Hope is fading for the imminent return of the international crew of the cargo ship hijacked by the Houthis in November, with a senior Filipino diplomat saying he does not expect a release until the war in Gaza is over, while the Houthis say the fate of the sailors is now in Hamas’ hands.

A Houthi-owned helicopter hijacked the Galaxy Leader cargo ship on November 19 in the Red Sea, as rebel gunmen laid siege to the vessel and took the ship’s crew of 17 Filipinos, two Bulgarians, three Ukrainians, two Mexicans and a Romanian hostage.

It’s now been more than 116 days since the hijacking, and according to a senior Filipino government official, there is no indication that the Houthis are open to releasing them until the hostilities end.

“There’s really not much that can be done to influence them, because the word we get from the Houthis is … that they will keep holding the ship, and all the crewmen, until we see an end to the hostilities in Gaza,” said Eduardo de Vega, the Filipino foreign affairs official overseeing millions of Filipino migrant workers.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been striking ships in the Red Sea since late last year, which they say is revenge against Israel for its military campaign in Gaza.

The Houthis said Thursday they had handed over the decision about the release of the Galaxy Leader to Hamas.

De Vega said the Houthis potentially also want official recognition of them as the government of Yemen in exchange for the hostages, but that’s unlikely to happen.

“It will be difficult for any government to recognize a government which attacks ships on the sea,” said de Vega. So, he said, “there is no point to negotiate,” except to ensure humane conditions for the hostages.

The Philippines sends nearly half a million seafarers worldwide throughout the year, making up more than one-fifth of maritime manpower. The large numbers mean Filipinos are disproportionately exposed to the dangers posed by Houthis targeting ships in the Red Sea.

Following the hijacking, video released by the militant group showed Houthi commanders greeting the crew and promising to treat them as guests.

“Anything that you need we are ready to provide it for you,” one of them is heard telling the seafarers in the clip.

De Vega says that the crew is being fed – some have even reported weight gain – and there’s no indication of violence. They’re allowed brief, weekly calls with their families, although the identities of the hostages have been kept from the public.

Most of the crew, and all the Filipinos, are being held on the ship itself and have some freedom to move around on deck. Some other crew members, he said, have at times been held onshore.

“I think it’s in the interest of the Houthis to treat them well. Those people are victims, at the end of the day,” said Mohammed Al-Qadhi, a Cairo-based Yemeni conflict analyst. “They don’t want them to create a bad image about themselves.”

The Philippines does not have official direct diplomatic contact with the Houthis, but works through an “honorary consul,” a Yemeni national given special status to represent the Philippines, who was able to visit the hostages in January, de Vega said.

But since the honorary consul is in Aden, home to the internationally recognized Saudi-backed government of Yemen that are rivals to the Houthis, de Vega said it’s a “labyrinthian maze” to get access.

Al-Qadhi suggests that even when the war is over, the Houthis may not immediately release the hostages.

“They don’t want to give concessions right now without getting anything in return, so, I think it’s not likely that they are going to be released unless there is a bigger deal being orchestrated, internationally, regarding Gaza or even with the Houthis themselves,” he said.

Normally used to transport vehicles worldwide, the giant roll-on/roll-off vessel has now become a tourist attraction for curious locals who are shuttled out to the massive vessel in small boats.

According to satellite data, about two weeks ago, it was moved from about two kilometers offshore, to just 500 meters now from Yemen’s western port city of Hodeidah.

First fatal attack

Yemen has been plagued by years of civil war, deepened by foreign proxy rivalries, and remains one of the Middle East’s poorest nations.

Years of conflict have sparked one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, Yemen divided and parts of the country in famine.

The Houthi attacks on merchant shipping have impacted one of the world’s busiest trade arteries through the Suez Canal, forcing many companies to redirect vessels and crew on the much longer route around Africa.

Data shared by Ambrey Analytics indicates there have been nearly 100 incidents involving hostile activity towards ships in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait area since the beginning of the conflict.

Twenty-three ships have been physically damaged by Houthi missiles or drones and injuries among crew members have been reported on three vessels following such attacks. One ship – the British-flagged Rubymar – has sunk almost completely following a strike by a Houthi missile in late February.

The United States and Britain have conducted multiple rounds of air strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen since February but that has not stopped the attacks.

Two Filipinos and a  Vietnamese crew member were killed in a Houthi strike on the M/V True Confidence on March 6. The vessel was hit by a Houthi anti-ship missile and fire quickly spread on board. The remaining crew was rescued by the Indian Navy, which took them to Djibouti for treatment.

Following the strike, Houthi spokesperson Yahya Sarea said the ship was targeted because it was American.

“Operations in the Red and Arab Seas will not stop until the aggression stops and the siege on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is lifted,” he said.

The bodies of those presumed dead remain onboard the ship and are now being transferred to the nearest port, according to de Vega.

“One family is still holding hope. Until they see the remains of the loved one, they continue to hold hope. Miracles do happen,” he said.

Most of the Filipino crew members on board returned to Manila on Tuesday, reuniting with their families after their ordeal at sea.

“It is saddening and horrible because we were together [for a long time] and suddenly this [attack] happened. It’s very painful for us, especially for the families,” Mark Dagohoy, one of the ship’s crew members, told journalists after their return.

The fatal strike has marked a significant escalation of the Houthi’s attacks on Red Sea shipping that has endangered the lives of ordinary seafarers working thousands of miles away from their families on weeks or months-long stints at sea.

Crew members, mostly from the Global South, on board vessels now passing through the Red Sea face the risk of death, injury and capture as Western navies deploy costly anti-ship missiles and other weapons to intercept the Houthi attacks.

