Ukrainian forces have announced the withdrawal of its forces from Avdiivka, a key town which in recent months became one of the most fiercely contested battles on the eastern front.

The move followed an intensification of Moscow’s attacks on the area, as Russia pummeled it with airstrikes and artillery and sent wave after wave of ground assaults by armored vehicles and soldiers.

While the town’s strategic significance is limited, Avdiivka marks the biggest gain for Moscow since it captured the city of Bakhmut last year and is an indication of how the war appears to have turned in Putin’s favor.

Ukraine meanwhile faces renewed pressure across the eastern front, compounded by ammunition and manpower shortages.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the decision to pull back from Avdiivka was made to “save our soldiers’ lives.”

“In order to avoid being surrounded, it was decided to withdraw to other lines. This does not mean that people retreated some kilometres and Russia captured something, it did not capture anything,” he added.

Avdiivka has been on the front lines since Russian-backed fighters seized large portions of the Donbas region, including the nearby city of Donetsk, in 2014. It has been under fire since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Withdrawing from the town, to the northwest of Donetsk city, was “the only correct solution,” Ukraine’s commander of southern forces Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said in a Telegram post Friday, adding that some Ukrainian troops had been captured by Russia during the process.

“In a situation where the enemy is advancing on the corpses of their own soldiers with a ten-to-one shell advantage, under constant bombardment, this is the only correct solution,” he said. Russian troops are “numerically superior in terms of personnel, artillery and aviation,” Tarnavskyi added.

Moscow’s forces had carried out 20 airstrikes and more than 150 artillery attacks in the area over the past 24 hours, he said, adding that the Russians were “practically erasing the city from the face of the earth.”

The decision comes just days after Ukraine’s new military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov visited the front lines in Avdiivka, pledging to send reinforcements to “prevent the enemy from advancing deeper into our territory.”

However, by Thursday, Ukrainian forces battling to hold the town were describing “hellish” conditions and the enemy “coming from all sides”.

Syrskyi said in a Facebook post on Friday that he ordered the withdrawal “to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen” and he was moving troops to defend “more favorable lines.”

He said Ukrainian soldiers had done “everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units and inflicted significant losses on the enemy in terms of manpower and equipment.”

Ukraine was “taking measures to stabilize the situation and maintain positions,” he said, adding “the life of military personnel is of the highest value.”

The commander of the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade, which as one of Ukraine’s most battle-hardened units had been sent to defend Avdiivka, said the retreat meant Ukrainian troops could “come back and strike even harder.”

“I am grateful to the command for their considered decision,” Andrii Biletsky said in a Telegram post on Saturday. “I thank the soldiers for the brave fight they put up against the enemy in Avdiivka, in the face of absolute numerical superiority of the Russians in manpower, equipment and shells,” he added.

Russia too has suffered immense losses in its offensive on Avdiivka, but Moscow appears to have calculated that, given its numerical advantage, these were worth it.

A symbol of Ukraine’s struggles

Avdiivka’s loss is an undoubted blow to Ukraine.

A counteroffensive launched months ago aimed at winning back substantial territory has floundered and the country is seeing signs that once rock-solid support from the West is waning, not least from its key ally US.

And with Ukraine on the back foot on other parts of the front, Ukraine’s new army chief Syrskyi faces a huge challenge bringing the fight back to Russia.

Moscow’s troops went on the offensive around Avdiivka in October. Since then, it became a point of intense combat with round-the-clock Russian shelling and waves of soldiers and armoured vehicles pressing.

Russia had been concentrating its efforts on encircling Avdiivka and gaining control of nearby areas.

A Ukrainian officer, Serhii Tsekhotskyi, recently told Ukrainian television that Russia was deploying large numbers of troops in the battle for Avdiivka. Many were being killed, he insisted.

“They do not spare their people,” he said.

The Russian assault was similar to the “meat-grinder” tactics used to capture Bakhmut last year, where a NATO source estimated that for every Ukrainian soldier killed defending Bakhmut, Russia lost five.

Moscow’s advances in Avdiivka, however, had been slowed by Ukrainian troops who were heavily entrenched in the area.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in December called the fighting in the city an “onslaught” and said the battle could in many ways “determine the overall course of the war.”

Pressure across the front

The town’s capture comes with Ukraine warning that it is facing a renewed Russian offensive along much of the frontline, with heavy fighting in the northeast along a stretch of territory where the regions of Kharkiv and Luhansk meet.

There has been no major breakthrough there for Moscow’s forces, but Ukraine has been forced to give up some pockets of territory it had recaptured in its successful advance in late summer 2022.

The recent flurry of Russian offensives come as Ukraine has also said it is facing critical shortages of ammunition, essential for its battlefield troops.

There are rising concerns that Ukraine’s US lifeline is hanging by a thinning thread, with President Joe Biden’s national security adviser warning late last year: “We’re running out of money, and we are nearly out of time.”

