Since his 2024 campaign got off to a shaky start with its much-mocked Twitter space debut Wednesday evening, Ron DeSantis has been making the rounds of right-wing media outlets, reminding voters of his record in Florida and occasionally taking digs at the leader. The rival is former President Donald Trump.

In an interview, he said if elected president he would consider granting amnesty to those accused in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, and when pressed on whether that would include Mr. Trump, he conceded that it would be for everyone.

His comments were criticized not only by Democrats, but by former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who tweeted: “Any candidate who claims to pardon the January 6 defendants is unfit to be president.”

Meanwhile, in the Florida governor’s ongoing feud with Walt Disney Co., Disney has urged a federal court to reject Mr. DeSantis’ request to disqualify the judge overseeing the company’s case as a political vendetta.

Disney filed its First Amendment lawsuit against the governor in April, alleging that he was punished for speaking out against a Florida law that critics called “Don’t Say Gay.”

It was the rhetoric of a disgruntled freedom fighter, but there was an ironic note that stood out as clearly as a neo-Nazi black sun patch on one of the soldiers’ uniform: Mr. Kapustin and key members of the armed group he leads, the Russian Volunteer Force, openly support far-right views. Indeed, German authorities and humanitarian groups, including the Anti-Defamation LeagueMr. Kapustin has been identified as a neo-Nazi.

Mr. Kapustin, who has long used the alias Denis Nikitin but usually goes by his military call sign White Rex, is a Russian citizen who immigrated to Germany in the early 2000s. He associated with a group of violent football fans and later became “one of the most influential activists”. A neo-Nazi splinter group in the mixed-martial-arts sceneOfficials from Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state said.

Mr. Kapustin is said to have been Banned from entering Europe’s visa-free, 27-country Schengen zone, but he said only that Germany had revoked his residency permit.

The fact that the group has drawn attention for its activism and renewed ties to the group with neo-Nazis is an ominous development for the Ukrainian government, particularly as Russian President Vladimir V. Putin justified his invasion on the false claim of fighting Neo. -A common theme of Nazis and Kremlin propaganda.

Most anti-Russian groups have long-term political aspirations to return home and overthrow the Russian and Belarusian governments.

“The Russian volunteer force marches in and destroys the current government – that’s the only way,” said Mr. Kapustin said earlier this year. “You cannot force a tyrant to leave, any other power would be considered invaders.”

In fact, far-right groups in Ukraine are a minority, and Ukraine has denied any involvement in the Russian Volunteer Force or any role in fighting on Russian borders. But Mr. Kapustin said his team “definitely got a lot of encouragement” from the Ukrainian authorities.

Some on Russia’s far-right, particularly Mr. Trump, have been criticized for his jailing of many nationalists, his policies on immigration and what he sees as giving too much power to minorities such as the Chechens. Since the 2014 Maidan revolution and the start of war between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donbass region, many of them have made a home in Ukraine and now fight on the side of their adopted country.

The Russian Volunteer Corps, also known by its Russian initials RDK, was one of two groups of anti-Russian militants who carried out a cross-border attack in southern Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday.

The groups say the purpose of the incursions is to force Moscow to redeploy troops from occupied parts of Ukraine to protect its borders, a goal aligned with the Ukrainian military’s broader aims to expand its defenses in the face of a Ukrainian counterattack.

The Russian Volunteer Force also claimed responsibility for two incidents in the Russian border region of Bryansk in March and April.

The second group is the Free Russia Legion, operating under the umbrella of the International Legion of Ukraine, which includes American and British volunteers, as well as Belarusians, Georgians and others. It is overseen by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and commanded by Ukrainian authorities.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Mr. Kapustin confirmed that his group was not controlled by the Ukrainian military, but said the military “wished the fighters all the best”. He said there was “nothing but encouragement” from the Ukrainian side.

“Everything we do, every decision we make, what we do beyond state borders is our own decision. We can ask our comrades and friends for help in planning openly,” he continued. “They’ll say ‘yes, no,’ and that’s kind of the encouragement, the help I’m talking about.” That claim could not be independently verified.

Andriy Chernyak, a representative of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, supported Kyiv’s decision to allow the group to fight on its behalf.

“Ukraine definitely supports everyone who is ready to fight Putin’s regime,” he added: “People came to Ukraine and said they want to help us fight Putin’s regime, so of course we let them. People from foreign countries.”

