Penulis: Agus S

The row between US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over a major spending bill has exacerbated uncertainty over the future of Nasa’s budget, which was already facing deep cuts.

The White House had requested huge cuts to the space agency’s budget, which would see funding for science projects cut by nearly a half.

Now the president has threatened to withdraw federal contracts with Musk’s company, Space X, further jeopardising the US space programme.

Nasa relies on the firm’s Falcon 9 rocket fleet to resupply the International Space Station with crew and supplies. The space agency also expects to use its Starship rocket to send astronauts to the Moon and eventually to Mars once it has been developed.

Dr Simeon Barber, a space scientist at the Open University, said that the uncertainty was having a “chilling impact” on the human space programme.

“The astonishing exchanges, snap decisions and U-turns we’ve witnessed in the last week undermine the very foundations that we build our ambitions on.

“Space science and exploration relies upon long term planning and cooperation between government, companies and academic institutions.”

Even before the feud between Trump and Musk, there was concern about the proposed cuts.

Forty science missions, which are in development or in space already, are in line to be stood down.

All sectors have been earmarked for savings, apart from an effort to send astronauts to Mars, which has received a $100m (£74m) boost.

According to Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, which promotes space exploration, the potential cuts represent “the biggest crisis ever to face the US space programme”.

Nasa has published details of how it plans to make the cuts requested by the White House in its budget request to Congress, proposing a reduction by nearly a quarter. The agency says the plan “aligns [its] science and technology portfolios to missions essential for the exploration of the Moon and Mars”.

Dr Adam Baker, a space analyst at Cranfield University, told BBC News that if these proposals are approved by Congress, it would fundamentally shift the agency’s focus.

“President Trump is repurposing Nasa for two things: to land astronauts on the Moon before the Chinese and to have astronauts plant a US flag on Mars. Everything else is secondary.”

Those who back the proposals say the White House’s budget has given Nasa a clear purpose, for the first time since the days of the Apollo Moon landings of the 1960s and 70s, when the aim was to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon.

Nasa’s critics say that, since then, the space agency has become a bloated, unfocussed bureaucracy which routinely goes massively over budget in its space missions and wastes taxpayer’s money.

One of the most egregious examples of this is Nasa’s new rocket for its plans to return American astronauts to the Moon, the Space Launch System (SLS). Its development has been delayed, and costs have spiralled such that it costs $4.1bn (£3.3bn) for each and every launch.

By contrast, SpaceX’s equivalent rocket system, Starship, is estimated to cost around $100m (£80m) per launch because it is designed to be reusable. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space company promises similar savings for its proposed New Glenn rocket.

To no one’s surprise, SLS will be phased out under the White House proposals, in the hope that Starship and New Glenn can take its place. But the past three development launches of Starship have been unsuccessful, and Blue Origin has only recently begun to test its Moon rocket.

“The worry is that Nasa may be jumping out of the frying pan, into the fire,” says Dr Barber.

“The development of these alternatives to SLS is being bankrolled by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

“If they lose their appetite for this endeavor and SpaceX or Blue Origin say they need more money to develop their systems, Congress will have to give it to them.”

Of greater concern, says Dr Barber, is the potential loss of 40 missions to explore other planets and to monitor the impact of climate change on Earth from space, many of which involve collaborations with international partners.

“I think it is very sad that what has taken so long to build can be knocked down with a wrecking ball so quickly with no plan to rebuild it afterwards.”

The projects facing the axe include dozens of planetary missions already in space for which most of the development and launch costs have already been paid for, with relatively small savings proposed on their operating costs.

Also under threat are two collaborations with the European Space Agency: an ambitious plan to bring martian rocks collected by Nasa’s Perseverance rover back to Earth and a mission to send Europe’s Rosalind Franklin rover to the red planet to search for signs of past life.

Prof Sir Martin Sweeting, head of the UK space firm Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and co-author of a Royal Society report on the future of space, says that while the development was “unwelcome”, there may be an upside for Europe as it takes greater responsibility for its own space exploration programme.

“Maybe we have been too reliant on Nasa [as] the big player to carry a lot of the emphasis in space,” he told BBC News.

“It is an opportunity to think about how Europe wants to get a better balance in its space activities.”

But there is much more downside for Europe in the short term. As well as the return of Mars samples and its rover, the ESA risks reduced access to the International Space Station if it is wound down, and the budget cuts cancel Nasa’s extensive contributions to its successor, the Lunar Gateway, a multinational space station planned for orbit around the Moon.

In its recently published strategy the ESA stated it “will be seeking to build a more autonomous space capability, and to continue being a reliable, strong and desirable partner with space agencies from around the globe”, with the implication that it would do so with or without Nasa.

Also facing cuts are numerous current and proposed Earth Observation programmes, according to Dr Baker.

“These Earth Observation programmes are our canary in the coal mine,” he told BBC News.

“Our ability to predict the impact of climate change and mitigate against it could be drastically reduced. If we turn off this early warning system it is a frightening prospect.”

The budget proposals have yet to be approved by Congress. The Planetary Society’s Casey Dreier has told BBC News that many Republicans have told lobbyists privately that they are prepared to vote against the cuts.

But, Mr Dreier worries that there is a strong possibility that political gridlock might mean that no budget is agreed.

It is likely that the reduced White House budget would be put in place as an interim measure, which then could not easily be reversed, because once space missions are turned off it is hard, if not impossible, to start them up again.

The phenomenon lit up skies on Wednesday night, with many capturing the moment on camera.

The moon hasn’t been visible so low in the sky for nearly 20 years due to a rare phenomenon.

The Strawberry Moon will be “the lowest full moon until 2043” and may appear red.

A Nasa exhibit lets you hear the Sun’s raw power, turning solar data into an unforgettable soundscape.

Scientists are analysing the smells of space – from the aroma onboard space stations to planets hundreds of light years away – to learn about the makeup of the Universe.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

A ban on a “destructive” type of fishing that drags large nets along the seafloor could be extended across English waters, the government has said.