On February 7, Senate Republicans blocked a major bipartisan border deal and foreign aid package with assistance for Ukraine and Israel, amid a torrent of attacks on the bill by former President Donald Trump and top House Republicans. The White House is making another attempt to gain Congressional approval for military aid for Kyiv, but it is far from clear if House Republicans, in particular, will support it.

There have been concerns that Ukraine is slipping down the agenda of the West since the Hamas attack on Israel last year and the widening conflict in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Zelensky in early February announced the dismissal of Ukraine’s top commander, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, marking the biggest military shakeup since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion almost two years ago.

A Russian election next month provides Putin with even more incentive to gain a victory in Ukraine. The Kremlin leader is running for a fifth term and is expected to secure a win which will keep him in office until 2030.

Looking deeper into 2024, NATO allies fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin may attempt a broader offensive following his expected victory in his country’s presidential elections in March – elections which outside observers view as a mere formality.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The body of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny should be handed over to his family “immediately,” his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said Saturday, adding his mother has been officially notified of his death.

“Alexey Navalny was murdered. His death occurred on February 16 at 2:17 p.m. local time, according to the official message to Alexey’s mother,” Yarmysh said in a post on social media.

“An employee of the colony said that the body of Navalny is now in Salekhard. It was picked up by investigators from the IC [Investigative Committee]. Now they are conducting ‘investigations’ with him,” she said.

“We demand that Alexey Navalny’s body be handed over to his family immediately,” Yarmysh said.

The death of Navalny, 47, was announced on Friday by the Russian prison service but Yarmysh’s comments mark the first confirmation from his team.

The Russian prison service on Friday said Navalny “felt unwell after a walk” and “almost immediately” lost consciousness. It said it was investigating his “sudden death.”

Navalny posed one of the most serious threats to Putin during his rule, which has spanned more than two decades. He organized anti-government street protests and used his blog and social media to expose alleged corruption in the Kremlin and in Russian business.

He was jailed after returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated after being poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. On arrival, Navalnvy was swiftly arrested on charges he dismissed as politically motivated.

Navalny has been incarcerated ever since, with longstanding concerns for his welfare growing more intense after he was transferred to a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.

Western condemnation of the Kremlin was swift and fierce following news of his death on Friday. US President Joe Biden laid the blame for Navalny’s death at Putin’s feet, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia has “serious questions” to answer.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The body of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny should be handed over to his family “immediately,” his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said Saturday, adding his mother has been officially notified of his death.

“Alexey Navalny was murdered. His death occurred on February 16 at 2:17 p.m. local time, according to the official message to Alexey’s mother,” Yarmysh said in a post on social media.

“An employee of the colony said that the body of Navalny is now in Salekhard. It was picked up by investigators from the IC [Investigative Committee]. Now they are conducting ‘investigations’ with him,” she said.

“We demand that Alexey Navalny’s body be handed over to his family immediately,” Yarmysh said.

The death of Navalny, 47, was announced on Friday by the Russian prison service but Yarmysh’s comments mark the first confirmation from his team.

The Russian prison service on Friday said Navalny “felt unwell after a walk” and “almost immediately” lost consciousness. It said it was investigating his “sudden death.”

Navalny posed one of the most serious threats to Putin during his rule, which has spanned more than two decades. He organized anti-government street protests and used his blog and social media to expose alleged corruption in the Kremlin and in Russian business.

He was jailed after returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated after being poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. On arrival, Navalnvy was swiftly arrested on charges he dismissed as politically motivated.

Navalny has been incarcerated ever since, with longstanding concerns for his welfare growing more intense after he was transferred to a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.

Western condemnation of the Kremlin was swift and fierce following news of his death on Friday. US President Joe Biden laid the blame for Navalny’s death at Putin’s feet, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia has “serious questions” to answer.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Five patients have died at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis after an Israeli raid caused the facility to lose power, the Ministry of Health in Hamas-controlled Gaza said, as the World Health of Organization (WHO) decried the “deeply alarming” situation.

The ministry said the Nasser Medical Complex was “without electricity, water, food, and heating” in a statement on Friday morning, after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched the raid Thursday and detained a number of people.

The Gaza ministry also announced in a separate Friday morning update that two pregnant women had delivered children in the hospital “under extremely challenging and inhumane conditions.”

It later accused Israeli forces of forcing “male patients who are able to move and their companions to evacuate the old Nasser building without their belongings and relocate to the maternity building, which has been converted into a military barracks.”

The IDF pressed ahead with its raid on the facility Friday, and said in a statement they had detained more than 20 suspects relating to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

“Troops located weapons inside the hospital and apprehended dozens of terror suspects,” the Israeli military claimed in a statement on Friday. The IDF did not provide any additional details on the people detained or the nature of their alleged involvement in the Hamas attack.