Industry standards dictate that crew are supposed to be paid double time for work in designated “warlike or high-risk areas,” and they should also have the right to say no to the journey and be repatriated at the company’s cost.

At the time of the attack, the ship was officially owned by a Liberian-registered company, but according to the Financial Times, it had been sold by an American private equity firm, Oaktree Capital, just days earlier.

Oaktree Capital declined to comment when asked about whether it had links to the vessel.

De Vega says initial indications are that the crew was given the choice not to proceed, but it’s not clear if they knew the ship had US ties when they boarded.

“[Crew] are frequently transferred from ship to ship. It’s the manning agency, which decides that and they had full trust in the manning agency. [Crew] as a general rule might not even be aware of the ownership of the ship that they’re traveling on,” de Vega said, though ideally, they should be.

Engineers have sent a “poke” to the Voyager 1 probe and received a potentially encouraging response as they hope to fix a communication issue with the aging spacecraft that has persisted for five months.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, are venturing through uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system.

While Voyager 1 has continued to relay a steady radio signal to its mission control team on Earth, that signal has not carried any usable data since November, which has pointed to an issue with one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers.

A new signal recently received from the spacecraft suggests that the NASA mission team may be making progress in its quest to understand what Voyager 1 is experiencing. Voyager 1 is currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth at about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away.

Meanwhile, Voyager 2 has traveled more than 12.6 billion miles (20.3 billion kilometers) from our planet. Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate beyond the heliosphere, the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Initially designed to last five years, the Voyager probes are the two longest-operating spacecraft in history. Their exceptionally long life spans mean that both spacecraft have provided additional insights about our solar system and beyond after achieving their preliminary goals of flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune decades ago.

But both probes have faced challenges along the way as they age.

Cosmic communication breakdown

The mission team first noticed the communication issue with Voyager 1 on November 14, 2023, when the flight data system’s telemetry modulation unit began sending a repeating pattern of code.

Voyager 1’s flight data system collects information from the spacecraft’s science instruments and bundles it with engineering data that reflects the current health status of Voyager 1. Mission control on Earth receives that data in binary code, or a series of ones and zeroes.

But since November, Voyager 1’s flight data system has been stuck in a loop.

The spacecraft can still receive and carry out commands transmitted from the mission team, but a problem with that telecommunications unit meant no science or engineering data from Voyager 1 was transmitting to Earth.

Since discovering the issue, the mission team has attempted sending commands to restart the computer system and learn more about the underlying cause of the issue.

The team sent a command, called a “poke,” to Voyager 1 on March 1 to get the flight data system to run different software sequences in case some type of glitch was causing the issue.

On March 3, the team noticed that activity from one part of the flight data system stood out from the rest of the garbled data. While the signal wasn’t in the format the Voyager team is used to when the flight data system is functioning as expected, an engineer with NASA’s Deep Space Network was able to decode it.

The Deep Space Network is a system of radio antennas on Earth that help the agency communicate with the Voyager probes and other spacecraft exploring our solar system.

The decoded signal included a readout of the entire flight data system’s memory, according to an update NASA shared.

“The (flight data system) memory includes its code, or instructions for what to do, as well as variables, or values used in the code that can change based on commands or the spacecraft’s status,” according to a NASA blog post. “It also contains science or engineering data for downlink. The team will compare this readout to the one that came down before the issue arose and look for discrepancies in the code and the variables to potentially find the source of the ongoing issue.”

How the Voyager probes keep going

Voyager 1 is so far away that it takes 22.5 hours for commands sent from Earth to reach the spacecraft. Additionally, the team must wait 45 hours to receive a response. Currently, the team is analyzing Voyager 1’s memory readout after initially beginning the decoding process on March 7 and finding the readout three days later.

“Using that information to devise a potential solution and attempt to put it into action will take time,” according to the space agency.

The last time Voyager 1 experienced a similar, but not identical, issue with the flight data system was in 1981, and the current problem does not appear to be connected to other glitches the spacecraft has experienced in recent years.

Over time, both spacecraft have encountered unexpected issues and dropouts, including a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 couldn’t communicate with Earth. In August 2023, the mission team used a long-shot “shout” technique to restore communications with Voyager 2 after a command inadvertently oriented the spacecraft’s antenna in the wrong direction.

During the Great American Eclipse of 2017, zoo animals acting strangely took researchers by surprise — the giraffes gathered and broke into a gallop, the Galápagos tortoises began to mate, and the gorillas started to get ready for bed.

These odd behaviors were just a few of several anomalies that scientists stationed at the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, South Carolina, observed during the historic solar event spanning the United States, according to a March 2020 report.

“Giraffes are kind of delicate, they don’t run a lot. When they run, it’s because they’re running from a predator or something like that,” said lead study author Dr. Adam Hartstone-Rose, professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

“It was kind of amazing and mind-blowing,” he said. Animal keepers at the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere also documented giraffes galloping during the brief moments in 2017 when the sky darkened in the middle of the day.

With the upcoming solar eclipse on April 8, the researchers plan to build upon their past study at a different zoo located within the path of totality. That’s the swath of Mexico, the US and Canada that the moon’s shadow will cross, obscuring the sun for three or four minutes at a time at geographical points along the way.

And you can help scientists unlock the mysteries of these unusual behaviors. While many people prepare to look to the sky for the dazzling event, others may want to take a few moments to watch the critters in their own backyard, said Hartstone-Rose, who is one of the principal investigators of Solar Eclipse Safari, a citizen project aiming to collect observations from people viewing the eclipse across the entire path.