The proposal would expand the ban on bottom trawling from 18,000km2 to 48,000km2 (around 18,500 sq miles) of the UK’s offshore areas that are already designated as protected. The plan is subject to a 12-week industry consultation.

A UN Ocean Conference begins in France today amid warnings from Sir David Attenborough that bottom trawling is destroying areas of the seabed and marine life.

A major goal of the conference is for more countries, including the UK, to ratify a treaty to put a third of international waters into protected areas by 2030.

Speaking before the summit, Sir David told Prince William he was “appalled” by the fishing method.

The naturalist’s latest documentary Ocean With David Attenborough showed new footage of a bottom trawling net bulldozing through silt on the seafloor and scooping up species indiscriminately.

Last week, MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee renewed calls to ban bottom trawling, dredging and mining for aggregates on the seabed in what are known as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

The extension proposed by the government would cover 41 of England’s 181 MPAs, and would protect rare marine animals and the delicate seabed they rely upon.

It says it has carried out detailed assessments into the harms caused to habitats and species.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed said “without urgent action our oceans will be irreversibly destroyed”.

Mike Cohen, chief executive at the UK’s National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, called the decision “disappointing” and pushed back on the claims of environmental impact.

“Trawling does not damage most of the seabed. Trawls penetrate the sediment very little, if at all, in most areas and trawling has been carried out for well over 100 years,” he said.

“Sensitive seabed features present today have survived more than a century of fishing, suggesting either that trawling does not happen in those places or that they are not sensitive to it,” Mr Cohen added.

A 12-week consultation will run until 1 September and will seek the views of the marine and fishing industry.

Ariana Densham, head of oceans at Greenpeace UK, said the consultation was “ultimately a long-overdue completion of a process started by the previous government”.

The Wildlife Trust said it hoped the extended ban would be put in place “rapidly”.

It would be a “win-win for both nature and the climate,” added the trust’s director of policy and public affairs, Joan Edwards.

Pressure is also building for more countries to ratify the High Seas Treaty at the Ocean Conference in Nice.

The treaty was agreed by 193 countries two years ago to put 30% of international waters into protected areas.

The treaty will not come into force until it is ratified by 60 countries. It was announced at the opening of the conference that an additional 15 countries had ratified the treaty on Monday, but that only brings the figure to 47. The UK is among those countries that has yet to ratify.

President Macron, whose country is co-hosting the conference with Costa Rica, shared the news with governments in attendance at the conference – it was met with cheers from the room.

He and his counterpart President Rodrigo Chaves both also spoke of their concern about deep sea mining, and called for a moratorium.

“The ocean is not for sale. We’re talking about a common shared good,” President Macron said.”I think it’s madness to launch predatory economic action that will disrupt the deep seabed, disrupt biodiversity, destroy it.”

He was speaking in reference to the decision made by President Trump in April to begin issuing permits to drill in the deep sea – in the hope that critical minerals could be retrieved.

This goes against a decade-long international negotiation to get global agreement on how any resources from the deep sea could be shared. China called the move, at the time, was a “violation” of international law.

More than 2,000 marine scientists have recommended that deep sea exploration is temporarily stopped until there is further research to understand the potential impacts on ecosystems.

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The protected seahorses breed and raise their young in seagrass near Weymouth’s peninsula.

The project in the River Blackwater, near Maldon, allows fish to complete their migration upstream.

Adlington says she hopes people see the charity fundraiser as “a call to action” for conservation.

The 20ft (6.1m) model is set to be taken to a Cornish beach, so people can fill it with plastic.

The fish finger is made locally from bycatch that would otherwise go to waste.

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Unregulated mining in the deep sea should not be allowed to go ahead, the head of the United Nations has warned.

“The deep sea cannot become the Wild West,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said at the opening of the UN Oceans Conference in Nice, France.

His words were echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who declared the “oceans are not for sale”.

The remarks appear to refer to the decision by President Trump in April to begin issuing permits for the extraction of critical minerals in international waters.

There is increasing interest in extracting precious minerals from what are called metallic “nodules” that naturally occur on the seabed.

But marine scientists are concerned about the harm that could be caused.

“The ocean is not for sale. We’re talking about a common shared good,” President Macron said. “I think it’s madness to launch predatory economic action that will disrupt the deep seabed, disrupt biodiversity, destroy it.”

This issue is one of a number on the agenda in France, including over-fishing, plastic pollution and climate change.

Over 2,000 of the world’s scientists met last week to review the latest data on ocean health – they recommended to governments meeting this week that deep sea exploration be halted whilst further research be carried out on the impacts.

More than 30 countries support this position and are calling for a moratorium – but President Trump has not rowed back on his executive order.

A key aim of the UN oceans conference, which runs until Friday, is to get 60 countries to ratify a High Seas Treaty and thus bring it into force.

This agreement was made two years ago to put 30% of international waters into marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2030, in the hope it would preserve and help ecosystems recover.

President Macron declared in his opening speech that an additional 15 had ratified but that only brings the total number to 47.

The UK government has not yet ratified the agreement, though on Monday it said a ban on a bottom “destructive” type of fishing that drags large nets along the seafloor could be extended across MPAs in England.

Even if enough countries sign there are concerns from environmentalists, including Sir David Attenborough, that there is nothing explicit in the Treaty to ban bottom trawling in these MPAs.

Bottom trawling is one of the more destructive fishing practices that can lead to accidentally killing larger marine species.

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The innovative collection created by Blackburn College students will be auctioned off for charity.

The BBC looks at the latest innovation and technology as workboats try to decarbonise.

Lyme Bay is still recovering from the effects of bottom trawling despite a ban, researchers say.

Customers need stronger protections against scammers capitalising on green energy schemes, says Scotland’s consumer body.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Successive governments have failed to deal with the threat posed by spreading sewage sludge containing toxic chemicals on farmers’ fields, a former chair of the Environment Agency has told the BBC.

