station

Scientists sent “Erasmus” lunar cement to the International Space Station. Half a year later, he came back stronger than vinegar

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Taking concrete mixers loaded with cement into space It is not something viable. Therefore, science has long been looking for ways to obtain construction materials from lunar regolith. When they are manufactured the first buildings on the Moonthe cement would not have to be brought from Earth, because it would be prepared on site. However, just because something is manufactured in space, with materials from space, does not mean that it will resist space conditions well, no matter how paradoxical it may be. For this reason, a team of scientists from the University of Delaware recently sent some samples of their lunar cement to the International Space Station (ISS). Six months later, they have returned them to Earth for analysis. What they have seen is very interesting. Stronger than on Earth. The lunar cement samples were placed on the outside of the ISS for six months. After, they were returned to our planet to see how cosmic radiation, vacuum or microgravity had affected them, among other factors. At the same time, other samples similar to those were kept on Earth, in order to verify the differences. When the space samples returned to our planet, it was observed that none had lost resistance. In fact, some had become more resistant after their space stay. The ingredients of moon cement. Broadly speaking, conventional cement is obtained subjecting a mixture of limestone and some clay to very high temperatures. This represents an energy consumption that we cannot even consider when traveling to space. Therefore, the first thing these scientists from the University of Delaware did was look for ways to obtain a cement-like material that did not require that extreme heating. They tried the development of geopolymers, which are materials obtained from clays through chemical reactions. In this case, simulated lunar and Martian regolith was used, which was mixed with a minimal amount of additives. These polymerized to give rise to a material that, when solidified, resembles the concrete we use here on Earth. Not all regoliths are the same. moon dustknown as regolith, is made up of different rock materials. They are not all the same. For this reason, these scientists started with an AI algorithm that predicts the resistance of the final result, depending on the type of regolith that was used as a starting point. This is very useful, as it allows you to select the best options to obtain a strong lunar cement. The results of this other step are published in a different study to the one used to show the results of the spatial exposure. A critical point not so critical. On the other hand, these scientists have identified a key point in the reaction to obtain lunar cement, known as the critical point of the gel, in which the material goes from a functional suspension to a solidifying structure. However, they found that mixing before that point did not affect how long the material took to harden or its final strength. Therefore, there is quite a bit of flexibility in the development of these materials. Taking into account that they want to do it in a place that is not too inhospitable, the less restricted the reaction is, the better. Image | Magnificent In Xataka | A study has tried to find out why space food is so bad: it’s not the food, it’s the astronauts

Play Station Network is down: the service is giving an error and does not allow you to log in

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Friday in the middle of summer, with unbearable heat, seems like a good time to play some games on your PlayStation. Not so fast… If you were planning to play an online game, forget about it because the PlayStation Network service is down and failing all over the world. What is happening. When the service tries to log in, the message “Something went wrong” appears. According to Downdetectorthe problems started today, Friday, July 24, around 12:45 noon and at this time reports are still coming in. The curious thing is that on the PlayStation status page It says that all its services are operating normally. Clearly this is not the case. something went wrong. This is the message that appears when the service tries to log in. This is not a total failure and you will still be able to play locally, but it is not possible to play online titles such as Fortnite, Call of Duty and others. You also cannot download games from the PlayStation Store nor can you see your friends’ activity on the platform. In development…

A Galician gas station already knows the consequences of confusing diesel with gasoline

