TIG Post

Tag: American space agency

  • None of our prosecution referrals have been acted on by the AG – PAC Chairman

    None of our prosecution referrals have been acted on by the AG – PAC Chairman

    Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament, Dr. James Klutse Avedzi, has revealed that the Office of the Attorney General (AG) has yet to prosecute any of the individuals or entities it recommended for legal action.

    In a media statement on August 21, 2024, Dr. Avedzi explained that the lack of prosecution stems from a failure in communication between the Clerk of Parliament and the Attorney General’s office.

    According to Dr. Avedzi, the Clerk has not been relaying the committee’s recommendations to the AG’s office.

    Dr. Avedzi also noted that he personally followed up on this issue and ensured that referrals for prosecution were sent to the Attorney General’s office earlier this year.

    “You would see in the report that we have that most of the time we attach an annex to our report listing all the agencies that are to be prosecuted by the Attorney General. The challenge we had as a committee was that while we do all these things, the parliament was not communicating this decision to the Attorney General for them to take action.

    “Until one day when the Attorney General appeared before the committee, I asked, we have made a number of referrals for prosecution. Tell us what action you are doing or you have taken on them. Then he said, nothing has been communicated to his office. So, I have to start doing a follow-up for the Clerk of Parliament to communicate this decision,” he said.

    He added, “I’ve gone through this for more than almost a year and a half or even more until recently, that when I raised the issue again on the floor of parliament, it came to light that finally, finally the issues have been communicated to the Attorney General to take action.”

  • Hurricane Ian: Nasa forced to shelter Artemis Moon rocket

    Due to an impending hurricane, the American space agency will remove its Artemis-I Moon rocket from the launch pad in Florida.

    In order to preserve it, NASA says that the Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle will be rolled back into its engineering workshop.

    Hurricane Ian is moving through the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall in Florida on Thursday.

    High winds and heavy rain are forecast for the Kennedy Space Center.

    Although the spaceport will probably escape the worst of the storm’s impacts, Nasa can’t risk its multi-billion-dollar rocket being damaged.

    The return to Kennedy’s famous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) likely now moves the maiden flight of the SLS to November.

    Nasa had hoped the storm’s track through the Gulf would take it sufficiently westwards so that the rocket could stay out on the pad, enabling a lift-off to take place sooner.

    But the medium-range forecast models have, in recent hours, seen the expected track shift eastwards, putting the west coast of Florida, or its panhandle, directly in the firing line.

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has already declared a “state of emergency”.

    Nasa has one of its giant tractors on standby at the pad, ready to initiate the roll-back.

    The slow speed at which this Crawler Transporter moves means the 6.7km (4.2 miles) journey to the VAB takes the best part of half a day. Engineers will therefore want to get it underway as soon as possible.

    The retreat is expected to begin at 0400BST (2300EDT).

    Artemis-I is the first in a series of missions that will eventually see humans return to the lunar surface after an absence of 50 years.

    The initial flight of the SLS is uncrewed: it’s billed as a safety demonstration of the hardware and will send a capsule called Orion out to and beyond the Moon before coming home to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

    Assuming everything works as it should, astronauts will then climb aboard the next scheduled SLS-Orion outing in 2024. This again will do a simple loop around the Moon.

    It’s on Artemis-III, possibly in late 2025, that astronauts will make the trip down to the lunar surface.