A Rare Find

A TV documentary crew of divers who were looking for the wreckage of a World War II aircraft off the Florida Space Coast made a startling and unexpected discovery: the heat shield remains of NASA's space shuttle Challenger.

It's an incredibly rare space artifact that acts a somber reminder of the deadly 1986 disaster, a dark chapter in the history of space exploration.

"While it has been nearly 37 years since seven daring and brave explorers lost their lives aboard Challenger, this tragedy will forever be seared in the collective memory of our country," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. "This discovery gives us an opportunity to pause once again, to uplift the legacies of the seven pioneers we lost, and to reflect on how this tragedy changed us."

What they uncover off the coast of Florida, outside of the Triangle, marks the first discovery of wreckage from the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger in more than 25 years. Don’t miss the premiere of The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters on Tuesday, November 22 at 10/9C. pic.twitter.com/LWUoFXxEnK

— HISTORY (@HISTORY) November 10, 2022

Challenger Discovery

According to the TV network History, it's the first Challenger wreckage to have been discovered in more than 25 years. Footage shared by the network show divers examining small eight-inch tiles making up a large mosaic.

NASA now has to decide whether it wants to recover the wreckage. Other pieces of the Challenger spacecraft were put on display to the public for the first time back in 2015 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

The fateful 1986 launch was NASA's 25th Shuttle mission, but 73 seconds after liftoff, it disintegrated at 46,000 feet, a tragedy watched live by countless people around the world on TV.

"Challenger and her crew live on in the hearts and memories of both NASA and the nation," said Kennedy Space Center Director Janet Petro in the statement.

"Today, as we turn our sights again toward the Moon and Mars, we see that the same love of exploration that drove the Challenger crew is still inspiring the astronauts of today’s Artemis Generation," she added, "calling them to build on the legacy of knowledge and discovery for the benefit of all humanity."

The History Channel will air its documentary about the rare find on November 22.

READ MORE: NASA Views Images, Confirms Discovery of Shuttle Challenger Artifact [NASA]

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A Russian soldier was rushed to the ER. His diagnosis? An unexploded shell lodged so deep in his chest it was almost touching his spine.

The soldier, junior sergeant Nikolay Pasenko, probably should've been dead already from either the impact or the impending detonation. But instead, defying all expectations, he lived — thanks to surgeons at the Mandryk Central Military Clinical Hospital who successfully removed the shell in an operation that's been dubbed a "miracle" by TASS, a state-owned Russian news agency.

Given Russia's ongoing and near-universally condemned war in Ukraine, you might be inclined to doubt the veracity of the source — but miracles like this have happened before.

"The patient was admitted with a wound that had penetrated [his] chest," the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, as quoted by TASS. "The examination revealed that the miraculously unexploded ordnance had pierced [his] ribs and lungs and got lodged close to the spinal cord, between the aorta and the inferior vena cava near the heart."

There was no guarantee that the munition wouldn't explode mid-surgery. The doctors — some military, some civilian — decided to operate on the soldier anyway, wearing body armor under their medical gowns, the Ministry said.

And the surgery had to be done fast — Pasenko was bleeding so profusely that there was no time to dawdle on a decision, let alone relocate to a safer or better equipped location.

"The unexploded shell was stuck between the aorta and the inferior vena cava close to the heart, which could have caused fatal bleeding even without the ordnance's detonation," Medical Corps Lieutenant-Colonel Dmitry Kim, who led the operation, told TASS. "A decision was made to carry out the surgery locally."

That decision proved to be the right call. The shell was removed without detonation, and a recovering Pasenko was shipped off to a central hospital.

But post-surgery, Pasenko said that, at the time, he was opposed to the doctors risking their lives.

"The surgeon ventured to perform the operation, I was against it," he told the Russian news agency. "And now you see that I am sitting in front of you."

"My thanks to surgeon Dmitry Kim and I will be grateful to him for the rest of my life. He replied: 'So, we will explode together.' That's it. He is a very courageous man," Pasenko said.