Ukraine called the incursions an “internal Russian crisis” because the group’s members were Russian.

Some analysts dismissed the RDK’s importance as a fighting force, even as they warned of the dangers they posed. Michael Colborne, a researcher at Bellingcat who reports on the international far right, said he hesitates to even call the Russian Volunteer Force a military unit.

“They’re mostly a far-right group of neo-Nazi exiles who make these incursions into Russian-controlled territory, who are more concerned with creating social media content than anything else,” Mr. Colborne said.

Some other members of the RDK, who were photographed during the border raid, also openly espoused neo-Nazi views. In 2020, Alexander Skachkov was arrested by Ukrainian security services for selling a Russian translation of the white supremacist manifesto of the shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, who killed 51 mosque worshipers in 2019. He was later released on bail. A month in jail.

Another member, Alexei Levkin, who filmed a selfie video wearing the RDK logo, is a group founder. Votanjugent It started in Russia, but then moved to Ukraine. Mr. Levkin organizes the “National Socialist Black Metal Festival”, which began in Moscow in 2012, but was held in Kyiv from 2014 to 2019.

Pictures posted online by the militants earlier this week showed them posing in front of captured Russian equipment, some wearing Nazi-style patches and equipment. One patch depicted a hooded member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Mr. Images of Kapustin and his militia could damage Ukraine’s security by alerting allies who support far-right armed groups, Mr. Colborne said.

“I worry that something like this could backfire on Ukraine, because these are not inconspicuous people,” he said. “These are not unknowns, they are not helping Ukraine in any practical sense.”

Mr. Kapustin, who is fluent in English and German in addition to speaking Russian, told reporters he did not think it was an “accusation” to be called “extreme right”.

“We never hide our views,” he said. “We are a right-wing, conservative, military, semi-political organization,” he said.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Andrew E. Kramer And Oleg Matsnev Contributed report.

“Here we are overnight. And the pressure is high. And the consequences are high. We recognize that. We know this, and the White House will certainly approve it,” he said.

There are signs that House Republicans and the White House are making real progress. A source familiar with the talks told POLITICO late Thursday that the two sides had finalized the spending portion of the discussions.

Conservative Republicans also floated a list that Republicans familiar with the matter said came from leadership, which the two sides apparently found agreement on. These include: an agreement to raise the debt ceiling through 2024, a mechanism to encourage Congress to pass all 12 spending bills, and a plan to refund unspent Covid money.

But as the old Capitol Hill adage goes: Nothing can be agreed until everything is agreed. A second Republican familiar with the negotiations cautioned Thursday night that negotiators had not reached an agreement on top-tax spending numbers or how long the debt ceiling extension would last. They warned that there could be no agreement until other details were fully resolved.

But those leaks have fueled heartburn from McCarthy’s conservative side, threatening to shatter the unity Republicans have portrayed since passing their own debt plan. McCarthy, however, downplayed criticism from the right, saying they “don’t know what’s in the deal.”

“I’m not worried about anybody making any comments right now,” McCarthy said Friday.

And McHenry warned that detail leaks could hinder negotiators’ ability to lock down a deal.

“The tweets, the content, the details and all of these, the leaks, will not help us get a deal that will change the course of the country,” he said.

But even as the country nears a June 1 deadline that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned puts the country at risk of default, both sides generally agree they are making progress.

McCarthy told reporters Friday, “We made progress last night. We have to make more progress now.” He and Rep. Garrett Graves (R-La.), the lead GOP negotiator, also held a powwow earlier Friday on a shared bike ride.

“We’re going to work as hard as we can to get this done, make more progress today and get the job done,” McCarthy said.

But work requirements and permit reforms remain two major sticking points. The White House, according to a person familiar with the matter, “continues to push against measures they worry will push Americans into poverty or take away their health care.” But McCarthy accused Democrats of wanting to pay “non-dependents” to stay home.

“Sometimes, we have disagreements,” McCarthy said.

Once negotiators reach an agreement, lawmakers expect it to take a day or two to turn it into legislative text. Republicans have promised to wait 72 hours — if it’s finalized before any vote — to win the speakership, part of the deal McCarthy struck with conservatives.

In that scenario, negotiators would have to reach a deal on Friday or Saturday to move the bill through the House before the earliest possible default date on Thursday.

