159763306511/202507159763306511.pdf
https://www.schiff.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Letter-to-Acting-Administrator-Duffy-on-NASA-Science-Funding.pdf
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/jason-cs-sentinel-6/sentinel-6-michael-freilich/how-joint-nasa-esa-sea-level-mission-will-help-hurricane-forecasts/
https://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/jason-cs-sentinel-6/summary/
How Joint NASA-ESA Sea Level Mission Will Help Hurricane Forecasts
Aug 01, 2025
Sentinel-6B will measure sea surface height for nearly all of the world’s ocean, providing important data for information products, including weather and hurricane forecasts.
NASA has a long record of monitoring Earth’s sea surface height, information critical not only for tracking how the ocean changes over time but also for hurricane forecasting.
These extreme storms can cost the United States billions of dollars each year, wreaking havoc on lives and property.
Meteorologists have worked to improve forecasts for a hurricane’s path, or track, as well as its intensity, measured as surface wind speed.
Sentinel-6B, the U.S.-European satellite launching later this year, will help in that effort.
The satellite is the second of two spacecraft that constitute the Sentinel-6/Jason-CS (Continuity of Service) mission, a collaboration between NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), EUMETSAT (the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites), and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). With its launch planned for no earlier than Nov. 16, 2025, Sentinel-6B will take over from its twin, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, which launched in November 2020 as part of a long line of U.S.-European missions that have monitored sea levels since 1992.
“Sentinel-6 will track global changes in Earth’s ocean — height, heat, and movement — and will improve forecasts of local extremes like floods and hurricanes, linking planetary trends to real-world risks for communities,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, Sentinel-6 program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
The decades-long, U.S.-European ocean dataset has been key to helping researchers advance hurricane intensity forecasting.
Warm water fuels hurricanes. And since water expands as it warms, sea surface height can tell researchers which regions of the ocean are warm enough to supercharge a hurricane.
“A deep layer of warm seawater is literally taller than a shallow layer of warm water,” said Josh Willis, Sentinel-6B project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
So sea surface height can be used as a proxy for the amount of heat in the ocean.
Fueling Hurricanes
There are two main ways that forecasters use sea level measurements, said Mark DeMaria, a senior research scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
One way is to help set the proper ocean conditions in ocean-atmosphere hurricane forecast models utilized by the National Hurricane Center.
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The second way is by feeding sea level data into machine learning models that forecasters use to predict whether a hurricane will undergo rapid intensification, where its wind speeds increase by 35 mph (56 kph) or more within 24 hours.
Meteorologists include both water temperature measurements from sensors drifting in the ocean and sea surface height data collected by Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich as well as other satellites.
Hurricanes churn the ocean as they pass overhead, mixing the top layers of seawater. If the storm encounters a shallow pool of warm seawater, its winds can stir things up, pulling cooler waters from the depths to the surface.
This can hinder rapid intensification. But if the warm pool of seawater extends deep into the ocean, those winds will only stir up more warm water, potentially resulting in the hurricane’s rapid intensification.
“Hurricane Milton is a perfect example of this,” said DeMaria, who was previously a branch chief at the National Hurricane Center in Miami and helped to develop hurricane intensity forecast models.
Milton experienced an intense period of rapid intensification — an event that was forecast using a model fed partly with data from Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich.
From Oct. 6 to Oct. 7, 2024, Milton exploded from a Category 1 hurricane to a Category 5, producing wind speeds as high as 180 mph (289 kph).
The storm weakened to a Category 3 — still a major hurricane — by the time it made landfall near Sarasota, Florida, on Oct. 9.
Forecast Improvements
While the U.S.-European series of sea level satellites began collecting measurements in 1992, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that meteorologists started working with data from satellites in operational hurricane intensity forecasts such as the ones used by the National Hurricane Center.
Before then, forecasts relied on models and ocean surface temperature measurements that weren’t always able to identify warm, deep pools of seawater that could induce rapid intensification in a hurricane.
Improvement efforts got a boost when the U.S. federal government started a program in 2007 aimed at advancing these types of forecasts.
Since then, the program has helped move improvements made in the research realm — such as in hurricane forecast reliability and accuracy, extensions in the lead time for predictions, and reduced forecast uncertainty — into operational use.
The investment has been money well spent, said Renato Molina, an economist at the University of Miami who has analyzed the economic impact of improving hurricane forecasts.
An accurate, timely forecast can give communities time to prepare, such as by boarding up homes and businesses or evacuating an area. The monetary savings can reach into the billions, he added.
While a host of atmospheric and oceanic characteristics go into hurricane forecasts, the inclusion of sea level data from satellites like Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich and, soon, Sentinel-6B has been an important addition.
“We need data from sensors in the ocean as well as satellite data — they go hand-in-hand,” said DeMaria. “It would be impossible to do what we do without the satellites.”
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NASA Satellite Shows Vast Spread of Utah Fire
Aug 01, 2025 at 9:03 AM EDT
Striking satellite images released this week by NASA have revealed the full scale of the Monroe Canyon wildfire, which has scorched nearly 46,000 acres of land in central Utah.
The images captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite show a thick cloud of smoke stretching hundreds of miles northeast, creating hazy skies and degrading air quality in the region.
The blaze erupted near the communities of Richfield, Monroe and Koosharem amid a stretch of hot, dry and windy weather. It then rapidly expanded over the afternoon of July 25, when firefighters reported wind gusts in the area exceeding 60 miles per hour.
Within three days, the fire had more than doubled its size, prompting evacuations and partial closure of Fishlake National Forest.
In false-color images captured by Landsat 8's Operational Land Imager, NASA scientists were able to distinguish burning zones and scorched land from untouched areas.
Bright orange patches on the below image mark areas that are still ablaze, while brown tones show all the dead vegetation left behind by the fire.
More than 1,000 firefighting personnel have been deployed to fight the blaze—and local authorities have confirmed the loss of several buildings. Conditions remain volatile.
As of July 31st, a red flag warning was in effect for central and southern Utah as a result on ongoing low humidity and breezy weather, which can interfere with containment efforts.
Data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows that the extent of area burned by wildfires each year has increased since the 1980s, with the largest acreage of burns occurring after 2004—including peaks in 2015 and 2020, aligning with many of the warmest years on record.
Land area burned by wildfires varies by state, with more burns in the Western part of the country than in the East. The most significant increases have happened during spring and summer, with peak fires in August.
Since 1983, the National Interagency Fire Center has documented an average of approximately 70,000 wildfires per year, although data from the Forest Service suggest that the number could be even higher.
Over the past decade, the USDA Forest Service has used prescribed burns and mechanical thinning in and around Monroe Canyon to promote aspen regeneration and reduce accumulated brush and dead vegetation.
According to Utah's Department of Natural Resources, the intensity of the Monroe Canyon fire decreased near treated zones. This helped firefighters add more blackline around the southeastern perimeter of the fire and increase containment on that side.