About 3.5 million tonnes of sludge – the solid waste produced from human sewage at treatment plants – is put on fields every year as cheap fertiliser.

But campaigners have long warned about a lack of regulation and that sludge could be contaminated with cancer-linked chemicals, microplastics, and other industrial pollutants.

Emma Howard Boyd, who led the EA from 2016 to 2022, says the agency had been aware since 2017 that the sludge can be contaminated with substances, including ‘forever chemicals’.

“Forever chemicals” or PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals which come from things like non-stick saucepans. They don’t degrade quickly in nature and have been linked to cancer.

Documents seen by BBC News suggest the water industry is now increasingly concerned that farmers could stop accepting the sludge to spread and that water firms have been lobbying regulators and making contingency plans in case rules change.

Ms Howard Boyd says efforts to update rules, which date back to 1989, to include new contaminants were “continually frustrated by the lack of ministerial appetite to deal with this issue.” In a public letter signed by more than 20 others she called on the current Environment Minister Steve Reed, to act now.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) told the BBC regulations around sludge spreading are being looked at. The water companies trade body Water UK told the BBC they were aware of the concerns but that no legal standards for contaminants had been set by the government.

Unlike the cleaned water that is discharged from wastewater treatment plants, the sewage sludge, or biosolid as the industry calls it, is considered “exempted waste”.

That means the treatment focuses mainly on killing bacteria and testing for heavy metals in the sludge.

There is no routine testing for chemicals, including “forever chemicals”, which have been developed over the last three decades and are getting into the sewage network from both from domestic and industrial users.

“I think the big concern is because these substances (forever chemicals) are so persistent they’ll stay around in the soil for hundreds, if not thousands of years,” says Alistair Boxall, professor of environmental science at York University.

“It may be in 10 years’ time that we start understanding that these molecules are causing harm,” he said. “Then we’re going to be in a bit of a mess, because we’ll be in a situation where we’ll have soils in the UK that will have residues of these molecules in them, and at the moment we have no way of cleaning that up.”

In 2022, the US state of Maine became the first state to ban the spreading of sludge contaminated with “forever chemicals” after high levels were found in water, soil and crops.

Reports and emails shown to the BBC by Greenpeace’s Unearthed investigation unit and obtained using Freedom of Information Act requests, reveal the water industry is acutely aware that attitudes are changing and is both lobbying government and making contingency plans.

The companies are concerned on two fronts: that general rules regarding the spreading of sludge on land (so called Farming Rules for Water) may soon be tightened due to fears that it’s polluting watercourses and that farmers’ concerns about the chemicals in the sludge might make them unwilling to put it on their fields.

The water industry has already commissioned reports looking at what might happen if the spreading is restricted.

One of them predicts that the “most likely” scenario is a shortfall of about three million hectares in land needed to spread the sludge. The water industry says that would lead to them either incinerating it or putting it into landfill. Both options would bring extra costs that would be passed on to billpayers.

“This investigation is yet more proof that we can’t trust the privatised water companies to deal with waste responsibly,” Reshima Sharma from Greenpeace said.

“So long as they can get away with it, they will just pass any problems on to our countryside and pocket the money they should be investing in solutions.”

In 2017 a report commissioned by the Environment Agency found that sludge contained potentially harmful substances, including microplastics and “forever chemicals”, at levels that “may present a risk to human health” and may create soil that is “unsuitable for agriculture”.

It said that “perhaps the biggest risk to the landbank” is from the spreading of physical contaminants such as microplastics into agricultural soil. The report also said it had heard evidence from EA staff indicating that some companies may be using wastewater treatment plants to “mask disposal of individual high risk waste streams not suitable for land spreading”.

“EA colleagues were continually frustrated by the lack of ministerial appetite to deal with this issue,” Ms Howard Boyd, who was chair of the regulator at the time, told the BBC in an email.

“EA proposals since 2020 to reform the regulations were treated with a lack of urgency, hampered by delays in passing requests up to the relevant ministers for decision-making, and a consistent failure by successive secretaries of state to take the matter seriously.”

The letter Ms Howard Boyd has signed jointly signed was organised by campaign group Fighting Dirty. It calls the contents of the sewage sludge a “dirty secret” and demands that Environment Secretary Steve Reed take action.

Sewage sludge is cheaper than other fertilisers, and can sometimes be free, though farmers may have to spread it themselves.

Julie Lewis-Thompson tells me it has “the smell of death”.

“It lingers in the air for somewhere around two to three weeks,” she tells me when I go to visit in her home on Dartmoor in the south-west of England.

She’s gathered together a group of neighbours who’ve all had direct experience of sewage sludge being spread near their properties. Before we start recording there’s a long discussion about whether they should speak out for fear of upsetting nearby farmers and the contractors who spread the sludge, who are often local.

Many of their concerns are about the smell and about potential contamination of their water sources. One young woman leaves in tears saying it had made her sick.

“The fact it’s spread for free ought to raise a few eyebrows,” Richard Smallwood, a local beef and sheep farmer who doesn’t use sewage sludge, tells me.

“If we’re starting to produce food on grassland and arable land which is filled up to the ear holes with PFAS compounds and nano and micro-plastics that find their way into the food chain I think my job’s over before I begin.”

With the alternatives to sewage sludge disposal costly, there’s broad agreement that the recycling of sludge into fertiliser has to be made to work.

“In principle, I think using properly treated human sewage to spread on the land, put it back into the ground for growing food in the UK, that’s the right thing to do,” Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the cook, writer and broadcaster, tells me at his small farm and café in east Devon. He’s also signed the protest letter to the environment minister.

“We know it’s happening. Our farmers are rightly worried. We’ve got to take action. Government’s got to take action,” Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall says.

“That means regulations are not voluntary regulations or guidelines, [they should be] legally enforceable regulations that stop these pollutants getting into the sewage and onto our land.”