And then there’s the Senate. No one expected the House to pass the bill unanimously – Especially after Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is committed to slowing the process — meaning it could take days for the upper chamber to pass the legislation before it heads to President Joe Biden’s desk. If June 1 is the actual default date, Yellen could provide additional guidance next week, which could be the biggest problem.

Sen. Chris Koons (D-Del.) hopes all Democrats can support the legislation that emerges from the negotiations on Thursday, but he’s not sure.

“It depends on what’s in it. It’s rare that we get every vote on absolutely everything. But it has to be something that you believe in our president,” he said.

Sarah Ferris, Jennifer Haberkorn and Catherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.

LONDON, May 26 (Reuters) – Global stock markets were muted on Friday as investors held their breath as the White House and U.S. lawmakers edged toward a deal to fund government spending to avoid an economy-shattering default.

U.S. President Joe Biden and top congressional Republican Kevin McCarthy are closing in on a deal to curb spending on most items while raising the government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling for two years.

The dollar pulled back from a two-month high, helping gold lift, although the yellow metal is poised for a third straight weekly decline as markets await a debt ceiling deal.

Oil was broadly flat while the dollar neared a two-month high against its major peers, buoyed by expectations that US interest rates will remain high for a longer period of time.

“There’s been a bit of a wake-up call for rate expectations this week. There’s a sense that inflation is going to stick around for a longer period of time,” said Mike Hewson, chief market strategist at CMC Markets.

US personal consumption expenditure (PCE) data, often referred to as the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, is due ahead of Wall Street’s opening bell.

The MSCI All Country Stock Index (.MIWD00000PUS) rose 0.15%, but was headed for a 1.4% loss on the week. In Europe, the STOXX (.STOXX) index of 600 companies rose 0.2%, but fell 2.5% on the week.

Traders took a step back from days of frenzied buying in chip and artificial intelligence stocks after Nvidia Corp ( NVDA.O ) sent the Nasdaq higher on Thursday after a blowout forecast.

“Until we see an agreement reached there, there is still tension and trepidation around the debt ceiling,” said Eran Osman, managing director of wealth management at Arbuthnot Latham & Co.

“Once that’s resolved, our focus is on the gap that widened earlier this week in manufacturing and services data. That’s a red flag for us … we’re using that to reduce our exposure to the cycle. Some parts of the market and risk in general,” Osman said.

S&P 500 futures were down 0.1%.

Japan Berkey

Japan’s Nikkei ( .N225 ) rose 0.6%, with earnings and production improvements for U.S. chipmaker Nvidia ( NVDA.O ) lifting Japanese companies on exposure.

The Nikkei rose 0.5% on the week, heading for a seventh weekly gain — its longest weekly streak in five years — and adding $460 billion to Japanese stocks.

The US dollar index touched a three-month high of 104.31 overnight and was last down 0.2% at 104.01.

Prices for Treasury bills maturing on the so-called ex-date of June 1 recovered on hopes of an improvement, while the rest of the curve remained under pressure as investors also worried that US rates would rise.

The two-year yield hit a 2-1/2-month high of 4.552% in Asia on Friday, up 24 basis points on the week. Yields eased slightly to 4.487% in European trade.

The New Zealand dollar was one of the biggest losers on the week, diving 3% to test 60 cents, as nerves about higher U.S. rates have come together with the Bank of New Zealand all but in time to call for rate hikes at its meeting on Wednesday.

China’s yuan has fallen along with other notable casualties and Chinese stocks as the sparkle leaves expectations of a post-pandemic recovery.

The yuan has fallen for three weeks in a row, losing 0.8% this week as China grappled with Covid-19 lockdowns late last year. 7.0467 to the dollar as investors worried about the economic outlook.

“US debt issues aren’t the only ‘ceiling’ we’re dealing with, the slowdown in Chinese economic data suggests a ceiling for growth may also be forming,” said RBC technology strategist George Davis.

Growth bellwether copper hit a six-month low in Shanghai on Thursday and is down about 2.5% on the week. Singapore iron ore fell about 3% on the week.

Brent crude remained steady at $76 a barrel. Spot gold is at $1,953 an ounce.

Additional reporting by Tom Westbrook, Lincoln Feast, Editing by Robert Birzel

Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

WASHINGTON, May 25 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and top Republican congressman Kevin McCarthy were nearing a deal on the U.S. debt ceiling on Thursday, with just $70 billion between the two sides, a person familiar with the talks said. A deal involving trillions of dollars.