However, despite all the efforts, only 11 percent of the ire has so far been contained, and official continue to warn residents to remains alert and follow evacuation orders.
https://www.newsweek.com/satellite-image-nasa-utah-fire-monroe-canyon-wildfire-2107444
NASA names Betelgeuse’s companion star Siwarha, meaning 'her bracelet'
Aug 1, 2025
After long speculation, a team of astrophysicists from NASA published their research, reporting that Betelgeuse, the 10th brightest star in our night sky, is orbited by a very close companion star now named Siwarha.
“Two recent studies have reignited the companion star hypothesis by using more than 100 years of Betelgeuse observations to provide predictions of the companion’s location and brightness,” NASA stated in a recent press release.
The research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in the paper “Probable Direct Imaging Discovery of the Stellar Companion to Betelgeuse,” from a team of astrophysicists led by a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.
The discovery took shape when Steve Howell, a senior research scientist at Ames, recognized that the ground-based Gemini North telescope in Hawai’i, one of the largest in the world, paired with a special, high-resolution camera built by NASA, and had the potential to directly observe the close companion to Betelgeuse, despite the atmospheric blurring, NASA explains.
“Officially called the ‘Alopeke speckle instrument, the advanced imaging camera let them obtain many thousands of short exposures to measure the atmospheric interference in their data and remove it with detailed image processing, providing an image of Betelgeuse and its companion,” a portion of the release reads.
Howell’s team detected the faint companion star right where it was predicted to be, orbiting very close to the outer edge of Betelgeuse.
“I hope our discovery excites other astrophysicists about the robust power of ground-based telescopes and speckle imagers — a key to opening new observational windows,” said Howell in the release. “This can help unlock the great mysteries in our universe.”
The traditional star name “Betelgeuse” derives from Arabic, meaning “the hand of al-Jawza,” a female figure in old Arabian legend. Howell’s team named the orbiting companion “Siwarha,” meaning “her bracelet.”
https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/betelgeuse-companion-star-siwarha-nasa-20797792.php
https://www.nasa.gov/science-research/astrophysics/nasa-scientist-finds-predicted-companion-star-to-betelgeuse/
NASA’s Europa Clipper Radar Instrument Proves Itself at Mars
August 1, 2025
As it soared past Mars in March, NASA’s Europa Clipper conducted a critical radar test that had been impossible to accomplish on Earth.
Now that mission scientists have studied the full stream of data, they can declare success: The radar performed just as expected, bouncing and receiving signals off the region around Mars’ equator without a hitch.
Called REASON (Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface), the radar instrument will “see” into Europa’s icy shell, which may have pockets of water inside.
The radar may even be able to detect the ocean beneath the shell of Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon.
“We got everything out of the flyby that we dreamed,” said Don Blankenship, the principal investigator of the radar instrument and a professor at the Jackson School of Geosciences.
“The goal was to determine the radar’s readiness for the Europa mission, and it worked. Every part of the instrument proved itself to do exactly what we intended.”
The radar, which was developed by Blankenship and his team a the school’s Institute for Geophysics, will help scientists understand how the ice may capture materials from the ocean and transfer them to the surface of the moon.
Above ground, the instrument will help to study elements of Europa’s topography, such as ridges, so scientists can examine how they relate to features that REASON images beneath the surface.
Limits of Earth
Europa Clipper has an unusual radar setup for an interplanetary spacecraft: REASON uses two pairs of slender antennas that jut out from the solar arrays, spanning a distance of about 58 feet (17.6 meters).
Those arrays themselves are huge — from tip to tip, the size of a basketball court — so they can catch as much light as possible at Europa, which gets about 1/25th the sunlight as Earth.
The instrument team conducted all the testing that was possible prior to the spacecraft’s launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 14, 2024.
During development, engineers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California even took the work outdoors, using open-air towers on a plateau above JPL to stretch out and test engineering models of the instrument’s spindly high-frequency and more compact very-high-frequency antennas.
But once the actual flight hardware was built, it needed to be kept sterile and could be tested only in an enclosed area. Engineers used the giant High Bay 1 clean room at JPL, where the spacecraft was assembled, to test the instrument piece by piece.
To test the “echo,” or the bounceback of REASON’s signals, however, they’d have needed a chamber about 250 feet (76 meters) long — nearly three-quarters the length of a football field.
Enter Mars
The mission’s primary goal in flying by Mars on March 1, less than five months after launch, was to use the planet’s gravitational pull to reshape the spacecraft’s trajectory.
But it also presented opportunities to calibrate the spacecraft’s infrared camera and perform a dry run of the radar instrument over terrain NASA scientists have been studying for decades.
As Europa Clipper zipped by the volcanic plains of the Red Planet — starting at 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) down to 550 miles (884 kilometers) above the surface — REASON sent and received radio waves for about 40 minutes.
In comparison, at Europa the instrument will operate as close as 16 miles (25 kilometers) from the moon’s surface.
All told, engineers were able to collect 60 gigabytes of rich data from the instrument. Almost immediately, they could tell REASON was working well.
The flight team scheduled the full dataset to download, starting in mid-May. Scientists relished the opportunity over the next couple of months to examine the information in detail and compare notes.
“The engineers were excited that their test worked so perfectly,” said JPL’s Trina Ray, Europa Clipper deputy science manager. “All of us who had worked so hard to make this test happen — and the scientists seeing the data for the first time — were ecstatic, saying,
‘Oh, look at this! Oh, look at that!’ Now, the science team is getting a head start on learning how to process the data and understand the instrument’s behavior compared to models. They are exercising those muscles just like they will out at Europa.”
Europa Clipper’s total journey to reach the icy moon will be about 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) and includes one more gravity assist — using Earth — in 2026. The spacecraft is currently about 280 million miles (450 million kilometers) from Earth.
https://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/2025/08/nasas-europa-clipper-radar-instrument-proves-itself-at-mars/
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/nasas-europa-clipper-radar-instrument-proves-itself-at-mars/
Sol 4616: Right Navigation Camera, Cylindrical Projection
August 1, 2025
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took 31 images in Gale Crater using its mast-mounted Right Navigation Camera (Navcam) to create this mosaic.
The seam-corrected mosaic provides a 360-degree cylindrical projection panorama of the Martian surface centered at 145 degrees azimuth (measured clockwise from north).
Curiosity took the images on August 01, 2025, Sol 4616 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission at drive 162, site number 118.
The local mean solar time for the image exposures was from 3 PM to 4 PM. Each Navcam image has a 45 degree field of view.
https://science.nasa.gov/resource/sol-4616-right-navigation-camera-cylindrical-projection/
What’s Up: August 2025 Skywatching Tips from NASA
Aug 01, 2025
Venus-Jupiter Conjunction and Meteor Mojo
Jupiter and Venus shine brightly in the mornings as they appear to graze each other in the sky on the 11th and 12th. The Perseids are washed out by the Moon.
Skywatching Highlights
All Month – Planet Visibility:
Mercury: Pops up above the horizon during the second half of August. Appears very low, below 10 degrees altitude.
Venus: Shines very brightly in the east each morning before sunrise, about 20 to 30 degrees above the horizon.
