Britain Diagnosed With Hollywood-Induced Quixotism

Psychologists say Britain’s unhealthy obsession with blockbuster movies has tragically developed into full-blown quixotism, the mental illness in which the commonplace seems fantastic, after the entire population decided that a meteor burning up in the atmosphere could not possibly be anything but a crashing - and probably snake-infested - airliner, full of screaming victims desperately texting their heart-rending final words to their loved ones.

No

“Millions of meteors fall into our atmosphere every day,” sighed Dr Maria Strangelove as she prepared the papers for Britain to be committed, “Whereas, in a typical year, about 150 commercial aircraft fall out of it. Now, which do you think you’re more likely to witness?”

With therapy, say experts, Britain may one day recover some sense of proportion – although they warn that this will take some time as, even once it accepts that what it saw was just a rock, the nation will then have to overcome the tragic delusion that only the heroic intervention of Bruce Willis narrowly saved the human race from total extinction.

Astronomers Spot Black Hole Sucking In Vast Cloud Of Money

Researchers at the European Southern Observatory today published stunning pictures showing the enormous black hole at the centre of our galaxy spectacularly swallowing all the money in the universe.

“We’ve known for a couple of years now that all of the money that has ever existed since the dawn of creation is disappearing at a phenomenal rate,” explained top space guy Randy Von Braun. “But this is the first time we’ve actually been lucky enough to see economic entropy happening right in front of our eyes. Look! There goes Greece’s entire GDP for the next 500 years! Puff - and it’s gone forever!”

It's Fred the Shred!

“Nobody knows for sure what - if anything - can exist within the enormous gravitational forces inside a black hole,” he added. “But recent advances in quantum physics lead us to believe it may well be a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland.”

Earth-Like Planet Teeming With Earth-Like Arseholes

Visitors from Kepler 22-b may already be among us

Although they are yet to ascertain whether whether the newly-discovered “Earth-like” planet Kepler 22-b is actually solid, liquid or gas, NASA scientists have confirmed that – just like Earth – its surface is absolutely crawling with complete and utter arseholes.

“We’ve picked up faint transmissions which, when amplified and run through an NTSC decoder, reveal the planet’s vapid inhabitants indulging in a depressing variety of tedious activities,” revealed project leader Randy Von Braun. “It seems that their chief religious ritual involves individual Kepleroids singing and dancing themselves into an emotional frenzy in front of a panel of tribal chiefs. Every night apparently resounds to gunfire exchanged by the citizenry and their law enforcers, while both groups seem to spend the entire daytime arguing amongst themselves. Sound familiar?”

“All we know about Kepler 22-b’s atmosphere is that it seems to be full of burnt hydrocarbons, with large stratospheric gaps at both poles,” he added. “Bearing in mind that everything we’re seeing happened 600 years ago, though, it’s quite likely that the Kepleroid infestation has managed to wipe itself out by now, so it’s probably not as bad as it sounds.”

NASA: Plummeting Six-Ton Satellite Will Only Kill 2,250,000

Considerably fewer than 3m people will be crushed to pulp by fragments of the tumbling ARSE satellite when it crashes to earth later today, according to reassuring calculations issued by top NASA gamblers.

It's fairly possible that this might not happen

“Yes, folks, there’s just one chance in 3,200 that you will be flattened by a red-hot, refrigerator-sized chunk of ARSE!” beamed Dr Randy von Braun from a bunker deep under Texas. “With seven billion potential targets out there, our new supercalculators confidently predict that 6.9775 billion of you have absolutely nothing to fear.”

Dr von Braun helpfully explained that the actual toll might be affected by a small degree of statistical variance, according to whether the larger chunks of flaming wreckage hurtled into the sparsely-populated Southern Ocean or a nuclear reactor close to a major metropolis.

“Er… whoops, that should be 6.99775 billion,” he added sheepishly. “Hey, you’d think I’d have picked up something from that Math 101 refresher they sent me on after the Mars Orbiter went AWOL because I forgot you guys in Europe are metric, wouldn’t you? Live and learn – well, unless you die tonight, but it probably won’t happen. Trust me. No, really. I’m hardly ever wrong.”

We Clean Forgot Top-Secret Military Space Plane Was Up There, Insists USAF

The US Air Force is steadfastly insisting that it clean forgot all about its top-secret X-37B space vehicle, leaving it innocently orbiting the Earth for seven months, until a telesales operator from NASA cold-called them to ask if they wanted to book any more launches.