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Everything seemed to be going well. Well. Neither good nor bad. Everything seemed to be going normally. Until someone raised the alarm. The hose with 95 gasoline was not adding 95 gasoline. And what’s worse, it was not adding gasoline. The green hose was feeding gasoline cars with diesel. This is what happened a few days ago at the Repsol gas station in Ribadeo (Lugo). There, customers have spent almost five hours refueling diesel in their gasoline cars due to an error while filling the tanks. The company already assures that it will take care of all repairs. 270 minutes That is the time between 12:49 and 17:19. That is also the time that the Repsol gas station next to Ribadeo has been supplying diesel instead of gasoline to the cars that stopped at said station, as they have accepted in a statement published through the social networks of the Association of Industrial Traders, Services and Self-Employed (ACISA). It explains that the confusion comes from an error during filling the tanks with the tanker truck. This has meant that for four and a half hours, a mixture of gasoline and diesel has been served to those who wanted to refuel with 95 gasoline. Click on the image to go to the original post “We sincerely apologize to all those affected. We take responsibility for the breakdowns resulting from this incident,” they say in the statement while encouraging all those affected to stop the car as soon as possible, report to the insurance and get in touch through this website. At all gas stations, the diesel hose openings are wider than the gasoline ones, to avoid this mistake. Thus, unless you get stubborn and look for the most unexpected tricks to put diesel into a gasoline car (as happened to former soccer player Dani Güiza)it is very difficult to fall into this error. If it happens as in this Galician case, fill a tank with diesel It can cause serious damage to the car if we start driving it and don’t realize it until it stops completely. And diesel will cause the car’s power to drop and start to emit large amounts of smoke. After running in fits and starts, it will stop. This is a real problem because you have to empty and clean the tank but in the workshop they also have to do an arduous task to clean the spark plugs, the injectors and all the components through which the diesel has passed. When the amount of fuel refueled is low, we could continue driving, but it has to be very low. In this case, the diesel will be mixed in part with the gasoline, so if the tank has not been filled much, the situation may not have been very serious. On the other hand, those who have filled the tank will have to do a deep cleaning of all the components. Photo | Wassim Chouak and Google Maps In Xataka | We thought that gasoline cars were much cleaner than diesel cars. We did not have the effect of the sun

Every summer Spain is more of an oven. This map of AEMET records demonstrates it station by station

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Climate change is bringing increasingly hot summers and a rather hopeless consolation: increasingly it’s harder to remember a cool summer and the feeling that this torrid summer will be the coolest of our lives (this applies equally this summer to the previous one or next summer). And it’s not just sensations: there is data. Without going any further and according to AEMET datathe Spanish state has just experienced the most extreme heat wave ever recorded in the month of June with some days, June 22 and 23, 2026, which were the warmest of that month in Spain since at least 1950. +7.1 °C above usual values. Faced with this reality, someone has thought of marking the maximums recorded by the Spanish State Meteorological Agency on a map that reveals that the frequency and severity with which the temperature breaks records happens more and more often. And if the pattern holds, this historic June could be, in a few years, just a normal June. The dev and data analyst Adrian Maqueda has developed an interactive map from Spain showing each station in the AEMET network and the latest heat record that he has beaten. That there is a new record? (because unfortunately this summer it will surely happen again) Well, the map updates automatically. This system works with both maximum and minimum temperatures. The updated reading data and historical records come from AEMET’s OpenData. From here the readings are crossed to, in case of a new record, indicate it. The more recent the milestone, the more striking the color and the older the color, the more subdued. In this way it is intuitive to detect the thermal records on the map with the naked eye. Of course, it is not the same for a centennial station to set a record as for one that is only a few years old to do so. How hot it is (it doesn’t matter when you read this) Spain, in maximum temperatures Precisely what makes this map so valuable is how visual it is to verify that They are not isolated phenomena applicable to a specific areabut a pattern that covers the entire territory. And it happens more and more frequently: according to the Report on the State of the Climate in Spain 2025 According to AEMET, in Spain in the last decade 221 records for warm days have been broken and only 7 for cold days. Seen with perspective, the average temperature in Spain has gone up 1.75 °C since 1961 and The 12 warmest years in the historical series are all from the 21st century. The widespread and sustained increase in temperatures has direct consequences for health. In fact, the heat already kills us more than the cold. This trend is not exclusive to Spain: according to the World Meteorological Organizationheat waves in Europe are becoming more frequent, more intense and extending to regions that barely suffered from them before. And be careful because Europe is also the continent that comes out worst off. The Tama station (Cantabria) has just renewed its maximum Returning to the map, last week’s heat wave meant renewing a few of those orange circles to set records because of the network of 828 AEMET stations, 13 new maximum temperature records were recorded. For example, it is the case from Tama station (Liébana), in Cantabria: it reached 43.7 degrees on June 23, the highest temperature recorded in that community in any month of the year. The days were an oven, but the nights became tropical: in southern cities like Jaén or Segovia, the nighttime minimums exceeded 28 degrees. In Xataka | This map reveals the exact ‘climate clone’ of your city (and the result is surprising) In Xataka | The easiest way to understand global warming, in this climate map with data from 1940 Cover | Adrian Maqueda