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Not Again

It happened again. ABC News reports that Chinese space debris from another one of the nation's heavy lift Long March 5B rockets was just discovered at sea off the Philippines' coastline.

The rocket remains are believed to be those of the Long March 5B that launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Hainan island last week, which was reportedly carrying a payload with laboratory materials to the Tiangong Chinese space station.

This isn't the first time that the Philippines has been threatened by Chinese space junk. Now, per ABC, officials from the Philippine Space Agency are pushing authorities in Manila to ratify UN treaties regarding space junk. If those treaties are signed, citizens of the island nation would be allowed to seek restitution for any injury or damage caused by falling rocket debris.

Sky Fall

Considering that the Philippines are under China's direct space flight path, it's fair for officials to worry. In fact, back in August the nation was technically hit twice by Long March 5B junk — once at the beginning of the rocket's launch, and once at the end.

"This shows that the risk is higher for us," an official told the Philippine newspaper the The Inquirer at the time, "because we are under the flight path of most Chinese rocket launches."

Though neither of the recent Long March 5B crashes near the island actually hit land, they very well could. After all, they've done so before. A defunct rocket core made landfall in West Africa last Spring, and more recently, a chunk of a Long March 2D — a different, but apparently equally chaotic — rocket crashed into a Chinese field. And while no lives have been taken by falling space junk thus far, there's certainly a risk, and experts have even warned that there's a ten percent risk that falling cosmic trash will cause human casualties in the next decade.

For its part, China has yet to express any legitimate concern over its extremely messy rockets. And as there's yet to be much in the way of international governance for ensuring that any and all spacefaring nations keep potentially dangerous debris in check, it appears to have little incentive to change its ways.

READ MORE: Suspected Chinese rocket debris found in Philippine waters [ABC News]

More on dangerous debris: Large Chunk of Chinese Rocket Comes Crashing down, Lodges in Field

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Chinese Space Debris Crashes Down in the Philippines

Tesla CEO Elon Musk's just might get shredded this time.

Richard Tornetta, a former metal drummer who made a small investment in Tesla, sued CEO Elon Musk and the company's board in what is called a "shareholder derivative lawsuit" back in 2018, Reuters reports.

The case survived a 2019 motion to dismiss and is set to kick off in a Delaware court on Monday — which will feature Musk's own testimony and Kathaleen McCormick, the same judge who oversaw his initial bid to get out of his chaotic Twitter deal.

If Tornetta were to win, Musk would have to rescind his 2018 stock grants pay package worth $55 billion, a potentially devastating blow, especially considering the fact that Musk has already been selling off appreciable amounts of Tesla stock to fund his acquisition of Twitter.

While these kinds of lawsuits are usually dismissed as "nuisance suits" by business groups, "this case looks different," as Jessica Erickson, a professor at University of Richmond School of Law, told Reuters.

Tornetta, who runs an aftermarket car parts company and used to drum for a now-defunct metal band called "Dawn of Correction," maintains Tesla's board had undisclosed conflicts.

His suit alleges that Musk came up with his own pay plan with help of with his former divorce attorney Todd Maron, who also happened to sit on Tesla's general counsel until late 2018, CNBC reported back in March.

Musk also allegedly set the bar too low for hitting 12 performance targets, as laid out in the 2018 stock grants plan. The plan allows Musk to buy one percent of Tesla stock at a significant discount for each met target.

So far, Tesla has hit 11 out of the 12 targets, according to Reuters, but Tornetta's lawyers argue that three of those goals had already been met when shareholders met to vote on the pay package, something they say wasn't properly disclosed.

Musk and his legal team maintain that the targets kept Musk on track during a difficult time, and eventually led to a massive rise in stock price.

"The plan designed and approved by the board was not a typical pay package intended to compensate the ordinary executive for overseeing the day-to-day operations of a mature company," Musk's attorney said during a pre-trial brief, as quoted by Bloomberg, arguing that the situation called for an extraordinary pay package.

