The two broods – one concentrated in US Midwestern states and the other in the South and Midwest, with a small area of overlap in Illinois – emerge together only once every 221 years.

Here is an explanation of what is expected to occur during this “dual emergence.”

What is a cicada?

Cicadas are relatively large insects – 1-2 inches (2.5-5 cm) long – possessing sturdy bodies, bulging compound eyes and membranous wings. There are many different kinds of cicadas.

Using needle-like mouthparts, cicadas feed on plant juices, called xylem, drawn from the roots of deciduous trees and shrubs. They spend much of their life cycle – years on end – underground as nymphs feeding on roots and drinking xylem.

After they emerge, adult males “sing” to attract females using special organs called tymbals on the first segment of the abdomen. The song pitch, tone, frequency and volume are specific to individual species. Cicadas live as adults for just a few weeks, then die after reproducing. Numerous birds and mammals eat cicadas.

How do periodical and annual cicadas differ?

With annual cicadas, some individuals emerge during any given year. They spend one to nine years underground as nymphs, varying by species, and do not have a synchronized emergence. Instead, they emerge on a staggered basis.

Periodical cicadas have more specific and longer lengths of time spent underground as nymphs – generally 13 years or 17 years – and a synchronized emergence. That means that all members of a particular brood emerge the same year, from late April into June, depending on their location. All of the periodical cicadas sharing the same life cycle that emerge together in a given year are called a brood, although any one species may be part of different broods.

There are more than 3,000 species of cicadas worldwide, but only nine are periodical, and seven of those – of the genus Magicicada – are found in North America. In India, a periodical species of the genus Chremistica emerges every four years, while in Fiji, a periodical species of the genus Raiataena emerges every eight years.

What 2 broods are involved in this year’s dual emergence?

Brood XIII, on a 17-year cycle, is restricted mostly to northern Illinois, eastern Iowa, southern Wisconsin and a few counties in extreme northwestern Indiana, according to entomologist Floyd Shockley of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. Brood XIII includes three Magicicada species.

Brood XIX, on a 13-year cycle, is widely distributed from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia – a total of 15 states, according to Shockley. Brood XIX includes four Magicicada species.

These two broods together span parts of 17 states but overlap only in a small area in central Illinois. They are close enough potentially to have some interbreeding between broods.

When will this dual emergence occur?

Periodical cicadas are expected to begin emerging in the southern parts of their geographical distribution in mid-April. The emergence continues northward into June. Given that most broods produce localized population numbers exceeding 1.5 million cicadas per acre (0.4 hectare) in densely populated areas of their distribution, there easily will be more than a trillion cicadas during this emergence, according to Shockley.

When was the last such ‘dual emergence’?

This will mark the first time that a 13-year brood emerges in the same year as a 17-year brood since 2015. The last time that adjacent 13-and 17-year broods emerged in the same year was 1998, according to University of Connecticut evolutionary biologist John Cooley. Brood XIX, one of the two popping out this year, emerged in 1998 at the same time as Brood IV, which spans Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.

The next time two 13-and 17-year broods will emerge the same year will not be until 2037 and the next time adjacent 13-and 17-year broods emerge together will not be until 2076, Cooley said.

What do cicadas do when they emerge?

The cicadas begin emerging, mainly at night, once the soil warms to about 64 degrees Fahrenheit (17.8 degrees C), according to George Washington University entomologist John Lill. These nymphs crawl up any hard surfaces – tree trunks, fences, vegetation – and molt into adult winged cicadas.

After a few days, adults fly into the tree canopy, where males form loud “choruses,” calling to females by vibrating their tymbals. Males have rather hollow abdomens, serving as echo chambers to amplify their calls. Cicadas are among the loudest insects. Females that are attracted to a particular male’s call respond with wing flicks, which also make a sound. Pairs then mate.

Once mated, female cicadas seek pencil-sized branches of trees and shrubs in sunny locations to lay their eggs into slits they cut in branches, according to Lill. These eggs develop for about six to seven weeks, after which hatched nymphs drop to the ground and burrow to begin the next generation of periodical cicadas.

When will this bug-tastic event occur next?