China is preparing to be the only power with its own space station, but NASA does not want to make it easy for it

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The International Space Station (ISS) He is not in his best days. The increasingly frequent leaks in the Russian module and the failures of systems that increasingly require more maintenance have led NASA to set a date for its deorbitation. It will possibly be in 2030 or 2031. When that happens, the largest space station in Earth orbit will be the Chinese Tiangong. Even if it remained as it is today, it would be a step forward in the space race between the Asian country and Western agencies. However, by that time Tiangong will be even larger, as China has recently announced its plan to double the size of its facilities. Three modules and a large observatory. Currently, the Chinese space station It has three moduleswhich were assembled in orbit between 2021 and 2022. However, they are falling short for all the missions and experiments that are beginning to be carried out. For this reason, the installation of three others has been planned: a 20-ton multifunctional module coupled to the main module and two experimental modules. In total, Tiangong would go from 90 tons to 180 tons. But that’s not all. Even before the installation of the first of these modules, the Xuntian observatory will be launched, which will also be closely linked to the space station. More sky than Hubble. Xuntian will have a 2-meter main mirror, slightly smaller than Hubble’s. However, it also includes a 2,500-megapixel camera with sensors that cover a much larger area of ​​the sky. Specifically, the Chinese observatory has a field of view 300 times biggerwhich will allow it to map 40% of the sky in the 10 years that it is expected to remain active. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better than Hubble. Hubble is more precise in the details, but it will carry out very interesting work in much larger spaces of sky. The relationship with Tiangong. Although Xuntian will not be directly in Tiangong, they are closely related, since it will be placed in a very close orbit, so that it can dock with the Chinese space station when it needs to be repaired, upgraded or refueled. More ports. Docking the observatory will be possible because the new Tiangong modules will also include new spaceports. Thus, more ships can be docked simultaneously, improving the volume of work at the space station and making its arrivals and departures more flexible. Besides, in case of emergencyit will be easier to have a ship ready to protect itself or leave the facilities. Xuntian’s field of view is 300 times larger than Hubble’s The International Space Station comes to an end. All this occurs while the International Space Station prepares for his retirement. It is expected to be in 2030 or 2031 when it will join the deorbitation vehicle developed by SpaceX that will be responsible for removing it from its orbit in a controlled manner. NASA right now has its vision much more focused on the lunar bases. However, they must also think about how this station will be replaced when its days end. Initially, NASA had planned for private companies to take charge this time. However, this same year the strategy changed and proposed the construction of a main government module in which various private companies could be attached. Axiom or Blue Origin are the ones that, at the moment, best fit the requirements of this project. The reason for this plot twist has been, in fact, China’s progress in its particular space race. The United States does not want to lose its leadership due to the retirement of the ISS, but to do so it needs to maneuver quickly. The problem is that sometimes hasty decisions can lead to wrong moves. We will have to wait to see what happens with all this in the end. Images | Shujianyang | 中国科学院长春光学精密机械与物理研究所 In Xataka | Western scientists have been debating the origin of Kamo’oalewa for years. China went looking for him

