Europe Lost Contact with Mars Lander 1 Minute Before Touchdown By Megan Gannon, Space.com Contributor

After a suspenseful night waiting for a signal from the ExoMars Schiaparelli lander, the European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed today that the spacecraft went silent less than a minute before it was set to reach the Martian surface Wednesday (Oct. 19).

ESA mission managers said this morning (Oct. 20) that they need more time to understand what went wrong with Schiaparelli, and to figure out exactly where and in what condition the test lander ended up. But theExoMars team was optimistic that the capsule had collected enough data during its descent to set the stage for the next phase of the mission: the planned 2020 launch of a life-hunting ExoMars rover.

"The test has yielded a huge amount of data," David Parker, ESA's director of human spaceflight and robotic exploration, said at a news conference early this morning. "It gives us a lot of confidence for the future. We need to understand what happened in the last few seconds before the planned landing, and that is likely to take some time." [In Photos: Europe's Schiaparelli Mars Landing Day]

The Schiaparelli Mars lander deploys its parachute in this artist's illustration.

Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

The European Space Agency's ExoMars project involves an orbiter, lander and rover, launched on two separate Proton rockets.

Credit: Details of the ExoMars orbiter, lander and rover.

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Playing With Fire!!! 20-Yr-Old Man In Prison For Stealing Motorcycle At A Police Headquarters

 
A 20-year-old man, Abeeb Wasiu, has been sentenced to three months imprisonment by a Magistrate Court sitting in Osogbo, the capital of Osun State, for stealing a motorcycle from the State Police Command headquarters.
Daily Post reports that the convict sneaked into the station and was in the process of making away with the motorcycle before he was arrested.
The police prosecutor, Mereti Wilson, had told the court presided by Magistrate A. Bashiru. that the suspect had stolen the motorcycle belonging to one Wodi Michael from the police headquarters on August 23, 2016, at about 11am.
Wilson added that the offense contravened Section 303 and was punishable under Section 390 of the Criminal Code, Cap 34, volume II, Law of Osun State, Nigeria.
When the charge was read to him, Waisu who had no counsel, pleaded guilty to the offense and begged for clemency.
In delivering judgment, Magistrate Bashiru sentenced him to three months’ imprisonment or a fine of N10,000 which he could not raise and was hauled to prison

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Nigerian Man Weeps As His Fiancee Dies In Accident Weeks To Their Wedding (Photos)

According to a man Obayi, his fiancée, Jennifer Obayi, died in his arms, in front of his house, last Saturday, after a road accident. They were meant to wed in December.
He wrote:
The bus she boarded had a terrible accident, just in front of my house and she bleed to death right in my arms. She died few minutes after the accident. I still can’t believe My Love is gone forever. She will be buried next Friday. This is so sad! Can I ever live without her??”
 

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That Time Someone Gave a Homeless Person $100,000 Just to See What Would happen

by Karl Smallwood   
 


In 2005 a homeless man called Ted Rodrigue stumbled upon a briefcase filled with crisp $20 and $50 bills totaling $100,000 (about $123,000 today). Ted was then told by screenwriter Wayne Powers that the money was his to keep and do with as he wished, so long as he would allow a film crew to document the result. Rodrigue, understandably, jumped at the opportunity, leading to a somewhat controversial documentary- Reversal of Fortune.
According to an interview with Powers, the genesis of the documentary stemmed from his time in LA where he was frequently asked for money by the homeless, prompting him to ponder, “What would a homeless person do if I gave them a million dollars?” Powers was curious if such a substantial amount of money could change a person’s life for the better or if it’d simply make it worse. He took this idea to an executive at Showtime where he’d briefly written a short-lived series called Out of Order. The executives loved the idea, but weren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of paying out a million dollars, eventually talking Powers down to $100,000.
With funding in hand, all Powers needed was a homeless person to give the money to. According to him, he picked Ted after filming several conversations with him and coming to the conclusion that Ted was a man who’d been dealt a bad hand and deserved a break for once.
As Ted put it, “When I look back at my childhood, I think it was screwed up. My mother was an alcoholic. We used to have parties all the time at the house. We used to as kids sneak in and grab a beer; sometimes they’d even give us one. I started drinking- I’ve been drinking since about 13.”

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