Week4 Mars exploration

Mars Rover Opportunity's Panorama of 'Wharton Ridge'

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover will drive down a gully carved long ago by a fluid that might have been water, according to the latest plans for the 12-year-old mission. No Mars rover has done that before.

The longest-active rover on Mars also will, for the first time, visit the interior of the crater it has worked beside for the last five years. These activities are part of a two-year extended mission that began Oct. 1, the newest in a series of extensions going back to the end of Opportunity's prime mission in April 2004.

"We have now exceeded the prime-mission duration by a factor of 50," noted Opportunity Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Milestones like this are reminders of the historic achievements made possible by the dedicated people entrusted to build and operate this national asset for exploring Mars."Opportunity launched on July 7, 2003 and landed on Mars on Jan. 24, 2004 (PST), on a planned mission of 90 Martian days, which is equivalent to 92.4 Earth days.

What: Mars exploration

When: 2004

Where: NASA & Mars

Keywords:

  Mars

  water

  opportunity

  historic achievement

  NASA

  exceed mission

網址: http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1940

Charlie Hebdo attack

Charlie Hebdo attack: Three days of terror

France is emerging from one of its worst security crises in decades after three days of attacks by gunmen brought bloodshed to the capital Paris and its surrounding areas. It began with a massacre at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday 7 January and ended with a huge police operation and two sieges two days later.

At 11:30 local time (10:30 GMT) on Wednesday 7 January, a black Citroen C3 drove up to the Charlie Hebdo building in Rue Nicolas-Appert. Two masked gunmen, dressed in black and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles got out and approached the offices.

They burst into number 6, Rue Nicolas-Appert, before realising they had the wrong address. They then moved down the street to number 10 - where the Charlie Hebdo offices are on the second floor.

Once inside, the men - now known to be brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi - asked maintenance staff in reception where the magazine's offices were, before shooting dead caretaker Frederic Boisseau.

One of the magazine's cartoonists, Corinne Rey, described how she had just returned to the building after picking up her daughter from day care when the gunmen threatened her, forcing her to enter the code for the keypad entry to the newsroom on the second floor - where a weekly editorial meeting was taking place.

The men opened fire and killed the editor's police bodyguard, Franck Brinsolaro, before asking for editor Stephane Charbonnier, known as Charb, and other four cartoonists by name and killing them, along with three other editorial staff and a guest attending the meeting.

Witnesses said they had heard the gunmen shouting "We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "God is Great" in Arabic while calling out the names of the journalists.
Police, alerted to a shooting incident, arrived at the scene as the gunmen were leaving the building.

Who: Charlie Hebdo

When: Wednesday 7 January

What: shooting incident

網址: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30708237

Keywords:

worst security crises
the capital Parismassacre
Two masked gunmen
wrong address
Charlie Hebdo offices
shooting incident

Aylan Kurdi’s story

Aylan Kurdi’s story: How a small Syrian child came to be washed up on a beach in Turkey

More has emerged about the death of three-year-old Aylan, pictured here smiling with his brother, whose story has given a face to the refugee crisis.

Surviving family members of Aylan Kurdi have revealed how the Syrian three-year-old came to be washed up dead on a beach in Turkey on Wednesday morning.

The Independent has taken the decision to publish the image, which some may find offensive, lower down in this article because among the often glib words about the "ongoing migrant crisis", it is all too easy to forget the reality of the desperate situation facing many refugees.

The images of Aylan emerged in Turkish media at around midday, and have since sparked international outrage over the refugee crisis.

Thousands are making the same journey from Turkey to Greece’s easternmost islands each day. It is considered one of the safest routes to Europe and beyond.

The majority are from Syria though some have also fled Afghanistan and Iraq. The UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, says the number crossing the Mediterranean has now exceeded 300,000 this year.

When: Thursday 3 September 2015
What: Aylan Kurdi’s story
Who: Aylan Kurdi

網址:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/aylan-kurdi-s-story-how-a-small-syrian-child-came-to-be-washed-up-on-a-beach-in-turkey-10484588.html

Keywords:

emerge

refugee crisis

Aylan Kurdi

spark

international outrage

journey from Turkey to Greece

exceed