The IDF’s raid on what was the largest hospital still functioning in Gaza has left international bodies deeply concerned. “The military raid at Nasser Medical Complex and reports emerging from the hospitals are deeply alarming,” World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said in Geneva on Friday.

“Patients, health workers, and civilians seeking refuge deserve safety, not peril in places of healing. Reports of forcing the transfer of many patients into a different building are gravely concerning.”

According to WHO, Nasser was already “barely functional,” with limited ability to provide urgent care.

Jasarevic said “critically injured and sick patients remain at the hospital. There is an urgent need to deliver fuel to the hospital to ensure the continuation of lifesaving services.”

“Further degradation of the facility means more lives lost, more illness and suffering,” he added. “The hospital is the backbone of the health system in southern Gaza and must remain functional.

On launching its raid, the IDF said the operation was led by intelligence gathered in part from released hostages. Israel said it believed the bodies of dead hostages were being held inside the hospital. Hamas denied the claims, saying the group had “no business” at the hospital.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Thursday evening that troops hadn’t found any hostages, but were continuing to scan the facility.

“Our forces were in the hospital the last few hours and looking for hostages. We haven’t found anything yet. But we are scanning the area, and we will pick anything that is relevant,” Hagari said during a briefing.

Hagari said using hospitals “for terrorist activities” and as military bases, as well as holding hostages there, were contrary to international law, though Hamas has denied those claims.

The IDF said that they had not targeted the hospital’s power supply, and that a generator malfunction had caused the power outage.

Despite the outage, “all vital systems” remained functional due to a backup power system, the IDF said, adding that troops with the Israeli military had also supplied an alternative generator, food for infants, water, and diesel fuel to the hospital.

Hospitals are protected civilian objects under international humanitarian law. It is illegal, with few exceptions, to attack medical facilities, or to otherwise prevent them from providing care. A hospital can only lose its protected status if it is used by an armed group for acts that are considered “harmful to the enemy.”

But, even then, patients and doctors inside are still protected by the principle of proportionality. A warning must be given, and time for safe evacuation, before carrying out an attack.

The surgeon, who asked not to be named for security reasons, added that the wards and corridors of the hospital are “flooded with beds” and that “most of the patients do not have the chance to get the medicine and their health care … We cannot make rounds on patients. We cannot move between beds.”

Israeli forces shelled the hospital early Thursday, killing and injuring an “undetermined number of people,” according to Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Since the attack, one of their colleagues remains unaccounted for.

MSF staff were forced to flee the hospital through a checkpoint set up by the Israeli military, the agency said, adding that one employee “was detained” there.

When Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny returned to Russia in 2021, there were many who feared he would face an untimely end. That became a reality on Friday with his death at a brutal Arctic Circle penal colony, where he had been incarcerated.

He was the most prominent voice of dissent in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the lawyer, politician and corruption activist had for years orchestrated massive street protests and famously branded Putin’s United Russia party “the party of crooks and thieves.” Despite languishing in prison, he denounced the president over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and advocating anti-war demonstrations across the country.

The Kremlin has said it is investigating the critic’s death, the circumstances of which were not immediately clear.

What is known is that Navalny has joined the apparently ever-growing list of high-profile Russians who have died in mysterious circumstances. From plane crashes, accidental falls from windows to hangings, poisonings and health issues, the fates of some of those who dared to challenge the Kremlin are myriad.

Yevgeny Prigozhin

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the bombastic mercenary boss – once one of the country’s most powerful oligarchs and a member of Putin’s trusted inner circle, died in 2023.

Speculation over Prigozhin’s eventual fate began soon after his march on Russia last summer.

The Wagner chief may have initially survived the aftermath of his failed insurrection, but many had expressed doubts over his future. After the aborted mutiny, the mercenary leader’s plane mysteriously fell out of the sky in August and he was subsequently confirmed to have died in the crash through genetic testing, Russian authorities said.

There is no concrete evidence that points to Kremlin involvement and, officially, the cause of the crash is unknown. Russian authorities have launched a criminal investigation.

Bill Browder, a Putin critic and the largest foreign investor in Russia before he was expelled from the country in 2005, said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Putin never forgives and never forgets.”

Boris Nemtsov

Boris Nemtsov, a vocal Kremlin critic who was a deputy prime minister in the late 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin, was shot dead in February 2015 as he walked with his girlfriend in central Moscow.

A top official with the Republican Party of Russia/Party of People’s Freedom, a liberal opposition group, he had been arrested several times for speaking against Putin’s government.

After his death, opposition leader Ilya Yashin said his friend had been working on a report about Russian troops and their involvement in Ukraine.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine just hours before his death, Nemtsov said Russia was “drowning” under Putin’s leadership and was swiftly becoming a fascist state. “Due to the policy of Vladimir Putin, a country with unparalleled potential is sinking, an economy which accumulated untold currency reserves is collapsing,” he said.