The deal aims to raise the government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling in exchange for limits on government spending.

Negotiations are coming down to the wire as the Treasury warned the government could fall short of funding to cover all its spending by June 1, triggering an economically disastrous default without a deal.

Another source said the agreement would specify the total amount the government could spend on discretionary programs such as housing and education, but would not break it down into individual categories. Lawmakers will likely fill in the blanks in the coming weeks and months.

McCarthy said earlier in the day that both sides were making progress.

“We worked well past midnight last night,” McCarthy told reporters. “There are still some outstanding issues and I have directed our teams to work 24/7 to resolve this issue.”

Representative Kevin Hearn, who leads the powerful Republican caucus, told Reuters on Friday afternoon that a deal was likely.

Even if Republicans make progress, McCarthy is preparing to allow lawmakers to leave Washington on Thursday for a week-long vacation on the condition that they be ready to return to a vote. The Senate is now out, but should be ready to return.

Time is short. A US default would lift global financial markets and push the US into recession.

But the Treasury’s forecast is far from iron-clad, and some private-sector analysts believe the government could default for another week, leading some hardliners at McCarthy’s meeting to dismiss the importance of the June 1 deadline.

Credit rating agency DPRS Morningstar on Thursday reviewed the US for a possible downgrade, echoing similar warnings. Fitch, Moody’s and Scope Ratings. Another firm, S&P Global, downgraded US debt in 2011 following a similar debt ceiling stance.

The months-long standoff spooked Wall Street, weighed on U.S. stocks and pushed up the nation’s borrowing costs. Yields on U.S. Treasury bills maturing in early June rose in early trade Thursday in a sign of investor unease.

U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Wally Adeyemo said concerns about the debt ceiling have so far raised the government’s interest costs by $80 million. “At the end of the day it’s money coming out of the pockets of the American people,” he told an investment industry conference in Washington.

Three days

Congress would need days to pass any deal through the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate. Lawmakers often have to raise the self-imposed debt ceiling to cover spending and tax cuts they’ve already approved.

House lawmakers will have three days to read before they have to vote on any debt ceiling bill. In the Senate, Republican Mike Lee said he would block a quick vote if he doesn’t like the deal, which could delay action by several days and push the final passage past June 1.

McCarthy said any deal would have to reduce discretionary spending next year and curb spending growth in the coming years, slowing the growth of the U.S. debt, which now equals the economy’s annual output.

Biden has proposed freezing spending at current levels next year and proposing several tax increases to help control the debt.

Lawmakers on both the right and the left are frustrated by signs of compromise. Republican Representative Chip Roy, a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, has insisted that any deal must include the sharp spending cuts they passed last month.

Meanwhile, some Democrats worry that Biden is too eager to find common ground with Republicans who threaten the health of the U.S. economy.

“They’re looking to waste time and play games and ensure we default because somehow they think that’s going to be a political advantage,” Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar said at a news conference Wednesday.

Reporting by Nandita Bose, Jared Renshaw, David Morgan, Steve Holland, Andrea Shalal, Richard Cowan, Douglas Gillison and Graeme Slattery; Written by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone, Alistair Bell and Rosalba O’Brien

Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Somehow, the ‘miserable creature in dire straits’ game isn’t very funny

• By
  
  Susana Polo
  

• On that day May 25, 2023 at 4:00 am

One thing you can’t say about JRR Tolkien’s orcs is that they lack personality. The typical orc of the common imagination might be a sad, dim-witted lump, but for Tolkien they were his main way of injecting humor into dark moments. lord of the rings. Any group of orcs would say “meat’s on the menu, boys!” Didn’t shout that. In books, but Peter Jackson’s trilogy was perfect.

This was on my mind when I was playing Lord of the Rings: Gollum, the new LatR-inspired action-adventure from Daedalic Entertainment. Shortly after completing the training Gollum, I was captured by Sauron’s ringwraiths (canon), tortured (canon), and thrown into the slave pit of Mordor (canon, not a spoiler!). A crouched and armored orc yelled at me – Gollum – to leave my room and follow a line of slaves into a black iron elevator. He was in a large stone and jagged metal room, with a scary woman in the middle, shouting, “The eye sees all! The eye knows all!”

But I can push the control stick forward and walk into his legs until it pleases me. He’ll let out another NPC bark – “Move slave!” – and hit his arm harmlessly again with his single animation. Scraps of personality I found in the first few hours Gollum Mostly provided by myself.

