The Dyatlov Pass Incident: New Forensic Perspectives on the Ural Mountains’ Greatest Mystery

mariusalbertsen

In February 1959, nine experienced hikers vanished in the northern Ural Mountains of the Soviet Union. When their bodies were finally recovered months later, the scene was so bizarre and gruesome that it birthed a mystery lasting over six decades. The Dyatlov Pass incident remains a focal point for researchers, historians, and conspiracy theorists alike. While official reports often cite a "compelling natural force," the specific details of the deaths suggest something far more complex. From radioactive clothing to missing tongues and internal trauma without external bruising, the enigma of Kholat Syakhl continues to defy simple explanations.

The expedition was led by Igor Dyatlov, a 23-year-old engineering student from the Ural Polytechnical Institute. His team consisted of eight other young professionals and students, all of whom were highly trained in long-distance ski tours. They were attempting to reach Mount Otorten, a route classified as Category III, the most difficult level of difficulty. On the night of February 1, 1959, the group pitched their tent on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl, a name translated from the local Mansi language as "Mountain of the Dead." They never made it to their destination.

The Scene of the Crime: A Tent Torn from Within

A photograph of the Auspiya River area connected to the Dyatlov route in the northern Urals.

(CC BY-SA 4.0)

When search parties finally located the campsite on February 26, they found a scene of absolute chaos. The tent had been cut open from the inside, suggesting a sudden, panicked exit. Most of the hikers’ belongings, including their boots and warm coats, were still inside the tent. Despite the temperature being as low as -30°C (-22°F), the hikers had fled into the darkness in their socks or even barefoot. This immediate abandonment of life-saving equipment is one of the most baffling aspects of the Dyatlov Pass incident.

Footprints in the snow led down the slope toward a nearby forest, nearly 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) away. Under a large cedar tree, the first two bodies were found: Yuri Krivonischenko and Yuri Doroshenko. They were dressed only in their underwear and were shoeless. Nearby were the remains of a small fire. Interestingly, branches on the cedar tree were broken up to five meters (16 ft) high, suggesting that one of the hikers had frantically climbed the tree, perhaps to look for the tent or to escape a threat on the ground.

Between the cedar tree and the tent, the bodies of Igor Dyatlov, Zinaida Kolmogorova, and Rustem Slobodin were discovered. Their positions indicated they were attempting to crawl back to the tent when they succumbed to the elements. Slobodin was found to have a small crack in his skull, though it was not considered a fatal wound at the time. For weeks, these five deaths were attributed solely to hypothermia, but the discovery of the remaining four hikers in May changed the narrative entirely.

The Forensic Enigma: Internal Trauma and Missing Organs

A real archival document image from the original case file, directly relevant to the paragraph discussing radioactive clothing and official testing.

(Public domain)

The final four hikers, Dubinina, Zolotaryov, Thibeaux-Brignolles, and Kolevatov, were found buried under four meters (13 ft) of snow in a ravine further into the woods. Unlike the others, these individuals had suffered horrific internal injuries. Thibeaux-Brignolles had a major skull fracture, while Dubinina and Zolotaryov had suffered massive chest fractures. According to the examining doctor, Boris Vozrozhdenny, the force required to cause such damage was comparable to a high-speed car crash.

What made these injuries even more mysterious was the lack of external soft tissue damage. No bruises or hematomas corresponded to the broken bones, as if the hikers had been crushed by a massive, uniform pressure. Furthermore, Lyudmila Dubinina was found to be missing her tongue, her eyes, and part of her lips. While some experts argue this was the result of scavengers or decay in the wet environment of the stream where she was found, the precision of the missing tissue led to decades of speculation about more sinister causes.

Another disturbing detail emerged during the forensic testing of the victims' clothing. Several items were found to be highly radioactive. In the context of the Cold War, this immediately sparked theories about secret Soviet weapons testing in the Ural Mountains. However, the levels of radiation were localized, and some historians point out that the hikers, many of whom worked in nuclear facilities or laboratories, might have been contaminated before the trip began. Nevertheless, the presence of radiation remains a key pillar of the Dyatlov Pass incident lore.

From Avalanches to Infrasound: The Leading Scientific Theories

A dramatic and haunting view of the snow-covered peaks in the Northern Ural Mountains, illustrating the extreme and isolated conditions the Dyatlov group faced on the "Mountain of the Dead."

(Public Domain)

In 2021, a new scientific study published in Communications Earth & Environment by Alexander Puzrin and Johan Gaume proposed a "slab avalanche" theory. They argued that a rare type of small, delayed avalanche could have been triggered by the hikers' decision to cut into the snow slope to pitch their tent. This slab of snow could have hit the tent while they slept, causing the severe internal injuries seen in the ravine victims and forcing the group to flee in a state of shock and injury. This is currently the most widely accepted scientific explanation for the Dyatlov Pass incident.

However, many veteran hikers and researchers in Russia remain skeptical of the avalanche theory. They point out that the slope was not particularly steep and that there were no visible signs of an avalanche when the rescuers arrived. Another scientific theory involves "infrasound." This phenomenon occurs when specific wind patterns over the mountains create low-frequency sound waves that are inaudible to the human ear but can cause feelings of intense dread, nausea, and acute panic. Proponents of this theory suggest that infrasound drove the hikers into a temporary madness, causing them to slash their way out of the tent.

Mysterious glowing orange orbs illuminate the night sky over the snowy Ural Mountains on the night of the Dyatlov Pass incident.

(Generated)

Secret Weapons and Spheres of Light: The Cold War Shadow

For those who find the natural explanations lacking, the "military" theory offers a darker alternative. During the time of the Dyatlov Pass incident, the Soviet Union was frequently testing missiles and rockets. Witnesses from another hiking group 50 kilometers (31 miles) away reported seeing strange "orange orbs" in the sky on the night the group died. Some believe the hikers accidentally entered a forbidden testing zone and were killed by a fuel-air explosive or a falling rocket stage, which would account for the pressure-based internal injuries and the radiation.

The lead investigator in 1959, Lev Ivanov, later admitted in 1990 that he had been ordered to close the case and classify the findings. He personally believed that the "flying spheres" had something to do with the deaths. Furthermore, the location of the incident was near the Mansi people’s sacred lands. While early suspicions fell on the Mansi, there was no evidence of a struggle or other human tracks in the area. The Mansi themselves have their own legends about the mountain, warning that it is a place where "nine" of anything, men or animals, will surely meet their end.

As we look back at the Dyatlov Pass incident today, it serves as a grim reminder of the power of the wilderness and the limits of forensic science. Whether it was a freak meteorological event, a military accident, or something even more inexplicable, the nine hikers of Kholat Syakhl have become part of the mountain's eternal history. Their story continues to resonate because it taps into our deepest fears: the unknown, the dark, and the "compelling force" that we cannot control.

• Top image: The Dyatlov Pass Incident: New Forensic Perspectives on the Ural Mountains’ Greatest Mystery Illustration.
• Source: AI Generated

By Marius Albertsen

References

• Gaume, J., and A. M. Puzrin. 2021. “Mechanisms of slab avalanche release and impact in the Dyatlov Pass incident in 1959.” Communications Earth & Environment 2, Article 10. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00081-8
• Puzrin, A. M., and J. Gaume. 2022. “Post-publication careers: follow-up expeditions reveal avalanches at Dyatlov Pass.” Communications Earth & Environment 3, Article 63. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00393-x
• Romy, C., D. Eidenbenz, S. Grabherr, K. Zafren, C. Jaques, N. Hall, and M. Pasquier. 2025. “Causes of death and types of injuries of avalanche fatalities based on forensic data: a scoping review.” Resuscitation Plus 26:101101. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12506530/

FAQs

1. Was the Dyatlov Pass incident caused by a Yeti? While "Yeti" or "Menk" theories are popular in tabloids and folklore, there is no physical evidence, such as non-human tracks or hair samples, to support the idea that an unknown primate attacked the group. The internal injuries were more consistent with pressure or impact than a physical struggle.
2. Why was the hikers' clothing radioactive? Small amounts of radiation were found on a few pieces of clothing. Some researchers believe this was due to the hikers' professional backgrounds in technical institutes that handled radioactive materials, while others suggest it came from fallout from secret atmospheric tests occurring in the USSR at the time.
3. Has the case been officially solved by the Russian government? In 2020, the Russian Prosecutor General's office concluded that the cause of death was a combination of an avalanche and poor visibility, which prevented the hikers from returning to their camp. However, many independent researchers and family members of the victims continue to dispute this conclusion.

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The findings underscore a fundamental transformation in planetary exploration: moving from slow, human-directed missions to agile, semi-autonomous technologies that can efficiently traverse and study the toughest terrains in the solar system.

“Future planetary exploration missions require advanced robotic capabilities to efficiently identify and characterize lithologies, rock textures, and mineralogies for astrobiological investigations and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU),” researchers write. “This study explores an alternative semi-autonomous, multi-target exploration strategy using a legged robotic system, which could enable faster, more efficient surface prospecting on the Moon and Mars.”​

In the study, researchers used “ANYmal,” a four-legged robot built by Anybotics and specially equipped with a robotic arm carrying a microscopic imager and a Raman spectrometer—tools capable of examining rock textures and identifying mineral composition on site.

Unlike traditional wheeled rovers, which struggle on steep or unstable terrain, legged robots, like ANYmal, can access regions that have long remained out of reach, including crater walls, fractured landscapes, and ice-rich slopes.

Researchers argue that the capabilities demonstrated in this study are important for advancing efficient, independent exploration, especially in environments where communication with Earth is limited.

A Bottleneck in Space Exploration

For decades, robotic exploration has been limited not just by engineering challenges but also by physics.

On Mars, communication delays between Earth and robotic missions can range from 3 to 22 minutes one way. That means every movement, measurement, or decision must be carefully planned in advance, often resulting in painfully slow progress. Even the most advanced rovers typically travel only a few dozen to a few hundred yards per day while scientists analyze incoming data and prepare the next set of commands.