Nemtsov’s death came two days before he was set to lead an opposition rally in the Russian capital. His killing took place within sight of the Kremlin. In 2017, five Chechen men were handed lengthy prison terms over his death. Many Nemtsov supporters suspected Putin’s administration of involvement.

Boris Berezovsky

Boris Berezovsky was a colorful character and once powerful Russian businessman who fell out with the Kremlin and fled to England.

He had accumulated his wealth following the collapse of the Soviet Union, ditching his earlier career as a Moscow math professor and systems analyst for more lucrative enterprises. While a large chunk of his fortune came from the sale of luxury cars, his wealth and political influence skyrocketed when he bought into Russian media.

After losing favor with his government, he relocated to Britain where he began agitating against Putin, and even called for a coup to oust the Russian president.

Berezovsky was convicted of fraud and tax evasion in absentia by a Russian court in 2007. He also accused Russia of trying to assassinate him.

Berezovsky was found dead on the bathroom floor of his UK home in 2013 with a noose around his neck. British police said at the time that there were no signs of struggle and suggested the oligarch had taken his own life.

Alexander Perepilichnyy

Alexander Perepilichnyy was a financier who provided evidence of alleged fraud against Russian tax officials. He died suddenly in 2012 aged 44 while jogging back to his home in Surrey, southwest of London.

It first appeared that the whistle-blower had died of natural causes.

But in 2015, plant toxicology experts from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew told a coroner’s court that traces of a rare plant poison – gelsemium – were found in his stomach. Two years later, there were suggestions that poison might have been slipped into sorrel soup, a popular Russian dish he had eaten shortly before his death.

However, police said later that they found no evidence that he was poisoned.

At the time of his death, Perepilichnyy was assisting in a case to uncover a multimillion dollar Russian money-laundering operation.

Sergei Magnitsky

Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in a Russian prison in 2009.

He worked for Hermitage Capital, an investment firm run by American-born financier Bill Browder, and helped uncover a $230 million tax fraud and evidence that Russian government officials were involved in carrying it out, and then covering it up.

Soon after he made those revelations public in 2008, Magnitsky was arrested on separate tax fraud charges. He died a year later, while still in pre-trial detention. His family said crucial medical care was withheld, while a Russian presidential human rights commission report found evidence he had been beaten on the very day he died. The Russian government has always maintained that Magnitsky died of heart failure.

In the US, Browder launched a public campaign for justice, calling on Congress to introduce a law sanctioning individuals in Russia suspected of involvement in Magnitsky’s death and other human rights violations. The Magnitsky Act was passed by lawmakers in 2012.

Two weeks after the Magnitsky Act was passed, Moscow banned American adoptions of Russian children in apparent retaliation. Both measures are still in place.

Alexander Litvinenko

A British inquiry determined Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent turned Kremlin critic, had been poisoned at a London hotel bar in 2006 by two Russian agents who spiked his green tea with the highly radioactive polonium-210.

Litvinenko – who died a slow and painful death in the weeks following his poisoning – always asserted that Putin and the Kremlin were responsible for what had happened to him.

“You may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life,” he said in a deathbed statement.

The inquiry, led by judge Robert Owen, said that Putin “probably approved” the ex-spy’s killing.

The Kremlin has always denied the accusation and has refused to extradite the two agents accused of the poisoning to Britain.

Litvinenko had worked for the FSB, Russia’s successor agency to the KGB, the former Soviet secret police and intelligence agency. He specialized in tackling organized crime and his last job at the agency, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was heading up its anti-corruption department – a position that made him many enemies.

After leaving the FSB, Litvinenko accused his former employers of orchestrating a series of apartment bombings in Russia in 1999 that left hundreds dead and led to Russia’s invasion of Chechnya later that year.

According to his widow, Marina Litvinenko, he had started working for Britain’s security services after he went to Britain as a whistleblower in 2000.

Anna Politkovskaya

A vocal critic of Russia’s war in Chechnya, she was gunned down in the entrance of her Moscow apartment in October 2006. In 2014, a Moscow court sentenced five men to prison for the killing.

Authorities alleged that an unidentified man asked Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, whom the jury found was a mastermind of the slaying, to kill Politkovskaya in exchange for $150,000 because of her reports of human rights violations and other issues, the Moscow city court said.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said her work chronicling human rights abuses in Chechnya led to threats against her and angered Russian authorities.

Shortly after her death, Putin denied any Kremlin involvement in her killing, saying that Politkovskaya’s “death in itself is more damaging to the current authorities both in Russia and the Chechen Republic … than her activities.”

Drownings, suicides and other unusual deaths

The list of deceased detractors who may have potentially fallen foul of the Kremlin could fill a book. On the same day Prigozhin was presumed to have been killed, RIA Novosti also reported the recent death of a former Russian security services general.