These two broods last emerged in the same year in 1803. The next time is set for 2245. – Rappler.com

The 18-meter (59 ft), four-stage solid-fuel rocket exploded seconds after lifting off just after 11:01 am (0201 GMT; 10:01 am Philippine time), leaving behind a large loud of smoke, a fire, fragments of the rocket and firefighting water sprays near the launch pad, visible on local media livestreams of the launch on the tip of mountainous Kii peninsula in western Japan.

Space One said the flight was “interrupted” after the launch and was investigating the situation. There was no immediate indication of what caused the explosion, or whether there were any injuries. Pads typically have no people anywhere nearby during a launch. Space One has said the launch is highly automated and requires roughly a dozen staff at the ground control center.

Kairos carried an experimental government satellite that can temporarily replace intelligence satellites in orbit if they fall offline.

Space One had planned the launch for Saturday but postponed it after a ship entered the nearby restricted sea area.

Although Japan is a relatively small player in the space race, the nation’s rocket developers are scrambling to build cheaper vehicles to capture booming demand for satellite launches from its government and from global clients.

Tokyo-based Space One was established in 2018 by a consortium of Japanese companies: Canon Electronics, the aerospace engineering unit of IHI, construction firm Shimizu, and the state-backed Development Bank of Japan. Two of Japan’s biggest banks, Mitsubishi UFJ and Mizuho, also own minority stakes.

Shares in Canon Electronics fell more than 9% after Wednesday’s failed launch.

Space One wants to offer “space courier services” to domestic and international clients, aiming to launch 20 rockets a year by the late 2020s, its president Masakazu Toyoda said. Although the company delayed Kairos’ inaugural launch window four times, it said orders for its second and third planned trips have been filled, including by an overseas customer.

Space One does not disclose Kairos’ launch costs, but company executive Kozo Abe said it is “competitive enough” against American rival Rocket Lab.

Rocket Lab has launched more than 40 Electron small rockets from New Zealand since 2017 at roughly $7 million per flight. Several Japanese companies have used Electron for their missions, including radar satellite makers iQPS and Synspective, and orbital debris-removal startup Astroscale.

Last month, state-funded Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully launched its new cost-efficient flagship rocket, the H3. JAXA completed a historic “pinpoint” moon landing this year, and the H3 is scheduled to carry about 20 satellites and probes to the space by 2030.

In 2019, Interstellar Technologies conducted Japan’s first privately developed rocket launch with its MOMO series, although without a full-scale satellite payload.

Partnering with the United States, Japan is seeking to revitalize its domestic aerospace industry to counter technological and military rivalry from China and Russia.

The government last year promised “comprehensive” support for space startups with technology critical for national security, as it seeks to build satellite constellations to ramp up intelligence capabilities.

Japan’s defense ministry on Friday said it had struck a deal with Space One to boost its rockets’ payload by experimenting with fuel-efficient methane engines. – Rappler.com

The Ramadan for 2024 will start on Tuesday, March 12 and go for about 30 days. It is then followed by the three-day celebration of Eid.

Significance of Ramadan in Islamic history

Prior to becoming a messenger of God, Muhammad used to withdraw to the Hira mountain top cave. He would meditate in solitude, away from the polytheistic culture of tribal Mecca for the whole month of Ramadan. We are not sure if this retreat involved fasting at the time.

In 610, when he was 40, he again went to the same mountain top to meditate. Several weeks into the retreat, he experienced an angelic form appearing before him, commanding him to read. He replied he did not know how to read. The angelic form squeezed him tight and repeated the command to read. This continued three times, after which the first five verses of the holy Qur’an was revealed:

Read in the name of your Lord who created humans from a piece of flesh. Read, for your Lord is Most Generous. Who taught humans with the pen. Who taught humans what they do not know.

Muhammad still was not able to read in a conventional way, but he understood that he was being asked to read the book of the universe and learn from it, and also understand that it points to its creator.

This incident marked the beginning of Islam, revelation of the Qur’an and the prophetic mission of Prophet Muhammad.

In 624, when Muslims migrated to Medina to escape persecution, the month of Ramadan was declared holy by virtue of the start of the mission of the Prophet and revelation of the Qur’an. Fasting was instituted in this month as one of the five pillars of Islam as a way for believers to show their thanks to God and reflect on the teachings of the Qur’an and its importance for believers.

Who observes Ramadan fasting?