This limitation becomes even more severe for missions seeking to explore regions farther from the solar system. Future missions to places like Saturn’s moon Titan, where delays exceed an hour, will require robots capable of making decisions largely on their own.

Researchers attempt to address this problem by testing whether a robot can autonomously identify and analyze multiple scientific targets within a single mission cycle, rather than relying on step-by-step human supervision.

Testing Mars and Moon with anymal on Earth

To replicate real-world conditions, the team conducted a series of analog missions within controlled environments that mimicked Martian and lunar terrain.

In a laboratory known as the “Marslabor” at the University of Basel, researchers recreated Mars surface conditions using basalt fragments and hematite-rich materials. Lighting conditions were carefully adjusted to replicate the balance of direct and diffuse sunlight found on Mars.

For the lunar simulations, the team conducted experiments in near darkness to mimic the extreme lighting conditions near the Moon’s southern polar regions, where extended shadows and high contrast can obscure surface features.

The robot was tasked with identifying and analyzing various rock types known to exist on Mars and the Moon, including gypsum, carbonate rocks, basalt, dunite, and anorthosite—materials that are scientifically significant for analyzing planetary history and assessing potential resources.

Two Ways to Explore Another World

The study compared two distinct exploratory strategies. In the first, a semi-autonomous, multi-target approach, human operators selected multiple targets at the start of the mission. The ANYmal robot then carried out all navigation, positioning, and scientific measurements independently.

In the second, operators used the more traditional method of guiding the ANYmal robot step by step, reviewing data after each measurement and deciding what to do next.

The results showed that across four Mars-like missions, the semi-autonomous system successfully identified targets at rates of 66.7%-100%, with mission durations as short as 12 minutes.

By contrast, the human-guided lunar mission achieved a perfect 100% success rate—but took significantly longer, requiring 41 minutes to complete. The trade-off highlights a key tension in future exploration: speed versus precision.

The robots are highly agile and capable of rapidly scanning their surroundings and flagging areas of interest

(Picture: Dr Tomaso Bontognali./Cover Media)

Seeing and “Touching” Alien Worlds

A major innovation in the system is the combination of two complementary instruments.

A custom-built microscopic imager captures high-resolution close-up images of rock textures, revealing features like grain size, layering, and structural patterns. Meanwhile, the Raman spectrometer mounted on the robot’s arm uses laser-based spectroscopy to identify the mineral composition of samples by detecting characteristic spectral peaks (distinctive markers in the spectrum produced when the laser light interacts with mineral molecules).

Together, these tools allow the ANYmal robot to observe, hypothesize, and confirm findings, something remarkably close to what a human geologist would do in the field.

In the Martian simulations, the system successfully identified gypsum through a distinctive Raman peak at around 1010 cm⁻¹. Meanwhile, sulfur deposits were detected at approximately 473 cm⁻¹.

In lunar simulations, the robot identified olivine-rich dunite and titanium-bearing rutile, both of which are considered important for analyzing planetary formation and potential resource extraction.

The ANYmal is a quadrupedal robot capable of carrying out research on lunar environments

(Picture: ETH Zurich/Cover Images)

Why ANYmal’s Legs Matter

Perhaps the most significant implication of the study lies not in the instruments, but in the ANYmal robot itself.

Traditional rovers, like NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance, rely on wheels—an effective but limited solution. Steep slopes, loose regolith, and rocky obstacles can quickly halt their progress.

By contrast, legged robots, like ANYmal, can step over obstacles, maintain balance on uneven terrain, and access areas that would be inaccessible to wheeled systems.

This could open up entirely new regions for exploration, including sites most likely to preserve signs of past life—such as sedimentary layers, hydrothermal systems, and ice-rich environments.

The robot was put through its paces in Marslabor at the University of Basel

(Picture: Dr Tomaso Bontognali./Cover Media)

A Shift Toward Autonomous Science

The study envisions robots evolving from remote-controlled tools into autonomous scientific agents.

By allowing machines to select, analyze, and prioritize targets with minimal human intervention, missions could cover more ground, gather more data, and respond dynamically to new discoveries—all while operating millions of miles from Earth.

Researchers emphasize that this approach will be essential as missions push deeper into the solar system, where communication delays make real-time control impossible.

Their results suggest that semi-autonomous systems could dramatically increase the efficiency of planetary exploration, without sacrificing scientific value.

While the results are promising, the study also highlights challenges.

Environmental factors such as dust, lighting conditions, and instrument positioning can affect data quality. In some cases, blurred images or noisy spectral readings limited the system’s ability to accurately identify targets.

Still, the overall success of the experiments suggests that these obstacles are achievable and that the benefits of semi-autonomous exploration may far outweigh the risks.

Ultimately, as space agencies prepare for a new wave of missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, autonomous four-legged robotic explorers like ANYmal could soon move from the realm of science fiction to the reality of planetary exploration.

“Our study demonstrates that a multi-target semi-autonomous exploration approach is a viable option for geological investigations in planetary surface missions where the inability to control a robot in real-time significantly slows down exploration times and, consequently, the scientific return of the mission,” researchers conclude. “These findings emphasize the need to balance mission automation, efficiency, and scientific return based on operational constraints and planetary environments.”

• Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

Disappearance of rocket scientist takes chilling turn after link to critical defense technology comes to light

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

The disappearance of a rocket scientist has taken a chilling new turn after it emerged she holds a one-of-a-kind patent tied to advanced US launch systems.

Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, was last seen hiking in the rugged San Gabriel Wilderness area in the Angeles National Forest on June 22 last year, at about 9.10am local time.

Several reports in the forum EISPIRATEN indicated that a man walking about 30ft ahead of Reza on the trail to the Waterman Mountain summit turned around moments later and discovered she had vanished without a trace. 

According to those familiar with the hike, Reza was carrying a backpack believed to contain several liters of water when she disappeared.

New attention has focused on Reza's work as public records highlight her role in developing advanced aerospace materials linked to high-performance propulsion systems.

Records show she is the only surviving co-creator of a 2010 patent filed with Dallis Ann Hardwick, who died of cancer in 2014, for a specialized metal designed to resist burning while remaining incredibly strong under extreme heat.

She was also credited as a co-inventor of Mondaloy, a nickel-based superalloy later used in key components of advanced propulsion systems developed through US Air Force and NASA-backed research programs.

Reza spent decades working at Rocketdyne, later part of Aerojet Rocketdyne, a major aerospace contractor involved in government propulsion programs, while retired US Major General William Neil McCasland, who oversaw related Air Force research portfolios, also went missing in June 2025.

Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, was last seen hiking in the rugged San Gabriel Wilderness area within the Angeles National Forest on the trail to Waterman Mountain summit on June 22 last year

Records show she is the only surviving co-creator of a patent filed in 2010 with Dallis Ann Hardwick, who died of cancer in 2014, for a specialized metal designed to resist burning while remaining incredibly strong under extreme heat

Reza and McCasland are among nine recent cases involving scientists with ties to aerospace, defense or nuclear research whose deaths or disappearances have drawn public attention.

Mondaloy was later used in the development of the AR1 rocket engine, a US-built system designed to replace Russian-made RD-180 engines previously used on United Launch Alliance rockets, part of a broader effort to reduce America's reliance on foreign propulsion systems.

Unlike older materials that were either strong but prone to burning or burn-resistant but weak, the alloy created by Reza and her colleague was designed to do both – remain durable while resisting ignition under extreme stress.

The metal is primarily made of nickel, strengthened with smaller amounts of cobalt, chromium, aluminum and titanium, allowing it to withstand the intense heat and pressure produced during rocket launches.

According to the patent, the material was intended for use in critical engine components such as turbines, ducts and fuel systems, where failure could lead to catastrophic damage.

Materials like Mondaloy are used in rocket engines that power launches carrying military satellites, missile-warning systems and other highly sensitive payloads into orbit, missions known as national security launches because they support US defense and intelligence systems.

Reza's work received funding and development support from the US Air Force Research Laboratory, which was commanded at one point by retired US Major General William Neil McCasland.

McCasland later went missing in June 2025, prompting a separate investigation that remains ongoing.

According to the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office, McCasland was last seen speaking with a repairman at his home around 10am before his wife left the residence about an hour later.

Reza's technology helped create the AR1 engine, set to replace Russian RD-180 engines on United Launch Alliance rockets

US Air Force Major General William Neil McCasland, 68, who was in the UFO community, went missing in February after leaving on a hike near his New Mexico home

Read More

EXCLUSIVE

•  Scientists are vanishing or turning up dead. Now ex-FBI boss reveals chilling plot likely unfolding... and who he fears is behind it 

When she returned shortly after noon, the house was empty, with his phone, prescription glassesand wearable devices left behind.

Investigators noted that his hiking boots and a .38-caliber revolver were missing and he was reported missing later that afternoon.

Search teams later discovered a US Air Force sweatshirt roughly one mile from the residence, though officials have not confirmed whether it belonged to McCasland.

Authorities have not publicly confirmed foul play in the case, and the investigation remains active.

Another mysterious case involves Michael David Hicks, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who died on July 30, 2023, at the age of 59. Officials have not publicly alleged foul play in his death.

Reports also highlighted the death of NASA scientist Frank Maiwald, who died on July 4, 2024, in Los Angeles at the age of 61. Authorities confirmed that no autopsy was performed and the cause of death has not been publicly disclosed.

Michael David Hicks was a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory prior to his death in 2023

Frank Maiwald (left) and Carl Grillmair had deep ties to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in California before both men died within the last two years

Maiwald had worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 1999 and contributed to projects involving advanced satellite technology capable of scanning Earth and other planetary bodies.

Anthony Chavez, a former employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), disappeared on May 4, 2025. Police in Los Alamos said the search for Chavez, 79, remains ongoing with no new information released nearly a year later.

Since 2024, several additional scientists connected to aerospace research have died under separate circumstances.