NASA puts astronauts from the International Space Station on evacuation alert

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It could have been just another day of work aboard the International Space Station, but the situation has taken a delicate turn. NASA has put in evacuation alert to several astronauts after an air leak in the Russian part of the orbital laboratory worsened, prompting the agency to order them to take precautionary shelter in a docked spacecraft. The order came from NASA mission control at 9:04 a.m., East Coast time of the United States (3:04 p.m. Spanish peninsular time). Several crew members were instructed to enter the ship SpaceX Crew Dragon and put on their corresponding space suits in case the situation led to an emergency evacuation. There are currently seven crew members on the ISS, but the preventive measure does not affect all of them. Bethany Stevens, of the NASA communications team, explains that The order reaches Americans Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway and Chris Williams, from NASA; to the French Sophie Adenot, from the European Space Agency, and to the Russian Andrey Fedyaev, from Roscosmos. The leak is located in a very specific area of ​​the Russian segment: the Zvezda service module transfer tunnel, known as PrK. According to Stevens, that part of the station has been showing cracks and leaks for some time, an issue that NASA has closely monitored and that Roscosmos has tried to contain until now with operational measures and partial repairs. In development. Images | POT In Xataka | Western scientists have been debating the origin of Kamo’oalewa for years. China went looking for him

steal materials from the asteroid belt (with a stop at a gas station)

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We haven’t built yet bases on the Moonbut already there are those who think in that future in which settlements can be built on Mars. If our satellite is a challenge, the red planet is already the pinnacle of complexity. Therefore, although there is still a lot of time for it to be viable, it doesn’t hurt to think about strategies. A good example is the proposal just made by a team of scientists led by aerospace engineer Serena Suriano. His proposal is based on one of the main problems that the space masons: the lack of materials. In the absence of suitable metals for construction there on Mars, they would have to be sought in the vicinity of the red planet. To do this, they propose “looting” the asteroid belt. It’s not that easy. In the asteroid belt There are metallic asteroids that could be mined for necessary metals such as molybdenum. But there is a problem. Traveling to these asteroids to take construction materials to Mars is not like taking the car on a Saturday to go to Ikea. In that case, the biggest handicap is the families that overcrowd the spaces. In the case of asteroids, the main problem is the orbital dance necessary to leave Mars, reach the asteroid and return. Luckily, these scientists consider that the problem could be solved with a couple of pit stops. An (almost) imaginary ship. When making calculations, it is normal to start from the parameters of a ship that actually exists. For this reason, these scientists have made simulations with an imaginary ship that is not the same, but looks like quite to the SpaceX Starship. The most powerful imaginable today. The ship in question weighs 120 tons, can carry a payload of 115 tons and hold up to 1,100 tons of fuel. This would mean a delta-v of 6.4 km/s. And what is that? The delta-v is a measure of the amount of effort necessary to carry out an orbital maneuver. In simpler terms, it is the change in speed that can be achieved by burning all the fuel in a ship. In this case it would be 6.4 km/s. The problem is that to reach the metallic asteroids that could be mined to build on Mars, taking into account the necessary orbital spins, a delta-v of 10 to 12.8 km/s would be needed. It can be solved. These scientists have designed a plan that includes two pit stops. The first would be on the metallic asteroid itself. Once the materials have been extracted, on the way back we would have to stop at a type C asteroid. These contain volatiles such as water and hydrocarbons, which would facilitate a process known as production on site of propellant. In other words, the type C asteroid would be used as a gas station, using its resources as propellant to continue the trip. If these stops are made, the necessary metals could be obtained with a delta-v of 6.4 km/s. The imaginary ship looks like Starship, but it is not the same 22 pairs. In total, there are 22 pairs of metallic asteroids and C-type asteroids in a 20-year window starting in 2040. This means that, from that moment, when it is assumed that trips to Mars and the construction of bases could already be viable, there would be more than 20 mine and gas station options to bring metals to the red planet. In total, 200 tons of metal could be obtained in that period. It may not seem like much if we consider that it is little more than the payload for a single trip. But fuel needs to be optimized. The loading process on site of propellant is carried out at a rate of 2 kg per day. To fill the tank it would take about 1,500 years. Logically, that is not viable, so you have to go with the tank half full and, therefore, adjust the payload. Why 20 years? For the trip to take place, it is necessary that the orbits of Mars and the asteroids are correctly aligned. It’s as if the road to Ikea only opens once every few years. Therefore, many trips could not be made. Building an entire base would take a lot of time, but it’s something you have to take on. A solution. If chemical propulsion is changed to solar propulsion or nuclearit would be much easier to extract metals from asteroids and, possibly, the deadlines would be shorter. However, these scientists have chosen to make their calculations with the only viable technology today. Maybe in the future the trip will be a little shorter than all this. Of course, building a base will continue to be a very, very long process. Many generations of humans would retire looking at those works. Image | NASA | SpaceX In Xataka | Elon Musk says it will take 1,000 Starships and 20 years to build the first sustainable city on Mars