The Ramadan fasting involves stopping eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse from dawn to sunset. Practitioners can engage in all these acts once fasting is broken and restart fasting the next dawn. The cycle continues for a whole month.

Ramadan fasting is one of the most observed of all the pillars of Islam, with 70-80% of Muslims practising it. It is obligatory for all Muslims, men and women, from the age of puberty. Parents encourage their children to fast for half a day from the age of ten to condition them to fasting.

There are exemptions. Travellers, elderly, sick, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers are exempt from fasting on the condition they make up missing days at a suitable time after Ramadan. The elderly and chronically ill compensate for days not fasted by making a small donation to charity for each day, if they can afford it.

Since fasting is from dawn to sunset, the duration of fasting time changes depending on the season and where a Muslim is located in the world. Near polar regions, fasting can be almost 22 hours in summer or just a few hours in winter.

Spiritual significance and benefits of Ramadan fasting

What may seem to some to be a self-inflicted ordeal has profound meaning for human beings and God, and their reciprocal relationship. God exhibits the perfection of lordship, grace and mercy by making the surface of this Earth a table of blessing, and placing all kinds of sustenance on that table for every creature to enjoy.

In Ramadan, believers show a collective act of worship in the presence of the mighty and universal Mercy as they wait for the divine invitation to the table of blessings at the time of breaking the fast. As the Earth revolves around its axis, the jubilant timeframe is repeated in a continuous manner for the whole month.

Many people forget the fact God is the source of all sustenance. While they readily thank agents of delivery, they forget to remember and thank God as the one who ultimately meets all their needs. God expects the price of thanksgiving for the sustenance he has provided.

True thanksgiving is to know that all sustenance comes directly from God, to acknowledge its value and to feel our own need and dependence on that sustenance.

A fasting person physically feels the value of, and their need for, basic sustenance when they experience the pangs of hunger and thirst. Since a believer fasts for the sake of God, they acknowledge the sustenance, which may be taken for granted, actually comes from God. Therefore, fasting in the Islamic tradition is the best way to show a true and sincere thanksgiving.

Fasting tames the desires. The constant exercise of willpower not to eat, drink or have sexual relations sends a strong message it is the human will, hence the spirit, that is in control.

Fasting is not just about staying hungry or thirsty, it is also to struggle to contain other harmful behaviours. Prophet Muhammad remarked:

Whoever doesn’t give up lying and acting on lies during fasting, then God has no need for him to give up food and drink.

Therefore, the fundamental spiritual benefit of fasting is to exercise the will-power and attain self-control, essential for success in every part of life.

Eid celebrations at the end of Ramadan

Fasting has other personal and social benefits. Through fasting, the rich know what it means to be hungry. Hence, the rich will be more inclined to give charity when they fast. The annual Islamic alms (zakat) are usually paid in Ramadan.

Muslims often invite friends and family members to join in the celebration of the break-fast dinners (iftar). The rich organize dinners for the poor.

In the past few decades, Muslim minorities in western countries have started to invite their non-Muslim friends to iftar dinners. Muslim organizations have annual iftar dinners for their associates and supporters.

In Australia, the NSW premier, for example, has been holding iftar dinners for members of the Muslim community and other faith leaders since 2004. Presidents of the US have also held iftar dinners in the White House.

Ramadan has become a cultural event for everyone.

Ramadan culminates in a three-day celebration (Eid al-Fitr), where Muslims offer a special morning prayer, then visit family and friends. Charity, called fitr, is given to the poor to ensure no one is left out of the celebrations and the joy of success that comes with fasting. – The Conversation/Rappler.com

Mehmet Ozalp is an Associate Professor in Islamic Studies, Director of The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation and Executive Member of Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University.

This article was first published in The Conversation.

WATCH: How start of Ramadan is determined through moonsighting

Using evidence from these artifacts, the researchers traced the rapid spread of cacao through trade routes after its initial domestication more than five millennia ago in Ecuador. They showed cacao’s dispersal to South America’s northwestern Pacific coast and later into Central America until it eventually reached Mexico 1,500 years later.

A tropical evergreen tree called Theobroma cacao bears large, oval pods containing the bean-like cacao seeds that today are roasted and turned into cocoa and multitudes of chocolate confections. In these ancient times, cacao was consumed as a beverage or an ingredient with other foods.