For now, all we can do is wait and see whether the lawsuit will bang heads in court.

READ MORE: Elon Musk braces for $56 billion battle with heavy metal drummer [Reuters]

More on Tesla: Tesla Issues Software Patch So That Its Cars Don't Lose Power Steering on Potholes

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Making Moves

It seems ill-advised to hire an employee who's under investigation at one of your other companies in a ranking position, but then again, Elon Musk is far from an ordinary CEO.

That's on full display as SpaceX hires Tesla's Texas plant lieutenant Omead Afshar, who according to sources close to the matter that spoke to Bloomberg has been brought on as vice president of Starship production.

Over the summer, Afshar — reportedly a close confidante of Musk's — was, as the news site reported at the time, under internal investigation for a sketchy plan he allegedly had to buy difficult-to-source construction materials for Tesla. During the investigation, some of the executive's subordinates were fired. But Afshar himself seems to have had a golden, well, Starship.

And pickle ball! https://t.co/InqxFkip7y

— Omead Afshar (@omead) November 6, 2022

Shuffleboard

It remains unclear whether Afshar is still working at Tesla as well, or if he was shuffled over to SpaceX as a result of his investigation. Sources did, however, tell Bloomberg that he hasn't been seen at Tesla's Austin plant in weeks.

Whether he was moved from Tesla to SpaceX or is working both companies, it wouldn't be the first time for either. Musk sent has shuffled Tesla employees to SpaceX previously and even sent them to Twitter in recent weeks. And as Bloomberg notes, another of his close consiglieres, Charles Keuhmann, is an executive at both companies.

To make this kind of hiring move would be weird enough in a regular context, but the fact that Musk is doing so while wreaking havoc over at his other new company makes it seem all the stranger.

More on Musk: MSN Ran a Story About Grimes and Elon Musk That's Completely Fake

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The Sun Sets

Eager customers of Tesla's solar roof program have been left holding the bag as the EV automaker says it's nixing operations in numerous markets, Electrek reports.

The cancellations underscore the degree to which the program has never really taken off. By Elecktrek's estimates, Tesla only installed its solar roofs on around 300 houses during the second quarter of 2022 — an underwhelming figure, especially since CEO Elon Musk has claimed the company's energy division will become as large as its automotive one.

And now, some Tesla Solar customers have been receiving emails from the company telling them that their orders for solar panels are being canceled.

"Upon further review of your project, our team has determined that your home is in an area we no longer service," the emails read, as quoted by Electrek. "As we cannot complete your order, we have processed your cancellation."

Solar Scapegoat

Tesla tends to be opaque when it comes to its energy division, so it's unclear which specific markets got screwed over. Electrek says the reports it's received have come from customers "in major solar markets including the greater Los Angeles area, Northern California, Oregon, and Florida."

In addition, the outlet also reports that Tesla has laid off employees in the solar scheduling, planning, and design department, but just how many is unspecified.

Historically, Tesla's solar program — controversially acquired by buying the company SolarCity in 2016 — is the one that gets the short end of the stick when it comes to reining in the budget.

In 2019, Musk admitted in a pre-trial deposition that, "If I did not take everyone off of solar and focus them on the Model 3 program to the detriment of solar, then Tesla would have gone bankrupt."

"So I took everyone from solar, and said: 'instead of working on solar, you need to work on the Model 3 program.' And as a result, solar suffered, as you would expect," he added.

Musk similarly admitted in 2022 that, for the year before, he had "shortchanged" Tesla's energy division in favor of pushing out more cars.

Considering that Musk bought the division from SolarCity with the alleged intention of bailing out his cousins that owned it, maybe it's not too surprising that the CEO seems to have no qualms over gutting it multiple times.

More on Tesla: Elon Musk Is Suddenly Selling Tesla Stock Like Crazy

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