Mars: Can be observed low in the west during the hour after sunset, appearing about as bright as the brightest stars in the Big Dipper.
Jupiter: Appears in the east each morning, together with Venus, but much less bright.
Saturn: Observable late night to dawn. Rises around 10:30 p.m. early in the month, and around 8:30 p.m. by the end of the month. Find it high in the south as sunrise approaches.
Skywatching Highlights:
August 11 & 12 – Venus-Jupiter Conjunction – The two brightest planets have a close meetup over several days, appearing closest over two days on the 11th and 12th, at just a degree apart.
August 19 & 20 – Moon with Jupiter & Venus – A slim lunar crescent joins Jupiter and Venus — still relatively close in the sky after their conjunction. They appear in the east in the several hours preceding sunrise.
August 12th-13th – Perseids Peak – The celebrated annual meteor shower will be hampered by an 84%-full Moon on the peak night. A few bright meteors may still be seen in the pre-dawn hours, but viewing conditions are not ideal this year.
All month – The Dumbbell Nebula (M27) – One of the easiest planetary nebulas to observe, M27 appears within the Summer Triangle star pattern, high overhead in the first half of the night.
cont.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/whats-up-august-2025-skywatching-tips-from-nasa/
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/whats-up-august-2025/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odMQnF1skOM
Antarctic Iceberg Downsizes
July 22, 2025
Almost 40 years after breaking from Antarctica’s Filchner Ice Shelf, a still massive iceberg is showing its age.
The berg, named A-23A, is shedding large chunks of ice as it drifts in the southern South Atlantic Ocean, about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) north of its birthplace.
Starting around March 1, 2025, the iceberg sat lodged on the shallow continental shelf around South Georgia, the largest of nine remote islands that compose the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands.
Icebergs that make it this far north are increasingly at the mercy of warm water, waves, and seasonal weather—factors that contribute to a berg’s ultimate demise.
After losing some pieces from its edge, A-23A wiggled off the shelf by late May 2025 and resumed its drift toward the eastern side of South Georgia, following the same currents previously ridden by the massive A-68A iceberg in late 2020.
The austral winter journey continued to inflict damage on A-23A, which shed even more ice from its sides.
Two of the new pieces were large enough to be named and tracked by the U.S. National Ice Center (USNIC).
Jan Lieser of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology first identified the bergs using NovaSAR-1 radar data, and they were later confirmed by USNIC analyst Britney Fajardo in radar images acquired by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 mission on July 15, 2025.
“Radar satellites can take images of the Earth at polar night and through all weather conditions, including heavy clouds and even smoke,” Lieser said.
As sunlight returns to Antarctica after the polar night, Lieser also checks for icebergs in visible imagery.
A break in the clouds and lengthening daylight hours on July 22, 2025, allowed the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite to capture this natural-color image of A-23A and the new bergs near South Georgia.
Around this time, A-23A’s surface spanned 2,510 square kilometers (969 square miles). The new pieces, A-23D and A-23E, measured 159 and 73 square kilometers (62 and 28 square miles), respectively.
Despite these edge losses, A-23A is still the largest iceberg currently drifting freely in any of the world’s oceans. (Only D-15A is larger, but that berg lies grounded in the cold Amery Sea off East Antarctica.)
As lengthening daylight hours come to this part of the South Atlantic, scientists expect more calving from the remnant of A-23A as it moves even farther north.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/154625/antarctic-iceberg-downsizes
NASA unveils 9 stunning snapshots of the cosmos in X-ray vision: Space photo of the week
August 2, 2025
This new collection of images from NASA's Chandra space telescope — which launched in 1999 — shows what different objects in space look like with an added layer of X-ray vision.
While the Hubble Space Telescope images the cosmos in mostly visible light and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) relies on infrared light that's beyond the limits of human vision, Chandra focuses only on high-energy X-ray light.
Each of these space telescopes therefore sees the universe through a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and combining these enables researchers to study the cosmos in greater detail.
Chandra's ability to see in X-ray light means it can detect hot, energetic regions like black holes, supernova remnants and pockets of super-hot gas. In the newly released images, these energetic X-rays are shown in pink and purple hues.
The top row shows N79 (left), a region of star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a small satellite neighbor galaxy to the Milky Way. In Chandra's image, N79 blazes with hot gas shaped by energetic stars.
NGC 2146 (middle) is a spiral galaxy bursting with X-ray-emitting phenomena like supernova remnants and winds from giant stars. And IC 348 (right) is another star-forming region that shimmers with reflective interstellar wisps and scattered young stars.
The middle row shows two spiral galaxies: the Milky Way-like M83 (left) and NGC 1068 (right).
The latter galaxy's core is illuminated by high-energy X-rays generated by winds from its black hole, which blow at 1 million mph (1.6 million km/h).
Meanwhile, M82 (center) is a starburst galaxy, featuring plumes of superheated gas produced as stars form at an extraordinary rate.
On the bottom row is NGC 346 (left), a young cluster home to thousands of newborn stars scattered among the glowing debris of an exploded star.
IC 1623 (center) shows two galaxies merging, which is triggering the formation of new stars that glow in X-ray light.
And Westerlund 1 (right), the largest and closest super star cluster to Earth, contains thousands of stars showering the cluster with powerful X-rays.
NASA also released a video exploring the images in more detail and created a page showing separate images of each object from Chandra, Hubble and JWST.
https://www.livescience.com/space/nasa-unveils-9-stunning-snapshots-of-the-cosmos-in-x-ray-vision-space-photo-of-the-week
https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2025/cosmic/
https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2025/cosmic/more.html
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/08/the-curious-case-of-russias-charm-offensive-with-nasa-this-week/
https://tass.com/science/1996709
https://tass.com/science/1995791
The curious case of Russia’s charm offensive with NASA this week
Aug 1, 2025 12:20 PM
Although NASA and its counterpart in Russia, Roscosmos, continue to work together on a daily basis, the leaders of the two organizations have not held face-to-face meetings since the middle of the first Trump administration, back in October 2018.
A lot has changed in the nearly eight years since then, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rocky departure of Roscosmos leader Dmitry Rogozin in 2022 who was subsequently dispatched to the front lines of the war, several changes in NASA leadership, and more.
This drought in high-level meetings was finally broken this week when the relatively new leader of Roscosmos, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov, visited the United States to view the launch of the Crew-11 mission from Florida, which included cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.
Bakanov has also met with some of NASA's human spaceflight leaders at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Notably, NASA has provided almost no coverage of the visit. However, the state-operated Russian news service, TASS, has published multiple updates.
For example, on Thursday at Kennedy Space Center, TASS reported that Bakanov and Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy discussed the future of the International Space Station.
Future of ISS partnership
"The conversation went quite well," Bakanov is quoted as saying. "We agreed to continue using the ISS until 2028. It’s important that the new NASA chief confirmed this. We will work on the deorbiting process until 2030."
A separate TASS report also quoted Duffy as saying NASA and Roscosmos should continue to work together despite high geopolitical tensions on Earth.
"What's unique is we might find disagreement with conflict here, which we have," Duffy said.