The researchers tested more than 300 pre-Columbian ceramics spanning nearly 6,000 years for traces of cacao DNA and three chemical compounds related to it, including caffeine. They
discovered cacao evidence on about 30% of them. The findings indicate cacao products were used more widely among these ancient cultures than previously known.

The ceramics themselves offered an artistic glimpse at the cultures, some displaying wondrous anthropomorphic designs.

A study published in 2018 revealed the domestication and use of cacao beginning about 5,300 years ago in Ecuador, based on evidence from ceramics at the Santa Ana-La Florida archeological site. The new study builds on that by tracking cacao’s spread through 19 pre-Columbian cultures. Some of the earliest use was shown through ceramics made by the Valdivia culture in Ecuador and Puerto Hormiga culture in Colombia.

The ancient DNA found on the ceramics also indicated that various cultures cross-bred cacao trees to adapt to new environments.

“The first steps of cacao domestication correspond to a more complex process than the one we had previously hypothesized,” said molecular geneticist Claire Lanaud from the AGAP unit of CIRAD, a French agricultural research center for international development, lead author of the study published on Thursday, March 7 in the journal Scientific Reports.

“We were not at all aware of such an important domestication of cacao trees all along the Pacific coast in South America in the pre-Columbian times, and so early. The significant genetic mixing that was observed testifies to numerous interactions that could have happened between peoples from Amazonia and the Pacific coast,” Lanaud added.

Cacao’s dispersal from Ecuador to Mesoamerica may have occurred through vast and interconnected political-economic networks, according to the researchers.

“First of all, we can firmly state that the origin of cacao and its domestication was the Upper Amazon – Mexico and Central America. The process of dispersal was rather quick and involved the close and long-distance interaction of the Amerindian people,” said archaeologist and study co-author Francisco Valdez of the PALOC unit of France’s IRD research institution and Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

“Maritime contacts must have been involved as well as the inland contacts. Previously, the common (belief) was that cacao was domesticated in the Mesoamerican lowlands and that it was dispersed from there to the south,” Valdez said.

The study provides insight into the earliest trade in what is now one of the world’s most important cash crops. Today’s sugary chocolate confections differ greatly from cacao’s early uses. Before Europeans reached the Americas five centuries ago, cultures like the Aztecs and Maya prepared it as a drink, mixed with various spices or other ingredients.

“Cacao as a plant is an energy-source food, as well as a medicinal product,” Valdez said. “Amerindian people used it in many ways. Raw, the pulp was sucked. The (cacao seed) could be cooked, roasted, grinded and made into liquid and solid foods. The bark, branches and the cob can be burned, and the ashes are an antiseptic. And it is also used to relieve skin or muscle inflammations and sores.” – Rappler.com

Researchers said on Wednesday, March 6, the stone tools – the most primitive kind known – were initially unearthed in the 1970s near the town of Korolevo in the Carpathian foothills along the Tysa river, close to Ukraine’s borders with Hungary and Romania. But their age had remained unclear.

The new method determined the age of the sediment layer containing the stone tools, making this site critical for understanding how humans first spread into Europe during warm spells – called interglacial periods – that interrupted the Ice Age’s grip on the continent.

The researchers concluded that the maker of the tools likely was Homo erectus, an early human species that arose roughly 2 million years ago and spread across Africa, Asia and Europe before disappearing perhaps 110,000 years ago.

“No bones were found at Korolevo, only stone tools. But the age suggests that Homo erectus was the only possible human species at the time. We know very little about our earliest ancestors. They used stone tools for butchery and probably used fire,” said Czech Academy of Sciences archeologist Roman Garba, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.

Homo erectus was the first member of our evolutionary lineage with body proportions similar to our species, Homo sapiens, though with a smaller brain.

The tools, made of volcanic rock, were fashioned in what is called the Oldowan style. While quite simple – flaked tools such as choppers, scrapers or basic cutting instruments – they represent the dawn of human technology.

Until now, the oldest-known evidence of humans in Europe was about 1.2-1.1 million years old from a site called Atapuerca in Spain.

The Korolevo findings provide insight into the route of the first human expansion into Europe. Homo erectus fossils from 1.8 million years ago are known from a Caucasus site in Georgia called Dmanisi. Coupled with Korolevo, this suggests Homo erectus entered Europe from the east or southeast, migrating along the Danube river, Garba said.