Despite the concerns there are still plenty of farmers who see the sludge as a cheap way to fertilise their fields.

Will Oliver is on the National Farmers Union Crops Board. He says he applies about 800 tonnes of sewage sludge every year to fields where he grows maize destined for animal feed.

The water company provides the sludge for free and Mr Oliver says he’s careful how much he uses and trusts the company to make sure it doesn’t have chemical contamination.

“If we can be sensible with how it’s used and spread on the land, it can be positive for farmers and for the water companies,” he says.

“I’m doing it because it’s adding value. It’s improving our organic matter. It’s benefitting the crop that I’m growing, and it’s reducing my spend on bagged fertilisers.”

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs did not contest anything the former chair of the EA Ms Howard Boyd told the BBC.

“We need to see the safe and sustainable use of sludge in agriculture to help clean up our waterways,” a spokesperson said.

“The Independent Water Commission will explore a range of issues, including the regulatory framework for sludge spreading, and we continue to work closely with the Environment Agency, water companies and farmers in this area.”

Water UK represents the water companies of England and Wales, and a spokesperson said: “Although there are some concerns that some bioresources may contain contaminants, such as microplastics and forever chemicals (PFAS), there are no legal standards for them and, in some cases, no agreed assessment techniques.”

“Any standards and techniques are a matter for the government and the regulator and need to be based on firm evidence and detailed scientific research.”

India can’t grow enough apples to meet demand but farmers are struggling to raise production.

Cattle, sheep and goats must be tested before crossing from England to Wales to tackle bluetongue.

West Midlands Safari Park welcomed the cubs named Nero, Nox and Nancy.

The company behind the incinerator says it exceeds UK and EU environmental rules.

Yorkshire Water’s drought plan includes the possibility of hosepipe bans and other measures.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Rolls Royce has been selected to develop and build the UK’s first small nuclear power stations.

It is hoped small modular reactors (SMRs) will help meet the UK’s growing electricity demands, be faster to develop than full size reactors and create thousands of skilled jobs.

Alongside £2.5bn for these SMRs, the government has also announced £14.2bn to build a new larger scale reactor, Sizewell C in Suffolk.

SMRs, sometimes called “mini nukes”, work on the same principle as large reactors, using a nuclear reaction to generate heat that produces electricity.

Inside one or more large reactor vessels, atoms of nuclear fuel are split, releasing a large amount of heat. That is used to heat water, which drives a turbine. Essentially, reactors are giant nuclear kettles.

SMRs will be a fraction of the size and have up to a third of the generating output of a typical large reactor.

The modular element means they will be built to order in factories – as a kit of parts – then transported and fitted together, like a flat-packed power station.

The aim is to save time and money

The government wants a secure, reliable, affordable and low carbon energy system.

In 2024, nuclear accounted for 14% of the UK’s electricity generation, according to provisional government figures. The aim is to boost that.

Along with 30 other countries, the UK has signed a global pledge to triple nuclear capacity by 2050.

But no new nuclear power station has been built since Sizewell B began operating in 1995. And most of those in operation are due to be retired by the end of the decade.

The SMR industry is in its infancy and, around the world, about 80 different designs are being investigated.

Only China and Russia have small reactors up and running.

The UK government is convinced that, with investment, SMRs will create thousands of jobs and boost manufacturing.

Initially though, both government and private investment will be needed to turn the designs into a commercially viable reality.

In the US, companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon, with their power-hungry data centres, have signed a deal to use the reactors when they become available.

In 2011, the Conservative government identified eight sites for “new nuclear” (larger reactors), at Bradwell, Hartlepool, Heysham, Hinkley Point, Oldbury, Sellafield, Sizewell and Wylfa.

Then, in February 2025, the prime minister said he would cut planning red tape to make it easier for developers to build smaller nuclear reactors on additional sites across the country.

Certain criteria would have to be met, Sir Keir Starmer said. No sites would be approved close to airports, military sites or pipelines. Locations valuable for nature or at risk of flooding would also be ruled out.

Great British Nuclear, a public body with statutory powers to push through the government’s nuclear plans, ran a competition to find a firm that would develop and build SMRs in the UK.

It aims to select and announce a location by the end of 2025, with the first SMR operational by the mid 2030s.

Preferred locations are likely to include old industrial sites, such as former nuclear plants, or old coal mines close to the grid.

Rolls Royce beat two American consortiums in the competition, Holtec, GE Hitachi. A Canadian company, Westinghouse pulled out.

The financial controversy around the new large reactor being built at Hinkley Point C in Somerset is a perfect example of what the UK is trying to move away from. It is running a decade late and has overspent by billions of pounds.

SMRs promise to be quicker, easier and cheaper to build.

But while they will eventually be built to order, cost savings don’t kick in until designs have been finalised and modules are reliably rolling off factory lines.

So the first SMRs will probably be very expensive to build.

The cost of dealing with nuclear waste also has to be factored in. Sellafield, in Cumbria, currently deals with most of the country’s waste, but it is running out of space and costs are spiralling.

In 2024, leading nuclear scientists on a government advisory committee recommended any new nuclear power station design should include clear plans for managing waste, to avoid the “costly mistake of the past”.

Taxpayers today are still paying for Sellafield to deal with nuclear waste from the 1950s.

Nuclear industry experts the BBC has spoken to are convinced that SMRs – and more nuclear power – will eventually reduce the cost of our electricity supply.

Public attitudes to nuclear power appear to be linked to those prices. A government survey in 2024 suggested that 78% of people would find an energy infrastructure project more acceptable if they were offered discounts on their bills.

Although the government has announced discounts on electricity bills for households close to upgraded pylons, there has been no such announcement yet relating to homes near SMRs.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says nuclear power plants are among “the safest and most secure facilities in the world”.

Nuclear power’s reputation is tarnished though by high profile disasters, where radioactive material has been released into the environment – including in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan, in 2011.