Nothing sinister about the X-37B at all

The unmanned X-37B spacecraft was launched on a secret mission from NASA’s Cape Canaveral site back in April; but, according to a USAF general who declined to give his name, shortly after the nine-metre craft entered orbit its mission controller was distracted by the arrival of a health and safety assessor, and the vehicle and its unspecified mission subsequently slipped his mind completely.

“We’re currently debriefing the poor schmuck,” admitted the general, “But for the life of him he can’t recall what he sent it up there for. Well, now that it’s landed safely at one of our airbases in California, he can open it up – we found the key at the back of his desk drawer, thankfully, at the bottom of a box of rubber bands – then take a peek inside the cargo bay and, with a bit of luck, see if there’s anything there that might jog his memory.”

Sceptical amateur astronomers have claimed that the X-37B may have been on some underhand surveillance mission, however, pointing out that it has been orbiting at an altitude of 255 miles - a zone typically reserved for spy satellites - and passing over trouble spots including North Korea and Afghanistan once every four days for the full seven months.

“My, my,” gasped the general. “Has it really? Now ain’t that the damnedest thing.”

'Large Amounts' of Water Ice, Ben & Jerry's, Magnum Found On Moon

A jubilant NASA mission team indulged themselves in a truly embarrassing display of unco-ordinated dancing around their consoles today, after lengthy computer analysis of the data generated by bombing the moon with a double-decker bus last month revealed "large amounts" of water-ices in the resulting 1.6km-high plume of debris.

"We've got a complete blackcurrant Ribena Ice, Mini-Calippos at both the infra-orange and ultralemon-and-lime ends of the spectrum, plus traces of what we've tentatively identified as fragments of the astronomically rare strawberry Calippo," grinned mission leader Randy von Braun, spinning round and round in his executive chair as he delightedly wrapped himself in yards of printout. "And it looks like quite a few other tooth-rotting treats may also have been blown into orbit."

"We're picking up strong spectroscopic signatures of Mini Milk, Fruit Pastil-Lolly, Twister, Magnum, Solero and even dark choc-ice matter," he added. "You name it, if it's cold and delicious, the moon has it in stock."

Meanwhile, NASA's equally-nerdy counterparts in Europe are busily engaged in the search for the elusive Higgs Beer Cooler, which has long been predicted by quantum physicists to exist somewhere in the universe - possibly on one of the attractively-frosted outer planets.

"After our discovery of liquid cherryade on Mars last December, we are truly unlocking the mysteries of our solar system," enthused Dr von Braun. "It would appear that the cold vacuum of space provides a near-perfect refrigerator that may well satisfy the exploratory requirements of a future generation of geeky astronauts addicted to junk food and sugar rushes."

Obama First To Win Two Nobel Peace Prizes In One Day

US President Barack Obama made history today, by receiving two Nobel Peace Prizes within 24 hours of each other.

The Nobel Committee honoured the "deeply humbled" president for achieving everlasting peace on earth thanks to his tireless efforts to deliver a string of vaguely aspirational speeches about talking to other nations about nuclear weapons.

"Previous leaders of the free world have always got bogged down in the detail of actually having talks," said a spokesman for the committee. "As soon as you sit down around the table, somebody wants something in return, and somebody else says they'll only do this if everybody else does that, it all breaks down in arguments and you're right back to square one. Obama's genius lies in realising that it is possible to take the short cut to world peace by not actually having those pointless talks at all. Only by not doing anything can you change the world. Brilliant."

"And, of course, he's not George W Bush," he added. "That's almost worth a prize in itself."

Meanwhile, hippies around the world expressed their shock and outrage at rampant US imperialism as NASA unexpectedly declared war on the moon by bombing it in an unprovoked sneak attack.

"Zoicks! They totally like blew the moon to pieces, man," said Shaggy, an organic mystery machine operator with self-inflicted dreads, who claimed he didn't speak for any particular group because everyone's opinion was like as valid as everyone else's yeah except some people's were shit. "It's like they fired a fucking Tranny van at the fucking moon at two million miles an hour. No shit, man, the Yanks blew a fuck-off great hole in the moon's karma, you know what I'm saying? It'll be your garden next, man, I tell you. Fuuuck."