“Korolevo is the northernmost outpost found so far of what we presume to be Homo erectus and is testimony to the intrepidness of this ancestor,” Czech Academy of Sciences geoscientist and study co-author John Jansen added.

It has been notoriously difficult to determine the age of Paleolithic sites like Korolevo. The study dated the tools, left by their makers on a river bed, by determining when the layer bearing the artifacts was buried under overlaying sediment.

“Earth is constantly bombarded by galactic cosmic rays. When these rays – mainly protons and alpha particles – penetrate Earth’s atmosphere, they generate a secondary shower of particles – neutrons and muons – that, in turn, penetrates into the subsurface,” geoscientist and study co-author Mads Knudsen of Aarhus University in Denmark said.

These particles react with minerals in rocks to produce radioactive nuclides, a class of atoms. The sediment was dated based on the ratio of two nuclides, thanks to their differing pace of radioactive decay.

Europe was later colonized by other now-extinct human species including Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago, arriving in significant numbers in Europe perhaps around 40,000-45,000 years ago.

The Homo erectus pioneers encountered a Europe inhabited by large mammals including mammoths, rhinos, hippos, hyenas and saber-toothed cats.

“Most likely they were scavengers, looking for carcasses left by hyenas or other predators, but what attracted them to Korolevo was a source of high-quality volcanic rock, very good for making stone tools,” Garba said.

The researchers suspect evidence of European human occupation even older than Korolevo will turn up.

“The question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ we will find a site of similar or older age somewhere else in Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria or Serbia,” Garba said. – Rappler.com

Scientists said on Wednesday, March 6, that Webb has spotted a galaxy where star formation had already ceased by roughly 13.1 billion years ago, 700 million years after the Big Bang event that gave rise to the universe. Many dead galaxies have been detected over the years, but this is the earliest by about 500 million years.

In some ways, this galaxy is like the late Hollywood actor James Dean, famous for his “live fast, die young” life story.

“The galaxy seemed to have lived fast and intensely, and then stopped forming stars very rapidly,” said astrophysicist Tobias Looser of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

“In the first few hundred million years of its history, the universe was violent and active, with plenty of gas around to fuel star formation in galaxies. That makes this discovery particularly puzzling and interesting,” Looser added.

This galaxy is relatively small, with perhaps 100 million to one billion stars. That would put it in the neighborhood of the mass of the Small Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy situated near our Milky Way, though that one is still forming new stars.

After a galaxy stops forming new stars, it becomes a bit like a stellar graveyard.

“Once star formation ends, existing stars die and are not replaced. This happens in a hierarchical fashion, by order of stellar weight, because the most massive stars are the hottest and shine the brightest, and as a result have the shortest lives,” Kavli Institute astrophysicist and study co-author Francesco D’Eugenio said.

“As the hottest stars die, the galaxy color changes from blue – the color of hot stars – to yellow to red – the color of the least massive stars,” D’Eugenio added. “Stars about the mass of the sun live about 10 billion years. If this galaxy stopped forming stars at the time we observed it, there would be no sun-like stars left in it today. However, stars much less massive than the sun can live for trillions of years, so they would continue to shine long after star formation stopped.”

The researchers determined that this galaxy experienced a burst of star formation spanning 30 to 90 million years, then it suddenly stopped. They are trying to figure out why.

It could be, they said, due to the action of a supermassive black hole at the galactic center or a phenomenon called “feedback” – blasts of energy from newly formed stars – that pushed the gas needed to form new stars out of the galaxy.

“Alternatively, gas can be consumed very quickly by star formation, without being promptly replenished by fresh gas from the surroundings of the galaxy, resulting in galaxy starvation,” Looser said.

NASA’s Webb is able to look at greater distances, and thus farther back in time, than its Hubble Space Telescope predecessor. Among other discoveries, Webb has enabled astronomers to see the earliest-known galaxies, which have turned out to be larger and more plentiful than expected.

In the new study, the researchers were able to observe the dead galaxy at one moment in time. It is possible, they said, that it later resumed star formation.