Image: Daedalic Entertainment/Negan

In fact, I could walk endlessly into the legs Any NPC’s in the room including the scary girl. The orcs had a few extra barks about how I wasn’t allowed near her, but nothing to really stop me from wandering off. I could walk into any orc in any corner of any room the game took me to. I can jump up and down. I could do it to the beast master orc as he threatened to feed his monsters. I could do that because the mine master called me a worthless digger.

I did that a lot, and I went from one room to another with a golem full of orcs, wondering if anyone would respond to my capering. Nobody did. Instead, I had to compile what I’m going to call “slave missions” and do what the NPC barkers told me to do.

Superficially, these are all different, but mechanically, they all invite me to an area that seems fancy but actually has only one path. Sometimes I stole from the area. Sometimes I climbed. Sometimes I ran against a timer. If I ever lost track of the route, I could press a trigger button to activate “Gollum Sense,” which changed the world grayscale and, like the Daedalic had, showed some bright orange wisps moving in my chosen direction. A lack of confidence in environmental signs of play.

Eventually, I dutifully took Gollum into his room and pressed X to sleep, thinking that after a day of slaving, surely a cutscene would speed up the game. Unfortunately, the next day I awoke to find myself in the same elevator (no scary girl this time) and down the same hallway, to do more slave work, with other slaves spitting on me with a grate.

my time Gollum The travel challenges are neatly divided into a supercon of walking (literally crawling) simulations and dialogue choices. Daedalic promoted the game as an opportunity to literally enter the broken mind of a victim of Sauron’s cruelty. In my roughly two hours of experience, I suspect that Daedalic uses the Smeagol/Gollum dynamic for more nuanced choices than the single choice I encountered later.

Image: Daedalic Entertainment/Negan

But even in the most mundane, low-impact dialogue options I’ve seen, Gollum Tolkien’s writing seems to rely on a description of Gollum’s “personalities” that is false. In lord of the rings, it’s Gollum badass and Smeagol is a sweet smart kid who does no wrong. Smeagol is simply a passive and frantic voice, sitting alongside Gollum’s violence and frenzy. Sam called him “slinger and stinger”, after all, not “nice and stinky”.

Easy answer Lord of the Rings: Gollum “Why are you kidding about Gollum, out of the whole Lord of the Rings thing?” Ignore that. But one can imagine any number of ways to make a great video game about Gollum. I’d at least like to see a silly gollum fishing game for mobile! I love it 100% Untitled Duck GameRomp in style through the essential beats of lord of the rings. I’ll be looking for strategies for a deck-builder “puzzle” game where you play against lost orcs that wander down your pond and eventually the final boss, that rogue Bilbo Baggins.

A better question is: “Why did you do it? This is A video game about Gollum?” If you’re going to make a simulation game about an evil creature in a miserable situation, it has to be meaningful and deep, or it has to be. There’s the heeheehoohoo factor. Based on the trailers and some hints at the opening time Gollum, I know the store has gameplay on the other side of Mordor. But the lack of personality has already sealed the demise of my save file (Doom, Drums in the Deep). I’ve seen these orcs before; I’ve seen this Mordor before. It’s a version of Middle Earth played completely straight, but immersed without creativity or flexibility.

I wasn’t imprisoned by orcs. I was imprisoned by a game that required me to find eight dog tags from eight slave corpses hidden in tunnels before I got to the non-slave area of ​​the game. The memory of the strawberries may have sent Frodo through Mordor, but I can turn off the game.

Lord of the Rings: Gollum Released on May 25 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PS5 using a pre-release download code provided by Datalic Entertainment. Vox Media has an affiliate partnership. These do not affect editorial content, however Vox Media may receive commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find out More information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.

NEW YORK, May 23 (Reuters) – (This May 23 story corrected the spelling of Cornell’s first name, Eric, from Eric, in paragraph 8)

Target, which unveiled its Pride collection in early May, is pulling some products from its stores after facing customer backlash, saying it was working to protect employee safety, the company told Reuters on Tuesday.

Target Corp ( TGT.N ) offers more than 2,000 products as part of its Pride Collection, including apparel, books, music and home furnishings. Includes “Gender Fluid” mugs, “Queer All Year” calendars, and books for kids ages 2-8 titled “Bye Bye, Binary,” “Bride 1,2,3” and “I’m Not A Girl.”

