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NASA is looking at September 23 and September 27 as possible dates for its next attempt at launching its Artemis 1 mission to the Moon, senior official Jim Free told reporters Thursday.

Two previous attempts were scrapped after the giant Space Launch System rocket experienced technical glitches including a fuel leak.

The launch window for the 23rd would open at 6:47am (1047 GMT), while the 27th would open at 11:37am (1537 GMT), added Free, associate administrator for the agency’s exploration systems development directorate.

The dates were chosen to avoid a conflict with the DART mission, in which a probe will strike an asteroid on September 26 to test its ability to divert the object. 

Both missions require use of an international array of antennas called the Deep Space Network.

The launch dates still depend, however, on NASA receiving a special waiver to avoid retesting batteries on an emergency flight system that is used to destroy the rocket if it strays from its designated range to a populated area.

If it does not receive the waiver, the rocket will have to be wheeled back to its assembly building, pushing the timeline back several weeks.

Mike Bolger, exploration ground systems manager, added that teams were working to replace seals to fix the hydrogen leak issue — work that could be completed by the end of Thursday, which would pave the way for a tanking test on September 17.

The Artemis 1 space mission hopes to test the SLS as well as the unmanned Orion capsule that sits atop, in preparation for future Moon-bound journeys with humans aboard.

Once launched, it will take several days for the spacecraft to reach the Moon, flying around 60 miles (100 kilometers) at its closest approach.

The capsule will fire its engines to get to a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) of 40,000 miles beyond the Moon, a record for a spacecraft rated to carry humans.

The trip is expected to last several weeks, and one of its main objectives is to test the capsule’s heat shield, which at 16 feet (5 meters) in diameter is the largest ever built.

Artemis is named after the twin sister of the Greek god Apollo, after whom the first Moon missions were named.

The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts to the Moon without landing on its surface, while the third — set for the mid-2020s — would see the first woman and person of color on lunar soil.

NASA wants to build a lunar space station called Gateway and keep a sustained presence on the Moon to gain insight into how to survive very long space missions, ahead of a mission to Mars in the 2030s.

NASA is looking at September 23 and September 27 as possible dates for its next attempt at launching its Artemis 1 mission to the Moon, senior official Jim Free told reporters Thursday.

Two previous attempts were scrapped after the giant Space Launch System rocket experienced technical glitches including a fuel leak.

“The 23rd is a 6:47am window open for 80 minutes, and the 27th is an 11:37am window with a 70-minute duration,” said Free, associate administrator for the agency’s exploration systems development directorate.

The dates were chosen to avoid a conflict with the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), in which a probe is set to strike an asteroid on September 26.

The launch dates depend, however, on NASA receiving a special waiver to avoid having to retest batteries on an emergency flight system that is used to destroy the rocket if it strays from its designated range to a populated area.

If it does not receive the waiver, the rocket will have to be wheeled back to its assembly building, pushing the timeline back several weeks.

Mike Bolger, exploration ground systems manager, added that teams were working to replace seals to fix the hydrogen leak issue — work that could be completed by the end of Thursday, which would pave the way for a tanking test on September 17.

The Artemis 1 space mission hopes to test the SLS as well as the unmanned Orion capsule that sits atop, in preparation for future Moon-bound journeys with humans aboard.

The summer of 2022 was the hottest in Europe’s recorded history, with the continent suffering blistering heatwaves and the worst drought in centuries, the European Commission’s satellite monitor said on Thursday.

The five hottest years on record have all come since 2016 as climate change drives ever longer and stronger hot spells and drier soil conditions.

And that created tinderbox forests, increasing the risk of devastating and sometimes deadly wildfires.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said temperatures in Europe had been the “highest on record for both the month of August and the summer (June-August) as a whole”.

Data showed August was the hottest on the continent since records began in 1979 by a “substantial margin”, beating the previous record set in August 2021 by 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 Fahrenheit). 

Temperatures from June through to August 2022 were 1.34C hotter than the historical 1991-2020 average, while August itself was 1.72C higher than average.

That puts summer in Europe well within the temperature range at which the Paris Agreement on climate change seeks to limit global heating.

The 2015 accord commits nations to cap average global temperatures at “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels and to strive for a safer guardrail of 1.5C.

Although satellite data only stretches back a few decades, a Copernicus spokeswoman told AFP the service was confident that 2022 was the hottest summer in Europe going as far back as 1880 — at the early stage of the industrial age.

Europe has been battered by a string of heatwaves this year, with temperature records tumbling in many countries and the mercury topping 40C for the first time in Britain. 

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) said last month that 2022 was already a record year for wildfires, with nearly 660,000 hectares torched in Europe since January.

– ‘Summer of extremes’ –

CAMS said fires in France had seen the highest levels of carbon pollution from wildfires since records began in 2003.

The EU said last month that the current drought parching the continent was the worst in at least 500 years. 

The European Commission’s Global Drought Observatory latest bulletin said 47 percent of the continent is currently covered by drought warnings — meaning the soil is drying out. 

An additional 17 percent is under drought alert, meaning that vegetation is showing signs of stress, fuelling concerns about the continent’s autumn harvest. 

“An intense series of heatwaves across Europe, paired with unusually dry conditions, have led to a summer of extremes with records in terms of temperature, drought and fire activity in many parts of Europe, affecting society and nature in various ways,” said senior C3S scientist Freja Vamborg. 

“Data shows that we’ve not only had record August temperatures for Europe but also for summer, with the previous summer record only being one year old.”

On a global level, August 2022 was the joint warmest August on record. The average temperature was 0.3C higher than the 1991-2020 average for the month, the monitor said. 

New British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday said domestic fuel bills would be frozen for two years, marking her first week in office with a costly plan to tackle a worsening cost-of-living crisis.

Two days after taking over, Truss unveiled emergency measures that include authorising more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea and lifting a ban on fracking, a controversial method to dig for fossil fuels.

The government said it would also review progress towards its legally enshrined target to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, to ensure no “undue burdens on businesses or consumers”, but stressed it remained committed to the goal.

Households are facing an 80-percent hike in gas and electricity bills next month due to the rise in the cost of wholesale energy made worse by a squeeze on supplies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Businesses whose bills are not capped have warned they could go to the wall because of even bigger rises, while inflation has reached 40-year highs of 10.1 percent and is predicted to go worsen.

“Extraordinary challenges call for extraordinary measures, ensuring that the United Kingdom is never in this situation again,” Truss said.

The government expects the state-backed energy scheme to cost tens of billions of pounds (dollars), but Truss and new finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng insisted it would have “substantial benefits” to the economy.

It would curb inflation by four to five percentage points, they said in a statement.

Kwarteng said the freeze means worried households and businesses “can now breathe a massive sigh of relief”.

– No windfall tax –

Tackling the cost-of-living crisis, which has led to widespread strike action over pay, threatens to define Truss’s premiership, who succeeded Boris Johnson on Tuesday.

Truss said energy bills for an average British household would be capped at £2,500 ($2,872) a year — £1,000 less than October’s planned level.

Non-domestic energy users, including businesses, charities, and public sector organisations such as schools and hospitals, will see a six-month freeze.

Analysts predict the plan, which will likely be in place at the next general election expected in 2024, could top well over £100 billion, surpassing Britain’s Covid-era furlough jobs scheme.

Truss confirmed that the government will pay energy suppliers the difference in price but did not put an exact figure on how much it could cost the public purse, pending a mini-budget this month by Kwarteng.

Truss, a former Shell employee, has rejected opposition calls to impose windfall taxes on energy giants whose profits have surged on the back of higher wholesale prices. 

In her campaign to succeed Johnson, she had also ruled out direct handouts to consumers, but the new scheme reverses course on that.

Paying for the freeze by increased borrowing has stoked concern on the financial markets about the prospect of worsening public finances already damaged by emergency Covid spending.

On bond markets, the UK’s 10-year borrowing rate topped three percent on Tuesday for the first time since 2014, and the pound has slumped to its lowest dollar level since 1985.

– Fracking –

The end to the fracking moratorium comes despite Truss’s Conservative party having pledged in 2019 to keep it in place, after onshore drilling for shale gas had caused seismic tremors in northern England.

She said that lifting the ban “could get gas flowing in as soon as six months”.

But Kwarteng himself wrote in March that it could take up to a decade to get enough gas from fracking. At the same time, there is concern about the environmental damage of restarting the process.

Like Johnson, Truss committed to diversifying Britain’s energy sources to renewables and nuclear.

But to the anger of environmentalists, the new support package offered nothing about insulating UK buildings better, to reduce Europe’s highest rates of energy leakage.

“Millions of people will breathe a sigh of relief at being pulled back from the brink of fuel poverty, but it’s the fossil fuel giants that will be uncorking the bubbly,” Rosie Rogers of Greenpeace UK said.

And by capping prices without curbing usage, observers said the plan could trigger power blackouts this winter.

“Liz Truss needs to start levelling with the British public,” a senior Conservative backbencher told AFP. 

“We’re ducking the hard choices, and we’re staring at a 1970s energy crisis at this rate.”