Gen. Gennady Lopyrev – who supposedly had knowledge of the construction of Putin’s Black Sea residence – was convicted of bribery offenses in 2017 and had been serving a sentence of 9 years and 8 months. According to RIA Novosti, while in custody he recently “suddenly fell ill” and subsequently died in hospital on August 16. Lopyrev had always maintained his innocence of all charges.

Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War labeled Lopyrev’s death “suspicious” and said that its “insider source claimed Lopyrev was “the keeper of secrets” related to the construction of Putin’s residence in Gelendzhik, often referred to as “Putin’s Palace.”

In May, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education, Pyotr Kucherenko, 46, died while returning from a trip to Cuba, according to the ministry.

At least 13 high-profile Russian businessmen have reportedly died by suicide or in mysterious circumstances over the past year, six of them tied to Russia’s two largest energy companies, Gazprom and Lukoil. The latter took the rare public position last year of denouncing Russia’s war in Ukraine, and calling for the end of the conflict.

Russian sausage magnate-turned-lawmaker Pavel Antov died in India in December 2022 after falling from the third floor of his hotel, according to the Indian police. His friend and travel companion Vladimir Budanov died of a heart attack two days earlier, on Antov’s 65th birthday, according to the police. Budanov was 61 years old and had a preexisting heart condition, the police said, adding that they believed Antov’s death was a suicide.

Alexander Buzakov, the head of a major Russian shipyard that specializes in building non-nuclear submarines, also died suddenly in December 2022, Reuters news agency reported, with no cause of death given by the authorities.

Anatoly Gerashchenko, the former rector to the Moscow Aviation Institute, died in an unspecified accident months earlier, according to a statement from the institute.

Lukoil chairman Ravil Maganov also died in the same month after falling out of the window of a Moscow hospital, according to TASS. An initial statement from Lukoil had said Maganov “passed away following a severe illness.”

Alive but neutralized

Not all those who cross the Kremlin meet with an untimely end. But many are ultimately rendered unable to cause further problems for Putin and his government.

Navalny had been one such individual before his sudden death at a Siberian penal colony.

Another Kremlin opponent who served time in prison was Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He was released in 2013 after Putin signed a decree pardoning the former oil magnate, who had been convicted of tax evasion and fraud.

Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal paid a heavy price for turning against the Kremlin. Skripal was convicted in Russia of spying for Britain before he was granted refuge in the UK after a high-profile spy swap in 2010 between the United States and Russia.

In 2018, he and his daughter Yulia were left in critical condition after being exposed to Novichok near their home in southern England.

They survived after a long stint in hospital, with Yulia revealing in the weeks after that their rehabilitation had been “slow and extremely painful.”

Water molecules have been detected on the surface of asteroids for the first time, proving that these remnants from the formation of our solar system aren’t just dried-up space rocks.

Astronomers believe that the impact of asteroids crashing into our planet may have helped deliver water and other elements to early Earth, so finding evidence of water on asteroids could support that theory, according to a new study.

The data was collected from an instrument on the now-retired Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy airborne telescope. Called SOFIA, the infrared telescope flew aboard a Boeing 747SP aircraft modified to fly through the stratosphere above 99% of Earth’s atmosphere, which blocks infrared light.

The Faint Object infraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope, or FORCAST instrument, allowed astronomers to detect water molecules on Iris and Massalia, two asteroids in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Both are more than 223.1 million miles from the sun.

The findings were published Monday in The Planetary Science Journal.

Astronomers were inspired to use SOFIA to study asteroids after the telescope spotted evidence of water on the moon, said lead study author Dr. Anicia Arredondo, research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

Evidence of hydration had been found on the two asteroids previously by study coauthor Dr. Maggie McAdam, research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, while using a different telescope. But researchers weren’t sure whether water or another molecular compound such as hydroxyl caused the hydration, Arredondo said.

“Our new observations with SOFIA definitively said that what they saw was indeed water,” Arredondo said. “But these objects are part of the S-class of asteroids, which means they are mostly made of silicates, and up until Dr. McAdam’s results, they were assumed to be completely dry.”

Finding water on dry cosmic surfaces

The amount of water the team detected was roughly equivalent to that of a 12-ounce bottle of water trapped within a cubic meter of soil, Arredondo said, which is comparable SOFIA’s moon finding. The telescope picked up on the signature of water molecules in one of the largest craters in the moon’s southern hemisphere in 2020.

Like the water found on the lunar surface, “on asteroids, water can also be bound to minerals as well as adsorbed to silicate and trapped or dissolved in silicate impact glass,” Arredondo said.

Asteroids are the leftovers from when the planets formed in our solar system. Studying their compositions can tell astronomers where in our cosmic neighborhood the asteroids originated.