“Since launching this year’s collection, we have experienced threats that affect the safety and well-being of our team members while at work,” Target said in a statement.

“Given these volatile circumstances, we are making changes to our plans, including removing items at the center of the most significant conflict behavior,” the Minneapolis-based retailer said.

Target has been celebrating Pride Month for over a decade. But this year’s collection has led to an increase in conflicts between customers and employees and incidents of Pride merchandise being thrown on the floor, Target spokeswoman Kayla Castaneda said.

Target’s move follows a conservative backlash against Bud Light, which brewer Anheuser-Busch used last month to promote the beer on social media with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

Target is removing the recalled products from all its U.S. stores and its website, Castaneda said.

While various Pride Collection products are under review, only LGBTQ brand Abprallen, which has come under scrutiny for its association with British designer Eric Cornell, is now being removed.

Cornell faced social media backlash for designing merchandise featuring images of pentagrams, horned skulls and other Satanic products.

A search for Abprallen merchandise on Target.com on Tuesday returned “0” results.

Screenshots and posts In social media events, Target previously sold a $25 slogan sweater with the words “Cure Transphobia Not Trans People” and an $18 “Too Queer for Here” tote bag.

Target is also reviewing some transgender swimwear and children’s items, but Castaneda said no decisions have been made on those products yet.

For example, a swimsuit sold in the women’s section has come under scrutiny for its fit being described as “duck friendly,” highlighting its ability to address male genitalia.

A Fox News Report Some Target stores in southern states said earlier Tuesday that they were removing Pride-related merchandise from storefronts. An employee at a Target store in Arkansas told Reuters that the store had a deep dive into Pride-related swimwear.

“We used to have swimsuits in the front… but they are now in a random area in the back,” said the employee, who did not want to be named. “We started shifting inventory on Sunday.”

Siddharth Gavel’s report in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler

Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Author’s Note: Updated at 1:30 am EDT (0530 UTC) on May 24 after a scrub of the first Badr 8 launch attempt.



SpaceX scrapped a launch attempt early Wednesday at Cape Canaveral because of bad weather, delaying the loading of an Airbus-built communications satellite for Arabsat until Wednesday night.

Falcon 9 opens a roughly two-hour launch window at 11:25 pm EDT Wednesday (0325 UTC Thursday), but there is a 25% chance of favorable weather at the start of the launch window.

Dense cloud cover from an evening thunderstorm did not clear in time for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, causing a 24-hour delay.

When it lifts off, the Falcon 9 rocket will head east from Cape Canaveral about half an hour later to send the Badr 8 satellite into an elliptical geostationary transfer orbit. The launch will mark SpaceX’s 36th flight of the year and the 26th orbital launch attempt so far in 2023 from Florida’s Space Coast.

The nearly 10,000-pound (4.5-metric ton) Badr 8 communications satellite is enclosed within the Falcon 9’s nose cone. Built by Airbus Defense and Space, the Badr 8 satellite will provide C-band and Ku-band communications services to replace the capability currently provided by the aging 15-year-old Badr 6 satellite in geostationary orbit.

Badr 8 will move in the same orbital slot as Badr 8, located at 26 degrees east longitude on the equator. The Badr satellites are owned by Arabsat, a pan-Arab consortium of 21 member states based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Badr 8 will provide television broadcasting services, video relay and data services across the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and Central Asia.

Arabsat says its investment in the Badr 8 project is about $300 million, including the spacecraft manufacturing contract with Airbus, the launch contract with SpaceX, insurance and ground infrastructure.

Badr 8 is based on Airbus’ Eurostar Neo satellite platform, the company’s new large space shuttle. 37 minutes after separating from the Falcon 9 rocket, Badr 8 will deploy its solar panels and run through post-launch checkouts under the supervision of Airbus ground controllers in Toulouse, France.

Badr 8 will then use low-thrust, high-efficiency plasma thrusters to maneuver into a circular geostationary orbit 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) above the equator, positioning it in an orbit that matches Earth’s rotational speed. Fixed view of its coverage zone from Europe, Middle East and Central Asia.

Orbital adjustments will take several months, and then Badr 8 should complete orbital testing and be ready to begin operational service for Arabsat later this year. The Badr 8 spacecraft is designed for a service life of 15 years.

Apart from its purpose as a commercial communications satellite, Badr 8 also carries an experimental laser communications payload for Airbus. The TELEO demonstration will test new optical communications technology in a partnership between Airbus, French space agency CNES and Safron Data Systems.