Spain wants 90% of the people on this map to have an AVE station 30 minutes away. There is small print

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The Ministry of Transport and Urban Mobility wants to turn the train into one of the great mobility axes of our country. To this end, the objective has been proposed to promote the use of high speed in the west of the Iberian Peninsula. The project has a clear headline: an AVE station half an hour away for 90% of the inhabitants of the Atlantic corridor. What has been announced? 9% of the population of the Atlantic Corridor will have access to a high-speed station within half an hour in 2030. This is the conclusion reached by the Territorial accessibility analysis carried out by the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobilitythrough the Office of the Commissioner of the Atlantic Corridor. If the plans are fulfilled, the Ministry assures that in less than five years a total of 62 high-speed stations will be ready, spread across 28 provinces and 11 autonomous communities. The jump will have to be substantial because right now there are 33 stations available with high-speed service distributed in 8 autonomous communities and 19 provinces. What is the Atlantic Corridor? Within the mobility of the European Union, the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) defines nine major corridors to define your roadmap and investments. These corridors are large spaces through which a very important part of the citizens of the European Union and their goods move. In the different corridors, therefore, all mobility nodes are taken into account, from ports and airports to railways and roads. In the case of the Atlantic Corridor we are talking about a set of communication nodes that link the south of Germany with Paris and the entire west coast of France with Spain (on its western slope) and Portugal, culminating in the Cádiz area. In these moments, the Atlantic Corridor as it passes through our country offers the following data: 5,400 kilometers of railway tracks 2,900 kilometers of roads Nine seaports Five international airports Nine intermodal stations Four cross-border crossings with Portugal or France And it is linked to 13 autonomous communities and 40 provinces By train. Among the infrastructures designed to facilitate movement through all these places is the train. And, specifically, the boost to high speed that the European Union wants to give to encourage the use of this means of transport instead of the plane. These investments, according to the Ministry of Transport, will have to be completed before December 31, 2030 and represent an investment of 3,123 million euros. It must be taken into account that the European Union has been demanding better connectivity by train from Spain and Portugal than should crystallize with a Madrid-Lisbon in 2030. But It won’t be until 2034 when this line is completely a high-speed route. What does it imply? In order to achieve the milestone set by the European Union, it will be necessary for Spain to complete the “Basque Y”, the high-speed project that has been underway for more than 20 years to provide the region with a qualitative leap in railway connections. that seem not to arrive. Additionally, the entire project will need to be completed to connect Spain with Portugal through Extremaduraa journey in which, at the moment, it is not always possible to travel at high speed. And it will also be necessary to bring high speed to Huelva. 90% with small print. The big headline, as we said, is that 90% of the population of the Atlantic Corridor will have a high-speed station less than half an hour from their home… as long as such a station exists in their province. Here is the headline’s trick, if the province does not have a high-speed station, the percentage drops drastically in some cases. For example, in the press release no reference is made to Salamancaone of the conflicting points when talking about high speed in the Atlantic Corridor. The European Union roadmap marks a connection between the Spanish city and Porto but there is little progress in this regard. Another of the region’s usual demands is also discarded: recover the Vía de la Plata railway. The truth is that this project is neither here nor expected. Other data must also be taken carefully. The Ministry of Transport says that 100% of the inhabitants of the Basque Country will have access to a high-speed train station… but in this case less than an hour away and not 30 minutes. La Rioja will also make a qualitative leap, from the current 14% to 99% although no high-speed train stops in the region. These data lead us to the fact that, in 2030, 70% of the population of the Atlantic Corridor will have a high-speed station less than an hour from their home. The Ministry of Transport puts this number at 26.8 million people. Some controversies. However, having a high-speed line close to home does not mean that we have a high-speed train that is always accessible. Spain, the second country with the most high-speed roads in the world (second only to China), is a good example of how a poorly studied growth ended with high speed stations with very little traffic. Nor does living in a provincial capital guarantee that the train always stops. A paradigmatic example of this is Zamorawhere they fight so that more high-speed trains that cover the Galician corridor stop at their stop. And sometimes, The best solution is to offer high-speed stations in the middle of nowhereas a link between large populations. Increasing the number of high-speed stations does not automatically mean having ample schedules to take a high-speed train. However, this shouldn’t be bad in and of itself. A good example is Japan’s dense high-speed network where there are trains that stop exceptionally between origin and destination and others that dot their journey with more or fewer stops. Of course, there the density of passage in the number of trains facilitates mobility and the connection between “fast” trains and those that stop more frequently. Photo | Adif In Xataka | High speed in Madrid … Read more