"Rooby wooby woo," agreed his dog, speaking from the end of a piece of string.

The spent rocket stage which was actually crashed into the moon was followed by a probe seeking to detect the presence of ice particles in the cloud of dust hurled miles into the moon's virtually non-existent atmosphere by the impact, unhindered by any significant gravity field.

"It's like worse than Hiroshima yeah," screamed Moonchild Starflower, an anarcho-folkist aura decorator who sincerely believes she is powered by crystals. "The sick murdering bastards. Have some holistic cider, man, this stuff's well wicked."

When the rising tide of cannabis-addled protest reached the White House, President Obama wasted no time in declaring a worldwide war on anarchy and free-thinking radicalism, mobilising the remaining bits of the US Army not currently engaged in fighting abstract concepts in Iraq and Afghanistan and putting them on standby as soon as intelligence experts in the Pentagon had pinpointed the rogue state of mind responsible for the increasing outbreaks of twaddle that threatened world security.

He was immediately awarded a second Nobel Peace Prize for promising to rid the world of the fear of soap forever.

"I love the smell of Palmolive in the morning," said a peace-loving general.

'Yes, UFOs Are Real,' Admits Government, 'Whatever'

The British government has finally revealed that UFOs exist and alien beings are walking among us, after classified Ministry of Defence files were published this morning.

"Yes, everything you ever read on the internet about alien craft visiting the Earth on a regular basis is true," confirmed Air Chief Marshal James Bigglesworth. "Happy now?"

According to the previously top-secret documents, alien spacecraft sightings peak every time a blockbuster sci-fi movie or TV series is shown.

"When we discovered this correlation, we thought that the extra-terrestrials might be laughing at our wildly-inaccurate speculations," suggested Britain's top pilot. "Although my chum Algy thought they were probably just lonely geeks who had never had a girlfriend."

"But when we tracked them down, we found the truth that was out there to be stranger than fiction," he continued. "They're just chavs joyriding about in nicked flying saucers. When the UFOs run out of dark matter, they're just as happy racing round council estates in ten-year-old Astras. A further search revealed it wasn't just sci-fi epics like Independence Day they were flocking to see. It's anything that the Sun tells them is 'unmissable'. If you go to the cinema today, you'll find them all slurping Coke and hooting inanely at Imagine That. That's your so-called intelligent life from other planets, for God's sake."

"They also love The Jeremy Kyle Show," he continued. "To them, it's a sort of dating show for extra-terrestrials."

To win over any remaining sceptics, ACM Bigglesworth dramatically invaded the Jeremy Kyle studio and tore the face off a slapper who had sex with 12 men a month to reveal a hideous, fork-tongued reptile-thing. His attempts to remove Jeremy Kyle's face were, however, intercepted by security staff.

Conspiracy theorists, however, have reacted with anger to the government's full and frank admission.

"Plenty of well-documented evidence exists of people not sighting UFOs," challenged multi-millionaire author Whitley Streiber. "Even in fiction, you can read the entire works of Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, V.S. Naipaul, Virginia Woolf, Tolstoy, E.M. Forster, Tolkien, Jeremy Archer, John Grisham, Barbara Cartland and Andy McNab and not find a single instance of alien abduction or lights in the sky flying in formation at impssible speeds."

"The question you have to ask yourselves is: why does the government want you to believe that UFOs exist?" demanded respected sports commentator David Icke. "This so-called 'evidence' is obviously a cover-up for the truth they don't want you to know, namely that it's all a load of bollocks. In the unlikely event that life exists on other planets, there's no way they could overcome the laws of physics to flit in and out of our solar system at will. And why would they want to anyway? We're too insignificant to matter."

Suggestions that the announcement was nothing more than a cynical smokescreen intended to distract people from the government's woeful mismanagement of the country were strenuously denied by Lord Mandelson.

"Look up there at that strange cigar-shaped object," he shouted, pointing skywards, before running away from reporters.

Farting Planet Baffles French

Mars is farting methane at a truly frightening rate, according to puzzled French researchers from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

By modelling effects first seen by Americans through infrared spectroscopy, Franck Lefevre and François Forget discovered that not only does the red planet sporadically pump plumes of up to 19,000 tonnes of the noxious gas into the thin Martian atmosphere - far more than the Earth produces - but that the awful eggy stench also lingers for a shorter time than expected. The rate of methane production also appears to be seasonal, they added.

