Foreign News
UK to send warship to South America amid Venezuela tensions
The UK is preparing to send a warship to Guyana in a show of diplomatic and military support for the former British colony, the BBC has learned.
It comes after neighbouring Venezuela renewed its claim for a disputed part of Guyanese territory that is rich in oil and minerals.
The Ministry of Defence confirmed HMS Trent would take part in joint exercises after Christmas.
Guyana, a Commonwealth member, is South America’s only English-speaking nation.
HMS Trent – an offshore patrol vessel – had been deployed to the Caribbean to search for drug smugglers but was re-tasked after Venezuela’s government threatened to annex the Essequibo region of Guyana earlier this month.
This raised fears that Venezuela might invade and spark the first interstate war in South America since the Falklands Conflict in 1982.
Venezuela has long claimed ownership of Essequibo, a 61,000 square mile region which comprises about two-thirds of Guyana. Its hills and jungles are rich in gold, diamonds and bauxite, while huge oil deposits have been found off its coast.
While Guyana’s economy is growing fast, Venezuela’s is suffering.
Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, staged a referendum on 3 December to assert popular support for his country’s claim to Essequibo. The result was widely challenged and disputed but he nonetheless published new maps and legislation showing Essequibo as part of Venezuela, named a new governor and offered identity cards to those living in the sparsely populated region.
He has also ordered the state oil company to issue extraction licences.
The Venezuelan president has subsequently met Guyana’s President, Irfaan Ali, and agreed not to use force, but he has maintained his territorial claim and both sides are still at odds over how the border dispute could be settled legally.
This week the Lloyd’s insurance market in London added Guyana to its list of riskiest shipping zones.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson told the BBC: “HMS Trent will visit regional ally and Commonwealth partner Guyana later this month as part of a series of engagements in the region during her Atlantic Patrol Task deployment.”
HMS Trent has a crew of 65, a top speed of 24 knots and a range of 5,000 nautical miles.It is armed with 30mm cannon and a contingent of Royal Marines. It can also deploy Merlin helicopters and unmanned aircraft.
HMS Trent left its home port of Gibraltar in early December and is currently alongside in Bridgetown, Barbados for Christmas.
The warship is expected to anchor off the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, and conduct visits, joint activities and training with the country’s navy and other allies. It cannot go alongside because the port is too shallow.
The vessel is mainly used for tackling piracy and smuggling, protecting fisheries, counter-terrorism, providing humanitarian aid, and search and rescue operations, but the Royal Navy says it is also designed for border patrols and defence diplomacy.
The decision to send HMS Trent to Guyana is part of a growing UK effort to show international diplomatic support for Guyana.
This week the Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said the UK would “continue to work with partners in the region to ensure the territorial integrity of Guyana is upheld and prevent escalation”.
David Rutley, the Foreign Office Minister for the Americas, visited Georgetown on 18 December, the first G7 representative to do so since Venezuela renewed its claim. He promised Guyana the UK’s “unequivocal backing” and welcomed Venezuela’s promise to avoid using force.
Mr Rutley continued: “The border issue has been settled for over 120 years. Sovereign borders must be respected wherever they are in the world. “The UK will continue to work with partners in the region, as well as through international bodies, to ensure the territorial integrity of Guyana is upheld.”
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, Yvan Gil, criticised the visit, accusing the UK of destabilising the region. In a post on X – formerly Twitter – he said: “The former invading and enslaving empire, which illegally occupied the territory of Guayana Esequiba and acted in a skillful and sneaky manner against the interests of Venezuela, insists on intervening in a territorial controversy that they themselves generated.”
Venezuela disputes the border which was established under an international agreement in 1899.
Guyana was formerly known as British Guiana before it secured its independence in 1966.
(BBC)
Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, who snapped one of the most famous photographs taken in outer space, has died at the age of 90.
Officials say a small plane he was flying crashed into the water north of Seattle, Washington.
Anders’ son Greg confirmed that his father was flying the small plane, and that his body was recovered on Friday afternoon. “The family is devastated. He was a great pilot. He will be missed,” a statement from the family reads.
Anders – who was a lunar module pilot on the Apollo 8 mission – took the iconic Earthrise photograph, one of the most memorable and inspirational images of Earth from space.
Taken on Christmas Eve during the 1968 mission, the first crewed space flight to leave Earth and reach the Moon, the picture shows the planet rising above the horizon from the barren lunar surface.
Anders later described it as his most significant contribution to the space programme.
The image is widely credited with motivating the global environmental movement and leading to the creation of Earth Day, an annual event to promote activism and awareness of caring for the planet.
Speaking of the moment, Anders said: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing that we discovered was the Earth.”
Officials said on Friday that Anders crashed his plane around 11:40PDT (1940BST).
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the 90-year-old was flying a Beechcraft A A 45 – also known as a T-34. The agency said that the plane crashed about 80ft (25m) from the coast of Jones Island.
Anders also served as the backup pilot to the Apollo 11 mission, the name of the effort that led to the first Moon landing on July 24, 1969.