Get involved in unraveling animal secrets

Hartstone-Rose plans to bring a team of graduate student researchers to the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas, which will experience the solar eclipse on April 8 from about 12:22 p.m. to 3:01 p.m. CT, with the moment of totality occurring for nearly 2 ½ minutes at 1:40 p.m. CT, according to NASA. The researchers will study certain animals to determine whether they repeat the same odd behaviors. But members of the public also can help with their own research.

And regular folks won’t just be watching at a zoo. The citizen project calls for observations from all sorts of environments, including cities with pigeons and squirrels, mountain ecosystems with woodland critters, farms with livestock, and more.

“There could be all sorts of things. We’re hoping that we even get kids watching their dogs in their backyard and seeing if their dogs behave interestingly during the eclipse,” Hartstone-Rose said.

The path of totality spans across more than a dozen US states, but even someone who is not directly on the path will most likely experience some percentage of the sun being covered by the moon. Hartstone-Rose is interested in reports from across North America to determine whether some animals only respond at a certain percentage of the sun’s coverage, he said.

“It’s a project that anybody anywhere on the path of totality, or even not in the path of totality, could do using our protocols and contribute data to our study, and help us understand more broadly how animals behave during the eclipse,” he added.

But that’s not the only way citizen scientists can get involved. You could also join NASA’s Eclipse Soundscapes Project. The space agency will collect observations from the public on animal behaviors as well as human reactions to the eclipse through written multisensory reports — such as what the observer saw, heard or felt — and audio recordings of the environment during the solar event.

Total solar eclipses are infrequent events that provide scientists with rare opportunities to collect data on behavioral responses to the phenomenon, said Kelsey Perrett, communications coordinator for the Eclipse Soundscapes Project. The next total solar eclipse that will be visible across the contiguous United States won’t appear until August 2044.

Why do animals react to the eclipse?

Reports of animals acting strangely during a solar eclipse date back hundreds of years, according to NASA, but the causes and effects of the unusual behaviors are not fully understood.

The researchers studied 17 species during the 2017 event and found behavioral responses to the eclipse in approximately 75% of the zoo animals observed, with the majority either displaying evening activities or behaviors that signal anxiety.

Hartstone-Rose believes there are two possible reasons for the animals’ responses to the eclipse. First, the animals were reacting to the natural light dimming and the temperature dropping as the sun disappeared behind the moon. Second, the animals were reacting to the crowd of zoo goers’ excitement and commotion while the eclipse was happening.

The moon’s interference with daylight caused by a total solar eclipse likely affects animals because of what is known as circadian rhythm, the internal biological 24-hour clock that tells a person or an animal how to respond to the amount of light they are receiving, said Dr. Bryan Pijanowski, professor of forestry and natural resources and the director for the Center for Global Soundscapes at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He was not involved in the March 2020 study.

“Most animals respond to (the light dimming from the eclipse) in a way where it’s like, ‘OK, it’s time to either sit down and rest and go to sleep.’ … And then there are the nocturnal animals that suddenly say, ‘oh, it’s time for me to wake up and be active,’” he added.

A better understanding of how animals respond to the eclipse could inspire further research on how animals, particularly insects, are affected by light pollution, said Pijanowski, who is also part of the science advisory board for the Soundscapes Project.

How have animals reacted during past eclipse events?

The most consolidated study is from nearly 100 years ago, when a team of scientists led by entomologist William M. Wheeler collected almost 500 observations from the public. For example, people told the researchers that during the August 1932 eclipse’s totality they noticed crickets chirping as if it were nighttime and bees attempting to return to their hives. The study, published in March 1935, also included observations of mammals, birds and cold-blooded vertebrates.

Researchers have made additional observations of specific animals’ reactions over the years during solar eclipse events, including studies of captive baboons that increased grooming behaviors, brown pelicans that began to roost, colonial orb-weaver spiders that took down their webs and certain amphibians that became more vocal.

Hartstone-Rose plans to have researchers stationed near the giraffe enclosure in April to see whether the galloping behavior occurs again and is hoping people stationed at other zoos will do the same.

A few of the other animals the research team will be scrutinizing include reptiles — particularly tortoises, to see whether the typically slow-moving giants will become more active — as well as primates, such as bonobos, which tend to have sex when under stress, Hartstone-Rose said.

Watching the eclipse at a zoo

The researchers will have to be aware of the limitations of crowd participation impacting the findings when it comes to observing animal behavior at the Fort Worth Zoo this year, Hartstone-Rose said. But he hopes there will be plenty of other observations from people who are not near crowds.

“It’s the nature of the beast. Eclipses are super exciting. We don’t want to do anything that diminishes people’s excitement during the eclipse,” he said.

The zookeepers also will contribute to data by observing animals within their area of expertise, said John Griffioen, assistant director of animal programs and conservation at Fort Worth Zoo.

The highly vocal animals of the zoo that communicate with one another often, such as the elephants, flamingos and parrots, will be of particular interest, Griffioen said, to determine whether the totality causes the animals to become quieter or louder.

In addition to the Fort Worth Zoo, several zoos across the path of totality have announced events open to the public for eclipse viewing, including the Buffalo Zoo in New York, the Little Rock Zoo in Arkansas, the Toledo Zoo in Ohio and the Indianapolis Zoo.

How you can help NASA with research

The Eclipse Soundscapes Project began last October with the annular eclipse, also known as the “ring of fire.” More than 800 people participated in the project, Perrett said. The space agency is expecting far larger numbers for the 2024 total solar eclipse — nearly 2,500 people have already signed up, she added.

Wheeler’s 1935 citizen study inspired the project, according to the website. The space agency’s researchers are particularly interested in studying crickets and other vocal nocturnal insects to find out whether they will begin chirping as the moon shrouds the sun, Perrett said.