"We have wild disagreement with the Russians on Ukraine, but what you see is we find points of agreement and points of partnership, which is what we have with the International Space Station and Russians, and so through hard times, we don't throw those relationships away.
We're going to continue to work on the problems that we have here, but we're going to continue to build alliances and partnerships and friendships as humanity continues to advance in space exploration."
During their meetings Duffy and Bakanov also discussed plans to deorbit the space station in 2030 and potential collaborations beyond 2030.
Prior to Bakanov's visit it was thought that NASA and Roscosmos might cease relations entirely after the space station's demise, but now it seems that some kind of partnership might still be possible, although it is not clear what format this might take.
What is clear about Bakanov's visit is that he has embarked on a sort of charm offensive with NASA, and with the multiple TASS reports wants to be sure his audience in Russia knows that Roscosmos is seeking to reestablish warm relations with NASA.
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But why?
From the outside it is difficult to disentangle Russian politics and the motivations of President Vladimir Putin, and there are always layers of intrigue.
Bakanov appears to be popular in Russia (and with a handsome, youthful appearance is something of a heartthrob on social media there). Prior to coming to Roscosmos, he was deputy minister of Transportation in Russia from April 2022 to February 2025.
There, he worked for a time under Roman Starovoit, who was fired by Putin in early July, possibly due to "corruption."
After saying farewell to his colleagues three weeks ago, Starovoit drove his Tesla to Malevich Park on Moscow's west side, where his body was discovered later with a gunshot wound to the head.
Bakanov seems to have escaped this controversy with his reputation untarnished.
Multiple sources said it was not entirely clear what lay behind Bakanov's very public trip to the United States.
However, they indicated one possibility is the nearly $1 billion contract that NASA has awarded SpaceX to deorbit the space station.
The space agency let the contract a year ago to ensure the station makes a safe landing in the Pacific Ocean, rather than a hazardous, uncontrolled reentry.
Previously NASA and Roscosmos had considered using three Russian Progress vehicles for this purpose. However, after studying the issue NASA ultimately concluded that using the Russian vehicles would "not provide sufficient margin to lower the public risk to an acceptable level."
Bakanov and Roscosmos apparently have been urging NASA to reconsider the possibility of using Russian vehicles, and there may be some interest after the falling out between US President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk two months ago.
There is a desire among some White House officials that federal agencies should look for ways to reduce their reliance on Musk's companies for federal contracting purposes.
Whether NASA will reconsider using Russian vehicles, especially after awarding a contract to SpaceX, is not clear. Asked if the issue was discussed at meetings between Duffy and Bakanov this week, NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens told Ars, "Not to my knowledge."
The strained relations between Trump and Musk also opens up other avenues of cooperation in space between NASA and Russia.
For example, Friday's successful launch of Crew-11 highlights that NASA's only operational vehicle for getting astronauts to and from the space station is SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. Boeing's Starliner vehicle may not fly crew again until 2027, and it is unlikely to ever be price-competitive with Dragon.
As NASA looks toward a future of commercial space stations in the 2030s, having Russian Soyuz spacecraft as a possibility would provide a means of avoiding a SpaceX monopoly on crew transport.
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https://www.space.com/science/particle-physics/new-discovery-at-cern-could-hint-at-why-our-universe-is-made-up-of-matter-and-not-antimatter
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09119-3
https://home.cern/
New discovery at CERN could hint at why our universe is made up of matter and not antimatter
Aug 1, 2025
Why didn’t the universe annihilate itself moments after the big bang? A new finding at Cern on the French-Swiss border brings us closer to answering this fundamental question about why matter dominates over its opposite – antimatter.
Much of what we see in everyday life is made up of matter. But antimatter exists in much smaller quantities. Matter and antimatter are almost direct opposites.
Matter particles have an antimatter counterpart that has the same mass, but the opposite electric charge. For example, the matter proton particle is partnered by the antimatter antiproton, while the matter electron is partnered by the antimatter positron.
However, the symmetry in behavior between matter and antimatter is not perfect.
In a paper published this week in Nature, the team working on an experiment at CERN, called LHCb, has reported that it has discovered differences in the rate at which matter particles called baryons decay relative to the rate of their antimatter counterparts.
In particle physics, decay refers to the process where unstable subatomic particles transform into two or more lighter, more stable particles.
According to cosmological models, equal amounts of matter and antimatter were made in the big bang. If matter and antimatter particles come in contact, they annihilate one another, leaving behind pure energy.
With this in mind, it’s a wonder that the universe doesn’t consist only of leftover energy from this annihilation process.
However, astronomical observations show that there is now a negligible amount of antimatter in the universe compared to the amount of matter.
We therefore know that matter and antimatter must behave differently, such that the antimatter has disappeared while the matter has not.
Understanding what causes this difference in behavior between matter and antimatter is a key unanswered question.
While there are differences between matter and antimatter in our best theory of fundamental quantum physics, the standard model, these differences are far too small to explain where all the antimatter has gone.
So we know there must be additional fundamental particles that we haven’t found yet, or effects beyond those described in the standard model.
These would give rise to large enough differences in the behavior of matter and antimatter for our universe to exist in its current form.
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Revealing new particles
Highly precise measurements of the differences between matter and antimatter are a key topic of research because they have the potential to be influenced by and reveal these new fundamental particles, helping us discover the physics that led to the universe we live in today.
Differences between matter and antimatter have previously been observed in the behaviour of another type of particle, mesons, which are made of a quark and an antiquark.
There are also hints of differences in how the matter and antimatter versions of a further type of particle, the neutrino, behave as they travel.
The new measurement from LHCb has found differences between baryons and antibaryons, which are made of three quarks and three antiquarks respectively.
Significantly, baryons make up most of the known matter in our universe, and this is the first time that we have observed differences between matter and antimatter in this group of particles.
The LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider is designed to make highly precise measurements of differences in the behaviour of matter and antimatter.
The experiment is operated by an international collaboration of scientists, made up of over 1,800 people based in 24 countries. In order to achieve the new result, the LHCb team studied over 80,000 baryons (“lambda-b” baryons, which are made up of a beauty quark, an up quark and a down quark) and their antimatter counterparts.
Crucially, we found that these baryons decay to specific subatomic particles (a proton, a kaon and two pions) slightly more frequently – 5% more often – than the rate at which the same process happens with antiparticles.
While small, this difference is statistically significant enough to be the first observation of differences in behavior between baryon and antibaryon decays.
To date, all measurements of matter-antimatter differences have been consistent with the small level present in the standard model. While the new measurement from LHCb is also in line with this theory, it is a major step forward.
We have now seen differences in the behavior of matter and antimatter in the group of particles that dominate the known matter of the universe. It’s a potential step in the direction of understanding why that situation came to be after the big bang.
With the current and forthcoming data runs of LHCb we will be able to study these differences forensically, and, we hope, tease out any sign of new fundamental particles that might be present.