The success of Artemis II has lit China’s space fire. Now, your space station will be twice as big

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All powers have embarked on the new space race and Artemis II It has been the lighthouse that demonstrates the interest that continues to arouse in sending humans outside our borders. Aside from rockets, in low orbit humanity has one of the most exclusive laboratories in the universe: the International Space Station. While the long-standing facility awaits dismantling, China has just sent a message with its Tiangong space station. Soon, it will be twice as big. Ambition. When China was left out of the International Space Station project, it got to work on its own facility. The Tiangong It began to take shape in the 2000s and launched its central module into low orbit in 2021. Other modules have been added designed for Chinese astronauts to investigate in an environment that, until now, was forbidden to them. Since then, it has become a symbol of the ambition of the Chinese space program. Also of the speed at which they are completing goalswith round trip rocket tests and plans for build, together with Russia, a lunar station. Despite everything, he has a problem. It is considerably smaller than the ISS and has a mass of just 100 tons, a pressurized volume of 340 m3 with the capacity to house a crew of three astronauts. Expanding the Tiangong. The ISS can support a crew of seven astronauts, has triple the pressurized volume capacity and a mass of more than 420 tons. If China wants to get involved in space research, it had to do something, and its response has come in the form of a project to expand the Tiangong. How has informed state television CCTV, the station will go from being a ‘T’-shaped structure with three modules to a cross-shaped one with six modules. Its mass will be approximately 180 tons and, although it will remain smaller than the ISS, it will have the capacity to equal the astronauts on a permanent mission: six. If the plans are fulfilled, the three current modules will be joined by a fourth that will have multiple docking ports that will give rise to future laboratory units, increasing the potential to six modules. At the moment, there is no date for this expansion, but it is estimated that work will begin around 2027 and will be a Long March 5B the rocket that will transport what is necessary. Since its T-shaped module was completed, astronauts have performed more than 260 experiments and 26 spacewalks. Exclusiveness. China spent 2025 launching rockets, culminating in a month of December in which they broke all their launch records in a stress test for your multiple mission points. With plans to expand their space station, they show that they are committed to this new era of research and exploration, being something that arrives just when the International Space Station remains in question. Tiangong has remained an exclusive laboratory for Chinese researchers, but if it suddenly becomes the only station in low orbit, China is the one that has the access key so that foreign astronauts can carry out their work in those special conditions. On April 22, the Chinese Manned Space Flight Agency already commented that two Pakistan Air Force pilots would be trained as reserve astronauts and one would travel to Tiangong. He will be the first non-Chinese astronaut to do so, although there are already other astronauts from Hong Kong and Macau who will perform the same process. It is something that responds to China’s intention to promote cooperation projects with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, but without forgetting that the Tiangong is Chinese and, as we say, they have the keys to the doors… and the right of admission. Scrap. While the Asian giant announces the good news around its station, on the other side of the world a dismantling process of the ISS is still scheduled for 2031. The plan is that NASA use a vehicle exclusive to SpaceX to guide the ISS to a space cemetery somewhere in the Pacific. In recent months there has been a lot of discussion about whether it is a better idea to dismantle it, turn it into scrap metal or use it as a portbut at this point, the plan continues its course and it is possible that, sooner rather than later, Tiangong will remain the only manned space station in low Earth orbit. In Xataka | Europe has grown tired of being NASA’s “supporting actor.” And that is why it is starting to work with China