The TELEO payload will test the technology’s ability to beam data from a satellite to a ground station using lasers, allowing data transfer of up to 10 gigabits per second. Airbus and its partners hope to develop the technology for future flights using optical communications to achieve one terabit bit per second rate.

“This Teleo demonstrator will enable very robust, very high-capacity optical feeder link communications, which are naturally jam-resistant as part of Airbus’ development of a new generation of optical communications technology in space,” Airbus said in a press release.

Badr 8’s launch, if it happens Wednesday night, will cap a jam-packed lineup of SpaceX missions. This is the fourth SpaceX Falcon 9 launch in six days, following Saturday’s Falcon 9 launch from California and Axiom Space’s Auxin launch from Cape Canaveral on May 19 with payloads for the Falcon 9 flight, OneWeb and iridium from Cape Canaveral. 2 private spaceflight on Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Engineers working from SpaceX’s launch and landing control center south of the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will oversee the nighttime countdown leading up to the Badr 8 mission’s liftoff on Wednesday. A million pounds of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants will fill the Falcon 9 rocket in the final 35 minutes before landing.

After the crews check that all technical and meteorological parameters are “green” for launch, the nine Merlin 1D main engines on the first stage booster will ignite with the help of an ignition fluid called triethylaluminum/triethylborane, or TEA-TEB. Once the engines reach full speed, the hydraulic clamps are opened to release the Falcon 9 to climb into space.

Nine main engines will generate 1.7 million pounds of thrust over two and a half minutes, propelling the Falcon 9 and Pater 8 into the upper atmosphere. The booster stage will close and separate from the Falcon 9’s upper stage to begin a controlled descent toward SpaceX’s drone ship “Just Read the Instructions” docked in the Atlantic Ocean.

The booster, designated B1062, extends titanium hypersonic grid fins and uses cold-gas nitrogen thrusters to control its orientation, then reactivates three of its nine main engines for a nearly 30-second braking maneuver during reentry. A final landing burn with the center engine slows the rocket to eight and a half minutes before the drone touches down.

A SpaceX recovery ship is in the Atlantic to retrieve the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing after two clamshell sections of the nose cone parachuted into the ocean. Shortly after the Falcon 9’s upper stage engine ignites, the payload fairing ejects from the rocket in about three and a half minutes.

The Falcon 9 rocket will fire its upper stage engine twice to launch the Badr 8 spacecraft into an elliptical supersynchronous transfer orbit. Separation of Badr 8 from Falcon 9’s upper stage is expected at T+plus 37 minutes, 13 seconds.

Rocket: Falcon 9 (B1062.14)

Payload: Badr 8 communication satellite

Release Site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida

Release Date: May 24/25, 2023

Launch window: 11:25 pm-1:22 am EDT (0325-0522 UTC)

Launch window: Immediate

Weather forecast: 25% probability of acceptable weather

Booster recovery: “Read the instructions” drone cruises across the Atlantic Ocean

Initialize the azimuth: East

Target Orbit: Super Synchronous Transfer Orbit

Start the timeline:

• D+00:00: Liftoff
• T+01:12: Maximum Aerodynamic Pressure (Max-Q)
• T+02:33: First Stage Main Engine Cut (MECO)
• T+02:36: Level separation
• T+02:44: Secondary engine ignition
• T+03:22: Fairing jettisoned
• T+06:29: First Stage Entry Combustion Ignition (Three Engines)
• T+06:51: First stage entry burn ends
• T+08:10: Secondary mechanical cut (SECO 1)
• T+08:23: First stage landing flare ignition (one engine)
• T+08:44: First stage landing
• T+29:03: Secondary engine restart
• T+30:02: Secondary mechanical cut (SECO 2)
• T+37:13: Separation of Badr 8

Working Statistics:

• 227th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since 2010
• 238th launch of the Falcon rocket family since 2006
• 14th launch of Falcon 9 booster B1062
• 192nd Falcon 9 launch from Florida’s Space Coast
• 126th Falcon 9 launch from Pad 40
• 181st issue overall from Bad 40
• 168th flight of a reused Falcon 9 booster
• 2nd SpaceX launch for Arabsat
• 33rd Falcon 9 launch of 2023
• SpaceX’s 36th launch in 2023
• 26th orbital launch attempt from Cape Canaveral in 2023

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