"Eet ees possible ze 'umble sprout may, en effet, 'ave originated on Mars," said Dr Lefevre, waving his arms about like an epileptic juggler and shrugging uncontrollably. "Wizout 'aving discovered ze actual vegetable patch, 'owever, eet ees 'ard to be certain when ees ze Martian growing season. But zees ees ze only explanation up with which we 'ave come. Mars ees exhibiting all ze farty signs of ze sprout-based diet. Zut alors."

"I would not go out zere eef I were you, mon brave," he warned.

After reading their Gallic colleagues' report in the journal Nature, however, NASA scientists believe they may have an explanation for the rapid disappearance of methane from the Martian atmosphere.

"Last night, in order to accurately replicate Mars under laboratory conditions, I set my team the task of consuming several crates of Coors," said mission leader Randy von Braun. "When they reached the appropriate level of methane production, I imitated the effect of Martian volcanoes by applying my Zippo to the gas plumes erupting from the appropriate fissures. And whaddya know - the methane disappeared completely, along with my eyebrows."

"But goddamn, it was one hell of an experiment," he added. "And we've invited the world's leading exologists along to what promises to be a truly awesome conference in Vegas to demonstrate our theory."

Moon Reunion 'Faked', Claim Conspiracy Theorists

On the 40th anniversary of mankind's first landing on the moon, conspiracy theorists are carefully examining TV footage to search for signs that the public reunion of the Apollo 11 astronauts was not really shot in Washington DC's National Air and Space Museum at all, but actually took place on the surface of the moon.

"Look carefully at the BACKGROUND," insisted an unblinking Californian feng shui exorcist in a tinfoil hat. "IT'S SOLID BLACK. If this 'interview' actually took place in a 'museum', as the NEW WORLD ORDER want you to 'think' - WHERE are the WALLS? WHERE are the STUFFED ANIMALS in 'glass' cases? WHERE IS TUTANKHAMEN? No, what you're looking at is the EMPTY void of ENDLESS SPACE. Wise up to the 'government' LIES, people, WISE UP."

"Just LISTEN to their delivery when they SPEAK," added a homeopathic dreamweaver from Dorset, who lives with a pack of vegan dogs and a liberated parrot. "It's SLOW and DELIBERATE - JUST AS YOU'D EXPECT WORDS TO BE, if they were 'spoken' in ONE-SIXTH of the earth's 'gravity'. Millions of RESPECTED SCIENTISTS you've never heard of are desperately trying to get people to learn the true FACTS that the 'government' will STOP AT NOTHING to prevent you from knowing, in a series of lavishly-worded $50 BOOKS you can only track down in 'ramshackle' BOOKSHOPS run by hippies, or direct from their WEBSITES."

"And how else can you explain the TOTAL LACK of any discernible ATMOSPHERE in the ENTIRE 'broadcast'?" she added. "They're ON THE FUCKING MOON, obviously. If you don't believe me, ask your NEAREST lizard."

David Icke, the world's foremost expert on conspiracies, is expected to broadcast a definitive rambling statement on the internet soon - because the Illuminati-owned news media are willingly co-operating with a top-secret government D-notice ordering them not to allow him airtime - in which he is likely to provide the world's free-thinking truth-seekers with enough research material to fuel an estimated 30,000,000,000 unwinnable arguments on Facebook.

Media Fascinated By Discovery Of Hot Place

As Britain braces itself for the approaching fury of the full Siberian winter, TV viewers across the nation were amazed to learn of an orbiting body that apparently gets quite hot sometimes.

Stunning new images reveal, for the first time, that a faraway object known to scientists as ‘Australia’ experiences periodical fluctuations in temperature as it travels around its sun in an elliptical orbit.

“At the moment, ‘Australia’ is quite close to its star, meaning that surface temperatures are reaching an unimaginable 40 degrees or more,” said a NASA travel agent. At such intolerable temperatures, life itself becomes unsustainable and people without extensive life-supporting air-con systems simply melt.”

Shivering British viewers were unmoved by the discovery, however.

“I’ve just been out to buy a warmer duvet,” complained one sceptical member of the public. “So obviously global warming is just a myth put about by greedy politicians. Er… that is what this is about, isn’t it?”