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https://rumble.com/v4lsr03-the-trump-time-travel-miracle-who-is-q.html?
https://www.space.com/astronomy/earth/ghana-has-a-rare-treasure-a-crater-made-when-a-meteor-hit-earth-why-it-needs-to-be-protected
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/maps.13253
Ghana has a rare treasure, a crater made when a meteor hit Earth: why it needs to be protected
Aug 2, 2025
Impact craters are formed when an object from space such as a meteoroid, asteroid or comet strikes the Earth at a very high velocity. This leaves an excavated circular hole on the Earth’s surface.
It is a basic geological process that has shaped the planets from their formation to today. It creates landscapes and surface materials across our solar system.
The moon is covered with them, as are planets like Mercury, Mars and Venus. On Earth, impacts have influenced the evolution of life and even provided valuable mineral and energy resources.
However, very few of the impact craters on Earth are visible because of various processes that obscure or erase them.
Most of the recognized impact craters on Earth are buried under sediments or have been deeply eroded. That means they no longer preserve their initial forms.
The Bosumtwi impact crater in Ghana is different, however. It is well preserved (not deeply eroded or buried under sediments).
Its well-defined, near-circular basin, filled by a lake, is surrounded by a prominent crater rim that rises above the surface of the lake and an outer circular plateau.
This makes it a target for several research questions.
As an Earth scientist, I joined a research team from 2019 to better understand the morphology of the crater. We carried out a morphological analysis of the crater (a study of its form, structure and geological features).
This study concluded that the activities of illegal miners are a threat to the sustainability of the crater. We also discovered that the features of the Bosumtwi impact crater can be considered as a terrestrial representation for a special type of impact crater known as rampart craters.
These are common on the planets Mars and Venus and are found on icy bodies of the outer solar system (like Ganymede, Europa, Dione, Tethys and Charon).
For future studies, the Bosumtwi impact crater can be used to help understand how rampart craters form on Mars and Venus. So the Bosumtwi impact crater should be protected and preserved.
The crater
The Bosumtwi impact crater is in Ghana’s mineral-rich Ashanti gold belt. It is the location of the only natural inland lake in Ghana.
As one of the world’s best-preserved young meteorite impact craters it is designated as an International Union of Geological Sciences geoheritage site.
It is one of only 190 confirmed impact crater sites worldwide, one of only 20 on the African continent. Its lake is one of six meteoritic lakes in the world, recognized for their outstanding scientific value.
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At almost 1.07 million years old, the crater offers unparalleled opportunities for studying impact processes, climate history and planetary evolution. It’s an irreplaceable natural laboratory for researchers and educators.
Beyond its scientific importance, the crater holds cultural significance for the Ashanti people of Ghana. The lake at its centre serves as a sacred site and spiritual landmark.
The crater’s breathtaking landscape also supports eco-tourism and local livelihoods, contributing to Ghana’s economic development while maintaining exceptional aesthetic value.
The research
As part of further research work on the 2019 study, in 2025 we have discovered through field work and satellite data analysis that illegal artisanal mining is prevalent in the area and threatening the crater.
This refers to informal, labour-intensive extraction of minerals, primarily gold. It is conducted by individuals or small groups using basic tools and rudimentary machinery.
The use of toxic chemicals such as mercury and cyanide, and practices such as river dredging, cause severe environmental harm.
Illegal miners are encroaching on and around the crater rim, posing severe threats to its environment and sustainability.
Their activities have become more prevalent over the course of less than 10 years, indicating a growing problem. If unchecked, it could lead to irreversible damage to the crater.
These mining operations risk contaminating the lake with toxic heavy metals. The consequences of these are grave.
They include destroying critical geological evidence, accelerating deforestation, and degrading the land. All this damages the crater’s scientific, cultural and economic value.
The International Union of Geological Sciences geoheritage designation of the crater underscores the urgent need for protection measures.
The loss of this rare geological wonder would represent not just a national tragedy for Ghana, but a blow to global scientific heritage.
Immediate action is required. This includes enhanced satellite monitoring (tracking illegal mining, deforestation and environmental changes) using optical imagery (such as Sentinel-2, Landsat, PlanetScope).
These tools can detect forest loss, identify mining pits and sediment runoff, and analyse changes over time.
tricter enforcement of mining bans, and community engagement programmes, will help preserve the Bosumtwi impact crater’s unique attributes for future generations of scientists, students, tourists and local communities who depend on its resources.
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Senate confims new top Navy leader, vice chief for Space Force
Aug 1, 2025, 10:08 AM
Senators confirmed a flurry of senior military leadership posts, including the new top uniformed leader of the Navy and the new head of U.S. Special Forces Command, amid a rush of confirmation votes on Thursday evening.
In contrast to a series of contested nomination votes this week, the military confirmations were done by a simple voice vote without objection.
The moves fill several top Pentagon and military service slots ahead of the congressional summer break, allowing the leaders to step into their roles in the coming days.
Adm. Daryl Caudle, who has been the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command since 2021, was approved as the next chief of naval operations, ending a nearly six-month vacancy in that role.
The Trump administration had dismissed previous CNO Adm. Lisa Franchetti without a stated reason on Feb. 21. Adm. James Kilby has been filling in as acting CNO since then.
Caudle testified at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 24 that America is “in the midst of a crucial era, defined by global competition, technological saturation and unpredictable threats that challenge our American dream.”
He addressed issues of environmental remediation at Red Hill, issues with a bloated budget for the dry dock replacement at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Navy accountability for late deliveries and mistakes made in defense programs, among other issues.
Caudle has also criticized manning shortages, a sentiment that aligns with the Trump administration’s intention to overhaul the maritime industrial base.
Also on Thursday, Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton was confirmed as vice chief of the Space Force, replacing Gen. Michael Guetlein.
Last month, Defense Department officials announced Guetlein would step aside from the role in order to lead the new Office of Golden Dome for America, coordinating efforts for that defense project.
Vice Adm. Frank Bradley was named the next head of U.S. Special Forces Command. Lt. Gen. Dagvin Anderson was confirmed as the first Air Force general to lead U.S. Africa Command.
Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Bligh, who currently serves as the staff judge advocate to the commandant of the Marine Corps, will take over as the judge advocate general of the Navy, the first Marine to hold that post in more than a century.
And Lt. Gen. Michael Borgschulte was confirmed as the next superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. He’s the first Marine to hold that post, although his appointment comes amid controversy.
Vice Adm. Yvette Davids, the school’s first female superintendent, had led the academy since January 2024 but was fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amid a host of reforms at the school.
The Senate could approve more senior defense posts in coming days. Lawmakers were expected to debate through the weekend on clearing a backlog of nominations pending in the chamber, and Trump has suggested cancelling the Senate’s planned August recess altogether to finish the work.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2025/08/01/senate-confims-new-top-navy-leader-vice-chief-for-space-force/
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2025/06/18/trump-taps-fleet-forces-head-as-navys-next-chief-of-naval-operations/
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4261917/resolute-space-25-space-force-aggressors-aim-to-stress-test-friendly-forces/
RESOLUTE SPACE 25: Space Force aggressors aim to stress, test friendly forces
Aug. 1, 2025
When a military service conducts exercises, there’s an opposing force – live, virtual, synthetic, or constructive – ready to test, stress, and validate the tactics, techniques and procedures used by the friendly force.