The NASA project is open to all volunteer participants, including those who are blind or have low vision, according to the news release. What’s more, it’s not necessary to have an animal within eyesight to take good observations, as listening is also an important sense to use during the eclipse, Pijanowski said.

“If we get even a handful of people who go out and experience the eclipse in a new way, we’ll consider it a success,” Perrett said in an email. “When it comes to data, it’s the more the merrier. The more people who participate, the better we can answer our questions about how solar eclipses impact life on Earth.”

The Solar Eclipse Safari and Eclipse Soundscapes Project will capture the public’s observations through forms found on their respective websites. But if you are just looking to take in the “once in a lifetime” solar event for yourself, that’s fine, too, Hartstone-Rose said.

“(During a total solar eclipse) you have so many different ways the light is scattering, so there’s these beautiful colors of orange and purple and green. … The wind speed drops and becomes very, very calm. And so everything happens within a very short time period, all at the same time,” Pijanowski said. “It’s kind of a great human sensory experience to be in the middle of a total solar eclipse.”

Sam George, the driving force behind Ghana’s harsh anti-LGBTQ legislation, portrays himself as a guardian of gay Ghanaians.

But despite his claims, the bill, signed into law late last month by Ghana’s parliament, imposes severe penalties merely for identifying as LGBTQ, with fines or up to three years in prison. Someone convicted of “promoting” gay rights can get up to five years behind bars, according to the bill.

In a relatively short time, the opposition member of parliament, who represents a constituency of the greater Accra region and is the bill’s main sponsor, has become a well-known face in Ghana and a regular feature on television.

The passage of the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values act unopposed in parliament in late February is a resounding victory for George and a coalition of religious and secular conservatives in Ghana. It is also part of a worrying trend of homophobic bills sweeping the continent.

By his admission, George has traveled to the United States to meet with like-minded conservatives pushing “family values.” He says he covers his own expenses.

Making inequality legal

Whatever its origins, the bill’s passage is terrible news for LGBTQ Ghanaians.

“The sentiment and emotion we are expressing right now is sadness,” said Alex Kofi Donkor, the founder of LGBT+ Rights in Ghana, an advocacy group. “The passage of this bill is only going to give legitimacy to the inequality that we face here in this country.”

He says the bill,  if it becomes law, would further impact access to legal and medical services in Ghana.

Now, it is up to President Nana Akufo-Addo: to sign or not to sign.

The question is, what will he do? In the context of local politics, Akufo-Addo faces difficult choices and competing pressure points.

After all, it’s an election year in Ghana, with polls set for early December.

On one side, you have politicians like George and a broadly conservative citizenry that will publicly goad the president to act. On the other, an international community poised to punish Ghana should Akufo-Addo sign.

Ghana can ill-afford punitive measures. A darling of multilateral lenders as recently as five years ago, rampant inflation and a colossal debt load have crushed Ghana’s economy, though there are tentative signs of improvement.

The government quickly pounced on the financial implications of the bill.

Soon after its passage, Ghana’s Ministry of Finance published an internal memo stating that “in total, Ghana is likely to lose US$3.8 billion in World Bank Financing over the next five to six years” because of the bill.

However, George disputes the ministry numbers. He points to the continued International Monetary Fund (IMF) line of credit to Uganda, despite that country’s own recently-passed homophobic law.

The World Bank, however, did suspend future financing in Uganda and the US State Department sanctioned Ugandans that were “undermining democracy and suppressing marginalized groups.”

“The problem with Ghana is not loans from multilateral institutions. The problem in Ghana is endemic corruption and overspending by government,” said George.

A way out

While the Ministry of Finance appears to be offering the president an elegant way out, it’s the courts that could save him from making a choice.

In a recent address to diplomats in Ghana, Akuffo-Ado said that no decision will be taken on the bill until a challenge, brought by a Ghanaian lawyer, is heard at the country’s Supreme Court.

The president also made assurances that Ghana would not be “turning her back on, hitherto, enviable, longstanding record on human rights observance and attachment to the rule of law.”

It is one thing to mollify foreign diplomats of Western capitals; it is quite another to be seen to be supporting LGBTQ rights in Ghana, where politicians and religious leaders have been whipping up homophobic sentiment.

Despite the bill’s alleged links to US groups, its supporters are also framing it as a matter of sovereignty – which can be a powerful political argument in Ghana.

“Ghana is not the 51st State of the United States or any other Western state. In the context of Ghana, we should not give rights to a person to practice a sexual preference other than what is natural and acceptable by society,” said George.

For Ghana’s president, navigating this intricate political landscape looks set to be a daunting – and unenviable – task.

Researchers in India have for the first time documented how Asian elephants bury dead calves.

Five calves were found buried on their backs in drainage ditches in tea gardens in northern Bengal, according to a new study.

The burials were documented in areas home to fragmented forests and agricultural lands such as tea gardens, said Roy.

Herds of elephants use trails that snake through tea gardens on their journeys through the countryside, he added.

In the past, elephants would have stayed mostly in the forests, but in recent decades they have become more comfortable in areas with a human presence, said Roy.

While elephants would not bury their dead in villages due to the high probability of human disturbance, the tea garden drainage ditches are a “perfect site” for calf burials, he explained.

“They hold the carcass with the legs or the trunk, it’s the only way they can get a grip on the carcass,” said Roy, who added that laying the body in the ditch and then covering it with mud is the easiest way for elephants to achieve a burial.

Roy said he and his co-author Parveen Kaswan of the Indian Forest Service were in the area to carry out other research when they found evidence of calf burials.

“We were surprised by this obviously,” said Roy.

The researchers also looked at whether the Asian elephants would revisit burial sites, as African elephants are known to do, but found that instead they would tend to avoid the area, said Roy.

