THIS is the nerve-wracking moment Vladimir Putin’s manned space rocket launch was aborted within seconds.

The Russian Soyuz spacecraft was almost ready to take off towards the International Space Station when a technical problem set off alarm bells.

6

6

6

Smoke could be seen billowing from beneath the rocket as it prepared to blast into space, with personnel having already evacuated the area.

But with just 20 seconds to go, it was announced that “an automatic launch abort has been initiated.”

The technical glitch was spotted with seconds remaining in the launch capsule, prompting space chiefs to immediately pull the plug on the mission.

The three-man crew – two women and one man – were safely evacuated from the rocket, narrowly avoiding disaster.

“The reason was a voltage drop in the chemical power source,” said Yuri Borisov, head of the Russian space agency.

“The automation worked during launch control and prevented the spacecraft’s systems from malfunctioning.

“The crew is safe, left the rocket and went to take off their spacesuits.”

The explosion has now been moved to Saturday afternoon.

The crew included NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, 54, along with Belarus’ first female cosmonaut, Marina Vasilevskaya, 33.

Vasilevskaya is normally a flight attendant for Belavia airline and flies on Boeing and Embraer aircraft.

Before that, she was a professional ballroom dancer for 15 years.

The commander is Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, 52.

“Colleagues, the space is like this and the situation is very understandable,” said Borisov, who spoke to Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko to explain why Vasilevskaya was still on the ground.

But the aborted launch is highly unusual.

In the history of modern Russia, manned launches have never been canceled while the crew was already in a spacecraft, TASS news agency reported.

In the USSR this happened only once, when the launch of the Soyuz-4, manned by cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov, was aborted in 1969.

However, in 2018, a rocket functioned and shot into space at a speed of 7,790 km/hour.

Two astronauts miraculously survived an emergency landing after the rocket boosters of Russia’s Soyuz MS-10 failed at 160,000 feet shortly after takeoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Russia’s latest rocket launch comes after plans were announced jointly with China to place a nuclear reactor on the moon within ten years.

With the space race intensifying, the two countries hope to install the unit by 2035.

Putin would also like to put his own space station in the sky.

The former spy said in October that the first segment of Russia’s new space station should be fully operational in 2027.

But a bombshell warning from US intelligence last month suggested that Russia could be planning to launch a satellite-destroying weapon armed with a nuclear bomb into space.

Mad despot Putin has already tested orbital weapons designed to destroy Western equipment, such as the Cosmos 2543 anti-satellite weapon.

Whatever happens, Putin hopes his next space launch will be more successful than last year’s Russian Luna-25 disaster.

The country’s first moon mission in fifty years ended in catastrophic failure when Putin’s robotic spacecraft went out of control and crashed.

The 800 kg Luna-25 probe was shattered into pieces when it crashed onto the surface from space.

6

6

6

A “double tap” Russian missile attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa killed at least 14 people and injured 46 others, including emergency workers who rushed to the scene to rescue the first victims, local officials said.

The two waves of strikes early Friday resulted in one The rocket hit homes before a second was shot at the same location as emergency services arrived on the scene, authorities said.

A paramedic and an emergency worker were among those killed, with photos from the scene showing the victims in pools of blood and the firefighters covered in dust.

At least 10 houses in Odesa were damaged in the attack, which caused a fire, which firefighters fought despite the looming threat, according to Ukraine’s emergency services and regional governor Oleh Kiper.

After the brutal attack by Vladimir Putin’s forces, bodies littered the streets of the residential area early on, and a day of mourning was declared in Odesa Oblast on March 16.

The tactic of firing a second missile at the same location, aiming to hit rescuers, is known in military parlance as a double tap.

Such attacks often target civilians, as was the case today, and it is a method Russia has used in the past with devastating consequences.

In August last year, two Iskander rockets hit the city center of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, killing nine people, including civilians, a first responder and a soldier.

The number of injured exceeded 80 in the double attack, which hit 12 high-rise buildings, a hotel, a pharmacy, shops and cafes, Ukrainian authorities said, blaming Russia.

The number of civilian deaths has continued to rise as a result of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Two people were killed and three injured in Ukraine’s central Vinnytsia region last night after Russia attacked a building with a drone, according to regional governor Serhii Borzov.

The Ukrainian Air Force said it shot down all 27 Shahed drones that Russia launched over the Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Khmelnytskyi and Kiev regions.

The attack came as Russians voted in a presidential election that will almost certainly extend Vladimir Putin’s rule for another six years.

The elections come amid a brutal Kremlin crackdown that has paralyzed independent media and prominent rights groups, putting Putin in full control of the political system. as Moscow’s war in Ukraine enters its third year.

Voters cast their ballots from Friday to Sunday at polling stations across the vast country’s 11 time zones, as well as in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine.

Ukraine and the West have also condemned Russia for holding votes in Ukrainian regions captured and occupied by Moscow’s forces.

