Jakarta, Indonesia — Indonesia aims to launch 19 satellites into low-Earth orbit next year, part of an ambitious plan to move the country into the forefront of the world’s growing space industry and reduce its reliance on other countries for its satellite data.

The broader program, known as the 2045 space map, is set to begin next year. Officials hope to boost Indonesia’s economy and drive foreign direct investment by leveraging its unique geography as a near-equatorial, fuel-efficient launch point for space travel and research.

While the satellite launches would support key economic sectors such as agriculture and mining with remote-sensing technology to track weather patterns, mining emissions and mineral-rich areas, the longer-term plan includes development of a leading-edge spaceport to reduce reliance on foreign launch sites.

But according to officials at BRIN, Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency, there’s still no confirmation of which company or government agencies would be responsible for the spate of launches planned for 2025.

“The main constraint was the government’s financial planning and budget cuts. We also couldn’t clinch foreign investment partners to join in developing the spaceport because it is high technology and high cost,” said BRIN researcher Thomas Djamalludin.

Starlink, SpaceX and Elon Musk

Jakarta has relied on Elon Musk’s SpaceX for launching its satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida, since 2019, and the billionaire entrepreneur last month launched a Starlink internet services satellite directly from Bali.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has repeatedly invited Musk to use the Papuan province island of Biak as a primary Starlink launch site, which has drawn outrage from locals who say developing the island as a spaceport will devastate its fragile ecology.

Although Biak has an airstrip, military base, deep-water seaport and ground stations, the 500 hectares (1.9 square miles) of government-owned land suitable for the spaceport would require foreign investment to cover the preliminary $613 million required to build the initial phase of the project. The total cost is dependent on what additional facilities investors want to build at the space port.

Luhut Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment, said that Starlink is mulling the offer but that there are no immediate plans for collaboration.

According to Djamalludin of BRIN, China, which has dominated Indonesia’s 5G market and is on track to be the nation’s largest foreign investor, had expressed interest. However, a catastrophic April 2020 rocket launch that destroyed Indonesia’s $220 million Nusantara-2 satellite has complicated Jakarta’s relationship with China’s state-owned China Great Wall Industry Corporation.

Beijing has since dialed back its financial interests, declaring the Biak location too distant, while Jakarta has doubled down on wooing SpaceX for the upcoming launches, deeming the company more reliable, offering more time slots and cheaper reusable rockets.

Indonesia’s director of investment promotion at the Investment Coordinating Board, Saribua Siahaan, told VOA that Jakarta continues offering financial incentives, along with an easy investment permitting process for public-private partnerships.

No takers in 2023

As recently as 2023, BRIN officials promoted their spaceport plans at the G20 Space Economy Leaders’ Meeting and Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum. China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and India were invited as potential partners, but none signed on.

“Despite the 2013 Space Law having been in effect for nearly a decade, [Indonesia’s] government has yet to finalize implementing regulations for commercialization of space and spaceport development,” said Indonesian space-law scholars Ridha Aditya Nugraha and Yaries Mahardika Putro in a recent Jakarta Post op-ed.

Indonesia was the first country in ASEAN to enforce national space legislation. The 2013 Space law provides a legal framework regarding outer space, and it lays the foundation for space industry growth.

Foreign direct investment in space activities brings legal certainty that can attract investors. In the past decade, though, implementation of regulations has not occurred and that has made it difficult for the related ministeries to make Indonesia a space-faring country.

“This must be resolved immediately if Indonesia is serious about making outer space a revenue center and the driver of the economy in the future,” the op-ed said.
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is putting the Environmental Protection Agency’s air pollution-fighting “good neighbor” plan on hold while legal challenges continue, the conservative-led court’s latest blow to federal regulations.

The justices in a 5-4 vote on Thursday rejected arguments by the Biden administration and Democratic-controlled states that the plan was cutting air pollution and saving lives in 11 states where it was being enforced and that the high court’s intervention was unwarranted.

The rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution. It will remain on hold while the federal appeals court in Washington considers a challenge to the plan from industry and Republican-led states.

The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has increasingly reined in the powers of federal agencies, including the EPA, in recent years. The justices have restricted the EPA’s authority to fight air and water pollution — including a landmark 2022 ruling that limited the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming. The court also shot down a vaccine mandate and blocked President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

The court is currently weighing whether to overturn its 40-year-old Chevron decision, which has been the basis for upholding a wide range of regulations on public health, workplace safety and consumer protections.