Arse Attacks!

Robotic anal probes have detected the presence of enormous farts on Mars, according to ecstatic NASA researchers.

Exobiologist sub-editors writing in the Sun immediately decided that the atmospheric methane clouds prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the red planet is teeming with life, kebabs and lager - although more cautious observers speculate that the massive Olympus Mons volcano may simply be some kind of gigantic, planet-sized rectum. 

"Jeezus H Christ, that planet stinks!" declared NASA's Mars mission chief, Wilbur von Braun. "I wouldn't go out there if I were you."

When Worlds Collide

Britain apparently experienced the world's first interplanetary pile-up last Sunday, it emerged, when a large, disc-like UFO crashed into a wind turbine in Lincolnshire, causing the alien pilot to lose control of his vehicle and collide with several other unearthly visitors.

Local police said the impact caused the turbine to shed a blade, while the UFO that struck it came down in a nearby field. Eyewitness Ed Straker, a passing film producer, was first on the scene.

"It was total carnage," a shaken Mr Straker told reporters. "This big saucer-thing was going far too fast, and completely ignoring the lights in the sky. It was just wobbling all over the place, like it was on a piece of string or something. He bounced off the wind turbine, narrowly missing a child on a flying bicycle, clipped an enormous illuminated mother-ship that was jamming with a guy on the ground with a synthesizer, and then he careered into the back of another big silver saucer full of angry jabbering Martians, who shot him down. Bloody maniac! Serves him right."

The alien visitor was seen to climb out of the wreckage with an eight-foot robot, which he left behind when he ran off into the bushes.

Mr Straker then drove off in some kind of furniture van on tracks for an urgent rendezvous with a giant submarine/jet fighter combination, which he claimed was a movie prop.

"We have traced the vehicle that was abandoned at the scene, and we are urgently looking for a Mr Klaatu to help us with our enquiries," said a police spokesman. "We would very much like him come forward and convince his robotic companion, Gort, to stop laying waste to Lincolnshire."

UFO experts say the incident is the worst interplanetary accident since the far side of the moon was blown clean out of the galaxy in 1999 by an explosion at an ill-considered nuclear waste dump, with the loss of 300 moonbase personnel.

Red Planet Was Fizzy, Says NASA

NASA is a step closer to discovering whether life may once have existed on Mars, after the discovery by its Reconnaissance Orbiter of carbonate rocks on the red planet.  All of the necessary ingredients for the rocks exist on Mars, so their apparent absence was an ongoing mystery.

Some scientists think that their rarity may be due to high acidity levels in Mars' now-vanished waters. However, a new theory from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggests that Mars was once covered with seas of cherryade, providing a neat explanation for the redness of the planet, and the present absence of life.

"If Mars has carbonate rocks, then it must have had carbonated water to make them," explained NASA's excited chief rocket scientist, Randy von Braun. "As everybody knows, the main occurrence of red carbonated water on Earth is in cheap supermarket cherryade - and God only knows where it all comes from or how it's made. My theory, then - get this - is that all of the cherryade in the universe originally came from Mars. Yeah? Check it out."

Dr von Braun went on to surmise that cherryade would have occurred naturally on Mars millions of years ago, through the random molecular interaction of molecules and stuff. Vast oceans of cherryade swiftly covered the entire surface of the planet and, for a while, other civilisations flocked to the planetary soda fountain and spread the new wonder-beverage throughout the galaxies.

However, after a period of time - which may have been several million years, says Dr von Braun, or more likely a day or two - the oceans of fizzy pop went flat, as the now-located carbonate rocks absorbed the carbon dioxide. Interstellar interest in our solar system swiftly evaporated - as did the fizz-free cherryade, leaving behind only an unpleasant-tasting residue which has stained the entire planet red.

Researchers are studying the theory with interest, and are already talking about a mission to Jupiter, to see if its thick atmosphere conceals vast oceans of Coca-Cola.

Woman Buggers Up Simple Repair Job

A daft cow has made a complete balls-up of a simple DIY repair job on the International Space Station, said US space agency NASA today.

The outdoor job - a piece of piss involving the ball joint on a solar array system, according to NASA technicians - was cocked up beyond belief when the clumsy bint, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, started singing and doing a silly zero-gravity dance, and knocked a tool-bag into the depths of space.