Dr Simon Middleburgh, a nuclear scientist from Bangor University, whose research focuses on developing new nuclear materials, describes the smaller reactors that are being considered for the UK as “incredibly safe”.

“The UK’s ONR (Office for Nuclear Regulation) is treated as a sort of gold standard internationally in terms of the regulatory environment,” he told BBC News.

Some experts do have concerns about nuclear waste. Scientists from the government advisory group recently said the issue of how radioactive waste from SMRs that are in the design stage “appears, with some exceptions… to have been largely ignored or at least downplayed”.

The number and location of SMRs is also a security issue.

With more reactors spread over a larger area, potentially built on industrial sites and closer to people, Dr Ross Peel, a researcher in civil nuclear security from Kings College London, says the security burden will be higher.

Security at nuclear power stations is provided by armed police – the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. Dr Peel says the fact that existing nuclear sites generally have “miles of empty land around them” means that anyone in the vicinity arouses suspicion. If officers spot anyone they could just “look through the binoculars and ask ‘what are you doing?’,” he said.

“In urban or industrial environments, suddenly you’re trying to do security in a very different [way].”

As government investment is announced, what is Sizewell C and what will it mean for the area?

New heating systems will “significantly cut energy use and emissions”, a council says.

What do local colleges say about the prospects for locals of employment and training at Sizewell C?

Ros Atkins looks at the reasons behind the government’s investment in nuclear power, and how its plan fits into the UK’s energy mix.

Sir Keir Starmer says the development of Sizewell C on the Suffolk coastline will create 10,000 jobs over the next decade.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

The first ever video and images of the Sun’s south pole have been sent back to Earth by the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft.

The new images will enable scientists to learn how the Sun cycles between periods of raging storms and quiet times.

This is important because intense solar activity can affect satellite communication and knock out power grids on Earth.

The new images show a shimmering bright atmosphere which in parts reaches temperatures of a million degrees Celsius. Interspersed are darker clouds of gas, which although much cooler, are still a searing one hundred thousand degrees.

The pictures are the closest and most detailed ever taken of the Sun and will help scientists learn how the star that gives us life on Earth actually works, according to Prof Carole Mundell, ESA’s Director of Science

“Today we reveal humankind’s first-ever views of the Sun’s pole,” she says.

“The Sun is our nearest star, giver of life and potential disruptor of modern space and ground power systems, so it is imperative that we understand how it works and learn to predict its behaviour”.

From Earth, the Sun is so bright that it appears like a featureless disc. But at different frequencies and using special filters, scientists can see it in its true form: as a dynamic fluid ball, with magnetic fields twisting and turning on the surface and conjuring up flares and loops of gas into its atmosphere.

It is these magnetic fields that determine when the Sun rages and spits out particles toward the Earth.

Scientists know that the Sun has a quiet period when the magnetic fields are ordered, with our star having a fixed magnetic north and south pole. This is a phase when the Sun is not able to produce violent explosions, but these fields then become complex and chaotic as they reorientate with the north and south poles flipping approximately every 11 years.

During the chaotic period the Sun tries to reduce its complexity and violence spills out, as bits of the Sun hurtle toward the Earth. These solar storms can damage communications satellites and power grids, though they can also cause beautiful auroras in the sky.

According to Prof Lucie Green of UCL, it has been hard to predict this activity with computer models of the Sun because there has been no data on the migration of the magnetic fields towards the poles. But that has now changed

“We now have the missing piece of the puzzle,” she told BBC News.

“The reversal of the polar magnetic fields on the Sun has been one of the big open questions in science and what we will be able to do with Solar Orbiter is measure for the first time the really important fluid flows that grab pieces of the magnetic field across the Sun and transport them to the polar regions”.

The ultimate goal is to develop computer models of the Sun so that this so-called space weather can be predicted. Accurate forecasts will enable satellite operators, power distribution companies, as well as aurora watchers, to better plan for intense solar storms.

“This is the Holy Grail of solar physics,” says Prof Christopher Owen, who specialises in solar wind studies using data from the spacecraft.

“Solar Orbiter will enable us to get to the bottom of some of the basic science of space weather. But a little more work needs to be done before we get to the point where we see signals on the Sun that we can rely on to predict eruptions that might hit the Earth”.

Solar Orbiter also has captured new images of chemical elements at different layers of the Sun and their movement. These have been taken using an instrument called SPICE, which measures the specific frequencies of light, called spectral lines, which are sent out by specific chemical elements hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, neon and magnesium at known temperatures.

For the first time, the SPICE team has tracked spectral lines to measure how fast clumps of solar material are moving. These measurements can reveal how particles are flung out from the Sun in the form of solar wind.

The phenomenon lit up skies on Wednesday night, with many capturing the moment on camera.

The moon hasn’t been visible so low in the sky for nearly 20 years due to a rare phenomenon.

A Nasa exhibit lets you hear the Sun’s raw power, turning solar data into an unforgettable soundscape.

A multi-billion pound project to build a nuclear power station could get the go-ahead on Wednesday.

The space agency has published its budget request to Congress which would see funding for science projects cut by nearly a half.

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Scientists have discovered a new species of dinosaur – in the collection of a Mongolian museum – that they say “rewrites” the evolutionary history of tyrannosaurs.

Researchers concluded that two 86 million-year-old skeletons they studied belonged to a species that is now the closest known ancestor of all tyrannosaurs – the group of predators that includes the iconic T.rex.

The researchers named the species Khankhuuluu (pronounced khan-KOO-loo) mongoliensis, meaning Dragon Prince of Mongolia.

The discovery, published in Nature, is a window into how tyrannosaurs evolved to become powerful predators that terrorised North America and Asia until the end of the reign of the dinosaurs.

“‘Prince’ refers to this being an early, smaller tyrannosauroid,” explained Prof Darla Zelenitsky, a palaeontologist from the University of Calgary in Canada. Tyrannosauroids are the superfamily of carnivorous dinosaurs that walked on two legs.