Three energy-producing states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia — have challenged the air pollution rule, along with the steel industry and other groups, calling it costly and ineffective. They had asked the high court to put it on hold while their challenge makes it way through the courts.

The challengers pointed to decisions in courts around the country that have paused the rule in a dozen states, arguing that those decisions have undermined the EPA’s aim of providing a national solution to the problem of ozone pollution because the agency relied on the assumption that all 23 states targeted by the rule would participate.

The issue came to the court on an emergency basis, which almost always results in an order from the court without arguments before the justices.

But not this time. The court heard arguments in late February, when a majority of the court seemed skeptical of arguments from the administration and New York, representing Democratic states, that the “good neighbor” rule was important to protect downwind states that receive unwanted air pollution from other states.

The EPA has said power plant emissions dropped by 18% last year in the 10 states where it has been allowed to enforce its rule, which was finalized a year ago. Those states are Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. In California, limits on emissions from industrial sources other than power plants are supposed to take effect in 2026.

The rule is on hold in another dozen states because of separate legal challenges. Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

States that contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog, are required to submit plans ensuring that coal-fired power plants and other industrial sites don’t add significantly to air pollution in other states. In cases in which a state has not submitted a “good neighbor” plan — or in which the EPA disapproves a state plan — the federal plan was supposed to ensure that downwind states are protected.

Ground-level ozone, which forms when industrial pollutants chemically react in the presence of sunlight, can cause respiratory problems, including asthma and chronic bronchitis. People with compromised immune systems, the elderly and children playing outdoors are particularly vulnerable.
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SAN DIEGO — A pair of giant pandas are on their way from China to the U.S., where they will be cared for at the San Diego Zoo as part of an ongoing conservation partnership between the two nations, officials said Wednesday.

Officials with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were on hand in China for a farewell ceremony commemorating the departure of the giant pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao.

The celebration included cultural performances, video salutations from Chinese and American students and a gift exchange among conservation partners, the zoo said in a statement. After the ceremony, the giant pandas began their trip to Southern California.

“This farewell celebrates their journey and underscores a collaboration between the United States and China on vital conservation efforts,” Paul Baribault, the wildlife alliance president, said in a statement. “Our long-standing partnership with China Wildlife Conservation Association has been instrumental in advancing giant panda conservation, and we look forward to continuing our work together to ensure the survival and thriving of this iconic species.”

It could be several weeks before the giant pandas will be viewable to the public in San Diego, officials said.

Yun Chuan, a mild-mannered male who’s nearly 5 years old, has connections to California, the wildlife alliance said previously. His mother, Zhen Zhen, was born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007 to parents Bai Yun and Gao Gao.

Xin Bao is a nearly 4-year-old female described as “a gentle and witty introvert with a sweet round face and big ears.”

The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has a nearly 30-year partnership with leading conservation institutions in China focused on protecting and recovering giant pandas and the bamboo forests they depend on.
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WASHINGTON — Reality TV star Paris Hilton called for greater federal oversight of youth care programs at a U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing on Wednesday as she described her traumatic experience in youth care facilities.

Hilton, 43, the great-granddaughter of Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton, has spoken publicly about the emotional and physical abuse she endured when she was placed in residential youth treatment facilities as a teen.

In remarks to the committee on Wednesday, she described being taken from her bed in the middle of the night at age 16 and transported across state lines to a residential facility where she experienced physical and sexual abuse.

“This $23 billion industry sees this population [of vulnerable children] as dollar signs and operates without meaningful oversight,” she said.

“There’s no education in these places; there’s mold and blood on the walls,” she said in response to lawmaker questions. “It’s horrifying what these places are like. They’re worse than some dog kennels.”

Hilton said private equity firms that have taken a greater stake in the industry in recent years focus on maximizing profits, prompting them to hire unqualified workers.

“They’re caring more about profit than the safety of children,” she said.

Hilton first described her experience at a Utah facility in 2021 and has been a vocal advocate for greater oversight of the system.

“These programs promised ‘healing, growth, and support,’ but instead did not allow me to speak, move freely, or even look out of a window for two years,” Hilton told the committee. “My parents were completely deceived, lied to and manipulated by this for-profit industry, so you can only imagine the experience for youth who don’t have anyone checking in on them.”