This is the case even though the Indian Forest Service removes the bodies, said Roy, who believes that even elephants from different herds from that which carried out the burial can sense a burial site.

“They know many things that we don’t know,” he said.

The team will use drones, as well as asking tea garden managers and local residents to report any burial sites, he added.

Joshua Plotnik, assistant professor of psychology at Hunter College in New York, who was not involved in the study, believes there could be a simpler explanation for these apparent burials.

An alternative explanation is that the calves fell into these ditches, couldn’t get out and then died there, with the dirt either falling in naturally after they died or evidence of an attempted rescue by other members of the herd, he said.

“The important point here is that more evidence is needed – direct observations of the burials and the elephants’ behavior, for example – before any conclusions about what is happening here can be drawn,” said Plotnik.

Roy contests this theory, explaining that contusions on the backs of the dead calves show that they were dragged to their resting place by other members of the herd.

The study was published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa on February 26.

After two nail-biting and explosive test flights in 2023, a SpaceX Starship rocket is back on the launchpad at the Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

The deep-space rocket system is aiming to make it through an hour-long integrated flight test. If successful, the spacecraft will splash down in the Indian Ocean, putting the gargantuan vehicle in a position to move on to more complex test flights and, eventually, carry NASA astronauts to the moon’s surface.

The launch could take place anytime during a 110-minute window that opens at 7 a.m. CT (8 a.m. ET) Thursday, according to an email from SpaceX sent Wednesday afternoon. The event will begin streaming live on the company’s website about 30 minutes before the highly anticipated takeoff.

SpaceX considers the Starship system crucial to its founding mission: to carry humans to Mars for the first time. And critically, NASA has chosen Starship as the landing vehicle that will ferry its astronauts to the lunar surface on the Artemis III mission slated to take off as soon as September 2026.

If all goes according to plan during Thursday’s test flight, the Super Heavy booster — the first stage, or bottommost part, of the launch vehicle — will roar to life and soar out over the Gulf of Mexico.

Nearly three minutes into flight, the Super Heavy booster will burn through most of its fuel and break away from the Starship spacecraft, the upper stage that rides atop the Super Heavy.

The booster will then aim to make an autonomous, controlled landing in the ocean, while the Starship spacecraft uses its own engines to continue propelling itself to breakneck speeds.

Aiming for orbital speeds

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said a primary goal of these early test flights is to get Starship to orbital speeds — velocities quick enough to allow the spacecraft to enter a stable orbit around Earth.

Typically, such a feat requires speeds topping 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour).

Starship will not, however, aim to actually enter orbit on this flight. Instead, the spacecraft will make a hard landing  in the Indian Ocean — hopefully more than 230 miles   (370 kilometers) away from the nearest land mass, according to documents published by the Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches.

Starship tests and tech demos

Starship will have to burn its engine for about six minutes before it enters a coasting phase. The spacecraft will then run through a few key tests and tech demonstrations.

First, Starship will attempt to open its payload door — a hatch that must swing ajar for the capsule to deploy satellites into space on future missions.

Then, SpaceX will also carry out what the company is calling a “propellant transfer demonstration.” The goal is to move some of the propellant on board the Starship vehicle from one tank to another, according to a December email from NASA explaining the test.

SpaceX engineers designed that demo to begin hashing out how Starship will be refueled on future missions while it’s in orbit.

NASA Artemis moon mission

Topping off the spacecraft’s fuel will be critical for Starship’s high-profile missions down the road.

When Starship makes a journey to the moon under NASA’s Artemis program — it will have to sit in orbit close to Earth as SpaceX launches separate vehicles  that will transport only fuel to the spacecraft. To get to the moon, SpaceX may have to make more than a dozen refueling trips.

SpaceX received approval from regulators on Wednesday to carry out this latest test flight.

About 40 minutes into flight, the Starship vehicle will attempt to reignite its massive engines once more before it plunges back toward the ocean.

SpaceX’s explosive test-flight process

Musk has said he’s more confident this flight will be successful compared with the 2023 attempts. A success would potentially give the company crucial data that could allow Starship to move on to more difficult test flights.

“I don’t want to jinx it, but I think the probability of reaching orbit is good — 80%,” he said during a recent talk posted to social media . “Certainly the third flight is a much better rocket than flights one or two.”

Still, SpaceX officials have repeatedly said the company does not expect 100% accuracy on these early test flights.

“Each of these flight tests continue to be just that: a test. They aren’t occurring in a lab or on a test stand, but are putting flight hardware in a flight environment to maximize learning,” the company said in a statement posted to its website. “This rapid iterative development approach has been the basis for all of SpaceX’s major innovative advancements.”

Russians are heading to the polls over the next three days for a presidential election that is set to hand Vladimir Putin a fifth term in power as he faces opponents carefully curated by the Kremlin and who pose no real threat to his legitimacy.

Russians will vote from Friday until Sunday across the country’s 11 time zones – from the far eastern regions near Alaska to the western exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Coast – and its 88 federal subjects, including parts of occupied Ukraine illegally annexed by Russia after it launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago.

With most opposition candidates either dead, jailed, exiled, barred from running or simply token figures, a victory for Putin, who has in effect been Russia’s head of state since before the turn of the century, is all but guaranteed.

Putin’s reelection would extend his rule until at least 2030. Following constitutional changes in 2020, he would then be able to run again and potentially stay in power until 2036, which would see him secure his place as Russia’s longest-serving ruler since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) approved only three candidates to oppose Putin: Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party, Vladislav Davankov of the New People Party and Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party. All three men are thought to be satisfactorily pro-Kremlin and none oppose the invasion of Ukraine.

The opposition candidates are, by their own admission, unlikely to take many votes away from the president. Slutsky, the candidate for the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and whose lavish spending was once exposed in one of Navalny’s investigations, said he would not call on Russians to vote against Putin.

