South Korea has launched its first moon shot
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)South Korea has launched its first moon shot after the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter blasted off strapped to a returning SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The craft, called Danuri, which means “enjoy the moon”, is what’s been described as the country’s “first step” in investigating the extent of its space exploration capabilities.
It’s hoped this will mean a robot mission landing on the moon by 2030, but there’s a long way to go for this test flight with the instrument-packed probe.
If you need a visual indicator of how bad the drought here in England is - the source of our city’s majestic river, the Thames, has dried up for the first time.
The tinder-dry conditions have seen the river’s source actually move from just outside Cirencester to a shocking five miles further downstream, which is described as merely a weak flow. It comes as parched parts of England are facing a hosepipe ban amid extreme dry conditions and ahead of another predicted heatwave.
Now, London’s desalination plant built to deliver up to 100 million litres of water a day during dry weather has given up the ghost.
Thames Water’s Gateway Water Treatment Works, in Beckton, was completed in 2010 to take fresh and saltwater from the tidal River Thames to provide tap water for up to 400,000 households.
Concerns are being raised by scientists from University of Exeter and King’s College London over the increase in antipsychotic drugs with potentially harmful, and even deadly, side effects given to people with dementia living in care homes - which increased by more than 50 per cent during the pandemic.
Researchers from the University of Exeter and King’s College London say the number of people with dementia receiving these prescriptions soared since 2018, with the biggest rise seen in care facilities for older people.
Plus, Kenyan comedian Elsa Majimbo releases custom NFTs on Instagram via the OpenSea platform. Leading French physicist Etienne Klein apologises after joking that a photograph showing a humble slice of chorizo sausage was actually an image captured by Nasa’s James Webb space telescope. Davy Zyw, an author and cyclist with motor neurone disease is taking on the ride of a lifetime on his mission to ride over 260 miles on Britain’s highest roads to raise well over £20,000 for the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation. Conservationists as part of the Wild Oyster Project say a network of oyster nurseries set up to help restore marine habitat have filtered almost half a million bathtubs worth of water in just one year. And, Nasa has examined tricky samples from the Bennu and say the surface was so loose it resembled a plastic ball pit.
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