Several lawmakers agreed that more federal oversight was necessary.

“We must always be concerned about fraud and guard against Wall Street vultures snatching public funds to line their pockets,” Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell said. “We cannot allow the private equity octopus to reach its tentacles into child services.”
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New Delhi — Mushrat Parveen, a resident of a low-income neighborhood in the Indian capital, New Delhi, perches atop a tanker truck delivering water to her neighborhood to escape the chaos that ensues.

“Everyone keeps fighting for water, so I climb on top and use a pipe to make sure I fill two or three buckets. Then I help others,” says Parveen, who in recent weeks has been spending about two hours daily first waiting for the truck, then filling containers and lugging them home.

As taps in urban slums and working-class areas in Delhi run virtually dry, millions have been depending on water ferried by government tankers. It is not the only Indian megacity running low on water. Two months ago, a similar crisis afflicted India’s information technology hub, Bengaluru.

Water shortages are not new in urban India — the scramble for water in low-income areas has been a familiar scene during summer months for many years. But they have been worsening. Amid a weekslong, searing heat wave that gripped Delhi, the city became so parched this season that police were deployed to guard water pipes.

New Delhi’s water minister, Atishi, recently staged a hunger strike for four days, alleging that the neighboring Haryana state was not providing the city its share of water from the Yamuna river that runs through both places, resulting in acute scarcity.

“There are 2.8 million people in the city who are aching for just a drop of water,” she said. Her worsening health forced her to call off the protest on Tuesday.

Political disputes over sharing of water from common rivers have often erupted when shortages intensify.

Experts say rapid urbanization is exacerbating a problem that has been building in recent years.

“What’s happened is that most Indian cities have grown so fast that the water supply networks have not kept up with the rate of growth. Its unprecedented crazy growth,” said Veena Srinivasan, executive director with non-profit WELL Labs.

The populations of Delhi and Bengaluru have more than tripled in about three decades. Delhi is now home to nearly 20 million people while Bengaluru’s population is estimated at 14 million.

These cities have become home to upscale commercial hubs and industries as India’s economy booms, requiring more quality, fresh water. As a result, lakes and rivers harnessed to provide water have been shrinking and ground water levels plummeting.

A 2018 government report said that nearly 600 million people in the country are facing high to extreme “water stress.” That adds more than 40% of the country’s population.

While upscale neighborhoods in Delhi face virtually no scarcity of clean water, experts say slums are the most parched areas in the city.

“In some places especially the lower socioeconomic areas, we find that water availability is as low as 35 to 40 liters per capita per day. So, the distribution of water is iniquitous. On top, climate change comes as a force multiplier,” said Anjal Prakash, research director at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy.

He says lack of investment in infrastructure such as water pipes and storage tanks has made the problem worse. “We have done some patchwork, but we have not done an integrated analysis of how this should be running. Delhi, for example, the leakage from the water infrastructure is about 58%.”

While India is a water-stressed country, the severe shortages cannot just be blamed on a shortfall of water, according to experts. Pointing to poor water management, they say authorities have not paid enough attention to strategies such as recycling wastewater or rainwater harvesting that would help conserve monsoon rains.

Experts say low water tariffs charged in India have also discouraged sufficient investment in schemes that could augment supplies.

“If water is free most of the time, the incentive to invest in good technology to really treat water, the incentive to harvest every last drop of rainwater, simply is not there, because it is not seen as a precious resource that is scarce. That remains a problem we have to grapple with in urban India,” points out Srinivasan.

For many Delhi residents, lives are upended by the water crisis every summer. Elderly residents like 82-year-old Kamlesh Devi say they cannot cope with the elbowing and shoving that ensues when tankers arrive.

“Four to six people come from one household and corner many buckets. Some of us keep standing. If we object, a scuffle ensues,” she says as she carries back two small containers that she will keep aside for drinking.

Ayesha Khatun, a diabetes patient relies on her family members to fetch water for cooking and cleaning because she cannot carry the buckets. “Our work gets affected. My husband sometimes loses a day’s work. My daughter has to skip school,” says Khatun. “And it is common for people to get hurt during the scuffles while filling water.”

With heat waves and water shortages likely to worsen, the situation in urban India could become grimmer, experts warn.
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