“A vote for Slutsky and LDPR is absolutely not a vote against Putin,” he said.

Although the ruling United Russia party has declared its “full support” for the president, Putin is running as an independent candidate, placing himself above party politics.

Two prominent anti-war candidates were barred from running. Yekaterina Duntsova was rejected by the CEC for alleged errors in her registration documents. Boris Nadezhdin later submitted the 100,000 signatures required to oppose Putin, before the CEC in February deemed only 95,587 of these to be legitimate.

The election also comes shortly after the death of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s most formidable opponent, in an Arctic penal colony on February 16. Russia’s prison service said Navalny “felt unwell after a walk” and lost consciousness, later attributing his death to natural causes. The Kremlin denied any involvement in his death.

Despite heavy police presence and the threat of arrest, thousands of mourners gathered in Moscow for Navalny’s funeral, where crowds were heard chanting his name and shouting “Putin is a killer” and “No to war.” Days after the funeral, Russians continued to shower his grave with flowers.

While Navalny, who had been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison, would not have been able to challenge Putin, his death cast a shadow over the elections and rid Russia of its most prominent opposition figure.

Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has urged Russians to turn out on the final day of the elections on Sunday at noon as a show of protest.

“Putin killed my husband exactly a month before the so-called elections. These elections are fake, but Putin still needs them. For propaganda. He wants the whole world to believe that everyone in Russia supports and admires him. Don’t believe this propaganda,” she said.

While the results of the elections are a foregone conclusion, they remain an essential tool in demonstrating Putin’s legitimacy among the Russian population.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted last August in The New York Times as saying: “Our presidential election is not really democracy, it is costly bureaucracy.” He said Putin would be reelected with more than 90% of the vote.

Peskov later sought to clarify his comments, telling Russian state media TASS that he meant “the level of consolidation around the president is absolutely unprecedented” and that, if Putin ran again, “he will be reelected by an overwhelming majority.”

The dismantling of Russia’s opposition has fed public apathy. Most Russians have never witnessed a democratic transfer of power between rival political parties in a traditional presidential election, and the crackdown on dissent has worked to keep much of the population disengaged from politics.

The war in Ukraine has, however, threatened to pierce some of that apathy. From cross-border drone strikes to the former Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow and the sheer human cost of sustaining its military, the Kremlin has not been able to isolate its population from the effects of the conflict.

But in his annual state of the nation address last month, Putin lauded the progress of Russia’s military, which he said “firmly holds the initiative in Ukraine” after Kyiv’s recent retreat from the eastern town of Avdiivka.

Despite its costs and the fact that the war, intended to last a few weeks, has entered its third year, the invasion of Ukraine has provided Putin a nationalist message around which to rally Russians.

Gauging popular opinion is difficult in authoritarian countries like Russia, where many are fearful of criticizing the Kremlin and the few independent polling organizations and think tanks operate under strict surveillance.

But the Levada Center, a non-governmental polling organization, reports Putin’s approval rating at over 80% – a staggering figure virtually unknown among Western politicians, and a substantial increase compared to the three years before the invasion of Ukrainian.

The war has also garnered widespread support, according to Levada, although its latest surveys show the majority of Russians support peace talks.

Polls are set to open in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka at 8 a.m. local time on Friday (4 p.m. ET on Thursday) and will close more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) away in Kaliningrad at 8 p.m. on Sunday (2 p.m. ET). Early voting in remote, hard-to reach areas began in late February, as well as in parts of occupied Ukraine.

Russia is holding a presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule throughout this decade and into the 2030s.

The vast majority of votes will be cast over three days from 15 March, though early and postal voting has already begun, including in occupied parts of Ukraine where Russian forces are attempting to exert authority.

But this is not a normal election; the poll is essentially a constitutional box-ticking exercise that carries no prospect of removing Putin from power.

The president’s dominance over the Russian electoral system has already been reinforced as the election looms. The country’s only anti-war candidate has been barred from standing, and Alexey Navalny, the poisoned and jailed former opposition leader who was the most prominent anti-Putin voice in Russia, died last month.

Here’s what you need to know about the election.

When and where is the election taking place?

Voting will be held from Friday March 15 until Sunday March 17, the first Russian presidential election to take place over three days; early voting was underway earlier, including among Russia’s ex-pat population around the world.

Voting has also been organized in the four Ukrainian regions Russia said it would annex in September 2022, in violation of international law. Russia has already held regional votes and referenda in those occupied territories, an effort dismissed by the international community as a sham but which the Kremlin sees as central to its campaign of Russification.

A second round of voting would take place three weeks after this weekend if no candidate gets more than half the vote, though it would be a major surprise if that were required. Russians are electing the position of president alone; the next legislative elections, which form the make-up of the Duma, are scheduled for 2026.

How long has Putin been in power?

Putin signed a law in 2021 that allowed him to run for two more presidential terms, potentially extending his rule until 2036, after a referendum the previous year allowed him to reset the clock on his term limits.

This election will mark the start of the first of those two extra terms.

He has essentially been the country’s head of state for the entirety of the 21st century, rewriting the rules and conventions of Russia’s political system to extend and expand his powers.

That already makes him Russia’s longest-serving ruler since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Putin’s previous efforts to stay in control included a 2008 constitutional amendment that extended presidential terms from four years to six, and a temporary job swap with his then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev the same year, that preceded a swift return to the presidency in 2012.

Is Putin popular in Russia?

Truly gauging popular opinion is notoriously difficult in Russia, where the few independent think tanks operate under strict surveillance and where, even in a legitimate survey, many Russians are fearful of criticizing the Kremlin.