And when the Space Force is testing the ability to operate in a contested environment during the largest service-led exercise to date – Resolute Space 2025 – Guardians want to go up against the best.
The best notional adversary they can find just happens to also be the Space Force.
Aggressors from three squadrons under Delta 11, Space Training and Readiness Command, made up the opposition forces: the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, electromagnetic warfare; the 57th SAS, orbital warfare; and the 33rd Range and Aggressor Squadron, cyber warfare.
Aggressors are responsible for creating a realistic, threat-informed environment pitted against operational forces in cyber, orbital and electromagnetic warfare scenarios.
Together, they serve as thinking adversaries presenting challenging dilemmas across multiple domains for operational forces to spar against.
“We’re responsible for knowing, teaching and replicating the threat environment to exercise operational forces,” said Maj. Michael Husar, director of operations at the 527th SAS, Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado.
“There’s a lot that goes into planning and executing an exercise like Resolute Space to ensure our forces get the best possible experience.
What we want to see are operational forces constantly growing and getting better, and that just makes the whole force better.”
Aggressors carry out these missions from a variety of settings, from indoor operations floors to field sites in mobile, transportable operating units.
Operating from a variety of settings tests and validates the ability to present functional capabilities from anywhere and anytime based on the needs of exercises and operations under any combatant command’s area of responsibility.
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During Resolute Space, aggressors challenged friendly forces with effects modeled on how potential real-world adversaries are known to operate across multiple warfighting domains.
Throughout the exercise scenario they introduced factors such as interference that could disrupt satellite communication, irregularities that affect navigation signals, and cyber actions that strain network defenses.
These efforts are built into the overall exercise scenario to mirror the types of obstacles Guardians could face in conflict.
This is all accomplished within the safety of a controlled training environment made possible by Delta 11’s range professionals: the 25th SRS, electromagnetic warfare range; the 98th SRS, orbital warfare range; and the 33rd Range and Aggressor Squadron, cyber warfare range.
Although exercises are conducted in structured and controlled settings, the intent is to push friendly forces to, and beyond, a breaking point. From those experiences, they move forward to innovate, develop and improve TTPs that ensure no potential adversary can match their ability to operate in conflict.
Resolute Space provides an opportunity for Guardians to move fast, think outside the box and disrupt the status quo to find new concepts for operating in a contested environment.
The training scenarios are designed to grow warfighters and hone their ability to deter emerging threats, leverage advanced technology and tactics to stay ahead of competitors and adversaries, and defend U.S. interests in, from and to space.
That effort doesn’t happen in isolation. The Space Force trains and fights as part of a larger joint team, with range and aggressor participation in exercises like this refining how space capabilities are integrated across air, land, maritime and cyber domains.
“Our goal is always to assure the joint force, our allies and partners, and frankly the world that our space-enabled and space-based capabilities are secure and operational,” said Lt. Col. Shawn Green, Resolute Space 2025 deputy exercise director and also the 527th SAS commander.
“Our combined arms training stresses mission areas that need to be routinely trained in complex scenarios; and all of those mission areas, in some way or another, serve as force multipliers to the joint and combined forces’ fight.
Everything we do strives to advance a competitive warfighting edge and advance combat capability."
“There’s no scenario in which the U.S. Space Force is not providing some form of critical capability to joint all-domain operations,” Green said.
“First and foremost, we are readying forces to deter any potential adversary aggression, and second, to assure our nation and our allies and partners that should deterrence fail, the U.S. Space Force remains ready to fight and win through a contested, degraded, and operationally limited environment.”
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Four people killed by Ukrainian drone raids across Russia – officials
2 Aug, 2025 06:46
Four people have been killed in Russia following a series of Ukrainian drone strikes that damaged industrial facilities and residential areas, local officials have said.
On Saturday, Yury Slyusar, acting governor of the southern Rostov Region, reported that the Russian military had repelled a “massive air attack,” with drones downed over several districts.
He added that one security guard had been killed at an industrial site in the town of Uglerodovskoye. The facility caught fire, but the blaze was later extinguished, the acting governor reportded.
In Penza Region in central Russia, Governor Oleg Melnichenko said drones targeted a local enterprise, killing a woman and injuring two others, who he said were expected to recover.
Meanwhile, Samara Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said an elderly man had died when debris from a drone hit his summer house in Kuybyshevsky district, triggering a fire.
The Ukrainian drone raid also prompted temporary mobile internet restrictions in the area.
Operations at airports in Penza, Saratov and Tambov regions were also temporarily suspended for security reasons.
Later in the day, Maksim Pukhov, head of the city of Energodar in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region, reported that one woman died and one man was injured in a Ukrainian drone raid on an industrial zone, which targeted a civilian vehicle.
He also said there was high activity of Ukrainian UAVs in the area, which he said impeded the operations of emergency services.
According to the Defense Ministry in Moscow, a total of 112 Ukrainian drones were intercepted overnight across Russia, with the bulk neutralized over Rostov and Krasnodar regions.
Ukraine has been carrying out drone attacks deep into Russia for months, frequently striking residential buildings and critical infrastructure.
In retaliation, Moscow has been using high-precision weapons to attack Ukraine’s military-related targets, while insisting the strikes are never aimed at civilians.
https://www.rt.com/russia/622394-three-people-killed-ukrainian-drones/
‘No defense against’ Russia’s Oreshnik missile – ex-Pentagon analyst
2 Aug, 2025 14:48
Neither Ukraine nor its Western backers have any means to counter Russia’s newly deployed intermediate-range Oreshnik missile, Michael Maloof, a former senior Pentagon security analyst, told RT in an interview on Friday.
Maloof noted that the Oreshnik could “easily shift the balance of power overwhelmingly in favor” of Russia in any conflict, including the ongoing hostilities with Ukraine.
“Having a hypersonic [missile] for which there’s no defense currently… is astonishing. It absolutely alters that balance of power dramatically, for which the Ukrainians have no defense,” he said.
He noted that while the US is working to adapt missile defense systems such as THAAD to counter hypersonic threats, these programs remain under development.
“There’s no operational ability at this point to deal with a hypersonic missile,” Maloof said, adding that the Oreshnik could reach its targets within mere minutes.
The former analyst added that the missile also travels at a speed of over 7,000 miles (11,000km) an hour. “There’s no defense against that,” he said.
The missile system, Maloof stated, has already been tested successfully in Ukraine in battlefield conditions.
He was referring to a strike on Ukraine’s Yuzhmash military industrial facility in the city of Dnepr in November 2024.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said afterward that the missile’s warheads flew at speeds exceeding Mach 10 and could not be intercepted by existing air defenses.
The missile could also carry conventional and nuclear payloads and travel up to several thousand kilometers.
According to Putin, the Oreshnik strike on Ukraine was a response to the country’s decision to use Western-supplied long-range missiles for attacks deep into Russia.