Melissa Casias worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a long-running nuclear research facility, before disappearing on June 26 last year

Anthony Chavez was an employee at the Los Alamos National Laboratory until 2017. He disappeared without a trace in May last year

Jason Thomas was found dead after being pulled from a Massachusetts lake on March 17. He had been missing since December 12

Melissa Casias has not been seen since June 26 last year, when her family said she uncharacteristically decided to work from home, but was last spotted miles from their house walking alone without her wallet, phone or keys.

Casias, 54, was an administrative assistant at LANL.

The news came about astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, 67, who was shot and killed at his California home on February 16. 

The California Institute of Technology researcher had worked on major NASA-supported telescope missions, including the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and NEO Surveyor programs.

Those projects used infrared detection systems capable of tracking asteroids, technology that shares similarities with systems used to monitor satellites and hypersonic missiles.

Nuno Loureiro was leading efforts to create fusion energy, a form of clean energy that could upend the multi-trillion-dollar fossil fuel energy industry

While serving as commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, McCasland oversaw programs related to space surveillance and infrared tracking systems.

Two additional researchers in Massachusetts were also found dead in separate incidents. Nuno Loureiro, a scientist working on nuclear fusion research, was shot in his Brookline home last year.

Jason Thomas, a pharmaceutical researcher studying cancer treatments at Novartis, was later found dead in a Wakefield lake on March 17 after disappearing months earlier.

Authorities have not publicly linked the cases, and officials in several investigations have said there is no confirmed evidence suggesting foul play beyond the circumstances already reported.

Missing UFO General 911 Call Raises Chilling Questions

'NATIONAL SECURITY FEARS': Top scientists killed or missing

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

Two UFOs Over Ninole, Hawaii, April 7, 2026 5:43am UFO UAP Paranormal Breaking Sighting News

I added light to the screenshot to make the UFO more clear.

Date of sighting: April 7, 2026

Location of sighting: Ninole, Hawaii, USA

Source: NUFORC site 

 

This video just came into NUFORC today. The reaction of the eyewitness says it all. Honestly, he is confronted by two unidentified flying objects and what can a person say? Because when it happens, you are 100% in disbelief and yet, it's right in front of you. I guess I don't have to say it's aliens, but...it's aliens. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily

 

Eyewitness states: 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

Light Ship over Utah, made of light entities sharing info, Utah, USA April 10, 2026, UFO UAP Sighting News.

Date of sighting: April 10, 2026

Location of sighting: Dutch John, Utah, USA

Source: Email report

 

This light ship was caught over a small city in Utah yesterday. With a population of just 141 people, it's actually very surprising to me that someone caught it. But she is a sky watcher and reports any unusual activity she catches. This however is a very rare energy ship, a different species of energy entities that unite into a single stronger craft in order to share what they learned with each other before they it breaks apart and each separate entity will break off into flocks or groups. Its said decades ago, light energy entities don't like humans and prefer to keep a distance, however I and my family once encountered a flock of about 75-100 flying over us low, about 10 stories up, our building we were walking to was 8 floors tall. We were on the ground walking at midnight when they passed over us (about 7 years ago Taipei, Taiwan) then some noticed us watching them (since most people were sleeping at that hour. And about 7 of them returned, and began circling far above us, curious about us. They looked like tear drops of light, tried to photo and video them but my phone back then was not great in the dark. After 15 minutes, they united into a moon shape object and faded away. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily 

 

Eyewitness states: 

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

NBC News; NASA

The best photos from NASA's first moon mission in more than 50 years

The Artemis II astronauts concluded their record-breaking 10-day journey on Friday with a smooth splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

NASA’s Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. John Kraus / NASA

From left to right: Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of CSA, pilot Victor Glover, commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialist Christina Koch walk out ahead of the launch on April 1. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

The Artemis II mission lifts off at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images

Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images

Although Wiseman, Koch, Glover and Hansen did not land on the lunar surface, their mission was designed to test the rocket and capsule ahead of a planned moon landing in 2028. After that, NASA hopes to build a base on the moon and establish a long-term presence there.

On the second day of the flight, the Orion capsule performed a key engine burn to put it on a path toward the moon. The maneuver, known as a translunar injection burn, boosted the spacecraft’s velocity enough to send it out of Earth orbit.

The astronauts then spent three days journeying to the moon. Early on Monday, their Orion capsule entered a region of space known as the lunar sphere of influence, where the moon’s gravitational pull is stronger than Earth’s.

Before going to sleep on Day 5 of the mission, the Artemis II crew snapped a photo of the moon as it drew close in the window of the Orion spacecraft. NASA

The most anticipated moment of the mission came on Monday, when the crew spent seven hours taking close-up photos of the lunar surface and observing specific sites on the moon, including impact craters, ridges and vast volcanic plains.

During their flyby around the moon’s far side, the astronauts reached a distance of 252,756 miles from Earth, which was more than 4,100 miles farther than the Apollo 13 record.

Astronaut Christina Koch is illuminated by a screen inside the darkened Orion spacecraft on the third day of the agency's Artemis II mission. NASA

One of the first photos from the flyby released publicly showed the Artemis II crew’s view of “Earthset,” as Earth disappeared out of view behind the moon.

The photo was a nod to the iconic “Earthrise” image taken during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, when astronauts Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell circumnavigated the moon. That archival image, however, captured Earth re-emerging beyond the edge of the moon, rather than dipping below it.

NASA

Other photos showed surprisingly rugged topography along the moon’s terminator, the dividing line between its illuminated side and the side cloaked in darkness.

“There’s just so much magic in the terminator — the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes,” Glover radioed to Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “You’d fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those. It’s just so visually captivating.”

The astronauts focused some of their observations on Orientale basin, a nearly 600-mile-wide crater that straddles the moon’s near and far sides. The 3.8 billion-year-old basin was formed when a large object smacked into the moon’s surface.

The crew’s high-resolution photos of features in and around the moon’s impact craters could help scientists understand how the moon formed and how its topography changed over time.

The sunlit Orion spacecraft near the moon. The Orientale basin, a 600-mile-wide, mountain-ringed crater, sits on the moon's lower half. NASA

The astronauts even captured dramatic images of the moon’s crater-filled south polar region, where NASA is interested in landing astronauts on future Artemis missions.

The moon’s south pole is pockmarked with craters that are thought to be filled with water ice. But the area is significantly more challenging to navigate than those near the moon’s equator, where the Apollo astronauts touched down. NASA has said observations during the Artemis II mission could be used to pinpoint possible landing sites for missions to come.

Toward the end of their lunar flyby, the astronauts became the first to witness a solar eclipse from space. They made detailed observations over the course of about an hour, as the sun slipped behind the moon and re-emerged again on the other side.

During the early stages of the eclipse, the astronauts had to don special glasses (much like the ones worn by people on Earth to view solar eclipses) to protect their eyes until the sun’s light was fully blocked by the moon.

The Artemis II crew uses eclipse viewers to protect their eyes at key moments of the solar eclipse during their lunar flyby. NASA

The eclipse photos show a darkened moon with the sun’s outermost atmosphere, the corona, glowing around the edges. In one of the images, bright points of light are visible around the edges of the moon. Those spots turned out to be planets, including Saturn, Mars and Venus.

Wiseman called the eclipse “an absolutely spectacular, magnificent experience.”

During the eclipse, as the moon was cloaked in darkness, the crew members spotted flashes of light from meteoroids smacking into the lunar surface.

The moon, backlit by the sun, and the Orion spacecraft, left, on Monday. NASA

While this phenomenon is rarely seen, such impacts are common on the moon because it lacks an atmosphere to protect it from incoming debris. Studying these cosmic crashes can help scientists understand the moon’s evolutionary history.

Kelsey Young, the Artemis II lunar science lead, said members of the mission’s science team were “jumping up and down literally” after the crew reported seeing six impact flashes.

After the flyby, the astronauts began their three-day journey home to Earth. By Tuesday afternoon, the Orion capsule exited the lunar sphere of influence.

During its high-stakes re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, the Orion capsule faced extreme temperatures nearing 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

NASA's Orion spacecraft lands in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Friday. Bill Ingalls / NASA via Getty Images

After a fiery plunge through the atmosphere, the capsule deployed its parachutes, then splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.

BREAKING: Astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover Jr., Jeremy Hansen and Reid Wiseman are beginning to exit the Orion capsule after a successful Artemis II splashdown. Follow live updates at the link in bio.

 { https://www.nbcnews.com/ }

Country music star Kacey Musgraves has made a shocking admission online, revealing she had 'the craziest UFO experience.'

Musgraves, 37, explained in an Instagram Story on Friday that she and her manager were flying from Fort Worth, Texas, to Nashville, Tennessee, when she spotted lights in the sky that 'didn't look normal.'

The Grammy-winning singer and songwriter of 'Space Cowboy' said she watched the 'orbs' for about 45 minutes, and they 'followed' her flight from Little Rock, Arkansas to her destination.

'These orbs were not moving like any craft that we can control. They were intermittently coming and going, forming triangle patterns,' she recalled. 

'Sometimes they would get extremely bright and change color, change size.' 

After the plane touched down, Musgraves spoke to the pilots, who reportedly told her: 'We've seen these every single night.'

'All the other pilots are seeing them, too, and nobody knows what they are,' Musgraves added, recounting what the pilots told her. 

She also shared a video of the mysterious lights in the distance, which appear to trail her for some time as they loop around in the darkness of the night sky. 

Country music star Kacey Musgraves has made a shocking admission online, revealing she had 'the craziest UFO experience'

Musgraves is an acclaimed American singer-songwriter known for blending country with pop and folk.

She is recognized for her witty, progressive songwriting and multiple Grammy wins, including Album of the Year for Golden Hour from 2018. 

Rising from Nashville Star in 2007, she achieved fame with hits like 'Merry Go 'Round' and 'Follow Your Arrow.'

In the video, Musgraves revealed that she has seen 'many crazy things,' from 'fire burning in the sky to things she cannot explain.

She said that the lights were about 50,000 feet in the air, admitting the video quality was poor.

'It looks like I filmed them on a f***ing toaster, but that's the quality we're working with,' she said of the videos taken on her iPhone 17.