A “floating gas station” in the middle of the ocean is making a fool of the US

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In the satellite images of certain points in Southeast Asia there are days in which dozens of oil tankers appear completely stopped in the open sea, forming a kind of improvised parking lot in the middle of one of the busiest shipping routes of the world. Some stay there for hours, others for days, with no apparent direction, as if waiting for something that never comes… or that happens when no one is watching. An invisible map in the middle of the ocean. I told the story this week CNN through data by MarineTraffic reviewed by the media. For years, the Iranian oil trade has followed a logic that barely left a trace in official records, with ships disappearing and reappearing in tracking systems and shipments whose origin changes depending on the document consulted. This dynamic, it seems, has allowed us to sustain a constant flow towards China even under sanctions, relying on a network of intermediaries, opaque routes and an aging fleet that operates on the margins of the international system, similar to the “Russian model”. It happens that what seemed like a succession of dispersed maneuvers begins to draw a much more defined pattern: a floating infrastructure that works away from the spotlight. The “floating gas station”. They explained in the exclusive that, in waters near Malaysia, in the area known as Eastern Outer Port Limitsa key point has been consolidated where dozens or even hundreds of ships remain waiting, exchanging oil in ship-to-ship operations that completely transform crude oil traceability. This enclave acts as a authentic service station intermediate where Iranian oil changes hands, identity and destination before continuing its journey towards Asia, becoming a central gear which allows Tehran to maintain stable exports despite international pressure. Its location, close to critical maritime routes and outside effective control, makes it the ideal place for this type of operations. SAR satellite images show vessels within the outer boundary of the Eastern Harbor off the coast of Malaysia on April 18, 2026 How the shortcut to China works. The system follows a precise and repeated logic: one where large oil tankers load crude oil at Iranian facilities, cross the Indian Ocean and reach this area. where they transfer their cargo to other ships, which in turn transport it to Chinese refineries. In this process, oil change label and appears as originating from countries such as Malaysia or Indonesia, hiding its real origin in official data. This mechanism allows China to continue receiving large volumes of crude oil at reduced prices, while Iran ensures constant income that sustains its economy in a context of sanctions. MarineTraffic data shows the multiple trips the MT Tifani made between the Persian Gulf and the EOPL from April 2025 until its capture by US forces in April 2026 “Ghost” fleet that does not stop. Behind the system are hundreds of vessels that change flag, name and owner frequently, making them difficult to track and reducing their exposure to sanctions. Many operate without identification active for long periods, activating and deactivating its location systems as appropriate, which further complicates any control attempt. The magnitude of the activity is growingwith hundreds of annual transfers that, in practice, turn this maritime space into one of the most active (and least transparent) points of global energy trade. The fight with Washington reaches another board. In the background, a story that remembered the wall street journal the weekend. Recent oil tanker seizures like MT Tifani They reflect a change in strategy on the part of the United States, which has decided to extend its pressure beyond the Middle East and act directly on these distant routes. These interventions they seek to interrupt a system that has operated for years with relative impunity, although they also show the difficulty of stopping such a distributed and adaptable network. Each intercepted ship is a signal, although the total volume of traffic suggests that the mechanism remains fully operational. Floating reserves and economic war. Beyond the immediate exchangethis network also works as a strategic reserve on the high seas, one with millions of barrels stored on oil tankers waiting to be delivered when conditions permit. There is no doubt, this capability offers Iran a mattress facing blockages or interruptions, bringing oil closer to their final buyers and reducing its dependence on vulnerable routes like right now in the Strait of Hormuz. In short, the system represents much more than an evasion of sanctions, approaching an entire logistics architecture designed to keep open a critical avenue of income in the midst of conflict. Image | Department of Defense, MarineTraffic, Sentinel 1/European Space Agency In Xataka | Ukraine taught how to use drones. Iran has gone one step further: turning them into a crusher for US radars and bases In Xataka | If the war resumes again, the US runs a risk unprecedented in the history of war: that the only one with missiles will be Iran.

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