In many ways, Ukraine is at the center of these elections, political analysts and opposition figures say.

Putin wants to use his virtually assured election victory as proof that the public supports his approach to the war, which he continues to call a “special military operation.”

Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of conflict in eastern Ukraine between Kiev’s forces on one side and pro-Russian Ukrainians and Russian allies on the other.

Tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides have been killed and many more injured, thousands of Ukrainian civilians are dead, and Ukraine’s economy and infrastructure have suffered hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage.

SPACEX successfully launched its spacecraft into orbit and refueled it from space, a unique achievement during a third test launch today.

Although the spacecraft disintegrated upon reentry, it completed several mission objectives that made the flight a success.

5

5

5

Starship is the spacecraft that will land boots on the moon in 2026 and will eventually become the ferry that takes people to Mars.

The rocket was launched on March 14 at 1:25 PM GMT / 8:25 AM CT after several setbacks due to weather conditions.

Despite a windy start, Starship broke the records of its second launch attempt in November, which exploded about 10 minutes after launch.

During the third flight, SpaceX tried procedures it had not tested before, including:

• Opening and closing Starship’s cargo door (where Starlink satellites will eventually be deployed from)
• A demonstration of propellant transfer during the coastal phase of the upper stage
• A controlled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere

These mission objectives made this spaceship’s most ambitious flight ever.

Achieving a propellant or fuel transfer while in the air will be essential for landing humans on the moon and for having enough gas to reach Mars and other deep space locations.

SpaceX announced that the payload door test and propellant transfer demonstration have been completed, making the launch a success.

The third test flight was to demonstrate the first-ever re-ignition of a Raptor engine in space.

However, the team decided to skip that process and save it for Starship’s fourth flight.

After the second launch attempt, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said that Starship’s third attempt had a good chance of success.

Musk congratulated the SpaceX team with X: “Starship has reached orbital velocity! Congratulations.”

Instead of the Pacific Ocean, Starship and its booster focused on a new trajectory and a soft landing in the Indian Ocean.

Life on Mars

Starship is the embodiment of Musk’s personal mission to make humans an interplanetary species.

The 33-engine, $3 billion mega-rocket is designed to carry up to 100 people from Earth to the moon and eventually to Mars in the 2030s.

In a SpaceX livestream ahead of launch, the team said Starship is “critical” to creating a “self-sustaining city” on Mars.

From the start, Starship was designed with the capacity to store more than 100 tons of cargo.

This is so it can store everything needed to build permanent bases on both alien worlds.

Not only is it the tallest rocket ever flown, Starship’s first stage, known as the Super Heavy booster, is the most powerful rocket ever built and can produce up to 7.6 million kilograms of thrust.

That’s almost double the current record of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS).

Starship, developed as part of a $1.15 billion contract with NASA, refers to the reusable stainless steel upper half of the rocket.

While the bottom half of the rocket is the booster, known as Super Heavy.

Not only will the rocket be critical in future Mars missions, but it has also been selected to launch a new outpost intended to replace the aging International Space Station.

5

5

A rocket attempting to launch a satellite into orbit exploded just seconds after launch in Japan.

Fiery debris and huge plumes of smoke filled the sky after Space One’s failed launch of the Kairos rocket.

2

2

The company attempted to become the first Japanese company to successfully launch a satellite into orbit.

Just five seconds after takeoff, the 16-meter rocket exploded, leaving a huge fireball at the tip of the mountainous Kii Peninsula in western Japan.

Dramatic footage showed a huge plume of smoke engulfing the area as water jets desperately tried to extinguish the fire.

Debris spread from the air and charred pieces of the rocket were later found scattered on the ground.

Company chairman Masakazu Toyoda said: “The rocket ended its flight after assessing that accomplishing its mission would be difficult.”

Space One has not confirmed what problem was detected by the rocket’s automated system that caused the rocket to explode.

The projectile is programmed to self-destruct when it detects errors in the flight path, speed or control system that could cause a crash that endangers people on the ground.

Toyoda added: “We do not use the world’s ‘failure’, because every trial gives us … new data and experiences for a new challenge.”

Space One said the problem occurred during step two of the launch, where the first step was liftoff, and all pieces of the rocket landed on company property.

The missile would have sent a government-made satellite into orbit around Earth to gather information, including monitoring potential dangers from missile launches from neighboring North Korea.

But one of the main objectives was for Japan to catch up, as missile launches here have lagged behind those of the US and China.

Space One had scheduled the launch for Saturday but postponed it after a ship entered the nearby restricted sea area.

Tokyo-based Space One was founded in 2018 with investments from major Japanese companies including Canon Electronics, IHI, Shimizu and major banks.

It hopes to eventually offer space services and travel.

Japan’s main efforts in space exploration were led by the government under JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which sent a spacecraft to the moon and brought back samples of asteroids for research.

