Mugambi M'Mutegi

I wrote a few things about mergers implemented without approval in today’s @BD_Africa, drawing learnings from the Makini School matter.

The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) announces the successful launch of the Climate Camera (ClimCam) payload, destined for the International Space Station (ISS). The liftoff took place today, Saturday, 11 April 2026, at 1:41 p.m. East African Time aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Welcome home Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy! 🫶 The Artemis II astronauts have splashed down at 8:07pm ET (0007 UTC April 11), bringing their historic 10-day mission around the Moon to an end.

Your last flight hit maybe 600 mph. Tonight four astronauts hit Earth's atmosphere at 25,000 mph. Forty times faster. NASA needs them at 17 mph by the time they touch water off San Diego. The engineering behind that slowdown is one of the best stories I've come across. It comes down to one piece of hardware: a 16.5-foot shield bolted to the bottom of the capsule, made of 186 blocks of a heat-absorbing coating called Avcoat on a titanium frame. When the capsule hits atmosphere, those blocks burn away on purpose, carrying heat with them so the crew sits at 75°F inside while the outside hits 5,000°F, roughly half the temperature of the sun's surface. And there is no backup for this system. NASA builds redundancy into everything else on the spacecraft. Not the shield. I have to tell you what happened last time because it makes tonight way more interesting. In 2022, NASA flew this exact shield on an uncrewed test called Artemis I. When the capsule came back, chunks had cracked off in over 100 spots. Way worse than any computer model predicted. Took two years and over 100 lab tests to pin down why. The answer is sort of beautiful in a nerdy way. During that 2022 reentry, the capsule did a "skip," dipping into the atmosphere, bouncing back out into space, then diving in again. The problem was the bounce. When the capsule floated back out, the outside cooled, but the inside of the shield was still scorching. Gases trapped in the coating had nowhere to go because the cooled outer layer sealed shut. Pressure built. Cracks formed. Pieces blew off. Apollo engineers in the 1960s were aware of this exact gas-venting issue. But when NASA remade the coating for Orion decades later, they accidentally made it less breathable. The fix for tonight is my favorite part. They kept the same shield; it was already bolted on, and swapping it would've added 18 months. Instead of changing hardware, engineers changed the flight path. Tonight's capsule does a shorter, shallower bounce, keeping steady heat on the shield so gases can escape properly. Same shield. Different math. One detail from a January safety review gave me real confidence. Engineers modeled total shield failure, coating stripped clean off. The titanium frame underneath could still protect the crew on its own. A physics professor at Northeastern said she'd personally feel safe riding in it because with a system this simple, there are only so many things that can go wrong. By tonight, these four people will have gone 252,756 miles from Earth, farther than any human ever, beating Apollo 13 by over 4,000 miles, at the fastest speed a human has ever moved. And the moment the capsule hits the Pacific, a diver will swim underneath and photograph the shield, giving NASA its first real proof of whether the new math worked.

The Competition Authority of Kenya has flagged alleged fuel hoarding and anti-competitive conduct by OMCs, citing risks of artificial scarcity and price manipulation. It has warned breaches could attract penalties of up to 10% of annual turnover, KES 10M fines, and up to 5 years imprisonment upon conviction.

Animation released by NASA shows the process of the expected splashdown of the Artemis II crew in the Pacific Ocean reut.rs/4mjcfXa

Homeward bound 🌎 Today’s the day our Artemis II astronauts splash down on Earth after their journey around the Moon. Here are ways to watch, starting at 6:30pm ET (2230 UTC): nasa.gov/ways-to-watch/

Public Notice on Fuel Availability in the Country.

Artemis II has set a new record for the most distant humans have ever traveled from Earth. On Monday, April 6, the spacecraft ventured 4,700 miles beyond the Moon’s far side, surpassing a mark set by Apollo 13 in 1970, when astronauts flew 158 miles behind the lunar surface.

On the shoulders of giants... 🧑🏼‍🚀 The Artemis II crew aboard Integrity have officially traveled farther into space than any humans before, passing the record set during Apollo. Our live coverage continues: x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

🚀 Huge achievement.

We had @VictorWanyama and he was nice we enjoyed it. Wishing you all the very best in your retirement, Victor. Thanks for the memories 🤍

Wishing you well in retirement, Victor ❤️

It's all been leading to this 🏆 HSBC SVNS World Championship: Explained #HSBCSVNS

You can now find us where you are at! Filing your returns just got a whole lot easier, as in , YOU can now file directly via WhatsApp. No long processes, no complicated steps. Whether uko job, uko kwa nyumba, ama uko kwa shughuli zako, everything you need iko kwa simu yako. Just send a message, follow a few simple prompts, na uko sorted. Ni fast, ni convenient, na it's here to make filing iwe stress-free kabisa

Yesterday, the Authority conducted search and seizure operations at the premises of six (6) foam mattress manufacturers & distributors in Nairobi, Kisumu, Machakos and Kiambu counties. Read more about the exercise/ investigation in the quoted tweet 👇👇

Dreams unlocked. 🔓🇨🇩 Congo DR are going to the #FIFAWorldCup.