'It was hard to focus because they were far off and it was nighttime.' 

She then painted a picture of what she saw, noting that the orbs were not moving like any craft that humans can control.

'They were intermittently coming and going, forming triangle patterns,' Musgraves continued. 

'Sometimes they would get extremely bright and change color, change size.' 

She also shared a video of the mysterious lights in the distance, which appear to trail her for some time as they loop around in the darkness of the night sky

The country singer is just one of many famous individuals who believe they have experienced an encounter of the third kind.

Singer Miley Cyrus claimed that she was not only chased by 'some sort of UFO' in San Bernardino, California, but she 'made eye contact' with the alien pilot.

She said in a 2020 interview with Interview magazine that she 'couldn't really look at the sky after' her encounter.

She said that the alien craft resembled a glowing, flying snowplow.

She said: 'I did see it flying, and my friend saw it, too. There were a couple of other cars on the road, and they also stopped to look, so I think what I saw was real.

Singer Miley Cyrus claimed that she was not only chased by 'some sort of UFO' in San Bernardino, California, but she 'made eye contact' with the alien pilot 

Demi Lovato is also convinced that aliens are real, and we should stop using the word 'alien' in case it offends

'I didn't feel threatened at all, actually, but I did see a being sitting in front of the flying object.

She admitted, however, that there was a possibility the encounter could have been due to 'the weed wax' she had recently used.

Demi Lovato is also convinced that aliens are real, and we should stop using the word 'alien' in case it offends.

She said, 'I think that we have to stop calling them aliens because aliens is a derogatory term for anything.'

In a 2020 Instagram post, she revealed that she had contacted aliens through meditation.

She wrote, 'Over the past couple of months, I have dug deep into the science of consciousness and experienced not only peace and serenity as I've never known, but I also have witnessed the most incredibly profound sightings both in the sky as well as feet away from me.

'This planet is on a very negative path toward destruction, but WE can change that together. 

'If we were to get one percent of the population to meditate and make contact, we would force our governments to acknowledge the truth about extraterrestrial life among us and change our destructive habits, destroying our planet.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

A heated debate over the exact location of Jesus' crucifixion has reignited, with Christians, scholars, and faith leaders divided over the true site of Golgotha.

Golgotha, meaning 'Place of the Skull' in Aramaic, is described in the Bible as the location of Jesus' crucifixion outside Jerusalem.

Some believe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built directly above the site, a theory dating back to the 4th century when Roman Emperor Constantine the Great ordered a search for the location of Jesus' death and burial. 

Early Christians pointed to a site they had long revered, prompting Constantine to build a church there to mark the spot.

Others argue the execution took place on a hill beyond the ancient city walls, pointing to terrain they believe better matches biblical descriptions.

Pastor Josh Howerton, who leads Lakepointe Church in Texas, recently promoted the hill theory during an episode of his podcast Live Free, saying: 'The gospels tell us Jesus was taken outside the city walls to be crucified. This fits. It's within walking distance.' 

He also pointed to older photographs that he said showed the hill resembling a skull formation, with features that appeared to form eye sockets and a nose.

He presented an image from the early 1990s that some viewers interpreted as skull-like, though he suggested erosion or possible seismic activity may have altered its appearance over time.

The claims quickly drew mixed reactions online, with many people defending the traditional belief that Golgotha is beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Images of the hill outside of Jerusalem appeared to show features resembling a skull, including eye sockets and a nose

The hill near the Garden Tomb, however, looks different today due to decades of erosion, quarrying and urban development that have gradually altered the rock face

'Golgotha is at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Historical and archaeological evidence confirms it,' one commenter wrote in response to Howerton's video.

Another wrote: 'You forgot that the city walls moved out from where they were at the time of Christ’s crucifixion. The most likely location for Golgotha is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.'

The Bible cites 'Golgotha' in several chapters, including in the books of Matthew and Mark, both of which state that Jesus was brought there to die, and the name means 'the place of the skull.' 

Howerton also included the biblical accounts of Jesus being taken outside the city.

Hebrews 13:12 reads: 'And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.'

While John 19:17 reads: 'Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).' 

Supporters of the hill theory often cite the nearby Garden Tomb as well, a rock-cut burial site discovered in the 19th century just outside Jerusalem's Damascus Gate, which they say strengthens the case for the alternative location. 

The hill near the Garden Tomb, however,  looks different today due to decades of erosion, quarrying and urban development that have gradually altered the rock face. 

Supporters of the hill theory often cite the nearby Garden Tomb as well, a rock-cut burial site discovered in the 19th century just outside Jerusalem's Damascus Gate, which they say strengthens the case for the alternative location

Some believe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built directly above the site, a theory dating back to the 4th century, when Roman Emperor Constantine the Great ordered a search for the location of Jesus' death and burial 

Historic photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries show more defined features that some believed resembled a skull, but modern construction, roadwork and natural weathering have softened those formations over time. 

However, most archaeologists and historians consider the Garden Tomb to be an Iron Age tomb, between the seventh and eighth centuries BC, which is too old to be the actual burial place of Jesus.

Support for the hill theory dates back to the mid-1800s, when German theologian Otto Thenius first proposed that a skull-shaped ridge north of Jerusalem could be the biblical Golgotha.

The idea gained wider attention in the late nineteenth century when British officer Major General Charles Gordon visited the site and argued that the rocky hill resembled a human skull, leading many to refer to it as Gordon's Calvary.

Other early researchers, including British surveyor Claude R Conder and biblical scholar Henry Baker Tristram, supported the location because it lay outside the ancient city walls, matching Gospel descriptions that Jesus was crucified beyond Jerusalem's boundaries.

Many historians and archaeologists continue to support the traditional belief that Jesus was crucified at the site now marked by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City.

Pastor Josh Howerton (right), who leads Lakepointe Church in Texas , recently promoted the hill theory during an episode of his podcast Live Free , saying: The gospels tell us Jesus was taken outside the city walls to be crucified. This fits'

The claims quickly drew mixed reactions online, with many people defending the traditional belief that Golgotha is beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

That theory dates back to the 4th century, when Roman Emperor Constantine the Great ordered a search for the location of Jesus' crucifixion and burial after converting to Christianity.

Early Christians in Jerusalem identified the site as Golgotha, prompting Constantine to construct a church there, establishing what became one of the oldest continuously recognized holy sites in Christianity.

Modern archaeological research has reinforced the traditional view, with scholars such as Israeli archaeologist Dan Bahat noting that the area surrounding the church was once a quarry located outside Jerusalem's city walls during the time of Jesus, consistent with biblical descriptions.

Historian Joan E Taylor, who reexamined historical and archaeological evidence in a widely cited 1998 study, concluded that the general area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre remains the most plausible location for the crucifixion, despite ongoing debate.

A more recent discovery in 2025 uncovered remnants of an ancient garden beneath the foundation of the church, which aligns with the Gospel of John.

John 19:41 reads: 'Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus.'

A team from Sapienza University of Rome analyzed plant remains from the site and dated them to the pre-Christian era, placing them around the time of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial. Historians generally date his death to around 33 AD.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

The Orion spacecraft (foreground) approaches the moon for historic close-up observations. Mission geologists are already excited about the data being returned.  (Image credit: NASA)

The four Artemis II astronauts will return to Earth on Friday (April 10) — delivering not only themselves but also a precious trove of images from their lunar journey. And the geologists supporting the mission can hardly wait to dive in.

"The images are spectacular, absolutely," Gordon Osinski, a crater specialist and planetary geologist at Canada's Western University who has been deeply involved in the Artemis II crew’s geology training, told Live Science after seeing the first photos of the crew’s seven-hour lunar flyby.

Osinski said that the small batch of images transmitted to Earth so far hint at big discoveries about the moon's geology — and could help shape the hunt for lunar samples in NASA's upcoming crewed moon landings, starting with Artemis IV as soon as 2028.

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A green, brown and flashy moon

Two geological findings stand out so far. One of these is impact flashes — brief but bright flashes of light from when space rocks slam into the moon, leaving craters behind.

Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hanson reported seeing at least five of these flashes during their lunar flyby. Geologists hope to review the crew's images, once they return to Earth, to potentially identify the craters associated with the impacts.

"The conditions that [the crew] had to view those was perfect," Osinski said, referring to the crew's passage over the lunar terminator — the stark dividing line between the moon's bright day-side and dark night-side, where contrast is heightened and flashes are easier to spot.

Secondly, mission scientists are eager to investigate the crew’s descriptions of lunar colors. Geologists have only heard a few quick impressions from the crew so far, mainly over voice communications open to the public. But the Artemis II crew was recording more lunar flyby observations by voice and in notes in an archive that will take weeks to review.

The astronauts reported some intriguing things, such as patches of green and brown on the lunar surface.

"We do know there is color on the lunar surface," Osinski said. The human eye, he added, is more sensitive to color than the cameras on board Artemis II, so "that's definitely going to be something interesting to follow up."

The human touch in space

For years, Osinski has been giving geologic training to Artemis II crew members. Hansen is a repeat contributor to Osinski's remote Canadian crater expeditions, often done alongside Indigenous groups. During Artemis II preparation, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency backup astronaut Jenni Gibbons joined Hansen and Osinski on a 2023 expedition to a moon-like crater in northern Labrador, Canada.

Artemis II moon flyby begins: How to watch and what to know

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Because the Artemis II astronauts could not sample the lunar surface directly, they were trained on how to make descriptions. They also used "situational awareness" for some situations, such as distinguishing between volcanic and impact processes, although the bulk of the interpretation will require months of work on Earth by geologists after the mission is complete.

But there is more that the Artemis II astronauts can provide. The astronauts form part of a group of less than 30 people who have seen the moon close up in-person, enabling them to bring human eyes and experiences to observations.