“Some galaxies may undergo rejuvenation, if they can find fresh gas to convert into new stars,” D’Eugenio said. “We do not know the ultimate fate of this galaxy. This may depend on what mechanism caused star formation to stop.” – Rappler.com

A video shared online shows the scale of these 20-foot-long (6.1-meter-long) reptiles as one of the researchers, Dutch biologist Freek Vonk, swims alongside a giant 200-kilo (441-pound) specimen.

It was thought that there was only one species of green anaconda in the wild, the Eunectes murinus, but the scientific journal Diversity this month revealed that the new “northern green anaconda” belongs to a different, new species, Eunectes akiyama.

“What we were there to do was use the anacondas as an indicator species for what kind of damage is being done by the oil spills that are plaguing the Yasuni in Ecuador, because the oil extraction is absolutely out of control,” researcher Bryan G. Fry said.

Fry – an Australian professor of biology at the University of Queensland who for almost 20 years has been investigating anaconda species found in South America – told Reuters the discovery allows them to show that the two species split from each other almost 10 million years ago.

“But the really amazing part was, despite this genetic difference, and despite their long period of divergence, the two animals are completely identical,” he said.

Although green anaconda snakes are very similar visually, there is a genetic difference of 5.5%, which surprised the scientists.

“Which is an incredible amount of genetic difference, particularly when you put it in the context that we’re only 2% different from chimpanzees,” Fry said.

Anacondas are incredibly useful sources of information for the ecological health of the area and the potential impacts on human health of oil spills in the region, Fry said.

Some of the snakes they studied in parts of Ecuador were heavily polluted by oil spills, and the anacondas and arapaima fish are accumulating a large amount of the petrochemical metals, he added.

“That means that if arapaima fish are accumulating these oil spill metals, that they need to be avoided by pregnant women, just like women avoid salmon and tuna and other parts of the world for fear of methylmercury,” he said. – Rappler.com

Intuitive Machines, the Texas-based aerospace company that NASA paid $118 million to build and fly Odysseus, said its ground control team had received a final “farewell transmission” from the spacecraft before it went dark on the moon’s south pole region.

“Goodnight, Odie. We hope to hear from you again,” Intuitive said in an online update, referring to the spacecraft by the nickname its engineers had affectionately adopted for a lander they said proved to be more robust than expected.

Earlier in the day, Intuitive said its teams would program Odysseus to “phone home” to the company’s ground control center Houston if and when the spacecraft receives enough solar power to reawaken in three weeks with the next sunrise over its landing site.

The company previously said Odysseus would likely run out of battery power sometime Wednesday night, just after its sixth full day on the moon, as the sun sank low on the lunar horizon and solar energy regeneration became insufficient.

But Intuitive said on Thursday morning that Odysseus was “still kicking,” and that flight controllers would seek to download a final stream of data trasmitted the 239,000 miles (385,000km) to Earth before contact was lost.

Intuitive’s shares – which had nearly tripled and then plummeted in wild swings over the course of the mission – remained up about 20% from just before the launch, giving the company a market value of about $600 million.

The six-legged Nova-C-class lander, shaped like a hexagonal cylinder and standing 13 feet (4 m) tall, was launched on Feb. 15 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket supplied by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It arrived in lunar orbit six days later.

The vehicle reached the lunar surface last Thursday after an 11th-hour navigational glitch and nail-biting descent that ended with Odysseus catching one of its feet on the ground and landing in a sharply tilted position, immediately impeding its operations.

Intuitive Machines have said human error was to blame for the navigational issue. Flight readiness teams had neglected to manually unlock a safety switch before launch, preventing subsequent activation of the vehicle’s laser-guided range finders and forcing flight engineers to hurriedly improvise an alternative during lunar orbit.

The last-minute work-around likely prevented a crash-landing but may have contributed to the vehicle landing askew, apparently catching a foot on the uneven surface and coming to rest leaning at a 30-degree angle, company officials said.

An image released on Wednesday showed the spacecraft as it was touching down on the surface, with its landing gear visibly damaged.

The company has said that two of the lander’s antennae were knocked out of commission, and its solar panels were likewise facing the wrong direction.

Despite persistent difficulties in communicating with the lander and keeping its solar batteries charged, NASA said it managed to extract some data from all six of its science payloads delivered by Odysseus.