When the dozy bitch returned to the airlock, moaning that she had broken a fingernail extension, the other astronauts on the space station wasted no time in telling her to stick to cooking and hoovering - and made it abundantly clear that in future she should leave the technical stuff to the blokes, who had an aptitude for that kind of thing.

According to mission controllers, Ms Stefanyshyn-Piper then burst into tears, locked herself in the zero-G toilet and refused to come out.

“Time of the month,” shrugged fellow-astronaut Steve Bowen, as he cracked open a tube of beer and strapped himself to the sofa for an uninterrupted evening of sport on the telly.

Amazing Images of Another World Published

Astronomers have released stunning photographs of another planet, light years away from Earth.

The digitally-enhanced pictures depict hazy shapes circling a fading star. The dim star, known to astronomers as NBG-60, or Prince Charles, is very old, and unable to shed much light on anything. The circling objects, which have been named Camilla, Wills and Harry, are said to be inhospitable and composed of nothing but gas.

“Their behaviour is quite unlike anything you’d find on in our solar system,” said NASA‘s space sciences chief, Ed Weiler. “There’s no indication of planetary recession at all. These distant objects just revolve serenely in their little circles, completely unaffected by events on planet Earth.”

Asked if Prince Charles exhibited any traces of real life, Mr Weiler replied: “Not as we know it.”

Reach For The Sky (II)

India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, announced the successful launch today of several hundred modern schools, thousands of affordable homes, a decent universal healthcare scheme, a life-saving welfare system, an efficient food distribution network, a complete modernisation of the dangerously-overstretched railways and a well-trained internal security force.

The much-needed improvements to India’s problems were successfully fired into space on a one-way journey to the moon.

Beam Me Up, Scotty

The Canadian actor James Doohan’s last wish – to have his ashes launched into space – remains unfulfilled after a rocket operated by a firm offering ‘space burials’ exploded shortly after its launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.

Doohan - famous for playing Scotty the engineer in the original Star Trek series – died in 2005. A previous attempt to send some of his remains into space was also a failure.

“Fortunately, as anyone who saw the movies knows, there is still plenty of James Doohan left over for future attempts,” said a spokesman for SpaceX.

Rocket scientists say they are trying to discover the reason for the Falcon 1’s malfunction, although preliminary indications are that the engines couldnae take it.

Virgin Territory

Richard Branson has unveiled the ‘mothership’ that will launch the pretend spacecraft which he hopes will briefly whisk obnoxious, selfish nerds with far too much money through the upper atmosphere so that they can kid themselves that they have really been in space.

The so-called mothership, WhiteKnightTwo, is made out of a pair of gliders stuck together with glue, but with four massive jet engines dangling off it.

Speaking at the roll-out, Branson told the onlookers – two reporters from the National Enquirer and the Daily Sport, and a stray dog with a limp – that he wanted the world to “wake up” and realise the fragility of the planet and the importance of protecting Earth.

“There are lots of hostile aliens out there whose sole desire is to destroy our beautiful planet,” said the bearded businessman. “I hope that my rich friends will queue up to pay £100,000 a time for the privilege of manning the front line in space. SpaceShipTwo is currently undergoing last-minute modifications to fit an unfeasibly large missile to its nose, and I plan to put an enormous, slow-talking robot UFO detector into orbit to complete the jigsaw of Earth’s defences. It will also broadcast my rotten TV channels to the whole planet so everyone will know the times of incoming UFOs, which already appear to be more reliable than my trains.”

“Eventually, I hope that my customers will raise enough money to send me to the moon,” said Branson, “Where I look forward to living out my twilight years, looked after by a highly-trained cohort of women in purple wigs.”

Star Truck

The European Space Agency has successfully put the Automated Transfer Vehicle - its largest ever spacecraft - into orbit around the Earth. The giant ‘space truck’ was launched from French Guiana using an Ariane 5 rocket, on a mission to resupply the International Space Station.

The 20-ton vehicle, must, however, wait for the space shuttle Endeavour to uncouple from the space station before it can complete its mission. It is currently reported to be looking for a lay-by somewhere near the A21, after a satnav routing error sent it through several narrow village streets in Kent.

HM Customs and Excise are also keeping an eye out for the ATV, as several illegal immigrants were reported to have been ejected from the vehicle’s cargo bay as it hurtled through Dover at 12,000mph.