The location is Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. On Thursday, China successfully deployed a three-member crew to its orbiting space station as part of its ambitious initiative to send astronauts to the moon by 2030.

The Shenzhou-18 spacecraft launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, located on the periphery of the Gobi Desert in northern China. It was propelled by a Long March 2-F rocket at precisely 8:59 p.m. (1259 GMT).

AP – VOR News Image

China Launches 3-Member Crew To Its Space Station As It Seeks To Put Astronauts On The Moon By 2030

The spacecraft’s three-member crew will replace the Shenzhou-17 team, which has been working aboard China’s Tiangong space station since October last year.

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) organized a send-off ceremony for the Shenzhou-18 crew on Thursday. The ceremony included flag-waving youngsters and patriotic music. The three astronauts were getting ready to board the spacecraft.

The trio consists of Commander Ye Guangfu, a seasoned astronaut who participated in the Shenzhou-13 mission in 2021, and two novice spaceflight pilots, Li Cong and Li Guangsu, who are 34 and 36 years old.

Their arrival at the space station is anticipated approximately six-and-a-half hours after the launch.

China constructed its own space station after being denied participation in the International Space Station, primarily due to the United States’ apprehensions regarding the Chinese military’s role in the project. For the current year, the Chinese space station has planned two missions for cargo ships and two for manned spaceflights.

AP – VOR News Image

China Launches 3-Member Crew To Its Space Station As It Seeks To Put Astronauts On The Moon By 2030

The Shenzhou-18 mission will last approximately six months on the space station. According to Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the CMSA, the crew will conduct scientific testing, install equipment to protect against space debris, undertake payload experiments, and promote science education, among other activities.

In addition, Lin stated that China is actively striving to eventually grant foreign astronauts and space tourists access to its space station.

“During a press conference on Wednesday, he stated that we will expedite the research and promotion of involving foreign astronauts and space tourists in flights on China’s space station.”

The nation is strategizing a mission to retrieve samples from Mars by approximately 2030, along with three lunar probe missions in the upcoming four years. Additionally, it aims to deploy astronauts on the moon by 2030.

In 2003, China successfully carried out its inaugural crewed space mission, making it the third nation, following the former Soviet Union and the United States, to independently send an astronaut into space.

AP – VOR News Image

China Launches 3-Member Crew To Its Space Station As It Seeks To Put Astronauts On The Moon By 2030

Due to its expenditures, supply networks, and capabilities, the U.S. space program will likely maintain a substantial advantage over China’s. Nevertheless, China has made significant advancements in space exploration by successfully retrieving lunar samples after several decades and landing a rover on the relatively unexplored far side of the moon.

The United States has set a goal to return a crew to the moon’s surface by the conclusion of 2025 due to a renewed dedication to manned missions. Private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin will support this endeavor.

SOURCE – (AP)

London — A rare first-class meal from the Titanic is likely to fetch up to £70,000 ($86,000) when auctioned off on Saturday in an auction of Titanic memorabilia.

Heavily water-stained, with parts of the letters partially erased, this menu likely wound up in the North Atlantic for a period when the Titanic fell in the early hours of April 15, 1912, according to the lot description from British auction house Henry Aldridge and Son Ltd.

The menu, which was eventually recovered, depicts the first meal served on board after the ship set sail from Queenstown, Belfast, and reveals the magnificence that the ship’s first-class passengers would have enjoyed.

On that April 11th night, dinner options included:

• Oysters
• Sirloin of beef with horseradish cream and pureed parsnips
• Desserts including apricot Bordaloue – a type of tart – and Victoria pudding

Rare Titanic First-Class Menu Up For Auction Sheds Light On Life Aboard

After checking museums with ship collections and communicating with top memorabilia collectors, the auction firm discovered that there appear to be no other surviving versions of the first-class meal for that precise night.

Other objects in the auction provide a brief peek into the life of the Titanic’s 2,223 passengers and crew, only 706 of whom survived.

A tartan blanket used by one of the survivors to keep warm in a lifeboat has been described as “one of the rarest three dimensional objects we have seen” and is estimated to fetch up to £100,000 ($123,000).