“When the solar system was forming, different materials formed based on their distance to the Sun because material (farther) from the Sun cooled down faster (than) material nearer to the Sun,” Arredondo said via email. “That’s why the inner planets like Earth and Mars are made of rock and the outer planets like Neptune and Uranus are made of ice and gas.”

Detecting water on Iris and Massalia can help astronomers trace the history of these particular asteroids, suggesting their formation took place far enough away from the sun to avoid having their water boiled away by heat.

Searching for water across the solar system

The researchers attempted to look for water on two other asteroids using SOFIA, but the detection was too faint. Now, the team is using the James Webb Space Telescope to zero in on different asteroids and search for water signatures.

While the Webb observations are ongoing, Arredondo said the preliminary results have encouraged the team to request time to observe 30 more asteroids using the powerful infrared telescope.

“The JWST telescope is much larger than the SOFIA telescope, so it can collect data with higher quality, and it can collect data for more asteroids in a shorter amount of time,” Arredondo said. “I hope to be able to observe many different asteroids with JWST to look for this signature of water, and hopefully be able to take inventory of the water in the asteroid belt.”

Webb could help astronomers better understand the distribution of water across the solar system, as well as the composition of different types of asteroids.

“We really weren’t expecting to find water on these silicate-rich asteroids,” Arredondo said. “Mostly when we talk about hydration on asteroids, we are talking about more carbon-rich asteroids, like asteroid Bennu that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission went to. So now I want to look for trends between (the) amount of hydration and composition. I want to know if the carbon-rich asteroids have significantly more water than silicate-rich asteroids, or if they have similar amounts.”

The Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed “Odie” or IM-1, has embarked on a historic journey to the lunar surface — aiming to make the first touchdown of a US-made spacecraft on the moon in five decades.

The launch follows closely on the heels of a separate US lunar landing mission that failed in January. NASA has ramped up the development of robotic spacecraft via private partners to evaluate the lunar environment and identify key resources — such as the presence of water — before it attempts to return astronauts to the moon later this decade.

Odie lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 1:05 a.m. ET Thursday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mission had been slated to launch on Wednesday, but an issue with the temperature of propellant needed to power the spacecraft delayed the attempt by 24 hours.

Journey to the moon

The rocket fired Odie into Earth’s orbit, blazing to speeds topping 24,600 miles per hour (11 kilometers per second), according to Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that developed the spacecraft under contract with NASA through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

Odie’s path amounts to “a high-energy fastball pitch towards the moon,” as Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus put it.

After burning through its fuel, the rocket detached from Odie, leaving the lunar lander to fly solo through space. The robotic explorer then consulted an onboard map of the stars so it could orient itself in space, pointing its solar panels toward the sun’s rays to charge its batteries.

“We are seeing most everything that we would expect,” according to a dispatch from Intuitive Machines’ mission control around 2 am ET.

Odie is now on an oval-shaped path around Earth, stretching as far out as 380,000 kilometers (236,100 miles) from home. And about 18 hours into spaceflight, the vehicle will ignite its motor for the first time, continuing its fast-paced trip toward the lunar surface.

The moon, which orbits roughly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away from Earth, is expected to give Odie a gentle gravitational tug as the spacecraft approaches, pulling the vehicle toward its cratered surface.

Odie is slated to make its nail-biting touchdown attempt on February 22, aiming for a crater near the moon’s south pole.

It will be a dangerous trek. If Odie fails, it will join a growing list of missions that have unsuccessfully sought a lunar touchdown: The first US-built lunar lander to launch in five decades, Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine, was hampered by a critical fuel leak last month. That came after two failed missions from other countries in 2023: one from Russia and another from a company based in Japan.

China, India and Japan are so far the only nations to have soft-landed vehicles on the moon in the 21st century.

What Odie will do on the moon

Odie’s trip to the moon can be considered a scouting mission of sorts, designed to assess the lunar environment ahead of NASA’s current plan to return a crewed mission to the moon through the Artemis program in late 2026.

The moon’s south pole is an area of widespread interest amid a new international space race, as the region is thought to be home to stores of water ice. The precious resource could be converted into drinking water for astronauts or even rocket fuel for missions exploring deeper into space.

Packed on board the lunar lander are six NASA science and technology payloads. They include a radio receiver system that will study lunar plasma, which is created by solar winds and other charged particles raining down on the moon’s surface.

Other payloads will test technology that could be used on future lunar landing missions, such as a new sensor that could potentially help guide precision landings.

The Navigation Doppler Lidar, as the sensor is called, “shoots laser beams to the ground and measures spacecraft velocity — that’s the speed — and the direction of the flight,” said Farzin Amzajerdian, the principal investigator for the lidar payload at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Also on board the lander are technological and commemorative payloads from the private sector. Columbia Sportswear, for example, developed a special insulation material that could help shield Odie from the moon’s extreme temperatures. A small sculpture representing the phases of the moon — designed in consultation with artist Jeff Koons — will be tucked on board as well.