But Putin undoubtedly has reaped the rewards of a political landscape tilted dramatically in his favor. The Levada Center, a non-governmental polling organization, reports Putin’s approval rating at over 80% – an eye-popping figure virtually unknown among Western politicians, and a substantial increase on the three-year period before the invasion of Ukraine.

The invasion gave Putin a nationalist message around which to rally Russians, boosting his own image, and even as Russia’s campaign stuttered over the course of 2023, the war retained widespread support.

National security is top of mind for Russians as the election approaches; Ukrainian strikes on Russian border regions have brought the war home to many people inside the country, but support for the invasion — euphemistically termed a “special military operation” by Russia’s leaders — remains high.

The Levada Center found at the end of 2023 that “increased inflation and rising food prices may have a lasting impact on the mood of Russians,” with the proportion of Russians cutting back on spending increasing.

But that is not to say Russians expect the election to change the direction of the country. Putin benefits heavily from apathy; most Russians have never witnessed a democratic transfer of power between rival political parties in a traditional presidential election, and expressions of anger at the Kremlin are rare enough to keep much of the population disengaged from politics.

Who else is running?

Candidates in Russian elections are tightly controlled by the Central Election Commission (CEC), enabling Putin to run against a favorable field and reducing the potential for an opposition candidate to gain momentum.

The same is true this year. “Each candidate fields juxtaposing ideologies and domestic policies, but collectively they feed into Putin’s aim of tightening his grip on Russia during his next presidential term,” wrote Callum Fraser of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank.

Nikolay Kharitonov will represent the Communist Party, which has been allowed to run a candidate in each election this century, but has not gained as much as a fifth of the vote share since Putin’s first presidential election.

Two other Duma politicians, Leonid Slutsky and Vladislav Davankov, are also running. Davankov is deputy chair of the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, while Slutsky represents the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, the party previously led by ultra-nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died in 2022. All are considered to be reliably pro-Kremlin.

But there is notably no candidate who opposes Putin’s war in Ukraine; Boris Nadezhdin, previously the only anti-war figure in the field, was barred from standing by the CEC in February after the body claimed he had not received enough legitimate signatures nominating his candidacy.

In December, another independent candidate who openly spoke out against the war in Ukraine, Yekaterina Duntsova, was rejected by the CEC, citing alleged errors in her campaign group’s registration documents. Duntsova later called on people to support Nadezhdin’s candidacy.

Writing on social media in February, opposition activist and Navalny’s former aide, Leonid Volkov, dismissed the elections as a “circus,” saying they were meant to signal Putin’s overwhelming mass support. “You need to understand what the March ‘elections’ mean for Putin. They are a propaganda effort to spread hopelessness” among the electorate, Volkov said.

Volkov was attacked outside his house on Tuesday in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. Lithuania’s intelligence agency has said it believes the attack on former Navalny aide Leonid Volkov was likely “Russian organized.”

The Kremlin on Thursday declined to comment on the assault on Volkov.

Are the elections fair?

Russia’s elections are neither free nor fair, and serve essentially as a formality to extend Putin’s term in power, according to independent bodies and observers both in and outside the country.

Putin’s successful campaigns have been in part the result of “preferential media treatment, numerous abuses of incumbency, and procedural irregularities during the vote count,” according to Freedom House, a global democracy watchdog.

Outside of election cycles, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine targets voters with occasionally hysterical pro-Putin material, and many news websites based outside Russia were blocked following the invasion of Ukraine, though more tech-savvy younger voters have grown accustomed to using VPNs to access them.

Protests are also tightly restricted, making the public expression of opposition a perilous and rare occurrence.

Then, as elections come into view, genuine opposition candidates almost inevitably see their candidacies removed or find themselves prevented from seeking office, as Nadezhdin and Duntsova discovered during this cycle.

“Opposition politicians and activists are frequently targeted with fabricated criminal cases and other forms of administrative harassment designed to prevent their participation in the political process,” Freedom House noted in its most recent global report.

How did Navalny’s death affect the run-up to the election?

The timing of the death of Alexey Navalny – Putin’s most prominent critic – served to emphasize the control Russia’s leader exerts over his country’s politics.

In one of Navalny’s final court appearances before his death, he urged prison service workers to “vote against Putin.”

“I have a suggestion: to vote for any candidate other than Putin. In order to vote against Putin, you just need to vote for any other candidate,” he said on February 8.

His death cast an ominous shadow over the campaign. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, urged the European Union to “not recognize the elections” in a passionate address to its Foreign Affairs Council a few days after she was widowed.

“Putin killed my husband exactly a month before the so-called elections. These elections are fake, but Putin still needs them. For propaganda. He wants the whole world to believe that everyone in Russia supports and admires him. Don’t believe this propaganda,” she said.

Thousands then gathered for Navalny’s funeral in Moscow despite the threat of detention by Russian authorities.

Navalnaya has urged Russian people to turn out at noon on the final day of the elections, March 17, as a show of protest. In a video posted on social media, Navalnaya told Russians they could “vote for any candidate besides Putin, you can ruin your ballot, you can write Navalny on it.”

She added that Russians did not have to vote, but could “stand at a polling station and then go home… the most important thing is to come.”

England’s National Health Service (NHS) has stopped prescribing puberty blockers for children and young people with gender dysphoria or gender incongruence, saying there is “not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness” of puberty-suppressing hormones.

NHS England said it made the decision, which was widely condemned by LGBTQ groups, after it “carefully considered” an evidence review it commissioned in 2020. It also reviewed evidence published since then, it said in a policy document published Tuesday.

Puberty blockers will now only be available to young people in clinical research trials and some private clinics, UK’s PA Media reported Tuesday. Fewer than 100 young people are currently on puberty blockers via the NHS and they will be able to continue the treatment, it added.

