AFP

NASA has scrubbed a test flight of its powerful new rocket, in a setback to its plan to send humans back to the Moon and eventually to Mars, but may shoot for another launch attempt on Friday.

“We don’t launch until it’s right,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said after an engine issue forced a cancellation of Monday’s flight from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“This is a very complicated machine,” Nelson said. “You don’t want to light the candle until it’s ready to go.”

The goal of the mission, baptized Artemis 1 after the twin sister of Apollo, is to test the 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion crew capsule that sits on top.

The mission is uncrewed — mannequins equipped with sensors are standing in for astronauts and will record acceleration, vibration and radiation levels.

Mike Sarafin, mission manager of Artemis 1, said the space agency is hoping to make another launch attempt later this week.

“Friday is definitely in play,” Sarafin said.

NASA would have a better idea of whether a Friday launch is feasible after a meeting on Tuesday of the management team, he said.

“We just need a little bit of time to look at the data,” Sarafin said.

Next Monday, September 5, is an alternative launch date.

Blastoff had been planned for 8:33 am (1233 GMT) but was cancelled because a test to get one of the rocket’s four RS-25 engines to the proper temperature range for launch was not successful.

Delays are “part of the space business,” Nelson said, expressing confidence NASA engineers will “get it fixed and then we’ll fly.”

Tens of thousands of people — including US Vice President Kamala Harris — had gathered to watch the launch, which comes 50 years after Apollo 17 astronauts last set foot on the Moon.

“Our commitment to the Artemis Program remains firm, and we will return to the Moon,” Harris tweeted.

Veteran NASA astronaut Stan Love told reporters he was disappointed but “not really surprised.”

“This is a brand new vehicle,” Love said. “It has a million parts. All of them have to work perfectly.”

– Extreme temperatures –

Overnight operations to fill the orange-and-white rocket with ultra-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen were briefly delayed by a risk of lightning.

A potential leak was detected during the filling of the main stage with hydrogen, causing a pause. After tests, the flow resumed.

NASA engineers later detected the engine temperature problem and decided to scrub the launch.

The Orion capsule is to orbit the Moon to see if the vessel is safe for people in the near future. At some point, Artemis aims to put a woman and a person of color on the Moon for the first time.

During the 42-day trip, Orion will follow an elliptical course around the Moon, coming within 60 miles (100 kilometers) at its closest approach and 40,000 miles at its farthest — the deepest into space by a craft designed to carry humans.

One of the main objectives is to test the capsule’s heat shield, which at 16 feet in diameter is the largest ever built.

On its return to Earth’s atmosphere, the heat shield will have to withstand speeds of 25,000 miles per hour and a temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) — roughly half as hot as the Sun.

– Crewed mission to Mars –

NASA is expected to spend $93 billion between 2012 and 2025 on the Artemis program, which is already years behind schedule, at a cost of $4.1 billion per launch.

The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts into orbit around the Moon without landing on its surface.

The crew of Artemis 3 is to land on the Moon in 2025 at the earliest.

And since humans have already visited the Moon, Artemis has its sights set on another lofty goal: a crewed mission to Mars.

The Artemis program aims to establish a lasting human presence on the Moon with an orbiting space station known as Gateway and a base on the surface.

Gateway would serve as a staging and refueling station for a voyage to the Red Planet that would take a minimum of several months.

Tens of millions of people across Pakistan were Monday battling the worst monsoon floods in a decade, with countless homes washed away, vital farmland destroyed and the country’s main river threatening to burst its banks.

Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said a third of the nation was under water, creating a “crisis of unimaginable proportions”.

Officials say 1,136 people have died since June, when the seasonal rains began, but the final toll could be higher as hundreds of villages in the mountainous north have been cut off after flood-swollen rivers washed away roads and bridges.

The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but it can also bring destruction.

This year’s flooding has affected more than 33 million people — one in seven Pakistanis — said the National Disaster Management Authority.

“It’s all one big ocean, there’s no dry land to pump the water out,” Rehman told AFP, adding the economic cost will be devastating.

This year’s floods are comparable to those of 2010, the worst on record, when more than 2,000 people died.

Flood victims have taken refuge in makeshift camps that have sprung up across the country, where desperation is setting in.

“Living here is miserable. Our self-respect is at stake,” said Fazal e Malik, sheltering in the grounds of a school now home to around 2,500 people in the town of Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

“I stink but there is no place to take a shower. There are no fans.”