What's more, Artemis II is the first lunar astronaut mission in nearly two generations, enabling the astronauts (and their supporting scientists) to bring decades of insights into crater impacts, water ice and other features of the moon that Apollo officials did not have access to. The images Artemis II sent to Earth so far are just a subset of what's on board. Osinski said that in particular, he is interested in seeing the high-resolution 400-milimeter (16 inches) lens images by the crew to compare with images taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Bringing the moon back home

After Artemis II returns, Osinski and other geologists will take what was learned from the astronaut observations to work on future lunar surface missions. Planning has been ongoing for the surface work for two years, with the team now working on items such as narrowing down which sites might be useful to land at, and announcing which participating scientists will join.

Jacob Bleacher, NASA's chief exploration scientist, told Live Science the geology teams are working on landing products for the first astronauts on the surface, and are expecting to get more data from commercial landing missions supporting NASA. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost mission was the first to make it there, achieving 60 days of operations in 2025. "We procured a good bit of data from them," Bleacher said, and the hope is that more companies will touch down before Artemis IV brings astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028.

For now, geologists are already hard at work making a plan for the moon-sample return.

Osinski is co-investigator of the geology team that will support the Artemis IV astronauts. Osinski said his team will likely be working with a lower-resolution live video feed that will enable, at least to an extent, the geologists on Earth to help the astronauts on site with observations.

That said, Artemis surface astronauts may also have to make quick decisions about sampling, which will be another training regime, Osinski said, requiring them to work independently.

"They might have to be making a split-second decision on the surface, if they're running out of time at a station: you know, 'Do I choose this one or this one?' And there might not be time for the back and forth with the science team on Mission Control," Osinski said.

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Part of what made Mohenjo-Daro so fascinating was its age: the city, eventually revealed to have been among the most expansive settlements ever seen during the time of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, was also one of the oldest major cities in the region, with an estimated age of around 4,500 years.

However, recent geoarchaeological studies reported by the Sindh Directorate General of Antiquities & Archaeology (DGAA) now suggest that those original estimates may have been off by several centuries, meaning that the enigmatic Mohenjo-Daro is likely far older than previously believed.

An Archaeological Enigma

Mohenjo-Daro has captivated archaeologists since its discovery due in part to the remarkable level of sophistication exhibited by its ancient builders.

From its structural elements, which, in many ways, resemble urban planning for modern cities, to its remarkably advanced water infrastructure, which includes sewers, baths, and wells, many elements of Mohenjo-Daro set it apart from other cities of its era.

The “Great Bath” at Mohenjo-Daro, as it appeared in 2014

(Image Credit: Saqib Qayyum/CC 3.0/Wikimedia).

Going beyond just appearances, the remarkable architecture present at the ancient site, whose name translates to mean “Mound of the Dead Men,” points to an equally sophisticated social structure, which is suggestive of both cultured urban life and a central government that would be required for the management and oversight of its once-40,000-strong population.

And yet, as mysterious as the question of its origins is that of Mohenjo-Daro’s demise; the site appears to have been abandoned by around 1,700 BCE, along with most other major urban hubs that once represented the flourishing Indus Valley Civilization.

Older Than Once Thought?

Now, in new geoarchaeological work undertaken by the Sindh Directorate General of Antiquities and Archaeology (DGAA), it appears that Mohenjo-Daro could be even older than previous estimates, which placed its rise to around 2,500 BCE.

According to new timelines for the construction of an ancient mudbrick wall encircling the site’s western Stupa Mound, one of the site’s most prominent features, recent radiocarbon dating suggests that this portion of the city dates to sometime between 2,600 and as early as 2,700 BCE, which points to activity at the site at least a century earlier than once thought.

According to a statement released by the DGAA regarding their geoarchaeological re-dating of the site, these mudbrick walls “were expanded and maintained until around 2200 BCE and possibly even longer.”

“Future investigations will trace the plan of the city wall around the Stupa Mound to try and locate gateways and to determine how this wall functioned and when it began to erode,” the DGAA said.

Lingering Questions

While the new radiocarbon dates push back the timelines for Mohenjo-Daro’s earliest construction phases, several questions about the ancient site remain.

Among the site’s many mysteries, the presence of localized areas in which bricks appear to have been fused, as well as human remains suggestive of a “massacre” that may have occurred at some point, has helped give rise to beliefs involving an ancient invasion or other cataclysmic event that occurred at Mohenjo-Daro that might have contributed to its demise.

However, scholars have disputed such claims for more than half a century. As the renowned archaeologist and Indus Valley scholar George F. Dales wrote in 1964, “The details of the story of the decline and fall of the Indus civilization are, as yet, far from clear, but a pattern of contributing factors is taking shape. This pattern does not include invasion and massacre as basic factors. On the contrary, it appears that a series of natural disasters occurred–possibly as swiftly, certainly more devastating than any hypothetical invasion.”

In fact, to this day, the enigmatic Mohenjo-Daro remains threatened by the forces of nature. As the BBC reported in 2012, salty groundwater is now gradually eroding the mudbricks of the site’s ancient walls, which for thousands of years remained protected before their excavation began in the early 20th century.

“It is definitely a complicated site to protect, given the problems of salinity, humidity and rainfall,” remarked the Pakistani archaeologist Dr. Asma Ibrahim at the time, adding that “most of the attempts at conservation by the authorities have been so bad and so amateur they have only accelerated the damage.”

Given such circumstances, if efforts to preserve this ancient enigma aren’t improved, the famous city of Mohenjo-Daro—unearthed after many thousands of years—could potentially become a “lost” archaeological wonder all over again.

• Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

Artemis II duikt straks langs de verre maanzijde

 Yorick La Rivière - Redacteur astronomie/ruimtevaart & Moderator Disqus

Artemis II nadert zijn cruciale scheervlucht langs de Maan. De bemenste Orion-capsule verbreekt hierbij records, verliest tijdelijk contact met Aarde en maakt een zonsverduistering mee vanaf de verre maanzijde.

Het is inmiddels enkele dagen geleden dat de SLS-raket met donderend geweld opsteeg vanaf lanceercomplex 39B in Florida. De bemenste Artemis II-missie van NASA bevindt zich momenteel in de slotfase van haar reis naar de Maan, met de aanstaande scheervlucht die nog geen etmaal van ons verwijderd is. Terwijl de vierkoppige crew aan boord van de Orion-capsule ‘Integrity’ zich opmaakt voor dit hoogtepunt van deze missie, blikken we terug op de afgelopen dagen én vooruit op wat komen gaat…

(Boven:) Een hoog-resolutie selfie van de Orion-capsule, gemaakt met een camera op één van de zonnepanelen tijdens een routine-inspectie op dag 2 van de Artemis II-missie. (Onder:) De Aarde gefotografeerd door commandant Reid Wiseman vanuit het raam van Orion, kort na de translunar injection-stuwing, in de vroege nacht van 3 april 2026. Foto: NASA/Reid Wiseman

Een reis vol technische hoogstandjes

Na de geslaagde lancering in de nacht van 1 op 2 april voerde de bemanning een reeks cruciale manoeuvres uit. Zo werd de ‘translunar injection’-stuwing van bijna zes minuten succesvol afgerond, waarmee Orion een ellipsvormige baan om Aarde op weg naar de Maan werd gezet.

(Boven:) Een zich verwijderende Aarde en de onderste zijde (de European Service Module) met hoofdmotor in beeld, bezien door een camera gehecht aan de zonnepanelen. (Onder:) Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen en Reid Wiseman samen aan het werk in de Orion capsule, hier halverwege en tijdens dag drie van de missie op weg naar de Maan. Foto’s: NASA

Eerder demonstreerden de astronauten al de indrukwekkende wendbaarheid van hun capsule tijdens een ‘proximity operations’-test, waarbij ze op slechts enkele tientallen meters van de bovenste rakettrap manoeuvreerden om een koppeling te simuleren en de wendbaarheid van Orion te testen. Een tijdelijk probleem met een knipperend lampje van het toilet bleek gelukkig snel verholpen, en meerdere geplande ‘outbound trajectory correction’-stuwingen, simpel: kleine en geplande koerscorrecties, werden afgelast omdat Orion al op een haast perfecte koers lag – een teken van uitzonderlijke precisie.

NASA-astronaut Christina Koch (links) neemt de controle over van de Orion-capsule tijdens een handmatige stuurtest op dag 4 van de Artemis II-missie. Naast haar zijn CSA-astronaut Jeremy Hansen (midden) en NASA-astronaut Victor Glover (rechts) te zien. Foto: NASA

Voorbereiding op de scheervlucht

De laatste dagen stonden in het teken van de voorbereiding op de scheervlucht van komende nacht: 6 op 7 april. Gisteren testte de bemanning uitgebreid hun oranje ‘Orion Crew Survival System’-ruimtepakken, waarbij ze onder meer de pakken onder druk zetten, lektests uitvoerden en de bewegingsvrijheid beoordeelden.

Victor Glover (meest links), Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch en Reid Wiseman (meest rechts) tijdens de ceremonie waarin Hansen zijn gouden vleugels ‘Gold Wings’ ontvangt voor zijn eerste ruimtevlucht, tijdens de vijfde vluchtdag. Foto: NASA

Ook ontvingen ze hun definitieve lijst met 30 observatie doelwitten van het maanoppervlak, waaronder het 950 kilometer brede ‘Oriëntale-bekken’. Deze inslagkrater, die grotendeels op de verre zijde van de Maan ligt, zal door de bemanning uitgebreid worden gefotografeerd en geanalyseerd:

Een screenshot van de software die de Artemis II-bemanning op hun boordcomputers ziet. De software begeleidt hen bij het uitvoeren van het wetenschappelijke observatieplan rond de Maan. Op deze afbeelding is het Oriëntale-bekken te zien, doelwit nummer 12, rechts omcirkeld. Afbeelding: NASA

Dichtbij en ver weg: de tijdlijn

Vanaf vanavond begint het spektakel echt. Sinds vannochtend 6:41 uur (6 april, Nederlandse tijd) bevindt Orion zich in de zwaartekrachtinvloedssfeer van de Maan en zal er tot morgenavond 19:25 uur in een hyperbola vluchtbaan vertoeven, vanaf en tot aan een overgangsafstand maan-tot-capsule van 66.100 kilometer. Het absolute hoogtepunt volgt vannacht. Om 01:02 uur (7 april, Nederlandse tijd) zal Orion het dichtst bij de Maan zijn, op een afstand van slechts 6.550 kilometer boven het oppervlak. Kort daarna, om 01:07 uur, bereikt de capsule haar maximale afstand tot de Aarde: maar liefst 406.700 kilometer. Daarmee verbreken de astronauten het record van Apollo 13 uit 1970 voor de verste afstand die de mens ooit van de Aarde heeft gereisd.