Intuitive and NASA executives both hailed the science achieved and the “soft” lunar landing itself – the first ever by a commercially manufactured and operated space vehicle – as a key breakthrough in a new chapter of lunar exploration.

Odysseus was also the first US spacecraft to make a controlled descent to the lunar surface since NASA’s final crewed Apollo mission to the moon in 1972.

And it was the first under NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to send several more commercial robot landers to the moon on science scouting missions ahead of a planned return of astronauts to Earth’s only natural satellite later this decade.

To date, space agencies of just four other countries have ever achieved a “soft” moon landing – the former Soviet Union, China, India and, just last month, Japan, whose lander likewise tipped over on its side.

The United States is the only country ever to have sent humans to the lunar surface. – Rappler.com

Texas-based Intuitive Machines said in an online update on Tuesday, February 27, that its control center in Houston remained in contact with the lander as it “efficiently sent payload science data and imagery in furtherance of the company’s mission objectives.”

The spacecraft reached the lunar surface last Thursday, February 22, after an 11th-hour navigational glitch and white-knuckle descent that ended with Odysseus landing in a sideways or sharply tilted position that has impeded its communications and solar-charging capability.

Intuitive Machines said the next day that human error was to blame for the navigational issue. Flight readiness teams had neglected to manually unlock a safety switch before launch, preventing subsequent activation of the vehicle’s laser-guided range finders and forcing flight engineers to hurriedly improvise an alternative during lunar orbit.

An Intuitive executive told Reuters on Saturday, February 24, that the safety switch lapse stemmed from the company’s decision to forgo a test-firing of the laser system during pre-launch checks in order to save time and money.

Whether or not failure of the range finders and last-minute substitution of a workaround ultimately caused Odysseus to land in an off-kilter manner remained an open question, according to Intuitive officials.

Nevertheless, the company said last Friday, February 23, that two of the spacecraft’s communication antennae were knocked out of commission, pointed the wrong way, and that its solar panels were likewise facing the wrong direction, limiting the vehicle’s ability to recharge its batteries.

As a consequence, Intuitive said on Monday, February 26, that it expected to lose contact with Odysseus on Tuesday morning, cutting short the mission that held a dozen science instruments for NASA and several commercial customers and had been intended to operate on the moon for seven to 10 days.

Beside crater wall?

On Tuesday morning, Intuitive said controllers were still “working on final determination of battery life on the lander, which may continue up to an additional 10-20 hours.”

The latest update from the company indicated the spacecraft might last for a total of six days before the sun sets over the landing site.

The company’s shares closed 7% higher on Tuesday. The stock plummeted last week following news the spacecraft had landed askew.

It remained to be seen how much research data and imagery from payloads might go uncollected because of Odysseus’ cockeyed landing and shortened lunar lifespan.

NASA paid Intuitive $118 million to build and fly Odysseus.

NASA chief Bill Nelson told Reuters on Tuesday he understood that agency scientists expected to retrieve some data from all six of their payloads. He also said Odysseus apparently landed beside a crater wall and was leaning at a 12-degree angle, though it was not clear whether that meant 12 degrees from the surface or 12 degrees from an upright position.

Intuitive executives said on February 23 that engineers believed Odysseus had caught the foot of one of its landing legs on the lunar surface as it neared touchdown and tipped over before coming to rest horizontally, apparently propped up on a rock.

No photos from Odysseus on the lunar surface have been transmitted yet. But an image from an orbiting NASA spacecraft released on Monday showed the lander as a tiny speck near its intended destination in the moon’s south pole region.

Despite its less-than-ideal touchdown, Odysseus became the first US spacecraft to land on the moon since NASA’s last crewed Apollo mission to the lunar surface in 1972.

It was also the first lunar landing ever by a commercially manufactured and operated space vehicle, and the first under NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to Earth’s natural satellite this decade. – Rappler.com

Sixteen years later, another landslide devastated the same town, killing over 90 residents and employees of a mining company.

How many more preventable disasters will happen due to disregard of scientific data?

In this Rappler Talk episode, environment reporter Iya Gozum talks with Dr. Likha Minimo, geologist and director for knowledge sharing at the University of the Philippines Resilience Institute, about the Davao de Oro landslide and the implementation of hazard maps in the Philippines.

Watch the interview at 11 am on Wednesday, February 28. – Rappler.com