On Friday, the Russian president said that the first serially produced Oreshnik missile system had entered service with the armed forces.
He also noted that the question of supplying the weapons to Belarus, Russia’s key ally, will likely be resolved by the end of the year.
https://www.rt.com/russia/622413-oreshnik-no-defense/
https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/Maloof-Aug-1-2025:d
Happy Birthday VP.
Obama was ‘mastermind’ behind Russiagate hoax – Trump
2 Aug, 2025 02:15
President Donald Trump has said his 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, and others involved in the so-called “Russiagate” affair should pay a “big price” for orchestrating what he described as a deliberate attempt to sabotage his presidency.
In an interview Friday with Newsmax host Rob Finnerty, Trump commented on newly declassified material from the annex to Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 report on the Russiagate hoax, which ties Clinton’s 2016 campaign and senior Obama-era officials to a coordinated effort to link Trump to Russia.
“I think they should pay a price. By the way, it’s a very big price,” Trump said. “For that to have gone on – it’s one of the great scandals, I think, in the history of our country. I know it is.”
Trump accused Obama of personally approving and encouraging Clinton’s plan to fabricate claims of Russia collusion, citing declassified documents released this week by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
“[Obama] knew about it. We have it cold. [Durham] has it in writing,” Trump said. “You could almost say that [Obama] was more of the mastermind. He heard what she was doing, and then he approved it – and not only approved it, he pushed it.”
Trump described the campaign as a “totally fake” conspiracy that inflicted immense damage on innocent people and on the country itself.
When asked whether Clinton should face consequences, Trump recalled choosing not to pursue criminal charges after his 2016 victory, despite pressure from supporters to “lock her up.”
“I had her right under the sights, and I told the people, ‘Look, you can’t do this to a ex-president’s wife.’ And I let Hillary off the hook,” he said. “And then I come in, and they did the same thing to me. The difference is, they meant it.”
Despite his calls for accountability, Trump emphasized that he would not interfere with the legal process. He said the decision on potential indictments would rest with Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom he praised as doing “a terrific job.”
The interview follows the declassification of documents by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which allege that Clinton operatives, with assistance from George Soros-linked organizations, orchestrated the Trump-Russia narrative and expected the FBI to play an active role in advancing it.
https://www.rt.com/news/622393-obama-russiagate-mastermind-trump/
Trump ‘prepared’ for nuclear war with Russia
1 Aug, 2025 22:39
US President Donald Trump has said he cannot treat any talk of nuclear weapons lightly and that the US must always be ”totally prepared” for any potential confrontation, responding to what he described as an inappropriate ”threat” issued by former Russian head of state Dmitry Medvedev.
At a White House press conference, Trump explained his order to deploy two nuclear submarines earlier on Friday.
He had vowed to send them to what he called ”the appropriate regions” in a post on Truth Social in reaction to remarks made by Medvedev on social media.
“Well, we had to do that. We just have to be careful. A threat was made, and we didn’t think it was appropriate,” Trump said. ”
So I do that on the basis of safety for our people. A threat was made by a former president of Russia, and we’re going to protect our people.”
Earlier in the week, Medvedev had reacted to Trump’s dismissal of New Delhi’s commitment to relying on Russian energy.
“About India’s and Russia’s ‘dead economies’ and ‘entering very dangerous territory’ – well, let him remember his favorite movies about ‘the walking dead,’ as well as how dangerous the fabled ‘Dead Hand’ can be,” Medvedev wrote.
The dispute escalated after Trump referred to Medvedev as a ”failed” leader and warned him to ”watch his words.”
Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, responded with a scathing message warning against provoking Moscow too far, referencing the legendary ‘Perimetr’ automatic nuclear retaliation system, which dates back to the Soviet era and is presumed to still exist in Russia.
Though Russia has never officially confirmed the existence of the system, it is widely believed by Western analysts to serve as a last-resort deterrent in the event of a decapitating strike on the Russian leadership.
Trump condemned the former Russian leader’s rhetoric as ”foolish and inflammatory,” warning that ”words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences.”
The White House and the Pentagon have not provided any further comments, and Trump’s claim about the submarine redeployment remains impossible to verify, since the exact locations and patrol areas of US nuclear submarines are among the military’s most closely guarded secrets.
https://www.rt.com/news/622391-trump-medvedev-nuclear-subs/
https://www.rt.com/news/622387-us-deploy-nuclear-subs-medvedev/
Ukrainian city riots against forced mobilization (videos)
2 Aug, 2025 00:16
A mass protest has erupted in the Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa against Kiev’s increasingly violent – and sometimes deadly – mobilization drive, after draft officers reportedly corralled dozens of men at a stadium.
The unrest began late Friday after eyewitnesses claimed that around 100 local men had been taken earlier to Lokomotiv Stadium by officers from Ukraine’s controversial Territorial Recruitment Centers (TRC), which operates as a press gang, mobbing victims and dragging them into vehicles off the streets.
As news spread, their relatives – mainly women – gathered at the site, demanding their release.
“They started catching them on the central bridge, brought them here, and locked them behind the gates. We came running because the guys we know asked for help.
When we approached, the police began dousing people with tear gas,” local resident Anna Tetervak told Ukrainskaya Pravda.
Videos circulating on social media show protesters shouting “Shame!” at police and attempting to break through the stadium gates.
Police reportedly deployed pepper spray and detained several demonstrators, according to local outlets and Telegram channels.
The situation remained tense well into the night, with new clashes reportedly breaking out after the start of the 11:00pm curfew.
Police urged residents to disperse, but many refused. Authorities allegedly blocked bridges leading to the stadium to prevent more people from joining the demonstration when the curfew ends at 5:00am.
Additional footage from the scene shows officers using police vehicles to block access roads leading to the stadium, while unmarked minibuses were driven inside the gates.
In a desperate attempt to stop the buses from taking the detained men away, relatives laid down on the asphalt in front of the vehicles, prompting police to forcibly clear the path.
Kiev’s general mobilization, requiring all able-bodied men aged 25 to 60 to serve, has not been enough to offset continued frontline losses.
Numerous social media posts show uniformed press gangs chasing men, dragging them into unmarked minibuses, and assaulting both recruits and bystanders – who increasingly defend the victims – in a practice now widely dubbed “busification.”
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has not commented on the Vinnitsa incident. However, opposition lawmakers and watchdog groups say thousands are being unlawfully detained.
One lawmaker, Georgy Mazurashu, recently described the mobilization effort as a “shameful hunt” and said soldiers are treated like “slaves.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/622392-vinnitsa-forced-mobilization-riot/
https://t.me/stranaua/205372
Putin to get a pair of elephants
1 Aug, 2025 14:13
Laos plans to gift a pair of elephants to Russia as a symbol of peace and prosperity, Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith said on Thursday during talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Sisoulith said the gesture would be in recognition of the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
“On behalf of the government and people of Laos, we wish to present the Russian Federation with a pair of elephants, which are a symbol of peace, friendship and well-being,” he said.
The elephants, Sisoulith added, would be sent to St. Petersburg, the city where he studied at the Herzen State Pedagogical Institute.