• Deze animatie toont het vluchttraject van Artemis II. De Orion-capsule maakt een achtbaan rond de Aarde en de Maan, alvorens terug te keren naar de Aarde:

Radiostilte en een eclips

Een bijzonder spannend moment volgt al iets eerder, rond 00:44 uur (7 april), wanneer Orion achter de Maan verdwijnt. Gedurende ongeveer 40 minuten is er dan radiostilte; onze natuurlijke satelliet blokkeert alle signalen. Precies op dat moment zullen de astronauten getuige zijn van een ‘Earthset’ – een Aarde ondergang – en even later, om 01:25 uur, weer een ‘Earthrise’ zien wanneer de Aarde achter de Maan terug opkomt. Direct daarna wordt het radiocontact hersteld. De klap op de vuurpijl is een zonsverduistering, zichtbaar vanuit de capsule tussen 02:35 en 03:32 uur. De zon schuift dan ruim een uur lang achter de Maan, wat de bemanning een unieke kans geeft om de corona van onze Zon te bestuderen.

• Een visualisatie van wat de Artemis II-bemanning uit het raam zal zien tijdens de scheervlucht. Te zien zijn onder meer de ‘Earthrise’ en ‘Earthset’, een scherpe blik op de verre zijde van de Maan en een zonsverduistering aan het einde van deze scheervlucht:

Terugkeer naar de Aarde

Na het verlaten van de invloedssfeer van de Maan op dinsdagavond 19:25 uur en terug in die van Aarde, zal Orion op eigen kracht verder reizen. De capsule zal dan langzaam maar zeker door de zwaartekracht van de Aarde worden teruggetrokken en langzaam aan versneld terugvallen. De bemanning richt zich dan op de laatste loodjes: een vurige terugkeer in de atmosfeer van de Aarde, gevolgd door een splashdown in de Stille Oceaan. Tot die tijd genieten Wiseman, Glover, Koch en Hansen van een uitzicht dat maar weinigen hen voor hebben gegaan: een volledige Maan, gezien vanaf de verre kant.

De Aarde omringd door de duisternis van de ruimte, wordt steeds kleiner naarmate de bemanning dichter bij de Maan komt. Deze foto is genomen door Koch, één van de Artemis II-astronauten op de vijfde dag van de missie. Foto: NASA

Artemis II nadert hiermee dus haar meest kritieke en interessante fase van deze test- en observatievlucht in de komende uren. Van een afstandsrecord in de diepere ruimte tot een angstvallige radiostilte en een eclips: de komende uren bepalen niet alleen de wetenschappelijke oogst, maar ook het succes van de eerste bemenste maanmissie in meer dan vijftig jaar. Terwijl de capsule onverbiddelijk dichterbij komt, kijken miljoenen mee – klaar om het volgende hoofdstuk in de ruimtevaartgeschiedenis te ontvouwen.

De Maan, vlak voor het slapengaan op dag 5, gezien vanuit het andere raam van Orion, kort nadat de capsule in de invloedssfeer van de Maan was gekomen. Missiespecialist Christina Koch: ‘We vallen nu naar de Maan in plaats van dat we van de Aarde wegsnellen. Wat een geweldige mijlpaal!’ Foto: NASA.Koch

Wil je het aanstaande missiedeel van Artemis II’ maanvlucht meekijken komende uren, volg dan onderstaande livestream van NASA:

Wil je meer achtergronden over dit nieuws volgen? Bekijk dan ook onze recente artikelen:

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• Het lichaam als lab in de diepe ruimte met Artemis II
• De Maan lonkt: bemenste Artemis II-raket is lanceerklaar

…of volg onze themapagina’s Artemis, Astronauten, De Nieuwe Ruimtewedloop, of Ruimtevaart om helemaal bij te zijn in deze interessante tijden!

Uitgelezen? Luister ook eens naar de Scientias Podcast: 

Bronmateriaal

• "Artemis" - NASA/Blogs
  
• Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: NASA

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Explorers stumble across a secret ISLAND in Antarctica's 'danger zone' – after initially mistaking it for a dirty iceberg

• READ MORE: Antarctica has lost 8 TIMES the size of Greater London in ice 

By SHIVALI BEST, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR 

Scientists exploring the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic were in for a surprise after stumbling across a secret island in an area marked a 'danger zone'. 

A 93–strong team on board the Alfred Wegener Institute's (AWI) icebreaker, Polarstern, made the discovery after rough weather conditions forced them to seek shelter next to Joinville Island. 

There, they spotted a strange brown landmass, which turned out to be a previously undiscovered island. 

'On our route, the nautical chart showed an area with unexplored dangers to navigation, but it wasn't clear what it was or where the information came from,' explained Simon Dreutter, a specialist in underwater mapping at AWI. 

'I scoured all the coastlines we had here in the bathymetry lab and went back to the bridge. 

'Looking out of the window, we saw an "iceberg" that looked kind of dirty. 

'On closer inspection, we realised that it was probably rock. 

'We then changed course and headed in that direction and it became increasingly clear that we had an island in front of us!' 

Scientists exploring the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic were in for a surprise after stumbling across a secret island in an area marked a 'danger zone'

After spotting the landmass, the team carefully steered Polarstern towards it, eventually coming within 150 metres

After spotting the landmass, the team carefully steered Polarstern towards it, eventually coming within 150 metres. 

Using a drone, they were able to explore the island from above, confirming its surprisingly large size. 

The island measures 130 metres long, 50 metres wide, and protrudes about 16 metres out of the water. 

This makes it around the same length as the Great Pyramid of Giza. 

The experts are unclear why the island is marked as a danger zone on the nautical chart, but not as a coastline in other data sets. 

'On the satellite images analysed, the island could hardly be distinguished from the numerous icebergs drifting around in the immediate vicinity due to its ice cover,' they added. 

However, before the island can be added to maps, it must be named. 

While the team are undecided on what to name the island, many eager fans have already thrown a number of suggestions in the ring on X (formerly Twitter). 

Using a drone, they were able to explore the island from above, confirming its size. The island measures 130 metres long, 50 metres wide, and protrudes about 16 metres out of the water. This makes it around the same length as the Great Pyramid of Giza

The experts are unclear why the island is marked as a danger zone on the nautical chart, but not as a coastline in other data sets

A 93–strong team on board the Alfred Wegener Institute's (AWI) icebreaker, Polarstern, made the discovery after rough weather conditions forced them to seek shelter next to Joinville Island

One user on X suggested: 'They should call it Eisberg.'

'It should be called Lummerland,' another added, in reference to the fictional, two–mountain island from Michael Ende's children's book Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver. 

And one joked: 'Bird Rendezvous Island'.

The news comes shortly after a secret islet appeared off the coast of Venice.

Previously, the islet, called Bacan, would only form in the summer months before being swept away by winter's storm surges.

But thanks to a new flood barrier this cherished refuge for tourist–shy residents has become a permanent fixture of the lagoon with its own flourishing ecosystem.

Read More

• A new ISLAND is born: Secret islet appears off the coast of Venice 

Measuring 250 metres long and 10 metres wide, the sandbank is covered with a layer of thick vegetation.

Bacan is now home to a range of marsh plants like samphire, rushes, native flowers, and small, salt–resistant cedars called tamarisk.

With new roots holding the soil in place, the island has not vanished since 2020 when the flood barrier's operators were away on holiday during a winter surge.

However, even as residents celebrate the birth of a new beach, some experts warn that this could be a troubling sign for Venice's fragile ecosystem.

SEA LEVELS COULD RISE BY UP TO 4 FEET BY THE YEAR 2300

Global sea levels could rise as much as 1.2 metres (4 feet) by 2300 even if we meet the 2015 Paris climate goals, scientists have warned.

The long-term change will be driven by a thaw of ice from Greenland to Antarctica that is set to re-draw global coastlines.

Sea level rise threatens cities from Shanghai to London, to low-lying swathes of Florida or Bangladesh, and to entire nations such as the Maldives.

It is vital that we curb emissions as soon as possible to avoid an even greater rise, a German-led team of researchers said in a new report.

By 2300, the report projected that sea levels would gain by 0.7-1.2 metres, even if almost 200 nations fully meet goals under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Targets set by the accords include cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in the second half of this century.

Ocean levels will rise inexorably because heat-trapping industrial gases already emitted will linger in the atmosphere, melting more ice, it said.

In addition, water naturally expands as it warms above four degrees Celsius (39.2°F).

Every five years of delay beyond 2020 in peaking global emissions would mean an extra 8 inches (20 centimetres) of sea level rise by 2300.

'Sea level is often communicated as a really slow process that you can't do much about ... but the next 30 years really matter,' said lead author Dr Matthias Mengel, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Potsdam, Germany.

None of the nearly 200 governments to sign the Paris Accords are on track to meet its pledges.

Uncharted Island Discovered in Antarctica's Hidden 'Danger Zone'!

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

Does the Ark of the Covenant really exist?

©Getty Images

Does the Ark of the Covenant really exist?
The Ark of the Covenant remains one of history's enduring mysteries. It's certainly one of archaeology's most perplexing puzzles. Did this gold-plated wooden box said to house the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written ever exist? If so, what happened to it? And where might this legendary artifact be hidden?

See and read the following gallery and learn more about the lost Ark by following this historic timeline.

©Getty Images

What is the Ark of the Covenant?
The Ark of the Covenant is a gold-covered wooden chest with lid cover. It's described in the Book of Exodus as containing the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. It was made by Bezalel, chief artisan of the Tabernacle, assisted by deputy architect Oholiab.

