WASHINGTON — Donald Trump announced Sunday that a former county prosecutor and a criminal defence lawyer with a background in civil rights work will lead his impeachment defence team, one day after it was revealed that the former president had parted ways with an earlier set of attorneys. The two representing Trump will be defence lawyer David Schoen, a frequent television legal commentator, and Bruce Castor, a former district attorney in Pennsylvania who was criticized for his decision to not charge actor Bill Cosby in a sex crimes case. Both attorneys issued statements through Trump's office saying that they were honoured to take the job. “The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always,” said Castor, who served as district attorney for Montgomery County, outside of Philadelphia, from 2000 to 2008. The announcement Sunday was intended to promote a sense of stability surrounding the Trump defence team as his impeachment trial nears. Several South Carolina lawyers had been set to represent him at the trial, which starts the week of Feb. 8. Trump, the first president in American history to be impeached twice, is set to stand trial in the Senate on a charge that he incited his supporters to storm Congress on Jan. 6 as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Republicans and Trump aides have made clear that they intend to make a simple argument in the trial: Trump’s trial is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office. “The Democrats’ efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country," Trump adviser Jason Miller has said. Many legal scholars say there is no bar to an impeachment trial despite Trump having left the White House. One argument is that state constitutions that predate the U.S. Constitution allowed impeachment after officials left office. The Constitution’s drafters also did not specifically bar the practice. Castor, a Republican who was the elected district attorney of Pennsylvania’s third-most populated county, decided against charging Cosby in an alleged 2004 sexual encounter. He ran for the job again in 2015, and his judgment in the Cosby case was a key issue used against him by the Democrat who defeated him. Castor has said that he personally thought Cosby should have been arrested, but that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. In 2004, Castor ran for state attorney general unsuccessfully. In 2016, he became the top lieutenant to the state’s embattled attorney general — Kathleen Kane, a Democrat — as she faced charges of leaking protected investigative information to smear a rival and lying to a grand jury about it. She was convicted, leaving Castor as the state’s acting attorney general for a few days. Schoen met with financier Jeffrey Epstein about joining his defence team on sex trafficking charges just days before Epstein killed himself in a New York jail. In an interview with the Atlanta Jewish Times last year, Schoen said he had been approached by Trump associate Roger Stone before Stone's trial and was later retained to handle his appeal. Trump commuted Stone's sentence and then pardoned him. Neither Schoen nor Castor immediately returned phone messages seeking comment Sunday evening. _____ Associated Press writers Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report. Eric Tucker And Jill Colvin, The Associated Press
Thunder Bay – OPINION – Are we at the beginning of the end of the pandemic? Or are we at the end of the beginning?
There has been a lot of angst over the past year with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our first report on the virus, was on February 2, 2020 when the global death toll was at 350 people.
First Report on Coronavirus – February 3, 2020
At that point, it was still difficult to imagine what would happen.
We have seen lockdowns, restrictions on our daily lives, an economy hit so hard that despite all efforts, many businesses have been forced to close.
Now, let’s talk, a year into the pandemic about some ideas moving forward.
Reality is even at the government’s best goal, of having all Canadians vaccinated by September, and as we are being told there is light at the end of the tunnel, the truth is we have a long ways to go still before things in our lives can return to something like it was.
So right now, there is a lot of pressure on our provincial and federal leaders to ease off on the restrictions. We have some in our society actually claiming the whole pandemic is a hoax.
Heck there are people who still think the world is flat.
As far as I see it, and not being a medical expert or a trained economist, what I am wondering is if we are rushing things. Are we putting all the effort, all the sacrifices, and all the pain in the back seat so we can open the economy?
The coronavirus, COVID-19, and the new variants of the virus which are transmitted much easier and faster are just rearing their ugly head in Ontario and across Canada.
Ontario is headed into what many feel is the home stretch of a provincial lockdown.
The hope is on February 11, 2021 the doors will re-open and people can start up again.
Maybe though that is too soon, and maybe some of us, including political leaders are seeking to open things up because they are getting scared of the people more than the virus?
There have been small protests here in Thunder Bay. There have been larger protests in Toronto.
While most people are treating this situation with the full seriousness it deserves, the voices of a few yelling loudly should not be directing the country.
Frankly if Ontario pulls back the restrictions, takes our eye off the ball, puts the economy ahead of the lives of seniors, the lives of our loved ones, we are likely to see another spike a third wave of this virus.
We need, right now to show the kind of courage needed not to fight this “war” on COVID-19, we need to demonstrate the courage to win this war on COVID-19.
To be real, that is going to mean more sacrifice. It is going to cost all of us more money. We are going to need our government to show the leadership and courage to realize supporting our economy best won’t come from easing off, but rather from stepping up and supporting businesses, supporting people, and showing the needed leadership to get the job done.
Really, if you think of it, is there really any other real option?
If you look at this from a historical perspective, Canada has in our past shown real courage.
The courage to get through the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and all the dangers we have faced.
Are we willing to admit that now, in the fight to knock out COVID-19 our desire to go shopping is greater than the lives of Canadians?
Really?
During the Second World War, in the House of Commons, Port Arthur MP and “Minister of Everything” in the Liberal Government of Prime Minister MacKenzie King, C. D. Howe was questioned over the cost of war time armaments.
Howe responded about the high cost, “If we lose it won’t matter, and when we win we won’t care”.
In many ways that is exactly the attitude we need right now.
Instead of rushing to open, we should as a province and as a country realizing that the war isn’t over against this pandemic.
Right now we have a vaccine. That represents hope.
Perhaps in historical perspectives, this is more like El Alamin in 1942.
British Prime Minister Churchill said after the Allied victory, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
That is where we are right now. The vaccine is a victory in the battle, but it is not the end of the battle.
Now no matter how much it pains us, now is the time to double down, not ease up.
We have all sacrificed so much. We are all missing the normal of our lives. May though, pushing and putting the victory ahead of everything else we can see things through to a total victory.
That of course is just my opinion, as always your mileage may vary.
SpaceX is gearing up to launch more Starlink satellites with its eye on Monday to put 60 additional satellites into orbit. The target launch date is February 1, which does represent a delay with the mission initially planned to launch Sunday morning. SpaceX is working hard to put more Starlink satellites into orbit to support its Internet service.
The liftoff on Monday is scheduled for 6:41 AM from Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39A. The mission will see 60 additional satellites added to the network following the ten satellites that were launched on January 24. The ten satellites that SpaceX put into orbit earlier this month all went into a unique orbit, allowing them to provide Internet coverage to Alaska.
That orbit did require special permission from the FCC for deployment. SpaceX did conduct a test fire of the Falcon 9 rocket that will deliver the satellites into orbit on Monday morning, assuming all goes well. A static fire test is required before any launch. SpaceX’s Starlink Internet service has the potential to radically alter Internet access for millions of people in the US and abroad.
Many rural communities are vastly underserved when it comes to broadband access paying high costs for slow speeds. Starlink Internet service has already been tested in some parts of the US, and reviewers show that it easily achieves speeds of 100 Mbps or more with ping times sufficient for gaming and anything else you might want to do.
It’s unclear at this time when SpaceX might have enough satellites in orbit to offer seamless coverage of the United States. Current beta testers for the service are paying around $500 for equipment and $100 per month for ongoing access.
We truly live on the cusp of a remarkable new era of space exploration, with SpaceX rockets rumbling almost every month and international probes spread out around the Milky Way capturing wondrous images of asteroids, comets, planets, moons, and our own shining Sun.
With all the activity and media coverage of these spacecraft and probes, it's easy to become complacent or apathetic towards the data and photos their missions are delivering back to Earth. So let's pause for a moment and gaze into the heavens at these dazzling new pics from NASA/ESA's Solar Orbiter as it traverses our solar system studying our home star.
The new video footage below, pieced together with a series of photos, shows an incredibly rare cosmic tableaux of Earth, Mars, and Venus, with the faint light of Uranus also winking at us from beyond.
These inspiring images were obtained on November 18, 2020 by the SoloHI camera installed aboard Solar Orbiter. Venus (left), Earth (middle), and Mars (right) are clearly visible in the foreground, with a tapestry of bright stars in the background, all captured while the spacecraft loops around the Sun. Eagle-eyed astronomers also noted that Uranus shares the stage near the bottom edge.
“Solar Orbiter is the most complex scientific laboratory ever to have been built to study the Sun and the solar wind, taking images of our star from closer than any spacecraft before,” ESA researchers noted. “The Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) is one of the six remote-sensing instruments onboard the mission. During the cruise phase, these are still being calibrated during specific periods, but are switched off otherwise.”
Venus, Earth, and Mars shift slightly in the SoloHI instrument's field-of-view. Venus is the brightest object seen, hovering roughly 30 million miles away from the Solar Orbiter. When the shots were taken that day, the distance to Earth was 156 million miles and 206 million miles to Mars. Far off Uranus is a mere dot located beside the official time code.
“At the moment of the recording, Solar Orbiter was on its way to Venus for its first gravity assist flyby, which happened on December 27,” ESA scientists explained. “Venus and Earth flybys will bring the spacecraft closer to the Sun and tilt its orbit in order to observe our star from different perspectives.”
Every now and again, we get a little glimpse of just how far human ingenuity has gone.
Quite literally: The above image was taken by a spacecraft travelling through the Solar System while it was at a distance of 251 million kilometres (156 million miles) from Earth – more than the distance between Earth and the Sun by nearly half again.
It was snapped by NASA and the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, a mission to study the Sun, on 18 November 2020, while en route to its destination. It joins a burgeoning tradition of photos of Earth taken by instruments far beyond where humans ourselves can venture.
But it's not just Earth in Solar Orbiter's image; Venus and Mars make an appearance, too, 48 million and 332 million kilometres from the spacecraft, respectively. It's a lovely family portrait when you think about it – three rocky planets, so similar in many ways, but so very different from each other – seen through a scientific instrument – the Heliospheric Imager – designed to study the heart of the Solar System.
(ESA/NASA/NRL/Solar Orbiter/SolOHI)
The Solar Orbiter launched in February 2020, and its flight was planned to make several Venus flybys to take advantage of the planet's gravity for a speed boost, a manoeuvre known as a gravity assist. The image of the planets was taken as the Solar Orbiter was moving towards Venus for one of these flybys.
By the time Solar Orbiter arrives in position around the Sun to start operations in November 2021, it will be swooping far outside the planetary plane to glimpse the Sun's polar regions. This will be tremendously exciting since, due to our vantage point on Earth, we've never directly imaged the Sun's poles.
While it is in transit, the Solar Orbiter is making observations. This helps the Solar Orbiter team back here on Earth calibrate and test the instruments on board, but that data can be used for scientific analysis, too, of planets, of the solar wind, of space weather.
It gives us a little inspiring reminder, too, of the fragility and resilience of our own existence. Such photos always call to mind the words of Carl Sagan, in his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot, of a photo of Earth taken by Voyager 1 on its way out of the Solar System.
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives," he wrote.
"The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilisation, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
NASA decides to redo SLS Green Run Static Fire - NASASpaceFlight.com
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Earth's second moon will make a close approach to the planet next week before drifting off into space, never to be seen again.
"What second moon," you ask? Astronomers call it2020 SO — a small object that dropped into Earth's orbit about halfway between our planet and the moon in September 2020. Temporary satellites like these are known as minimoons, though calling it a moon is a bit deceptive in this case; in December 2020, NASA researchers learned that the object isn't a space rock at all, but ratherthe remains of a 1960s rocket booster involved in the American Surveyor moon missions.
This non-moon minimoon made its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 1 (the day before NASA identified it as the long-lost booster), but it's coming back for one more victory lap,according to EarthSky.org. Minimoon 2020 SO will make a final close approach to Earth on Tuesday (Feb. 2) at roughly 140,000 miles (220,000 kilometers) from Earth, or 58% of the way between Earth and the moon.
Get ready to explore the wonders of our incredible universe! The "Space.com Collection" is packed with amazing astronomy, incredible discoveries and the latest missions from space agencies around the world. From distant galaxies to the planets, moons and asteroids of our own solar system, you’ll discover a wealth of facts about the cosmos, and learn about the new technologies, telescopes and rockets in development that will reveal even more of its secrets. View Deal
The booster will drift away after that, leaving Earth's orbit entirely by March 2021, according to EarthSky. After that, the former minimoon will be just another object orbiting the sun. The Virtual Telescope Project in Rome will host an online farewell to the object on the night of Feb. 1.
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NASA learned that the object has made several close approaches to Earth over the decades, even coming relatively near in 1966 — the year that the agency launched its Surveyor 2 lunar probe on the back of a Centaur rocket booster. That gave scientists their first big clue that 2020 SO was man-made; they confirmed it after comparing the object's chemical makeup with that of another rocket booster, which has been in orbit since 1971.
Godspeed, minimoon 2020 SO. We built you. We abandoned you. And now, you abandon us.
NASA will conduct a second hot fire test for its first Space Launch System (SLS) mega rocket in February after the first attempt ended in an early shutdown, earlier than planned this month.
"NASA plans to conduct a second Green Run hot fire test as early as the fourth week in February with the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket's core stage that will launch the Artemis I mission to the Moon," the space agency said in a statement on Friday.
NASA's Artemis I mission is an uncrewed flight test that will launch Orion on the agency's Space Launch System rocket to orbit the Moon and return to Earth.
The Green Run is a comprehensive assessment of the rocket's core stage prior to launching Artemis missions.
While the first hot fire test marked a major milestone for the programme with the firing of all four RS-25 engines together for the first time for about a minute, it ended earlier than planned.
After evaluating data from the first hot fire and the prior seven Green Run tests, NASA and core stage lead contractor Boeing determined that a second, longer hot fire test should be conducted and would pose minimal risk to the Artemis I core stage while providing valuable data to help certify the core stage for flight.
Inspections showed the core stage hardware, including its engines, and the B-2 test stand is in excellent condition after the first hot fire test, and no major repairs are needed to prepare for a second hot fire test at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
All SLS rockets use the same core stage design, so a second Green Run hot fire will reduce risk for not only Artemis I, but also for all future SLS missions.
The Green Run series of tests is designed to certify the core stage design and verify that the new stage is ready for flight. The hot fire test is the final Green Run test and will provide valuable data that minimises risk for US deep space exploration missions for years to come.
A second hot fire test is planned for about eight minutes to simulate the time amount of time it will take to send the rocket to space following launch. IANS
NASA is known for revealing titbits of the universe now and then. With several missions twirling around in space, NASA has shown us several pictures and images of the cosmic occurring. The latest one that's trending on the internet is the image of a cosmic sparkle, captured from an irregular dwarf galaxy.
Both NASA and ESA - the European Space Agency shared pictures of the Cosmic Sparkle on their official Instagram handles. The image was shared on the NASA Hubble Space Telescope page, which reveals the I Zwicky 18 galaxy. The sparkle comes from this dwarf and irregular galaxy, which is believed to be around 59 million light-years away.
The post further explains that the bluish-white colors in the picture are two major start burst regions where 'stars are forming at a furious rate'. "A trio of Sun-studying missions took images of Earth and some of our solar system neighbors from different vantage points last year," NASA explains in the post.
NASA Shares Trio Of Images
The first videos show Venus, Earth, and Mars as seen by the Solar Orbiter. To note, the Solar Orbiter is a joint mission of the ESA and NASA. The Instagram post by ESA further explains that Venus is the brightest object in the video, roughly 48 million kilometers away from Solar Orbiter.
On the same day, the distance to Earth was 251 million kilometers and 332 million kilometers to Mars on that day, the post says. "At the moment of the recording, 18 November 2020, Solar Orbiter was on its way to Venus for its first gravity assist flyby, which happened on 27 December. Venus and Earth flybys will bring the spacecraft closer to the Sun and tilt its orbit in order to observe our star from different perspectives", ESA wrote.
Next, the second images are from Parker Solar Probe, explains NASA. Here, the probe captured six of the solar system's planets as it flew by the Sun on June 7, 2020. Lastly, the STEREO spacecraft captured the same scene from a different perspective on the same day. With all these Cosmic Sparkle images, both NASA and ESA have caught the attention of netizens!
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According to one study, phosphine found in the Venusian atmosphere is probably the only common sulfur dioxide. Therefore, the “greatest scientific discovery in history” still has to wait.
In mid-September, a team Announced Venus discovered phosphine in the upper atmosphere. This statement made headlines. And for good reason, on our planet, we know that these molecules can be produced by anaerobic bacteria. From this statement, other studies have questioned the reliability of this possible identification. One of them, led by the University of Washington in collaboration with NASA researchers, Ends The so-called phosphine today is not … no.
A sign of sowing confusion
Each chemical compound absorbs the specific wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. For example, astronomers analyze them to learn more about the chemical composition of the atmosphere. As part of its study, the first group announced Detection of a spectral signal of 266.94 GHz in the Venusian atmosphere.
Another compound that exists in Venus is phosphine and sulfur dioxide, you should know that it absorbs radio waves close to this frequency, so question the researchers.
To separate the two compounds, the team conducted further observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter / Submillimeter Array or ALMA. Analyzes of ALMA observations at frequencies consistent only with sulfur dioxide led the team to this conclusion Sulfur dioxide levels on Venus are too low for the detected signal. Therefore, it should come from phosphine instead.
As part of this new study, researchers began by modeling conditions in the Venusian atmosphere based on decades of observations. They used this basis to comprehensively understand the features observed and unrecognized in ALMA data sets.
Representation of the phosphine (PH3) / ESO / M molecule. Cornmesser / L. Caldada & NASA / JPL / Caltech
Ordinary sulfur dioxide
The team used this model to simulate the signals of phosphine and sulfur dioxide in the Venusian atmosphere at different levels and to analyze how the alma receives these signals in their configurations. Based on the signal shape, the researchers first pointed out that the absorption was not from the cloud layer of Venus as reported by the first team.
Instead, the observed signal Comes from the mesosphere of Venus, about 80 kilometers from the surface. However, at this altitude, harsh chemicals and ultraviolet radiation Phosphine destroys molecules in seconds According to researchers.
They found that there was also alma data Venus severely estimates the amount of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere. “The configuration of the antenna of the ALMA during the 2019 observations had an unwanted side effect: it emits signals of gases, sulfur dioxide, which are found almost everywhere in the Venus atmosphere. Weaker than gases distributed in small quantities“Underlines NASA’s JPL’s Alex Akins. This phenomenon is called spectral line dilution.
In conclusion, the authors not only describe the observations made at the beginning of sulfur dioxide, but these results are more consistent with what astronomers know about the planet’s atmosphere, which includes acid clouds. Sulfuric. Finally, keep in mind that sulfur dioxide is not the third most common chemical compound in the Venusian atmosphere. Not considered a symbol of life.
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Earth's second moon will make a close approach to the planet next week before drifting off into space, never to be seen again.
"What second moon," you ask? Astronomers call it2020 SO — a small object that dropped into Earth's orbit about halfway between our planet and the moon in September 2020. Temporary satellites like these are known as minimoons, though calling it a moon is a bit deceptive in this case; in December 2020, NASA researchers learned that the object isn't a space rock at all, but ratherthe remains of a 1960s rocket booster involved in the American Surveyor moon missions.
This non-moon minimoon made its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 1 (the day before NASA identified it as the long-lost booster), but it's coming back for one more victory lap,according to EarthSky.org. Minimoon 2020 SO will make a final close approach to Earth on Tuesday (Feb. 2) at roughly 140,000 miles (220,000 kilometers) from Earth, or 58% of the way between Earth and the moon.
The booster will drift away after that, leaving Earth's orbit entirely by March 2021, according to EarthSky. After that, the former minimoon will be just another object orbiting the sun. The Virtual Telescope Project in Rome will host an online farewell to the object on the night of Feb. 1.
NASA learned that the object has made several close approaches to Earth over the decades, even coming relatively near in 1966 — the year that the agency launched its Surveyor 2 lunar probe on the back of a Centaur rocket booster. That gave scientists their first big clue that 2020 SO was man-made; they confirmed it after comparing the object's chemical makeup with that of another rocket booster, which has been in orbit since 1971.
Godspeed, minimoon 2020 SO. We built you. We abandoned you. And now, you abandon us.
The mystery of the Dyatlov Pass has raised questions for over half a century.
Soviet investigators/Creative Commons
The Dyatlov Pass incident is a spooky tale most often told in hushed tones around a campfire, but this very real -- and very mysterious -- event has long been the subject of conspiracy theories, scientific conjecture and even a movie or two. But the truth of what drove nine experienced hikers to slash through the safety of their own tent and flee, half-dressed into the snow of the Ural mountains, has remained inconclusive for over half a century.