Putin responded with a smile, saying, “Thank you, they’ll come in handy.”
During the talks, Putin highlighted growing trade ties between the two countries, noting that bilateral trade increased by 66% last year. In the first five months of 2025 alone, he said, trade volumes had risen by a further 20%.
Elephants have a long history in St. Petersburg, dating back to 1714, when the Persian Shah gifted the first one to the newly founded imperial capital.
It was transported by sea to Astrakhan and then led on foot to St.Petersburg, reportedly wearing specially made slippers to protect its feet.
Throughout the 18th century, additional elephants were gifted by Persian rulers, housed near the city center, and occasionally walked along what is now Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main avenue.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, trained elephants performed in St. Petersburg Zoo, attracting large summer crowds.
Some were later transferred to Moscow due to financial difficulties, while others perished during periods of war and famine – including one that starved to death during the 1918 food crisis and another in 1941, during World War II, when a bombing raid by Nazi forces destroyed the elephant house during the Siege of Leningrad.
St. Petersburg Zoo has long awaited the return of elephants, with several generations of residents growing up without ever seeing one. The last elephant to live at the zoo, a male named Xun, died in 1982.
https://www.rt.com/russia/622364-laos-elephants-russia-putin/
Ukraine says it uncovers major drone procurement corruption scheme
Updated 08/02/2025, 12:05 PM
KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies said on Saturday they had uncovered a major graft scheme that procured military drones and signal jamming systems at inflated prices, two days after the agencies’ independence was restored following major protests.
The independence of Ukraine’s anti-graft investigators and prosecutors, NABU and SAPO, was reinstated by parliament on Thursday after a move to take it away resulted in the country’s biggest demonstrations since Russia’s invasion in 2022.
In a statement published by both agencies on social media, NABU and SAPO said they had caught a sitting lawmaker, two local officials and an unspecified number of national guard personnel taking bribes. None of them were identified in the statement.
"The essence of the scheme was to conclude state contracts with supplier companies at deliberately inflated prices," it said, adding that the offenders had received kickbacks of up to 30% of a contract’s cost. Four people had been arrested.
"There can only be zero tolerance for corruption, clear teamwork to expose corruption and, as a result, a just sentence," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram.
Zelenskiy, who has far-reaching wartime presidential powers and still enjoys broad approval among Ukrainians, was forced into a rare political about-face when his attempt to bring NABU and SAPO under the control of his prosecutor-general sparked the first nationwide protests of the war.
Zelenskiy subsequently said that he had heard the people’s anger, and submitted a bill restoring the agencies’ former independence, which was voted through by parliament on Thursday.
Ukraine’s European allies praised the move, having voiced concerns about the original stripping of the agencies’ status.
Top European officials had told Zelenskiy that Ukraine was jeopardising its bid for European Union membership by curbing the powers of its anti-graft authorities.
"It is important that anti-corruption institutions operate independently, and the law adopted on Thursday guarantees them every opportunity for a real fight against corruption," Zelenskiy wrote on Saturday after meeting the heads of the agencies, who briefed him on the latest investigation.
https://www.investing.com/news/world-news/ukraine-says-it-uncovers-major-drone-procurement-corruption-scheme-4166843
Hanging out at the Barns
Refineries, Airfields, and Defense Targets Blasted Deep in Russia as Moscow Claims 112 Drones Shot Down
Aug. 2, 2025, 9:45 am
Several Russian cities, as well as occupied Crimea, were attacked by drones early on Saturday morning, August 2.
According to Russian Telegram channels, explosions were heard in the Lipetsk, Ryazan, Taganrog, Penza, Voronezh, and Samara regions, as well as in occupied Crimea.
The SHOT Telegram channel reported that at least four explosions occurred in different areas of Lipetsk. Before that, locals heard an air raid siren, followed by apparent air defense activity targeting drones.
Soon after, videos began circulating on other Telegram channels allegedly showing footage of the drone attack and the explosions. Some sources claimed a military airfield was the target.
Ryazan was also reportedly targeted. Photos and videos published online show at least one fire and visible smoke after the attack. Later, local Telegram channels claimed that a fire had broken out near the oil refinery in Ryazan.
The Baza Telegram channel also reported that explosions were heard early in the morning over the Diaghilev Airfield in Ryazan.
The pro-Ukrainian “Crimean Wind” Telegram channel reported that the Crimean Bridge was blocked, and a series of explosions was heard in Feodosia, Crimea.
Footage circulating on social media allegedly shows a fire near an oil depot in Feodosia. Reports indicated that the city had been under drone attack for several hours.
At approximately 00:34 Kyiv time, SHOT wrote that more than five explosions were heard in Taganrog, Rostov region. Flashes were seen in the sky, and air defenses were reportedly engaged.
There were also reports of explosions in the Voronezh region, where an unknown drone allegedly damaged a kindergarten building. It was also claimed that the windows of an office building were shattered.
Meanwhile, drones attacked the Penza and Samara regions, causing fires near an oil refinery and on the premises of two defense-related enterprises.
Russian Telegram channels reported that a drone threat alert was issued in the Samara region at 02:40. Temporary flight restrictions were introduced in the area.
Around 05:00, residents of Novokuibyshevsk in the Samara region reported loud noises in the sky. The Telegram channel Exilenova+ published a video allegedly showing drones striking the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery.
Between five and eight explosions were heard in Penza. Local residents reported that at least one drone was downed by air defenses over a forest, with smoke seen rising from the wreckage.
Eyewitnesses also filmed drones striking JSC “Production Association Electropribor” in Penza.
This facility is linked to the defense industry and involved in state military contracts. It reportedly manufactures:
Cryptographic communication protection devices, secure modems, and multiplexers;
Switches and equipment for digital networks in military command systems;
Hardware for aircraft, armored vehicles, ships, and spacecraft;
Systems for secure transmission of voice, graphics, and documents.
Drones also reportedly struck the Penza Radiozavod plant again.
In its morning update on Telegram, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that between 20:00 on August 1 and 04:40 on August 2 (Moscow time), Russian air defenses destroyed or intercepted 112 Ukrainian aircraft-type drones:
34 over the Rostov region
31 over Krasnodar region
12 over Voronezh region
11 over Ryazan region
5 over Samara region
4 over Penza region
2 over Belgorod region
1 each over occupied Crimea and Lipetsk region
11 over the Azov and Black Seas
As of now, the Ukrainian side has not issued an official comment on the attack.
Long-range drones operated by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) struck the Radiozavod plant in Penza – a key facility within Rostec that produces automated combat systems and mobile command centers for the Russian military on July 31, a Kyiv Post source in the SBU confirmed.
At least 11 explosions were recorded during the strike, followed by a large fire that reportedly destroyed a new production complex and critical component warehouses.
The plant, already under international sanctions, supports command systems for Russian air defense, artillery, and strategic forces.
The local governor acknowledged a fire at an industrial site but denied casualties or serious damage. Authorities also temporarily restricted mobile internet access, citing support for counter-drone systems.
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/57413