The first tyrannosauroids though were tiny.

PhD student Jared Voris, who led the research with Prof Zelenitsky, explained: “They were these really small, fleet-footed predators that lived in the shadows of other apex predatory dinosaurs.”

Khankhuuluu represents an evolutionary shift – from those small hunters that scampered around during the Jurassic period – to the formidable giants, including T.rex.

It would have weighed about 750kg, while an adult T.rex could have weighed as much as eight times that, so “this is a transitional [fossil],” explained Prof Zelenitsky, “between earlier ancestors and the mighty tyrannosaurs”.

“It has helped us revise the tyrannosaur family tree and rewrite what we know about the evolution of tyrannosaurs,” she added.

The new species also shows early evolutionary stages of features that were key to the tyrannosaurs’ tyranny, including skull anatomy that gave it a strong jaw. Jared Voris explained: “We see features in its nasal bone that eventually gave tyrannosaurs those very powerful bite forces.”

The evolution of such powerful jaws allowed T.rex to pounce on larger prey, and even bite through bone.

The two partial skeletons that the team examined in this study were first discovered in Mongolia back in the early 1970s. They were initially assigned to an existing species, known as Alectrosaurus, but when Mr Voris examined them, he identified the Tyrannosaur-like features that set it apart.

“I remember getting a text from him – that he thought this was a new species,” recalled Prof Zelenitsky.

The fact that this group of dinosaurs were able to move between North America and Asia – via land bridges that connected Siberia and Alaska at the time – also helped them to find and occupy different niches.

Mr Voris explained: “That movement back and forth between the continents basically pushed the evolution of different tyrannosaur groups” over millions of years.

Prof Zelinitsky added: “This discovery shows us that, before tyrannosaurs became the kings, they were princes.”

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The zoo says the puppets will “inspire” guests to think about their impact on the natural world.

The seven-metre tall sauropod sculpture – named Boom Boom – has divided local opinion.

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As the skies unleashed six months of rain in February over North Queensland, Australia, many locals endured sleepless nights, unsure what level of flooding and damage they would wake up to.

Perhaps none more so than Andrew Brown – a cybersecurity lecturer by day, with a side hustle as a self-made amateur weather forecaster.

Few know that Mr Brown is the brains behind Wally’s Weather – a Facebook page with 107,000 followers and 24 million monthly views, focusing on weather across the tropical state of Queensland.

During the record-breaking flooding, when 400 people were forced to evacuate their homes, Mr Brown published round the clock posts, even waking in the night to share updates, out of a sense of duty and responsibility to his audience.

He even left work early when he spotted on his weather radar that five hours of non-stop rain would be approaching, advising not just his Facebook followers, but his bosses, colleagues, wife and adult children to do the same.

“When there’s a big weather event, you try and give people as much notice as possible.”

He is based in Townsville, the regional centre of an area known for a rain-drenched, hot, humid wet season from January to March.

“People want to know what’s going on, because even if they lose power, they’ve probably still got an internet connection. These systems are notorious for happening at night time when you can’t see what’s going on, so you do feel like their eyes and ears,” says Mr Brown.

Mr Brown’s active, highly engaged Facebook audience is indicative of how more members of the public are turning to social media for news and weather updates – in the US, it’s how 20% of adults get this information, according to Pew Research Centre.

People pay as much attention to influencers on Facebook as they do journalists and the mainstream media, and actually pay more attention to them than their mainstream counterparts on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, according to a study by the Reuters Institute and University of Oxford.

Prof Daniel Angus is director of the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology.

When Brisbane-based Prof Angus found himself caught up in the heavy rain and flooding brought on by Tropical Cyclone Alfred also in February, he preferred to follow official advice from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, as he believes they still provide the most accurate forecasts and warnings.

Prof Angus recognises the rising popularity of weather influencers like Mr Brown’s Wally’s Weather as stemming from not just a broader trend of public mistrust towards mainstream media and government sources, but about filling gaps in coverage and relatability.

“Weather influencers have gained popularity, particularly in rural and regional areas, because they provide highly localised, real-time updates that mainstream media can often overlook,” says Prof Angus.

“They engage directly with their audience, offering personalised analysis and responding to community concerns in a way that traditional news outlets typically don’t.

“Their credibility has grown because they are seen as passionate, knowledgeable, and often deeply embedded in the communities they report on.”

Yet the issue with weather influencers, Prof Angus notes, is their tendency to scaremonger, as social media weather forecaster Higgins Storm Chasing, also based in Townsville, has been criticised for.

In 2018, it was criticised for predicting historic levels of rainfall and flooding to its one million Facebook followers, which didn’t materialise.

Higgins Storm Chasing, which has hired professional meteorologist and amateur tornado chaser Thomas Hinterdorfer, didn’t respond to the BBC’s request for an interview.

“Weather influencers are often prone to hyperbolic and exaggerated claims, as they are not held to the same standards or consequences as their mainstream and official government counterparts, which has led to claims of scaremongering, and propagation of misinformation,” explains Prof Angus.

“What we have to understand is that they are part of an attention economy. The more eyes they have, the more engagement they see on their metrics. The bureau and governments are very reserved in putting out alerts and evacuation orders, because it only takes a few non-events for people to lose their trust in them,” says Professor Angus.

“They have to answer for that, whereas for Higgins or any of the others, there’s ultimately zero accountability if they completely mess it up. “

It’s a view shared by Alan Sealls, a former TV weatherman who now teaches meteorology at the University of South Alabama, and consults as a forensic meteorologist, providing weather analysis for legal cases.

Prof Sealls is also now the president elect of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), which welcomes both professionally-trained meteorologists and weather influencers as members, so doesn’t have an official position on the topic.

But Prof Sealls’ personal view is that trained meteorologists with an online platform add value, while those without formal training stand to discredit the profession.

