12-yearmissiondone,Rosettalandercrashesintocomet
BERLIN (AP) – After 12 years of hurtling through space in pursuit of a comet, the Rosetta probe ended its mission Friday with a slow-motion crash onto the icy surface of the alien world it was sent out to study.
Mission controllers lost contact with the probe, as expected, after it hit the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 1039 GMT (3:39 a.m. PDT) Friday, the European Space Agency said.
“Farewell, Rosetta; you’ve done the job,” said mission manager Patrick Martin. “That is space science at its best.”
ESA chief Jan Woerner called the $1.57 billion mission a success. Aside from sending a lander onto the surface of comet 67P in November 2014 – a cosmic first – the Rosetta mission has collected vast amounts of data that researchers will spend many years analyzing.
Scientists have already heralded several discoveries from the
BEIRUT (AP story and photo) – The 6-yearold girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria’s rebel-held city of Aleppo. “Dust!” she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.
“Forget the dust. I’ll wash your face and give you water. Come on, sweetheart,” one rescuer said.
Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl’s family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.
At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the mission that offer new insights into the formation of the solar system and the origins of life on Earth.
Spectacular images taken by the orbiter and its comet lander revealed a desert-like landscape on the comet with wide, featureless regions but also high cliffs and sinkholes that were more than 110 yards across.
The shape of 67P itself – two orbs connected by a “neck” that have been likened to a giant rub- ber duck – surprised scientists when Rosetta first got up close. Researchers now believe the orbs formed independently and later merged into one.
Jessica Sunshine, a senior scientist on NASA’s Deep Impact and Stardust comet missions, said the way the comet was formed has implications for the model of how other objects in the solar system, including Earth, formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
BERLIN (AP) – Shares in Deutsche Bank swung wildly on Friday, touching a record low before roaring back to life, amid speculation about the stability of Germany’s biggest bank and the European financial system.
Having initially fallen 8 percent, the shares rallied to close more than 6 percent higher on hopes the bank will be able to negotiate down the massive cost of settling a U.S. investigation.
The U.S. government had been asking for $14 billion to settle claims over the bank’s sales of mortgage securities, complex investments that were one of the causes of the global financial crisis in 2008. The U.S. government says Deutsche Bank was among several companies that misled investors about the quality of these investments.
That price was so huge – just below the bank’s total market value as of Friday – that it raised speculation Deutsche Bank would have to raise new capital, diluting the value of its shares.
Those concerns, as well as broader worries about the bank’s ability to turn around its ailing businesses, hammered its shares in recent weeks. They closed up 6.4 percent at 11.57 euros – a strong close after earlier in the day trading below 10 euros for the first time ever.
The rally was prompted by an unsourced report by Agence France Press that the U.S. government had agreed to a settlement worth $5.4 billion. Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the report.
Investors are likely “getting cold feet given the possibility of more news over the weekend that could easily send the shares soaring come Monday,” said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG.