MELBOURNE: An Australian warship on Monday rescued a Lithuanian solo rower who had encountered a tropical cyclone while attempting to cross the Pacific Ocean from California.
Aurimas Mockus was taken aboard Royal Australian Navy landing ship HMAS Choules, where he was undergoing a medical assessment, Vice Adm. Justin Jones said in a statement.
The 44-year-old adventurer had been stranded for three days in the Coral Sea around 740 kilometers east of the Queensland state coastal city of Mackay. He had rowed there in an enclosed boat nonstop from San Diego headed for the Queensland capital, Brisbane.
He began the 12,000-kilometer journey in October and was days away from Brisbane when he ran into the storm, which is forecast to cross the Australian coast within days.
Brisbane is 800 kilometers south of Mackay by air.
Mockus activated an emergency beacon on Friday after rowing into stormy seas and 80kph winds generated by Tropical Cyclone Alfred, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said in a statement.
The rescue authority sent a plane that made radio contact with Mockus on Saturday. Mockus reported he was “fatigued,” the authority said.
The warship is taking Mockus south beyond Brisbane to Sydney in New South Wales, the navy said.
The cyclone has continued to track south and on Monday was 450 kilometers east of Brisbane, authorities said.
The cyclone is forecast to turn west and cross the Australian coast on Thursday or Friday.
Mockus was attempting to become one of the few rowers who have crossed the Pacific alone and without stopping.
Brit Peter Bird arguably became the first in 1983. He rowed from San Francisco and was towed the final 48 kilometers to the Australian mainland. But he is considered to have rowed close enough to Australia to have made the crossing.
Fellow Brit John Beeden rowed from San Francisco to the Queensland city of Cairns in 2015 and is considered by some to have made the first successful crossing.
Australian Michelle Lee became the first woman to make the crossing in 2023, rowing from Ensenada in Mexico to Queensland’s Port Douglas.
Another Australian, Tom Robinson, in 2022 attempted to become the youngest to across the Pacific, albeit with a break in the Cook Islands. He set out from Peru and spent 265 days at sea before he was rescued off Vanuatu in 2023.
A wave capsized the 24-year-old’s boat, leaving him clinging naked to the hull for 14 hours before he was rescued by a cruise ship that made a 200-kilometer detour to reach him.
Australian navy rescues adventurer who hit a cyclone while rowing across the Pacific Ocean
https://arab.news/jstyd
Australian navy rescues adventurer who hit a cyclone while rowing across the Pacific Ocean
- Aurimas Mockus taken aboard Royal Australian Navy landing ship HMAS Choules, where he is undergoing a medical assessment
- Mockus activated an emergency beacon on Friday after rowing into stormy seas and 80kph winds generated by Tropical Cyclone Alfred
NASA and families of fallen astronauts mark 40th anniversary of space shuttle Challenger accident
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: Families of the astronauts lost in the space shuttle Challenger accident gathered back at the launch site Thursday to mark that tragic day 40 years ago.
All seven on board were killed when Challenger broke apart following liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986.
At the Kennedy Space Center memorial ceremony, Challenger pilot Michael Smith’s daughter, Alison Smith Balch, said through tears that her life forever changed that frigid morning, as did many other lives. “In that sense,” she told the hundreds of mourners, “we are all part of this story.”
“Every day I miss Mike,” added his widow, Jane Smith-Holcott, “every day’s the same.”
The bitter cold weakened the O-ring seals in Challenger’s right solid rocket booster, causing the shuttle to rupture 73 seconds after liftoff. A dysfunctional culture at NASA contributed to that disaster and, 17 years later, shuttle Columbia’s.
Kennedy Space Center’s deputy director Kelvin Manning said those humble and painful lessons require constant vigilance “now more than ever” with rockets soaring almost every day and the next astronaut moonshot just weeks away.
Challenger’s crew included schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, who was selected from thousands of applicants representing every state. Two of her fellow teacher-in-space contenders — both retired now — attended the memorial.
“We were so close together,” said Bob Veilleux, a retired astronomy high school teacher from New Hampshire, McAuliffe’s home state.
Bob Foerster, a sixth grade math and science teacher from Indiana who was among the top 10 finalists, said he’s grateful that space education blossomed after the accident and that it didn’t just leave Challenger’s final crew as “martyrs.”
“It was a hard reality,” Foerster noted at the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy’s visitor complex.
Twenty-five names are carved into the black mirror-finished granite: the Challenger seven, the seven who perished in the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003, the three killed in the Apollo 1 fire on Jan. 27, 1967, and all those lost in plane and other on-the-job accidents.
Relatives of the fallen Columbia and Apollo crews also attended NASA’s Day of Remembrance, held each year on the fourth Thursday of January. The space agency also held ceremonies at Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery and Houston’s Johnson Space Center.
“You always wonder what they could have accomplished” had they lived longer, Lowell Grissom, brother of Apollo 1 commander Gus Grissom, said at Kennedy. “There was a lot of talent there.”
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