“There are those who are not formally-trained and take more risks in showing and promoting long-range weather outlooks, as though they are as accurate as short-range forecasts, particularly when the outlook hints at extreme weather. That’s considered hype that makes people click and share, increasing the popularity of the influencer,” he says.

“Trained meteorologists avoid that because it causes confusion in implying something distant is likely, when in reality it is uncertain and unknown.

“On the other hand, there are weather influencers who have the equipment and expertise to track and forecast local weather when it is extreme, in times of crisis, often giving more focus to communities that don’t get full coverage from traditional TV stations. “

While Andrew Brown of Wally’s Weather is self taught in meteorology, he has a masters in IT and numerous other technology qualifications.

His investment in forecasting equipment has been so big that he introduced paid subscriptions three years ago, but they mainly just cover his costs.

The advancement of AI, he says, gives him more time to accurately analyse data and communicate it to his followers. It will also allow him to expand to an Australia-wide operation.

Yet there is money to be made in the world of weather influencing. Colorado-based Andrew Markowitz has a meteorology degree and works full-time for an energy company, but also has 135,000 followers on a TikTok weather page.

Through a combination of live stream donations, sponsorships, brand deals, and TikTok’s Creativity Program which helps creators monetise their content, Mr Markowitz says he can earn up to thousands of dollars a month.

“It’s definitely not enough to quit my job, nor would I want to. I just treat it as fun money on the side, which I usually spend on travels,” says Mr Markowitz.

Back in Australia, Mr Brown says he would like to retire from teaching, and have more time to focus on Wally’s Weather, and to spend with his grandchildren, but acknowledges that this is a while away. But what he doesn’t want is to be the face of the page – something he’s so far avoided.

“I don’t go out of my way to reveal who I am, because I like to be able to walk down the street and not be harassed. I’ve been interviewed on the radio before, and then walked past the person, and they had no idea it was me,” says Mr Brown.

“Sometimes I can stand in line and hear people talking about the page, and they have no idea that I’m right there. It all adds to the fun.”

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High above the Arctic Circle, the archipelago of Svalbard lies halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.

Frozen, mountainous, and remote, it’s home to hundreds of polar bears and a couple of sparse settlements.

One of those is Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost town, and just outside the settlement, in a decommissioned coal mine, is The Arctic World Archive (AWA) – an underground vault for data.

Customers pay to have their data stored on film and kept in the vault, for potentially hundreds of years.

“This is a place to make sure that information survives technology obsolescence, time and ageing. That’s our mission,” says founder Rune Bjerkestrand, leading the way inside.

Switching on head-torches we descended a dark passageway and followed the old rail tracks 300 metres into the mountainside, until we reached the archive’s metal door.

Inside the vault, stands a shipping container stacked with silver packets, each containing reels of film, on which the data is stored.

“It’s a lot of memories, a lot of heritage,” Mr Bjerkestrand says.

“It’s anything from digitised art pieces, literature, music, motion picture, you name it.”

Since the archive’s launch eight years ago, more than 100 deposits have been made by institutions, companies and individuals, from 30-plus countries.

Among the many digitised artefacts are 3D scans and models of the Taj Mahal; tranches of ancient manuscripts from the Vatican Library; satellite observations of Earth from space; and Norway’s treasured painting, the Scream, by Edvard Munck.

The AWA is a commercial operation and relies on technology provided by Norwegian data preservation company, Piql, which Mr Bjerkestrand also heads.

It was inspired by the Global Seed Vault, a seed bank that’s located only a few hundred metres away, a repository where crops can be recovered after natural or manmade disasters.

“Today, there are a lot of risks to information and data,” said Mr Bjerkstand. “There is terrorism, war, cyber hackers.”

According to him, Svalbard is the perfect place, for hosting a secure data storage facility.

“It’s far away from everything! Far away from wars, crisis, terrorism, disasters. What could be safer!”

Underground it’s dark, dry and chilly, with temperatures remaining sub-zero all year-round; conditions which Mr Bjerkestrand claims are ideal for keeping the film safe for centuries.

Should global warming cause the thick Arctic permafrost to thaw, the vault is still robust enough to preserve its contents he says.

At the back of the chamber, another large metal box contains GitHub’s Code Vault.

The software developer has archived hundreds of reels of open source code here, which are the building blocks underpinning computer operating systems, software, websites and apps.

Programming languages, AI tools, and every active public repository on its platform, written by its 150 million users, are also stored here.

“It’s incredibly important for humanity to secure the future of software, it’s become so critical to our day to day lives,” Githhub’s chief operating officer, Kyle Daigle tells the BBC.

His firm has explored a variety of long-term storage solutions, he said, and there are challenges. “Some of our existing mechanisms can be stored for a very long time, but you need technology to read them.”

At Piql’s headquarters in southern Norway, data files are encoded onto photosensitive film.

“Data is a sequence of bits and bytes,” explains senior product developer, Alexey Mantsev, as film ran through a spool at his fingertips.

“We convert the sequence of the bits which come from our clients data into images. Every image [or frame] is about eight million pixels.”

Once these images are exposed and developed, the processed film appears grey, but viewed more closely, it’s similar to a mass of tiny QR codes.

The information can’t be deleted or changed, and is easily retrievable explains Mr Mantsev.

“We can scan it back, and decode the data just the same way as reading data from a hard drive, but we will be reading data from the film.”

One key question arising with long-term storage methods, is whether people will understand what has been preserved and how to recover it, centuries into the future.

That’s a scenario Piql has also thought about, and so a guide that can be magnified and read optically, is printed onto the film, as well.

Every day more data is being used and generated than ever before, but experts have long warned of a potential “digital Dark Age”, as technological advances render previous software and hardware obsolete.

That could mean the files and formats we use now, face a similar fate to the floppy disks and DVD drives of the past.

Many firms offer long-term data storage.

Cassettes of magnetic tape known as LTO (Linear Tape Open), are the most common form, but newer innovations promise to revolutionise how we preserve information.