Odie also houses a camera system called EagleCam that was developed by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. The device is set to pop off of the lunar lander as it approaches the surface and capture images of the vehicle’s descent.

“Hopefully, we’ll get a bird’s-eye view of that landing to share with the public,” Altemus said.

Odie is expected to operate for seven days on the lunar surface before darkness falls on the landing site, blocking the spacecraft’s solar panels from the sun and plunging it into freezing temperatures.

The Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed “Odie” or IM-1, has embarked on a historic journey to the lunar surface — aiming to make the first touchdown of a US-made spacecraft on the moon in five decades.

The launch follows closely on the heels of a separate US lunar landing mission that failed in January. NASA has ramped up the development of robotic spacecraft via private partners to evaluate the lunar environment and identify key resources — such as the presence of water — before it attempts to return astronauts to the moon later this decade.

Odie lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 1:05 a.m. ET Thursday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mission had been slated to launch on Wednesday, but an issue with the temperature of propellant needed to power the spacecraft delayed the attempt by 24 hours.

Journey to the moon

The rocket fired Odie into Earth’s orbit, blazing to speeds topping 24,600 miles per hour (11 kilometers per second), according to Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that developed the spacecraft under contract with NASA through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

Odie’s path amounts to “a high-energy fastball pitch towards the moon,” as Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus put it.

After burning through its fuel, the rocket detached from Odie, leaving the lunar lander to fly solo through space. The robotic explorer then consulted an onboard map of the stars so it could orient itself in space, pointing its solar panels toward the sun’s rays to charge its batteries.

“We are seeing most everything that we would expect,” according to a dispatch from Intuitive Machines’ mission control around 2 am ET.

Odie is now on an oval-shaped path around Earth, stretching as far out as 380,000 kilometers (236,100 miles) from home. And about 18 hours into spaceflight, the vehicle will ignite its motor for the first time, continuing its fast-paced trip toward the lunar surface.

The moon, which orbits roughly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away from Earth, is expected to give Odie a gentle gravitational tug as the spacecraft approaches, pulling the vehicle toward its cratered surface.

Odie is slated to make its nail-biting touchdown attempt on February 22, aiming for a crater near the moon’s south pole.

It will be a dangerous trek. If Odie fails, it will join a growing list of missions that have unsuccessfully sought a lunar touchdown: The first US-built lunar lander to launch in five decades, Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine, was hampered by a critical fuel leak last month. That came after two failed missions from other countries in 2023: one from Russia and another from a company based in Japan.

China, India and Japan are so far the only nations to have soft-landed vehicles on the moon in the 21st century.

What Odie will do on the moon

Odie’s trip to the moon can be considered a scouting mission of sorts, designed to assess the lunar environment ahead of NASA’s current plan to return a crewed mission to the moon through the Artemis program in late 2026.

The moon’s south pole is an area of widespread interest amid a new international space race, as the region is thought to be home to stores of water ice. The precious resource could be converted into drinking water for astronauts or even rocket fuel for missions exploring deeper into space.

Packed on board the lunar lander are six NASA science and technology payloads. They include a radio receiver system that will study lunar plasma, which is created by solar winds and other charged particles raining down on the moon’s surface.

Other payloads will test technology that could be used on future lunar landing missions, such as a new sensor that could potentially help guide precision landings.

The Navigation Doppler Lidar, as the sensor is called, “shoots laser beams to the ground and measures spacecraft velocity — that’s the speed — and the direction of the flight,” said Farzin Amzajerdian, the principal investigator for the lidar payload at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Also on board the lander are technological and commemorative payloads from the private sector. Columbia Sportswear, for example, developed a special insulation material that could help shield Odie from the moon’s extreme temperatures. A small sculpture representing the phases of the moon — designed in consultation with artist Jeff Koons — will be tucked on board as well.

Odie also houses a camera system called EagleCam that was developed by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. The device is set to pop off of the lunar lander as it approaches the surface and capture images of the vehicle’s descent.

“Hopefully, we’ll get a bird’s-eye view of that landing to share with the public,” Altemus said.

Odie is expected to operate for seven days on the lunar surface before darkness falls on the landing site, blocking the spacecraft’s solar panels from the sun and plunging it into freezing temperatures.

A controversial plan agreed upon between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Albanian counterpart in November to send boat migrants to Italian-run centers on Albanian soil has passed the Italian Senate.

The plan passed on a vote of 93 to 61. It had previously passed the lower house of parliament.

The program has drawn scorn from Italy’s opposition, which refers to it as Italy’s Guantanamo Bay, and by human rights groups, because Albania is not part of the European Union (EU) and therefore does not have to follow EU guidelines on detention, treatment and deportation of people seeking asylum.

It is unlawful under EU law to immediately deport a migrant or refugee until their application for asylum is processed. Albania is not obliged to follow EU rules.