That is, until now. After 62 years of speculation, scientists believe they may have figured out what happened in the Ural Mountains, all those years ago.
Thanks to simulations, analytical models and even some borrowed Disney technology, the data indicates an impactful force of nature could very well be the conclusive answer.
What is the Dyatlov Pass mystery?
In January 1959, a team of experienced Russian mountaineers were trekking in the Ural Mountains -- at least, they were, until they perished under mysterious circumstances.
Personal diaries and film discovered on site confirm that the team had made camp on a stretch of the slopes known as Kholat Saykhl, or "dead mountain." However, something caused the hikers to flee in the middle of the night, cutting their way out of the tent and sprawling across the mountain -- barely dressed despite subzero temperatures and a thick layer of snow.
When a search and rescue team finally found them, scattered over the pass weeks later, they discovered that while six of the hikers had died from hypothermia, the remaining three hikers had been killed by extreme physical trauma. There were body parts missing -- one hiker's eyes, another's tongue -- and severe skeletal damage to some of the skulls and chests.
The only problem? There was no convincing evidence to explain why or how this had happened. At the time, the investigators concluded only that an unknown but powerful "natural force" had compelled them to leave their tent. Conspiracies range from katabatic winds through to Yeti attack and even infrasound-induced panic, but no definitive conclusion was ever made to explain the deaths.
Until, potentially, now.
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Simulations, Disney and a potential answer
In an article published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, researchers identified data supporting the theory that a small, impactful avalanche could have been the culprit.
It's not the first time such a hypothesis has arisen. In fact, it was one of the first conclusions drawn -- it just had no supporting evidence. In 2019, a team of Russian scientists also concluded that it was an avalanche, but the data to support the theory was once again lacking. There had been no definitive evidence of an avalanche -- even a small one. The topography and snowfall levels didn't match such an incident.
Reported by National Geographic, the data indicated the avalanche would have been particularly small -- perhaps as small as 16 feet of ice and snow, compacted into a solid slab. This would allow for the conditions to mask the phenomena over time, with snowfall obscuring any debris, while still creating enough of a threat to compel the hikers to slash their way out.
But it still didn't explain the extreme trauma left on some of the bodies. To answer that question, the team looked to Disney's Frozen. Johan Gaume, head of the laboratory, combined their simulation tools with animation models borrowed from Frozen's creative team to analyze how the impact of the avalanche would affect the bodies.
Using the simulation, enhanced by these animation models, the team was able to conclude that the suspected avalanche could have had enough of an impact if the hikers had arranged their bedding on top of their skis, providing a rigid base upon which the force would have been exerted -- crushing skulls and chests between the two hard forces.
There's still little evidence as to what happened next, given that all the hikers were found outside the tent, but the best theory is that they then tried to escape the avalanche and rescue their injured teammates -- though their injuries and the extreme temperature would eventually prove fatal. As for the missing body parts? Animal scavengers are the likely culprit.
So while the study goes a long way in explaining a possible, even likely, scenario for the deaths of the hikers on Dyatlov Pass, a lot of questions still remain.
And those questions are inevitably going to keep conspiracy theorists busy speculating for years to come.
Sir Richard Branson's rocket company Virgin Orbit has joined a growing list of private companies that can launch satellites into orbit.
Earlier this month, 10 payloads were lofted on the Virgin Orbit rocket, which was launched from under the wing of one of the entrepreneur's old 747 jumbos.
Sir Richard is hoping to tap into what is a growing market for small, lower-cost satellites.
Space has traditionally had a high barrier to entry. Today, just seven firms make up 75% of the industry, according to Scott Campbell, director at Deloitte Ventures.
The space industry is worth $380bn (£285bn), and 60% of that is commercial. But previously, virtually all investment into space was by governments, he says.
The first real shift came in 2011 when US President Barack Obama opened up space to businesses, and now more disruption is coming.
"The new space race and start-up scene is almost entirely based around space applications: what can I do with data from space?" says Mr Campbell.
Traditionally, building and launching a satellite to collect data or enable communications costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
The satellites weighed up to six tonnes, were the size of a bus, and would be sent up into geostationary orbit - 35,786km (22,236 miles) above the Earth.
But today, you could send up a so-called nanosat weighing just 25-50kg into low-Earth orbit (160-1,000km above Earth) for between $100,000 and $1m.