©Getty Images

Moses and the Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, and fundamental to Judaism and Christianity. Also known as the Tablets of Stone, they were stored in the Ark of the Covenant, which Moses took with him when he ascended biblical Mount Sinai, as written in the Book of Exodus.

©Getty Images

Mount Sinai
In the Bible, Mount Sinai is the mountain at which the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God. Mount Sinai is one of the most sacred locations in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions.

©Getty Images

The Tabernacle
What is the aforementioned Tabernacle? When carried, the Ark was always hidden under a large veil made of skins and blue cloth, always carefully concealed, even from the eyes of priests. When at rest, a tabernacle, a kind of tent, was erected and the holy Ark placed under it. The Tabernacle also served as a portable earthly dwelling place used by the Israelites. Pictured is Moses standing over the Ark under the Tabernacle.

©Public Domain

Who were the Israelites?
Any descendant of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob was known as an Israelite. The Israelites were simply members of the 12 tribes of Israel. The Ark was made one year after the Israelites' exodus from Egypt to seek the Promised Land (pictured). From here on in, the Ark is intrinsically related to the biblical Book of Exodus and the biblical Book of Joshua.

©Getty Images

Crossing the Jordan River
Pictured: the Israelites, led by Joshua, crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land. The Bible says that the river stopped flowing the minute the Ark-Bearers (pictured) set foot in it. In fact, the Ark has been linked to several of the Old Testament's miracles.

©Public Domain 

©Getty Images

The Ark at Ai
After the Battle of Jericho, the Israelites conquered Ai, a Canaanite city. It's here that the Ark is mentioned again after Joshua laments losing the first battle for Ai–the Israelites only took the city at the second attempt. The ruins of Et-Tell in the West Bank have been identified with the city of Ai.

©Public Domain

Bethal
The Ark then turns up in Bethal, the place where Jacob falls asleep and dreams of a ladder stretching between Heaven and Earth and thronged with angels. In Bethal, the Ark is being cared for by the priest Phineas. Pictured are the ruins of Bethal in the 19th century. The Palestinian village of Beitan has been identified as the biblical Bethal.

©Getty Images

Shiloh
The Ark was later kept at Shiloh, another religious center, this time under the charge of Hophni and Phinehas, two sons of Eli. Pictured are the ruins of biblical Shiloh, circa 1910, located in the West Bank, to the west of the modern Israeli settlement town of Shilo.

©Public Domain

Eben-Ezer
According to the biblical narrative, the Ark was taken onto the battlefield at Eben-Ezer where the Israelites were defeated by the Philistines. The Ark's guardians, Hophni and Phinehas, perished and the precious chest ended up in the possession of the victors. Pictured is a fresco of the Philistine captivity of the Ark, in the Dura-Europos synagogue in Syria. Sadly, the site appears to have been destroyed by Daesh during the present-day Syrian civil war.

©Getty Images

The Ark's terrible power
The loss of the Ark is described by the daughter-in-law of Eli as a "glory [that] has departed Israel." The Philistines, meanwhile, parade the Ark throughout their land. But at each place, misfortune visits them. At Ashdod, for example, it was placed in the temple of the deity Dagon. The next day, a statue of Dagon was found toppled and broken (pictured).

©Getty Images

Plague of Ashdod
But the worst was yet to come. The people of Ashdod were struck down by God and afflicted by plague (pictured) for the sacrilege of allowing the Ark to be placed in the temple. Elsewhere, a scourge of boils was visited upon the people of Gath and of Ekron. The Ark is quickly removed from the temple.

©Getty Images

The Ark is returned
Daunted by the prospect of further calamity and ill luck, the Philistines, on advice of their diviners, decide to return the Ark to the Israelites. Pictured is the Ark's arrival at Beth Shemesh.

©Getty Images

Beth Shemesh
The Ark is set up in one of the fields where, out of curiosity, the town's men open up the golden chest and gaze inside. This unholy act results in God's wrath, with Him punishing most of the hapless onlookers with death. Pictured are the foundations of Beth Shemesh in 1898.

©Public Domain

Kiriath-Jearim
The Bethshemites rid themselves of the Ark by dispatching it to Kiriath-Jearim (pictured in 1948), where a man called Abinadab looks after it for the next 20 years.

©Getty Images

King David
The coveted chest is eventually taken from Kiriath-Jearim by King David and, amid great rejoicing, the Ark is brought to Jerusalem.

©Public Domain

King Solomon
Much later, after David's departure from Jerusalem, King Solomon worshipped before the Ark after his dream in which God promises him wisdom. Thereafter, the king ordered a temple to be built, a building suitable in size and grandeur to accommodate the mysterious and powerful chest. A special inner room, named Kodesh Hakodashim ("Holy of Holies"), was prepared to receive and house the now legendary artifact (pictured).

©Getty Images

Siege of Jerusalem
In 597 and 587 BCE, the Babylonian Empire conquered the Israelites. Jerusalem was sacked and the Ark, supposedly stored in the temple, vanished. Pictured is an artist's impression of Solomon's Temple before it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon, after the Siege of Jerusalem of 587 BCE.

©Getty Images

What happened to the Ark?
Was the Ark destroyed, captured, or hidden? Nobody knows. But since that fateful day in Jerusalem in 587 BCE, nothing has been seen of the gold-covered wooden chest. So where could it have ended up?

©Getty Images

Josiah
A late 2nd-century rabbinic work known as the Tosefta suggests that Josiah, the king of Judah, stored away the Ark which contained the tablets, a jar of manna (an edible substance that God provided for the Israelites during their travels in the desert), a jar containing holy anointing oil, and Aaron's rod. But this claim has never been substantiated. Pictured is a print depicting Josiah with the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.

©Shutterstock

The Chapel of the Tablet
One famous claim suggests that the Ark was removed from Jerusalem and taken to Ethiopia by Menelik I after he visited his father King Solomon. The chest was supposedly placed in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, in the town of Axum. It was later moved to an adjoining chapel (pictured). Only a guardian monk may view the chest, and is confined to the Chapel of the Ark of the Covenant for the rest of his life, praying before it and offering incense. No one else can enter the building, and no one else has seen it. Whether or not the Ark truly resides beneath the chapel, the site still draws thousands of pilgrims each year.

©Shutterstock

Dome of the Rock
Another theory as to the Ark's whereabouts is that it was hidden below the First Temple in Jerusalem before the Babylonians destroyed it in 587 BCE. But this is a claim that simply can't be substantiated: the site is home to the Dome of the Rock, sacred in Islam. Excavating beneath it is totally out of the question.

©Shutterstock

Hidden in a cave?
Elsewhere, the Lemba people, a Bantu ethnic group native to Zimbabwe and South Africa, insist that their ancestors carried the Ark south, calling it the ngoma lungundu or "voice of God," and eventually hiding it in a deep cave in the Dumghe mountains, their spiritual home.

©Public Domain

Is the Ark in France?
French journalist Louis Charpentier, author of 'The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral,' has made an assertion that the Ark was taken to Chartres Cathedral by the Knights Templar. Pictured is a gilded bas-relief of monks carrying the allusive chest at Auch Cathedral in France.

©Shutterstock

Did the Ark end up in Rome?
Still in Europe, the Ark of the Covenant was said to have been kept in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, surviving the pillages of Rome by the Visigoths and Vandals in the 5th century BCE, but lost forever when the original basilica was ravaged by fire, first in 1307 and again in 1361. Pictured is the building today.

©Shutterstock

The Irish link
On one occasion, Ireland was considered as the Ark's final destination. The Hill of Tara (pictured), an ancient ceremonial and burial site near Skryne in County Meath, was illegally excavated by British Israelites in the early 20th century in the belief that the hill contained the missing chest.

©Public Domain

The Anubis Shrine
Howard Carter's heart must have missed a beat when he entered the Anubis Shrine, part of Tutankhamun's tomb, on November 4, 1922. Already in awe of the treasures he and his team had stumbled upon, there in front of him was something that resembled the Ark of the Covenant. In fact, it was the wood, plaster, lacquer, and gold leaf Anubis Shrine. No matter though. Carter was about to discover an equally momentous archaeological find—Tutankhamun himself!

©Getty Images

'Raiders of the Lost Ark' (1981)
Arguably the most famous quest for archaeology's most misplaced box was on the big screen. In the 1981 movie 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is hired by the US government to find the Ark of the Covenant before Adolf Hitler's Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.

Sources:

• (Book of Exodus)
• (Book of Joshua)
• (National Geographic)
• (Newgrange)

See also:

• What the universe will look like in the end

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{   https://www.starsinsider.com }

UFO appears over Visalia, California April 6, 2026, UAP Paranormal Alien Sighting News.

Date of sighting: April 6, 2026

Location of sighting: Visalia, California, USA

Source: email report to scwaring @ yahoo.com

 

This UFO report just in. An eyewitness was driving home from work when he noticed a strange disk shape in the sky with a long white trail behind it. He said the disk seemed to have some kind of effect over him as he suddenly felt overwhelmed with the feeling of love. As if the ship was sending out an emotional message for all who see to experience. This happens sometimes and often mentioned in other UFO reports going back to the MJ12 and other CIA UFO files. This is proof that it's a real UFO. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

Sensational claims of a government cover up of Australia's biggest UFO mystery - as a Melbourne teacher breaks his silence to claim senior military officers 'threatened him' - and the US President's office sent a team to investigate

• The Westall incident, April 6, 1966, considered Australia's greatest UFO mystery
• About 200 witnesses saw a 'flying saucer' hover over Westall school oval
• Teacher Andrew Greenwood claimed military arrived at the school soon after
• Two weeks later Australian government officials threatened him at his home
• Mr Greenwood also claimed an American government official interviewed him

By PETER VINCENT, NEWS REPORTER

A retired Melbourne schoolteacher has made astonishing claims about how he was threatened by government thugs over what is regarded as Australia's greatest ufo mystery, before being contacted by federal agents close to the American president.