The centers will be built with Italian funds and staffed with Italian civil servants to process up to 3,000 asylum applicants a month.

The migrants and potential refugees would be those rescued by Italian military assets including the Coast Guard and Navy ships, and not those rescued by NGO’s, the accord language states. Women and children would also not be sent to Albania.

In 2023, more than 157,000 people reached Italy by boat, according to Italian interior ministry data.

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party campaigned on a strong anti-immigration platform in 2022, but she has been criticized for not doing enough to stop boats.

Amnesty International’s chief migration and asylum researcher Matteo De Bellis said in a statement Thursday that individuals disembarked in Albania and brought to the centers, including refugees and people seeking asylum, “would be automatically detained and unable to leave” the centers for up to 18 months.

“Under international law, automatic detention is inherently arbitrary and therefore unlawful,” he warned, adding that transport to Albania would mean people rescued from often harrowing situations at sea would have to stay on boats for days longer than needed.

“This dangerous distortion of search and rescue rules might put lives at risk, and would affect people already in a vulnerable condition given the circumstances of their journeys, marking a shameful chapter for Italy,” he added.

The plan mirrors a similar plan that has hit roadblocks in the United Kingdom, which aims to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda.

A Joe Biden presidency would be better for Russia than a Donald Trump one, Russian President Vladimir Putin told pro-Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin in an on-camera interview Wednesday.

Asked by Zuribin about the upcoming US presidential election, Putin said Biden would be better for Russia “because he is a more experienced person, he is predictable, he is a politician of an old formation.”

However, he added that Russia would “work with any leader of the US that gains the trust of the American people.”

Putin has a tradition of pontificating on US presidential politics.

In late 2015, the Kremlin leader praised Donald Trump as “a bright and talented person without any doubt,” and cast Trump as the front-runner for the election months ahead of the Republican National Convention.

The Russian president also did little to conceal his dislike of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Putin would go on to deny Russian interference in the 2016 election and gloated in an interview about the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee, saying “there is nothing false about it, every single grain of it is true. And the Democratic leadership admitted it.”

US President Joe Biden has not minced words about Putin since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, calling the Russian leader a war criminal – something Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described as “absolutely unacceptable and inexcusable.”

The Russian leader’s comments also come in the wake of Trump telling a campaign rally he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country that doesn’t meet spending guidelines, something NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said put European and American soldiers at an increased risk.

Trump’s pledge – if delivered – would overturn the collective defense clause at the heart of the alliance. Putin has long criticized NATO and opposes its expansion.

In his interview, the Russian president said he regretted that he “didn’t start active actions in Ukraine earlier” than February 2022, claiming that Western leaders had lied to Russia about “not expanding NATO to the East.”

“We were and are concerned about the possibility of Ukraine being drawn into NATO, since this threatens our security,” Putin said.

Putin ‘didn’t fully enjoy’ Carlson interview

Putin also said that in order to judge the actions of the current US administration one should look at its “political position.”

“I believe that the position of the current administration is extremely harmful and erroneous,” Putin said in a reference to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

According to Putin, that war “could have been over a year and a half ago” if agreements during a meeting in Istanbul in March 2022 were kept.

Putin didn’t specify what agreements he was referring to, but he has in the past referred to a series of bilateral talks that took place between Russia and Ukraine in the weeks after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, suggesting a deal was in place.

Those talks eventually faltered, and Ukrainian public opinion hardened against compromise with Russia after the uncovering of the mass killings of civilians by Russian forces in the town of Bucha and other liberated areas of Ukraine.

Putin also alleged that the Minsk agreements, a ceasefire protocol signed by Ukraine and Russia in 2015, was never meant to be kept but used “to buy time to load Ukraine with additional weapons.”

The Minsk agreements called for the removal of heavy weaponry from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, constitutional reform in Ukraine as well as the restoration of Ukrainian control of its state borders, among other things.

The order in which those measures would be implemented was never fixed, lower-level fighting continued and a so-called line of contact between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists remained largely stable between 2015 and 2022.

The US and its allies only ramped up military support to Ukraine significantly on the eve of the February 2022 invasion, as Russian forces massed around Ukraine’s borders, in particular rushing deliveries of anti-tank weaponry.

In his recent interview with far-right media figure Tucker Carlson, Putin said the US could “come to an agreement with Russia” on Ukraine, a suggestion that appeared to imply that an agreement could be brokered over the heads of the Ukrainians.

The Russian leader also expressed disappointment with Carlson. dismissively referring to the media personality’s interviewing style.

“I honestly thought he would be aggressive and ask tough questions. I wasn’t only ready for that, I wanted that, because it would give me the opportunity to give tough answers back,” Putin said.

“To be frank, I didn’t fully enjoy that interview,” he said.

This story has been updated with additional information and context.