Launch prices are also falling because technology giants are driving demand, says Mark Boggett, chief executive of British venture capital firm Seraphim Capital.
"Because tech firms need to launch their own satellites in the thousands [for space internet networks], this further drives down the cost of launch and storage for everyone else," he says.
"Whole new industries of businesses can benefit from using this data, essentially democratising space."
Seraphim Capital
And of course, if more data is being transmitted back to Earth, someone will need to process it.
As a result, Deloitte's Scott Campbell has seen "an explosion of businesses around space". In 2011, there were 234 space-related firms in the UK, rising to 948 companies in 2018.
As for satellites, today there are fewer than 9,000 in orbit, according to Seraphim.
OneWeb, SpaceX, Planet, Spire and Amazon have put up 10% of these satellites since 2016, but there are 200 smaller firms behind them who are projected to launch 25,000 satellites over the next four years.
One smaller firm is nanosat manufacturer NanoAvionics, which announced plans in October to create 400 new jobs in the UK. The firm saw revenues soar 300% in the last year.
NanoAvionics
"In the old days, we launched one satellite that had lots of sensors on it. But today, we've launched hundreds of satellites that have the same one sensor, and that's a much cheaper, repeatable way to do it with more consistent data," says Robin Sampson, head of operations at NanoAvionics UK.
PWC UK's space lead Dinesh Patel says the nanosat market is worth only £1.8bn today, but annual growth rates of 20% are projected.
Satellites have traditionally been used for communications, TV services and tracking the weather, but new cheaper options are attracting tech giants with big plans.
Late last year Microsoft announced it was teaming up with Elon Musk's SpaceX.
Their partnership, Azure Space, plans to combine Microsoft's cloud computing services with a global network of satellites.
Tom Keane, corporate vice president at Microsoft Azure, tells the BBC that space makes it possible to "move computing to the edge", which means processing data much closer to users' devices than ever before.
"The edge could be anywhere - on a device... you're wearing, it could be something you're carrying, it could be in your car," he says.
"Space allows you to connect all of that infrastructure together, and then you can use artificial intelligence [like] predictive analytics to gain insights over things that were previously not connected together."
Ground stations, which receive data from satellites, are also potential money makers for IT giants.
Microsoft Azure's Tom Keane plans to revolutionise ground stations, which are currently "expensive and often monolithic devices" and hook them up to Microsoft's data centres.
"Today, in many cases, data [from ground stations] may not be used, or it's certainly not used as broadly as it could be. By connecting that ground station, you take the data from space... to solve problems that you can't solve today."
Another opportunity is to connect the 3.8 billion people in rural areas who still do not have an internet connection.
Other businesses will hope to make money by collecting data from nanosats, processing it with artificial intelligence, and using it in innovative ways to solve problems.
Firms are looking to collect Earth observation data like weather, heat signatures and atmospheric gas composition to help farmers, for example, and to monitor things like flood defences, traffic and construction sites.
But not everyone thinks constellations of satellites orbiting close to Earth is a good idea.
Microsoft
Alex Gellman, boss of Vertical Bridge, the largest privately owned communications infrastructure company in the US, says there are limitations to space broadband due to latency.
Latency measures the time it takes to get a response after you send out a data request.
To send data over a 4G mobile network, the latency through air would be 3.3 microseconds/km, while data sent over fibre broadband, where the signal moves through glass, has a latency of 5 microseconds/km. In comparison, nanosats are much further away.
"If the satellite has to communicate with a ground base station to compute, [the data] has to go back to the satellite, and then to your device, so it could be four round trips before it gets to the device," he explains.
"Satellites do bring internet to places that don't have it, but it's not a service comparable to 4G or 5G ultimately."
Walt Disney Pictures
And then there's the space trash problem, warns Paul Kostek, a senior member at IEEE, the world's largest technical professional organisation.
"We're talking thousands of small satellite launches and there's a traffic management problem that people have not really encountered before," he says.
"What happens if one satellite gets hit by space debris, breaks apart and goes into the orbit of another constellation? You've added more debris in orbit around the Earth."
He doesn't think geostationary satellites will become obsolete, but legacy space firms are wary.
"Everyone's trying to work out where they fit in. There's going to be a shake-up going forward," says Mr Kostek.