Following Anders’ retirement from the space programme in 1969, the former astronaut largely worked in the aerospace industry for several decades. He also served as US Ambassador to Norway for a year in the 1970s.
But he is best remembered for the Apollo 8 mission and the iconic photograph he took from space.
“In 1968, during Apollo 8, Bill Anders offered to humanity among the deepest of gifts an astronaut can give. He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves,” Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
Mark Kelly, a former astronaut who now serves as a US Senator for the state of Arizona, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that Anders “inspired me and generations of astronauts and explorers. My thoughts are with his family and friends”.
[BBC]
A Chinese spacecraft carrying rock and soil samples from the far side of the Moon has lifted off from the lunar surface to start its journey back to Earth, according to state media.
The achievement on Tuesday is a world first and the latest leap for Beijing’s decades-old space programme, which aims to send a crewed mission to the Moon by 2030.
The Xinhua News Agency, citing the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said that the ascender of the Chang’e-6 probe took off at 7:38am local time on Tuesday (23:38 GMT) and entered a preset orbit around the moon.
It described the move as “an unprecedented feat in human lunar exploration history”.
The Chang’e-6 probe was launched last month and its lander touched down on the far side of the Moon on Sunday. It used a drill and robotic arm to dig up soil on and below the Moon’s surface, according to Xinhua.
After successfully gathering its samples, the Chang’e-6 unfurled China’s national flag for the first time on the far side of the Moon, it said.
The agency cited the CNSA as saying that the spacecraft stowed the samples it had gathered in a container inside the ascender of the probe as planned.
[Aljazeera]
China says its uncrewed craft has successfully landed on the far side of the Moon – an unexplored place almost no-one tries to go.
The Chang’e 6 touched down in the South Pole-Aitken Basin at 06:23 Beijing time on Sunday morning (22:23 GMT Saturday), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.
Launched on 3 May, the mission aims to collect precious rock and soil from this region for the first time in history. The probe could extract some of the Moon’s oldest rocks from a huge crater on its South Pole.
The landing was fraught with risks, because it is very difficult to communicate with spacecraft once they reach the far side of the Moon. China is the only country to have achieved the feat before, landing its Chang’e-4 in 2019.
After launching from Wenchang Space Launch Center, the Chang’e 6 spacecraft had been orbiting the Moon waiting to land. The lander component of the mission then separated from the orbiter to touch down on the side of the Moon that faces permanently away from Earth.
During the descent, an autonomous visual obstacle avoidance system was used to automatically detect obstacles, with a visible light camera selecting a comparatively safe landing area based on the brightness and darkness of the lunar surface, the CNSA was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.
The lander hovered about 100m (328ft) above the safe landing area, and used a laser 3D scanner before a slow vertical descent. The operation was supported by the Queqiao-2 relay satellite, the CNSA said.
Chinese state media described the successful landing as an “historic moment”. The state broadcaster said “applause erupted at the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center” when the Chang’e landing craft touched down on the Moon early on Sunday morning.
The lander should spend up to three days gathering materials from the surface in an operation the CNSA said would involve “many engineering innovations, high risks and great difficulty”. “Everyone is very excited that we might get a look at these rocks no-one has ever seen before,” explains Professor John Pernet-Fisher, who specialises in lunar geology at the University of Manchester.
He has analysed other lunar rock brought back on the American Apollo mission and previous Chinese missions. But he says the chance to analyse rock from a completely different area of the Moon could answer fundamental questions about how planets form.
Most of the rocks collected so far are volcanic, similar to what we might find in Iceland or Hawaii. But the material on the far side would have a different chemistry . “It would help us answer those really big questions, like how are planets formed, why do crusts form, what is the origin of water in the solar system?” the professor says.
The mission aims to collect about 2kg (4.4lb) of material using a drill and mechanical arm, according to the CNSA.
The South Pole–Aitken basin, an impact crater, is one of the largest known in the solar system.
From there, the probe could gather material that came from deep inside the lunar mantle – the inner core of the Moon – Prof Pernet-Fisher says.
The Moon’s South Pole is the next frontier in lunar missions – countries are keen to understand the region because there is a good chance it has ice.
The capsule in the last Chinese moon mission, Chang’e 5, brought back soil and rocks in 2020 (BBC)
Access to water would significantly boost the chances of successfully establishing a human base on the Moon for scientific research.
If the mission succeeds, the craft will return to Earth with the precious samples on board a special return capsule.
The material will be kept in special conditions to try to keep it as pristine as possible.
Scientists in China will be given the first chance to analyse the rocks, and later researchers around the world will be able to apply for the opportunity too.
This is the second time China has launched a mission to collect samples from the Moon.
In 2020 Chang’e 5 brought back 1.7kg of material from an area called Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon’s near side.
China is planning three more uncrewed missions this decade as it looks for water on the Moon and investigates setting up a permanent base there.
Beijing’s broader strategy aims to see a Chinese astronaut walk on the moon by around 2030.
The US also aims to put astronauts back on the moon, with Nasa aiming to launch its Artemis 3 mission in 2026.
(BBC)
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