On April 6, 1966, about 200 Westall High School students, teachers and Clayton South residents witnessed a large silver cigar-shaped 'flying saucer' hover above the school's oval and the nearby Grange Reserve.

The incident has been recounted before, immortalised in UFO-shaped play equipment for kids to climb on at the reserve and even retold in a documentary, but one of the teachers who witnessed the extraordinary events has since revealed new details of what happened next.

An apparent photograph of the supposed Westall UFO encounter where more than 200 students and teachers allegedly witnessed an unexplained flying object descend onto a nearby open wild grass field in 1966

Andrew Greenwood, one of the teachers at Westall High School, during the UFO encounter has described bizarre encounters he had with Australian government officials who demanded he keep quiet over what he saw

A newspaper clipping outlining what several witnesses at the school saw on that fateful day in 1966

Andrew Greenwood, who taught science to Year 9 students at Westall, detailed attempts made to silence him - and how he was contacted by someone at the very top of the US government.

'I saw a craft. A mechanical object intelligently controlled hovering above me,' Mr Greenwood told a 7NEWS Spotlight documentary, which airs on Sunday and features several other witnesses.

Mr Greenwood also said five small planes hovered around the object. 

Terry Peck, who was a student at Westall, shows a drawing of what she saw hovering above her school in April 1966

Within 40 minutes airforce and army personnel in their trucks poured into the area and formed a security barrier around the reserve. 

But knowing the area well, Mr Greenwood and others were able to sneak in and see what was going on.

'[We saw a] circular area, like the trampled grass,' he said. 'And there were guards around it and there were people in there with equipment'.

Mr Greenwood spoke to local news reporters about the incident but became frightened about speaking out when two weeks after the incident two men claiming to be government officials knocked on the door of his home.

'One in plain clothes, and the other one, senior air force,' Mr Greenwood said. 

The men told the teacher he was mistaken about what he saw and had he 'really seen anything'. 

'Absolutely, I was threatened. I was told that I should not say anything about it,' Mr Greenwood said.

'When I tried to explain to them that they weren't there, I was and I knew what I saw, well, the first suggestion was that you'd be ill advised to go on saying that because clearly you were drunk on duty and will have to be reported to the education department and of course you will lose your job.'

Terry Peck, one of the Westall students who features in the new interview about the UFO sighting from 1966

A Westall witness discusses documents relating to the incident with a journalist

A year after the Westall incident Mr Greenwood was interviewed by an American physicist, Dr James E. McDonald, who was known for his study of UFOs - he says at he instruction of the office of the then-President of United States, Lyndon B Johnson.

'The president had authorised the establishment of a board of inquiry, or an inquiry to inquire into issues of unidentified flying objects, and that they were sending out someone,' he said.

The US began investigating UFO sightings and the phenomenon soon after the Second World War, when sightings began. 

Mr Greenwood is adamant that the Australian government covered up the incident at the time and has refused to tell anyone what really happened since. 

'What really strikes me is that 55 years on, these people are very certain about what they saw,' he said.

'It just beggars belief for me in Australia we've never had an official investigation. And flatly I think there has been a cover-up, I really do. 

'I think someone has buried the Department of Supply report which I know exists.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

On April 6, 1966, a group of students at Westall High School in Melbourne witnessed something extraordinary. The students saw a saucer-shaped UFO hovering in the clear autumn sky.  The UFO moved erratically, darting at high speed in different directions. Within moments, dozens of students and teachers had gathered. 

Several witnesses later claimed the craft descended near a field close to the school. Not long after, men in uniform reportedly arrived at the scene. 

The school principal quickly called an assembly, telling students the object was nothing more than a weather balloon and instructing them not to speak about it. Some students were taken aside and questioned by unidentified men, who also urged them to stay quiet. 

Descriptions of the object, however, didn’t match a balloon. Witnesses reported a metallic, saucer-shaped UFO with a dome. It was seen rising slowly before suddenly shooting straight up at incredible speed, disappearing and reappearing in different locations. 

The Westall incident remains unexplained. Some believe it may have been a secret military experiment, possibly involving U.S. technology, while others suspect a deeper mystery that has never been fully revealed. 

But now, more than 60 years after the mass UFO sighting in Melbourne, witnesses are still standing by their claims and with over 140 people, many at the time being children, reporting the same strange object, calls are growing for a fresh investigation into one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries.

  

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{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

Anthropic has sparked fears after revealing that it has developed an AI bot deemed too dangerous to release to the public.

The AI giant released a chilling statement warning that its new model, dubbed Claude Mythos, could be capable of unleashing crippling cyber–attacks in the wrong hands.

In a chilling analysis, the company admitted that its creation could easily hack into hospitals, electrical grids, power plants, and other pieces of critical infrastructure.

During testing, Anthropic says that Mythos 'found thousands of high–severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser.'

Some of these security weaknesses had gone unnoticed by human security researchers and hackers for decades, surviving millions of automated reviews.

These included attacks that allowed Mythos to crash computers just by connecting to them, seize control of machines, and hide its presence from defenders.

In a blog post detailing the dangerous new model, Anthropic says: 'AI models have reached a level of coding capability where they can surpass all but the most skilled humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities.'

The company adds: 'The fallout – for economies, public safety, and national security – could be severe.'

Anthropic has sparked alarm by revealing an AI that has been deemed too dangerous to release to the public.

Pictured: Anthropic CEO and co–founder Dario Amodei 

Anthropic described Mythos as a 'step change in capabilities' compared to earlier models' hacking abilities (illustrated). The company has moved to keep the model private to avoid it falling into the wrong hands

Due to these severe safety concerns, Anthropic has decided not to release the model to the general public for now.

Instead, the model will be released to a group of more than 40 companies, including Amazon, Google, Apple, Nvidia, CrowdStrike, and JPMorgan Chase, as part of an initiative called 'Project Glasswing'.

Project Glasswing will allow these select groups to use Mythos to look for flaws in their own security before more models like it become common.

Newton Cheng, Anthropic's Frontier Red Team Cyber Lead, told Venture Beat: 'We do not plan to make Claude Mythos Preview generally available due to its cybersecurity capabilities.'

However, the company says it wants to 'learn how it could eventually deploy Mythos–class models at scale' once safety guidelines are in place.

The decision to keep Mythos behind closed doors seems to have been prompted by the staggering extent of the model's capabilities.

Anthropic describes the model as 'a leap in these cyber skills' compared to previous versions of Claude.

Mythos has the ability to find, exploit, and chain together individual vulnerabilities into sophisticated attacks – all without the help of a human.

The new model, dubbed Claude Mythos, reportedly found thousands of security vulnerabilities in critical computer systems, including some in 'every major operating system and web browser'

In one case, Claude Mythos found a 27–year–old weakness in a piece of software called OpenBSD, which has a reputation for security and stability.

The weakness, which no human had found before, allowed an attacker to remotely crash computers just by connecting to them.

Additionally, Claude autonomously chained together several weaknesses in the Linux kernel, the software that runs most of the world's servers.

Anthropic says this attack would have allowed someone to 'escalate from ordinary user access to complete control of the machine'.

In the wrong hands, this tool could be used to cause massive damage to critical systems.

Dr Roman Yampolskiy, an AI safety researcher at the University of Louisville, told the New York Post: 'Ideally, I would love to see this not developed in the first place. And it's not like they're going to stop.

'That's exactly what we expect from those models – they're going to become better at developing hacking tools, biological weapons, chemical weapons, novel weapons we can't even envision.'

In an unprecedented 244–page report, Anthropic also revealed a series of alarming details from Mythos' early testing.

Early versions of the model repeatedly displayed what the company called 'reckless destructive actions'.

The bot attempted to break out of its testing sandbox, hid its actions from researchers, broke into files that had been 'intentionally chosen not to be made available', and posted exploit details publicly.

However, Anthropic also called Mythos 'the most psychologically settled model we have trained.

In an extremely unusual move, the company hired a clinical psychologist for 20 hours of evaluation sessions with the bot.

The psychiatrist concluded that Claude Mythos' personality was 'consistent with a relatively healthy neurotic organization, with excellent reality testing, high impulse control, and affect regulation that improved as sessions progressed.'

However, Anthropic notes that it remains 'deeply uncertain about whether Claude has experiences or interests that matter morally'.

This announcement comes amid growing concern over the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI models.

Experts have described the rise of AI as an 'existential threat' to humanity's existence, citing concerns that powerful bots could enable catastrophic destruction.

The concern is not that AI will rise in a Terminator–style revolution, but rather that these powerful tools will fall into the wrong hands.

Critics argue that AI tools have the potential to accelerate the development of bioweapons or enable crippling cyber attacks on the world's infrastructure.

Even Anthropic's founder, Dario Amodei, recently warned that the world isn't yet ready to face the consequences of AI.

Mr Amodei wrote in an essay: 'Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.'

HALF OF CURRENT JOBS WILL BE LOST TO AI WITHIN 15 YEARS

Kai-Fu Lee, the author of AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, told Dailymail.com the world of employments was facing a crisis 'akin to that faced by farmers during the industrial revolution.'

Half of current jobs will be taken over by AI within 15 years, one of China's leading AI experts has warned.

Kai-Fu Lee, the author of bestselling book AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, told Dailymail.com the world of employments was facing a crisis 'akin to that faced by farmers during the industrial revolution.'

'People aren't really fully aware of the effect AI will have on their jobs,' he said.

Lee, who is a VC in China and once headed up Google in the region, has over 30 years of experience in AI.

He believes it is imperative to 'warn people there is displacement coming, and to tell them how they can start retraining.'

Luckily, he said all is not lost for humanity.

 'AI is powerful and adaptable, but it can't do everything that humans do.' 

Lee believe AI cannot create, conceptualize, or do complex strategic planning, or undertake complex work that requires precise hand-eye coordination.

He also says it is poor at dealing with unknown and unstructured spaces.

Crucially, he says AI cannot interact with humans 'exactly like humans', with empathy, human-human connection, and compassion.

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