Near Sukkur, a city in southern Sindh province and home to an ageing colonial-era barrage on the Indus River that is vital to preventing further catastrophe, one farmer lamented the devastation wrought on his rice fields.

Millions of acres of rich farmland have been flooded by weeks of non-stop rain, but now the Indus is threatening to burst its banks as torrents of water course downstream from tributaries in the north.

“Our crop spanned over 5,000 acres on which the best quality rice was sown and is eaten by you and us,” Khalil Ahmed, 70, told AFP.

“All that is finished.”

– Landscape of water –

Much of Sindh is now an endless landscape of water, hampering a massive military-led relief operation.

“There are no landing strips or approaches available… our pilots find it difficult to land,” one senior officer told AFP.

The army’s helicopters were also struggling to pluck people to safety in the north, where soaring mountains and deep valleys make for treacherous flying conditions.

Many rivers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province — which boasts some of Pakistan’s best tourist spots — have overflowed, demolishing scores of buildings including a 150-room hotel that crumbled into a raging torrent.

The government has declared an emergency and appealed for international help, and on Sunday the first aid flights began arriving — from Turkey and the UAE.

The floods could not have come at a worse time for Pakistan, where the economy is in free fall.

In Washington later Monday, the International Monetary Fund executive board approved the revival of a $6 billion loan programme essential for the country to service its foreign debt.

“We should now be getting the 7th & 8th tranche of $1.17 billion,” Finance Minister Miftah Ismail said on Twitter.

The United Nations announced that it will launch a formal appeal Tuesday for $160 million to fund emergency aid for the flood-battered country.

“The situation is expected to worsen with more ongoing rainfall,” Stephane Dujarric, the UN Secretary-General spokesman, warned during a press briefing Monday. The UN has already allocated $10 million in emergency aid.

But it is already clear it will take more to repair and rebuild after this monsoon.

Prices of basic goods — particularly onions, tomatoes and chickpeas — are soaring as vendors bemoan a lack of supplies from the flooded breadbasket provinces of Sindh and Punjab.

The meteorological office said the country as a whole had been deluged with twice the usual monsoon rainfall, but Balochistan and Sindh had seen more than four times the average of the last three decades.

Padidan, a small town in Sindh, was drenched by more than 1.2 metres (47 inches) of rain since June, making it the wettest place in Pakistan.

– More arriving daily –

Across Sindh, thousands of displaced people are camped alongside elevated highways and railway tracks — often the only dry spots as far as the eye can see.

More are arriving daily at Sukkur’s city ring road, belongings piled on boats and tractor trollies, looking for shelter until the floodwaters recede.

Sukkur Barrage supervisor Aziz Soomro told AFP the main headway of water was expected to arrive around September 5, but he was confident the 90-year-old sluice gates would cope.

The barrage diverts water from the Indus into 10,000 kilometers (6,210 miles) of canals that make up one of the world’s biggest irrigation schemes, but the farms it supplies are now mostly under water.

The only bright spark was the latest weather report that said there was little chance of rain for the rest of the week.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday he was en route to inspect Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as Kyiv’s forces launched a counter-offensive to retake the Russian-occupied southern region of Kherson.

The coastal region of Kherson and its capital city of the same name have been contested by Russian troops since the war broke out six months ago.

“Today there was a powerful artillery attack on enemy positions in… the occupied Kherson region,” local government official Sergey Khlan told Ukraine’s Pryamyi TV channel.

“This is what we have been waiting for since the spring — it is the beginning of the de-occupation of Kherson region.”

Russia’s defence ministry said it had repulsed attacks in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions and inflicted “heavy losses” on Ukrainian forces.

Kherson city lies some 200 kilometres (125 miles) southwest of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant — Europe’s largest atomic facility — which has also been occupied by Russian troops since early March. 

The plant was targeted over the weekend by fresh shelling, its operator said, with Moscow and Kyiv trading blame for attacks around the complex of six nuclear reactors in Energodar, a town on the banks of the Dnipro River.

Ukraine’s nuclear agency Energoatom has warned of the risk of a radiation leak.

Russian troops “continued to fire at Energodar and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant” on Sunday, injuring 10, among them four plant workers, it said in an update early on Monday.

As of 10:00 am (0700 GMT), the plant was operating “with the risk of violating radiation and fire safety standards”. 

Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukrainian troops of shelling near the plant on Sunday, claiming it had shot down a “Ukrainian strike drone” approaching a nuclear fuel and radioactive waste storage area. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged the international community “to put pressure on the Ukrainian side so it stops endangering the European continent by shelling”.

Peskov said Russia saw the IAEA visit as “necessary” and had been “waiting for this mission for a long time”, insisting it would ensure its safety in the face of “constant” risks. 

– ‘Radiation blackmail’ –

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday called for sanctions against Russia’s state nuclear energy agency Rosatom over the occupation of the plant.

“It’s not normal that there are no sanctions against Rosatom for its radiation blackmail at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant,” he said.

“The Russians are the only terrorists in the world that have managed to turn a nuclear plant into a battlefield.”

The UN’s nuclear watchdog has for months been asking to visit the site, warning of “the very real risk of a nuclear disaster”.

Writing on Twitter, Grossi on Monday said an IAEA support and assistance mission was “now on its way” with the team due to arrive “later this week”. 

The United Nations has called for an end to all military activity in the area surrounding the complex.

Ukraine initially feared an IAEA visit would legitimise the Russian occupation of the site before finally supporting the idea of a mission.

In its Monday update, Energoatom said the Russians had “increased pressure on the personnel of the plant to prevent them from disclosing (to the IAEA) evidence of the occupiers’ crimes at the plant and its use as a military base”.

The G7 industrial powers on Monday demanded free access for the IAEA team to “engage directly, and without interference, with the Ukrainian personnel responsible for operating these facilities”.

Ukraine was the site of the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe in 1986, when a reactor at the northern Chernobyl plant exploded and spewed radiation into the atmosphere.

Experts say any leak at Zaporizhzhia would more likely be on the scale of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Energoatom on Monday warned any leak would scatter radiation over swathes of southern Ukraine and southwestern regions of Russia. 

The United States on Monday urged a complete shutdown of the plant and renewed calls for a demilitarised zone around the facility.

– Kherson official assassinated –

Russian investigators reported that a former pro-Zelensky Ukrainian lawmaker who had joined the local Moscow-backed administration in Kherson had been shot dead at his home on Sunday.

Alexei Kovalev, “the deputy head of the military and civil administration in the Kherson region was killed by bullets,” the investigators said on Telegram.

With tensions high around the plant, Ukraine’s rescue services have been holding training sessions on managing the risk of nuclear accidents. 

Schools in Zaporizhzhia city began distributing iodine pills to reduce medical risk of radiation in the event of a disaster, with some 200 people turning up to collect them on Friday when distribution began, an AFP correspondent said.

“The tablet is taken in case of danger, when the alarm is raised,” said Elena Karpenko, a nurse at the Zaporizhzhia Children’s Hospital. 

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African countries on Monday called for an end to a “climate injustice” saying the continent causes less than four percent of global CO2 emissions but pays one of the highest prices for global warming.

Government officials, international organisations, NGOs and the private sector from more than 60 African nations attended Monday’s opening of Africa Climate Week in Gabon’s capital to prepare for the COP27 UN climate conference in Egypt in November.

Host President Ali Bongo Ondimba told the gathering the continent has to speak with one voice and offer “concrete” proposals for COP27.

“The time has come for Africans to take our destiny into our own hands,” he said, deploring the global failure to meet climate targets.

“Our continent is blessed with all the necessary assets for sustainable prosperity, abundant natural resources… and the world’s youngest and largest working population,” he said.

“But Africa and the rest of the world must address climate change,” when the UN’s intergovernmental climate panel IPCC “describes Africa as the most vulnerable continent.

“Droughts are causing extreme famines and displacing millions of people across the continent,” Bongo said.

“Today, 22 millions of people in the Horn of Africa face starvation because of the drought and famine, countries in the south of the continent are regularly hit by cyclones, rising sea levels threaten cities such as Dakar, Lagos, Capetown and Libreville.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, head of COP27, which will be held in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, said: “Despite contributing less than four percent of global emissions”, Africa was “one of the most devastated by the impacts of climate change.

“Also, Africa is obliged, with limited financial means and scant levels of support, to spend about two to three per cent of its GDP per annum to adapt to these impacts,” Shoukry said, calling it a “climate injustice”.

Denouncing the failure of developed countries to deliver on their climate commitments, he warned: “There is no extra time, no plan B and there should also be no backsliding or backtracking on commitments and pledges.”