The article has lots of reasons why maybe not. Not using Martian material is one of them.
But moss typically doesn't need soil. The first mosses evolved on earth before soil was a thing. Mosses don't have roots that extract nutrients/water from soil. Instead, they have rhizoids that just kinda anchor them in place, but don't transport nutrients/water
While Matt Damon relied on potatoes cultivated in crew biowaste to survive in the hit film The Martian, researchers say it is a humble desert moss that might prove pivotal to establishing life on Mars.
“The unique insights obtained in our study lay the foundation for outer space colonisation using naturally selected plants adapted to extreme stress conditions,” the team write.
Dr Agata Zupanska, of the SETI Institute, agreed, noting moss could help enrich and transform the rocky material found on the surface of Mars to enable other plants grow.
Writing in the journal The Innovation, researchers in China describe how the desert moss not only survived but rapidly recovered from almost complete dehydration.
“Looking to the future, we expect that this promising moss could be brought to Mars or the moon to further test the possibility of plant colonisation and growth in outer space,” the researchers write.
Dr Wieger Wamelink of Wageningen University, also raised concerns, including that temperatures on the red planet rarely get above freezing, making outdoor plant growth impossible, while the new study did not use Mars-like soil.
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The Norwegian government has called off a plan to sell the last privately owned piece of land on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard in order to prevent its acquisition by China.
The archipelago is located halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, in an Arctic region that has become a geopolitical and economic hotspot as the ice melts and relations grow ever frostier between Russia and the west.
A treaty signed in 1920 recognises Norwegian sovereignty over the territory but also gives citizens of the signatory powers – which include Russia and China – the same rights to exploit its mineral resources.
“The current owners of Sore Fagerfjord … are open to selling to actors that could challenge Norwegian legislation in Svalbard,” said the trade and industry minister, Cecilie Myrseth.
The property, in the south-west of the archipelago where no infrastructure exists, covers protected areas where construction and motorised transport are prohibited, stripping it of commercial value.
In 2016, the government paid €33.5m to acquire the second-last piece of private land on Svalbard, near Longyearbyen, which was also reportedly being eyed by Chinese investors.
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Regressive's like maga claim to be all about personal freedom but in truth they don't want others to have any freedom they don't approve of. Tolerance is not something they possess. Never listen to what regressives say just watch what those perverts do.
Regressives want the personal freedom to harass hurt and kill who they want. That's what they're talking about. They feel the walls finally around them saying they can't. So they lash out, at anything.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a post on Telegram, said Russia had used more than 800 glide bombs on Ukrainian targets in the past week. He issued a fresh plea in his nightly video address for better weapons systems. “The sooner the world helps us deal with the Russian combat aircraft launching these bombs, the sooner we can strike – justifiably strike – Russian military infrastructure … and the closer we will be to peace,” he said.
Well, I don't know what kind of counter he's aiming for. There are basically two that I can think of:
Long-range SAMs with sufficient range (and maybe mobility) to strike an aircraft launching glide bombs without being placed at risk. Ukraine's has had some old long-range Warsaw Pact SAMs, but I don't think that we've got more stores or production capacity. There are Patriots, but those are the only anti-ballistic-missile counter Ukraine presently has; using them as a counter for aircraft will cut into that. I suggested earlier that the SAMP/T systems that France sent, firing Aster missiles -- which theoretically have an ABM capability, but at least earlier in the conflict, apparently weren't intercepting them -- might work, if the range is long enough.
Aircraft armed with long-range air-to-air missiles.
To use it to directly support the front, that's about how close they're going to have to get. Maybe closer if they want to strike behind the front.
The US has the AIM-120. The latest version reaches 160–180 km according to WP. We have other long-range air-to-air missiles in development, but not in production today.
Maximum range: 200 km (110 nmi)+[4]
No Escape Zone: 60 km (32 nmi)+[5]
A Ukrainian aircraft firing those will need to do so at high altitude to leverage high range, use the aircraft's fuel rather than the missile's. That height will make it visible to Russian air defense, and the aircraft has to avoid getting hit by Russian SAMs.
The longest-range SAM that I'm aware of that Russia has is an S-400 variant:
That can reach out 400 km with the right missile according to WP.
Now, there are a number of ways one might measure range (from what height? Are these "minimum maximum" ranges or the actual limit? Is this a no-escape range or the furthest the missile can travel? What altitude can it reach at that point?) So I can't say "this is the range that Ukraine's going to need" exactly. But if Russia can legitimately reach out about twice as far as any air-to-air missile, it seems to me that that's going to be a problem for air-to-air missile use unless countermeasures or stealth or similar can prevent Russia from making use of SAMs.
Ukraine has been hitting S-400s with ATACMS, so those are, in turn, under threat.
Long range atacms and maybe a few cruise missiles that can take out an airfield. In no way does Russia have any air defense put back that far behind the lines.
I'm just surprised Ukraine has not resorted to attacks from an ocean faring ship up north yet.
These prudes would be terrified of San Francisco, whole city is clothing optional. No one ever really does it cause it's too cold though saw a couple out today for pride. Sucks there banning it in a place that would actually be comfortable to do it.
I think that the problem is that the entire article, other than that sentence, consists of a list of bullet points. It's conventional for articles to sometimes include a list of bullet points with an "executive summary" at the top, and then have the real article below, but this just omits that latter text.
In one of three blasts on Saturday in the town of Gwoza, a woman with a baby strapped to her back detonated explosives in the middle of a wedding ceremony, according to state police.
The high turnout is likely to mean that many more third-place candidates will make it to the second round of the election, Mujtaba Rahman, Eurasia Group’s managing director for Europe, said on social media.
Following Sunday’s vote, campaigning will resume on Monday for a further five days before voters are called back to the polls for a final, decisive second-round ballot on 7 July.
In recent days, candidates from the leftwing coalition and Macron’s centrist alliance have scrambled to remind voters that the RN, launched in the early 1970s as the National Front, once included in its ranks former members of a Waffen-SS military unit under Nazi command during the second world war.
Most analysts suggest the most likely outcome is a polarised parliament, where consensus between the larger far-right and leftwing blocs, and a smaller number of Macron’s allies would be nearly impossible, leading to political paralysis.
If the RN wins a majority, the party chief, Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s 28-year-old protege who has no governing experience, could become prime minister in a fraught cohabitation with Macron.
In the lead-up to Sunday’s first round vote, Macron sought to hammer home this point, warning that France risked being plunged into a “civil war” if either of his “extreme” opponents won a majority.
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