SPACEX has announced the launch date for Starship’s third test launch, months after the rocket exploded in mid-air during an earlier training flight.

Starship is the rocket that NASA will use to take humans to the moon during the 2026 Artemis III mission – and ultimately to Mars in the 2030s.

3

3

3

In an announcement on X (formerly Twitter), the company said it is targeting March 14 for Starship’s third test flight “pending regulatory approval.”

The second test flight in October last year exploded dramatically in mid-air due to a technical fault.

The nearly 400-foot-tall rocket with 33 engines is the most powerful spacecraft ever built and costs a whopping $3 billion.

SpaceX plans to try a number of procedures on this third attempt, including propellant transfers during the coast phase of the flight.

Without the ability to transfer fuel into space, NASA will not be able to land astronauts on the moon.

If successful, SpaceX will attempt to transfer propellant from one rocket to another in orbit on the next jump.

In this process, several spacecraft will fuel a tanker in orbit, which will be used to move fuel to another spaceship that is part of NASA’s Human Landing System.

It’s part of the U.S. mission to get boots on the moon’s south pole before China does.

US vs China

The ongoing saber-rattling between the US and China has led to a renaissance of the space race of the 1960s.

The pair compete for the moon’s mysterious south pole, which both countries believe is the most feasible location for a permanent moon base.

In January, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he believed the “race” for China was over, and that the US was on track to return humans to the moon in September 2026 with Artemis III.

If all goes according to plan, Artemis III will be the first human mission on the moon since Apollo 17.

China’s military presence in the South China Sea signals how the country might behave on the lunar surface, Nelson argues, which would violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

But China has big plans and is working with Russia to realize them.

A research paper from scientists at the China National Space Administration earlier this week revealed that the country plans to build a moon base the size of Disneyland.

The planned moon base has a radius of 6 km and includes a command center, a power plant, a communications center, scientific facilities and a fleet of robots.

It will even have its own remote sensing, navigation and communications satellites.

China hopes to start construction of the moon base within the next few years and have a stripped-down version of the outpost by 2028.

Next, China and Russia plan to build a nuclear reactor by 2035 with the robots that will call the moon base their home.

Hunting for helium

The south pole of the moon has been a place of interest for all spacefaring countries including India, Russia, China and the US.

The area is considered one of the most resource-rich areas on the moon.

Last year, India made history by becoming the first country to land near the southern location.

Days before India’s success, Russia also attempted a landing at the South Pole, which resulted in an emergency landing.

There are many ‘cold traps’ on the moon’s surface that are believed to contain gases such as Helium-3, which could help produce enormous amounts of energy here on Earth.

“Even though there are many precious metals and minerals on the moon, the most valuable resource is Helium-3, because it is rare on Earth but very common on the moon,” says a report from the Universities Space Research Association (USRA ). .

“The price of Helium-3 could even reach $2,000 per liter, or $59.15 per ounce.

“It is essential to note that 2.2 pounds, or 1 kilogram, of Helium-3 mixed with 1.5 pounds, or 0.67 kilograms of deuterium, can produce 19 years of megawatts of energy – enough energy to power the United States for an entire year Let it turn.”

RONNIE O’SULLIVAN’S 16-match winning run came to a halt after a 6-0 thrashing of Mark Selby in the Players Championship.

It took Selby just an hour and 42 minutes to whitewash Rocket.

2

2

The Leicester star scored breaks of 105, 91, 81, 65 and 59 in the Telford quarter-finals.

O’Sullivan, 48, had missed the Welsh Open and German Masters to care for his mental health.

That came from winning the snooker’s Masters and the UK Championship.

Selby said: “Beating Ronnie is always a big win.

“To beat him the way I did, I’m very happy.

“I hope it acts as a spark for my season. That has proven to me what I should continue to do.

“After that win, I’m looking forward to my chances.”

Earlier in the match the referee was forced to apologize after her blunder saved Ronnie O’Sullivan from forfeiting a frame.

CASINO SPECIAL – BEST CASINO WELCOME OFFERS

In the opening frame, and despite being able to see the red lines clearly with the cue ball on the top pad, O’Sullivan made a mistake on his first two shots.

The referee should then have given O’Sullivan a warning that a third miss in a row would result in him gifting Selby the frame.

But she forgot and when O’Sullivan made a mistake for the third time, there was confusion at Telford.

The referee apologized for her mistake and the warning was given before his fourth shot – with both players seemingly agreeing to the spontaneous rule change.

And knowing the pressure was on, O’Sullivan took zero chances when he fired the white into the group of red balls, sending them sprawling across the table.

The seven-time world snooker champion barely waited for the cue ball to come to a stop before marching back to his seat, dressed in his chunky black trainers.

Selby voiced no complaint and simply continued with the opening frame, accepted the honest mistake and continued with the crunch clash.