Puberty blockers will also available through some private gender identity clinics.

According to the NHS clinical policy, treatment for young people “focuses on psychosocial and psychological support.” Gender-affirming hormones and surgery may be available later or in adulthood.

Gender-affirming care for young people in England has faced legal and political scrutiny in recent years that has coincided with rising anti-trans rhetoric in the country, say LGBTQ advocates.

Some British politicians welcomed NHS England’s announcement. The UK’s Health and Social Care Secretary Victoria Atkins said on X that “care that affects our children’s health and wellbeing so profoundly must always be based on clinical evidence.”

Health minister Maria Caulfield also welcomed the policy, calling it a “groundbreaking change as children’s safety and wellbeing are paramount.”

Stonewall, a LGBTQ campaign group in the UK, criticized Tuesday’s announcement, writing in a statement that “all trans young people deserve access to high quality, timely healthcare.”

“For some, an important part of this care comes in the form of puberty blockers, a reversible treatment that delays the onset of puberty, prescribed by expert endocrinologists, giving the young person extra time to evaluate their next steps,” it wrote.

“We are concerned that NHS England will be putting new prescriptions on hold until a research protocol is up and running at the end of 2024,” the charity added.

Mermaids, a charity that supports trans, non-binary and gender-questioning children and young people, said that the NHS announcement is “deeply disappointing, and a further restriction of support offered to trans children and young people through the NHS, which is failing trans youth.”

Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one the person was designated at birth – to their affirmed gender – the gender by which one wants to be known.

Puberty blocking is a noninvasive therapy that can be reversed. Doctors inject a compound or use an implant that mimics the actions of a puberty-stimulating hormone that is released in the brain known as gonadotropin-releasing hormone. The compound makes the pituitary gland less sensitive to that hormone and, in doing so, it essentially pauses puberty. Puberty starts again after the drugs are stopped.

In the US, where several Republican-led states have banned gender-affirmative healthcare for young people, every major medical association agrees that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults. This includes the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Gender-affirming care can include puberty blockers, which may not be a part of every association’s treatment.

The AMA and LGBTQ advocates stress that gender-affirming care can be a life-saving treatment for trans youth. In the US, transgender and nonbinary youth are twice as likely to have attempted suicide compared to their cisgender peers, according to a 2022 survey by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth.

SpaceX is once again set to fly its gargantuan Starship rocket — the most powerful launch vehicle ever constructed — after federal regulators approved the company’s plans for a third test flight.

The launch could take place anytime during a 110-minute window that opens at 7 a.m. CT (8 a.m. ET) Thursday, according to an email from SpaceX sent Wednesday afternoon. A live stream of the event will begin on the company’s website about 30 minutes before takeoff.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches, gave SpaceX the final green light for the mission on Wednesday afternoon.

“The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements,” the agency said in a statement.

This test flight comes after two attempts to get the massive Starship vehicle to orbital speeds in 2023 ended in explosions, with the spacecraft and booster erupting into flames before reaching their intended landing sites.

SpaceX is known to embrace fiery mishaps in the early stages of spacecraft development, saying these failures help the company rapidly implement design changes that lead to better results.

Much is riding on Starship’s eventual success. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly characterized the rocket as central to the company’s founding mission: putting humans on Mars for the first time.

Crucially, the Starship spacecraft is also the vehicle NASA has selected to land astronauts launched from the United States on the moon for the first time in more than five decades as part of its Artemis program. The space agency is in a race with China, vying to become first to develop a permanent lunar outpost and set the precedent for deep-space settlements.

The US space agency has committed to investing up to $4 billion in Starship. Under NASA’s current road map, Starship would complete the final leg of the agency’s crewed mission to the moon, taking the astronauts from their spacecraft in lunar orbit and ferrying them down to the surface. The first astronaut landing under the Artemis program is slated to occur as soon as September 2026.

What success looks like for SpaceX

Musk has indicated that he believes Starship has a high chance of successfully completing this third test flight.

“I don’t want to jinx it, but I think the probability of reaching orbit is good — 80%,” he said during a recent talk posted to social media. “Certainly the third flight is a much better rocket than flights one or two.”

Musk said before the last Starship test flight in November that the vehicle had about a 50% chance of success. The vehicle was not meant to orbit Earth, but it was intended to reach the breakneck speeds that will be required when the vehicle does go into orbit. (Starship ultimately hit about 24,000 kilometers per hour, or 15,000 miles per hour. Reaching orbit typically requires hitting at least 17,500 miles per hour.)

The November test flight marked a big improvement compared with Starship’s inaugural liftoff in April 2023, when some of the rocket’s 33 main engines flamed out and the vehicle began tumbling over the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX destroyed the rocket just four minutes into that first flight to prevent it from veering off course.

Starship made it much further in November, successfully igniting all its engines and completing a key flight milestone: stage separation. That’s when the Super Heavy rocket booster — the bottommost portion of the rocket that gives the initial burst of power at liftoff — breaks away from the upper Starship spacecraft, allowing the vehicle to ignite its engines and continue the mission on its own power. But ultimately Starship was destroyed about 10 minutes into flight. If it had gone to plan, the mission would have lasted about an hour and a half.

SpaceX has said its approach to rocket development is geared toward speed. The company makes use of an engineering method called “rapid spiral development.” This process essentially boils down to a desire to build prototypes quickly and willingly blow them up to learn how to construct a better one — faster than if the company solely relied on ground tests and simulations.

After the first and second Starship test flights ended in explosions, the company immediately sought to frame these mishaps as successes. In a statement after the November launch, SpaceX said, “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary.”