The blanket had previously belonged to Frederick Toppin, who had acquired it at a New York pier when he met rescued passengers coming ashore in his job as Assistant General Manager in New York of the firm that owned the Titanic, according to the auction house.

However, 1,517 people died aboard the Titanic, and a pocket watch belonging to Sinai Kantor, a Russian immigrant traveling to the United States in second class, marks the minute he entered the water and died.

Rare Titanic First-Class Menu Up For Auction Sheds Light On Life Aboard

A face slip used to mark mail bundles illustrates the fate of the postal clerks aboard, all of whom died while attempting to take mail bags to the ship’s upper decks to save them from water, according to the auction house.

The Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in April 1912 after hitting an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The sinking of the Titanic resulted in the deaths of over 1,500 people, making it one of the deadliest commercial peacetime maritime disasters in modern history.

The tragedy led to significant changes in maritime safety regulations and practices, and it continues to capture public interest and imagination to this day.

SOURCE – (CNN)

North Dakota legislature has nominated an Ojibwe woman as the state’s poet laureate, making her the state’s first Native American to hold this post and drawing attention to her knowledge of Native American boarding schools.

Denise Lajimodiere, a Turtle Mountain Band member from Belcourt, has written several award-winning poetry books. She is known all over the country as an expert on the history of Native American boarding schools. In 2019, she wrote an academic book called “Stringing Rosaries” about the terrible things that boarding school survivors had to go through.

“It is an honor and a privilege to represent my tribe Ojibwe,” Lajimodiere said in an interview following her bipartisan confirmation as poet laureate on Wednesday.

Kim Konikow, in charge of the North Dakota Council on the Arts, says that poet laureates represent the state by giving speeches at inaugurations and graduations, reading poetry, and putting on educational programs.

Lajimodiere, an educator with a doctorate from the University of North Dakota, aims to use her position as poet laureate to hold workshops with Native kids around the state. She intends to write a new book on them.

Lajimodiere’s appointment is significant and inspiring because “representation counts at all levels,” according to Nicole Donaghy, executive director of the advocacy group North Dakota Native Vote and a Standing Rock Nation Hunkpapa Lakota Ojibwe.

North Dakota legislature has nominated an Ojibwe woman as the state’s poet laureate.

Donaghy believes that the more Native Americans view themselves in positions of distinction, the better for our communities.

“I’ve grown up knowing how amazing she is,” said Rolette Democrat Rep. Jayme Davis, who is from the same Turtle Mountain Band as Lajimodiere. No one is more deserving.

Lajimodiere’s book “Stringing Rosaries,” which highlighted firsthand testimonies of what boarding school survivors went through, encouraged talks about how to solve injustices that Ojibwe Native people have faced, according to Davis.

From the 18th century to the 1960s, networks of boarding schools in North America institutionalized the legal kidnapping, abuse, and forced cultural assimilation of Indigenous children. Much of Lajimodiere’s work deals with trauma experienced by Native Americans in the region.

“Sap seeps down the trunk of a fir tree-like bitter tears... I brace against the tree and weep for the children, the parents left behind, my father who lived Ojibwe, and those who didn’t,” Lajimodiere wrote in a poem based on interviews with Boarding School Victims that appeared in her 2016 book “Bitter Tears.”

The 1978 statute empowers tribes Ojibwe in foster care and adoption cases involving Native youth.

Davis, the legislator, stated that Lajimodiere’s writing influences ongoing efforts to confront the past, such as returning ancestral remains — including boarding school victims — and safeguarding tribal cultures in the future by incorporating the federal Indian Child Welfare Act into state law.

The 1978 statute empowers tribes Ojibwe in foster care and adoption cases involving Native youth. As the United States Supreme Court contemplates a challenge to federal law, North Dakota and several other states have discussed codifying it this year.

Last year, the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a report that identified over 400 Native American boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Native children into white society. According to the federal analysis, more than 500 students perished at the boarding schools, but officials estimate that number to rise dramatically as the inquiry continues.

SOURCE – (AP)