Entertainment

NASA launches spacecraft to deflect asteroid from collision with Earth

A spacecraft that must ultimately crash to succeed was launched late on Tuesday from California on a NASA mission to demonstrate the world’s first planetary defense system, designed to deflect an asteroid from a potential doomsday collision with Earth.

The DART spacecraft soared into the night sky at 10:21 p.m. Pacific time on Tuesday (1:21 a.m. Eastern/0621 GMT Wednesday) from Vandenberg US Space Force Base, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, carried aboard a SpaceX-owned Falcon 9 rocket.

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The launch was shown live on NASA TV.
The DART payload, about the size of a small car, was released from the booster minutes after launch to begin a 10-month journey into deep space, some 6.8 million miles (11 km) from Earth.
Once there DART will test its ability to alter an asteroid’s trajectory with sheer kinetic force, plowing into it at high speed to nudge the space boulder off course just enough to keep our planet out of harm’s way.
Cameras mounted on the impactor and on a briefcase-sized mini-spacecraft to be released from DART about 10 days beforehand will record the collision and beam images of it back to Earth.
The asteroid DART is aimed at poses no actual threat and is tiny compared with the cataclysmic Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, leading to extinction of the dinosaurs. But scientists say smaller asteroids are far more common and pose a greater theoretical danger in the near term.
DART’s target is an asteroid “moonlet” the size of a football stadium that orbits a chunk of rock five times larger in a binary asteroid system named Didymos, the Greek word for twin.
The team behind DART, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, chose the Didymos system because its relative proximity to Earth and dual-asteroid configuration make it ideal for observing the results of the impact.

Bumping asteroid moonlet

The plan is to fly the DART spacecraft directly into the moonlet, called Dimorphos, at 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kph), bumping it hard enough to shift its orbital track around the larger asteroid.
Cameras on the impactor and on a briefcase-sized mini-spacecraft released from DART about 10 days beforehand will record the collision and beam images back to Earth. Ground-based telescopes will measure how much the moonlet’s orbit around Didymos changes.
The DART team expects to shorten Dimorphos’ orbital track by 10 minutes but would consider at least 73 seconds a success. A small nudge to an asteroid millions of miles away would be sufficient to safely reroute it.
DART is the latest of several NASA missions of recent years to explore and interact with asteroids, primordial rocky remnants from the solar system’s formation 4.6 billion years ago.
Last month, NASA launched a probe on a voyage to the Trojan asteroid clusters orbiting near Jupiter, while the grab-and-go spacecraft OSIRES-REx is on its way back to Earth with a sample collected last October from the asteroid Bennu.
The Dimorphos moonlet is one of the smallest astronomical objects to receive a permanent name and is one of 27,500 known near-Earth asteroids of all sizes tracked by NASA.
Although all none poses a foreseeable hazard to humankind, NASA estimates many more asteroids remain undetected in the near-Earth vicinity.
The DART spacecraft, cube-shaped with two rectangular solar arrays, is due to rendezvous with the Didymos-Dimorphos pair in late September 2022.
NASA put the entire cost of the DART project at $330 million, well below that of many of the space agency’s most ambitious science missions.

Entertainment

Accused of rape, British comedian Russell Brand speaks of ‘distressing’ week

British comedian and actor Russell Brand on Friday spoke of an “extraordinary and distressing week” in his first public comments since rape and assault allegations were aired against him, but did not address the claims.
“Obviously it’s been an extraordinary and distressing week and I thank you very much for your support and for questioning the information you are being presented with,” he said on a video posted to his YouTube channel, which has 6.64 million subscribers.
“I need your support now more than ever, more than I ever imagined I would,” he added.
But he did not comment on the joint investigation by The Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4 television in which four women made claims of rape, sexual assaults and emotional abuse against him.
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Then on Thursday, a woman accused Brand of exposing himself to her in 2008.
Brand criticized the British government for asking tech companies to take action against him.
Denouncing what he described as “deep state and corporate collusion” and “media corruption and censorship,” he said he would post a longer video on Monday.
In a video released last week, just before the story broke, Brand, 48, denied the allegations against him, which are said to have taken place between 2006 and 2013.
He said his relationships had always been “consensual,” even during a period when he admitted he was “very, very promiscuous.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman called the allegations “very serious and concerning.”
Sunak “has been clear there should never be any space for harassment, regardless of where it is found,” he added.
Brand’s publisher Bluebird announced that “all future publishing” with the comedian had been put on hold.
Video-sharing platform YouTube has also demonetized his content.

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Entertainment

Talks between striking Hollywood writers, studios fail for second day

Negotiators for Hollywood's major studios and striking film and television writers failed to reach an agreement to end a months-long stalemate after meeting for a second straight day on Thursday, CNN reported.

Representatives of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) talked for more than 10 hours, CNN said. It is unclear when they will convene again.

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Spokespeople for the WGA and the AMPTP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

To help spark a deal, sessions on Wednesday and Thursday were attended by Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, Comcast's NBCUniversal Studio Group Chairman Donna Langley and Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav, according to a source close to the studios.

Roughly 11,500 WGA members walked off the job in May to protest pay and working conditions in the streaming TV era.

The SAG-AFTRA actors union went on strike in July, putting Hollywood in the midst of two simultaneous work stoppages for the first time in 63 years.

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Entertainment

Striking writers, Hollywood studios to meet again to resolve five-month standoff

Negotiators for the striking Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Hollywood studios will meet again on Thursday to try to resolve a nearly five-month standoff that has disrupted film and television production.

The WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Walt Disney, Netflix and other media companies, held talks for the first time in about a month on Wednesday.

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Early on Wednesday evening, the two sides issued a joint statement saying simply: “The WGA and AMPTP met for bargaining today and will meet again tomorrow.”

To help spark a deal, Wednesday’s meeting was attended by Disney CEO Bob Iger, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos, Comcast’s NBCUniversal Studio Group Chairman Donna Langley and Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav, according to a source close to the studios.

People in the room described the session as “encouraging,” the source said, and the four executives are expected to return to the talks on Thursday.

CNBC, citing people close to the negotiations, said writers and producers were near an agreement and hoped to reach a deal on Thursday. But if a deal is not reached the strike could last through the end of the year, CNBC reported.

The WGA went on strike in May after negotiations reached an impasse over compensation, minimum staffing of writers’ rooms and the role of artificial intelligence (AI), among other issues.

The SAG-AFTRA actors union called a work stoppage in July, putting Hollywood in the midst of two simultaneous strikes for the first time in 63 years. No talks are currently scheduled between the actors and the studios.

Hollywood studios release terms of new proposal to striking writers