For example, Microsoft’s Project Silica has developed 2mm-thick panes of glass, onto which chunks of data is transferred by powerful lasers.

Meanwhile a team of scientists from the University of Southhampton have created a so-called 5D memory crystal, which has saved a record of the human genome.

That’s also been placed in the Memory of Mankind repository, another vault safeguarding historic documents, hidden in a salt mine in Austria.

The Arctic World Archive receives deposits three times a year, and as the BBC visited, recordings of endangered languages and the manuscripts of the composer Chopin, were among the latest reels placed in the vault.

Photographer, Christian Clauwers, who’s been documenting South Pacific Islands threatened by sea level rise, was also adding his work.

“I deposited footage and photography, visual witnesses of the Marshall Islands,” he says.

“The highest point of the island is three meters, and they’re facing huge impact of climate change.”

“It was really humbling and surreal,” says archivist Joanne Shortland, head of Heritage Collections at the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust, after depositing records, engineers’ drawings and photographs of historic car models.

“I have all these formats that are becoming obsolete.

“You need to keep changing the file format and making sure that it’s accessible in 20 or 30, years time. The digital world has so many problems.”

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Going back to the Moon after half a century, and then to Mars, literally means reinventing the wheel.

After all, Mars is a long way to come back if you get a flat.

“One thing you cannot have is a puncture,” says Florent Menegaux, chief executive of the French tyre-maker Michelin.

The tough conditions on Mars have been underlined by the experience of the unmanned Curiosity rover.

Just a year after landing in 2012, its six rigid aluminium tyres were visibly ripped through with punctures and tears.

As for the Moon, the US Artemis missions aim to return astronauts there, perhaps by 2027.

Later Artemis missions plan to use a lunar rover to explore the Moon’s south pole starting with Artemis V, currently scheduled for 2030.

The Artemis astronauts will be driving much further than their Apollo forebears, who in six landings between 1969 and 1972 never ventured more than 25 miles (40km) across the Moon’s surface.

“The target is to cover 10,000 kilometres in 10 years,” says Sylvain Barthet, who runs Michelin’s lunar airless wheel programme in the central French town of Clermont Ferrand.

“We’re not talking about short, week-long durations, we’re talking about decades of utilisation,” says Dr Santo Padula, who has a PhD in materials science, and works for Nasa as an engineer at the John Glenn Research Centre in Cleveland, Ohio.

One big challenge for anyone developing technology for the Moon are the huge temperature ranges.

At the lunar poles temperatures can plunge lower than -230C, that’s not far off absolute zero, where atoms stop moving.

And that’s a problem for tyres.

“Without atom motion you have a hard time having the material be able to deform and return,” says Dr Padula.

The tyres need to be able to deform as they go over rocks and then ping back to their original shape.

“If we permanently deform a tyre, it doesn’t roll efficiently, and we have issues with power loss,” says Dr Padula.

The new wheels will also carry much bigger loads than the lightweight rovers Apollo astronauts cruised around in.

The next space missions will need to drive round “bigger science platforms and mobile habitats that get larger and larger”, he says.

And that will be an even heftier problem on Mars, where gravity is double that on the Moon.

Apollo’s lunar rovers used tyres made from zinc-coated piano wire in a woven mesh, with a range of around 21 miles.

Since extreme temperatures and cosmic rays break down rubber or turn it to a brittle glass, metal alloys and high-performance plastic are chief contenders for airless space tyres.

“In general, metallic or carbon fibre-based materials are used for these wheels,” says Pietro Baglion, team leader of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin Mission, which aims to send its own rover to Mars by 2028.

One promising material is nitinol, an alloy of nickel and titanium.

“Fuse these and it makes a rubber-acting metal that can bend all these different ways, and it will always stretch back to its original shape, says Earl Patrick Cole, chief executive of The Smart Tire Company.

He calls nitinol’s flexible properties “one of the craziest things you will ever see”.

Nitinol is a potentially “revolutionary” material says Dr Padula, because the alloy also absorbs and releases energy as it changes states. It may even have solutions to heating and refrigeration, he says.

However, Mr Barthet at Michelin thinks that a material closer to a high-performance plastic will be more suitable for tyres that need to cover long distances on the Moon.

Bridgestone has meanwhile taken a bio-mimicry approach, by making a model of the footpads of camels.

Camels have soft, fatty footpads that disperse their weight on to a wider surface area, keeping their feet from sinking into loose sandy soil.

Inspired by that, Bridgestone is using a felt-like material for its tread, while the wheel comprises thin metal spokes that can flex.

The flexing divides the lunar module’s weight into a larger contact area, so it can drive without getting stuck in the fragments of rock and dust on the Moon’s surface.

Michelin and Bridgestone are each part of different consortiums that, along with California’s Venturi Astrolab, are presenting their proposed tyre tech to Nasa at the John Glenn Centre this month (May).

Nasa is expected to make a decision later this year – it might choose one proposal or adopt elements of several of them.

Meanwhile, Michelin is testing its tyres by driving a sample rover around on a volcano near Clermont, whose powdery terrain resembles the Moon’s surface.

Bridgestone is doing the same on western Japan’s Tottori Sand Dunes.

ESA is also exploring the possibility of whether Europe might make a rover on its own for other missions, says Mr Barthet.

The work might have some useful applications here on Earth.

While working on his doctorate at the University of Southern California, Dr Cole joined a Nasa entrepreneurial programme to work on commercialising some of the technology from the Mars super-elastic rover tyre.

An early product this year will be nickel-titanium bicycle tyres.

Priced around $150 (£120) each, the tyres are much more expensive than regular ones, but would be extremely durable.

He also plans to work this year on durable tyres for motorbikes, aimed at areas with rough roads.

For all this, his “dream” remains to play a part in humanity’s return to the Moon.

“So, I can tell my kids, look up there on the Moon,” he says. “Daddy’s tyres are up there.”

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