geneva — The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information.

“Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable,” the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva.

He said it was “certain” that cases were on the rise in other places that haven’t been reporting, calling on governments to keep up surveillance and provide continued access to treatments and vaccines.

Tedros said the JN.1 variant was now the most prominent in the world. It is an omicron variant, so current vaccines should still provide some protection.

Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead at WHO for COVID-19, cited an increase in respiratory diseases across the globe due to the coronavirus but also flu, rhinovirus and pneumonia.

“We expect those trends to continue into January through the winter months in the northern hemisphere,” she said, while noting increases in COVID-19 in the southern hemisphere — where it’s now summer.

While bouts of coughs, sniffling, fever and fatigue in the winter are nothing new, Van Kerkhove said this year in particular, “we are seeing co-circulation of many different types of pathogens.”

WHO officials recommend that people get vaccinated when possible, wear masks and make sure indoor areas are well ventilated.

“The vaccines may not stop you being infected, but the vaccines are certainly reducing significantly your chance of being hospitalized or dying,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at WHO.
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Geneva — The World Health Organization is warning that millions of people caught in conflict-driven health emergencies risk dying from traumatic wounds and infectious diseases because life-saving humanitarian aid is not reaching those in need.

In one of his most forceful statements to date, the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accused the Israeli government of blocking essential aid to Gaza.

In a briefing to journalists Wednesday, Tedros said a humanitarian mission to northern Gaza planned for that day, the sixth since December 26, had to be canceled because “our requests were rejected and assurances of safe passage were not provided.”

“Delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza continues to face nearly insurmountable challenges. Intense bombardment, restrictions on movement, fuel shortages, and interrupted communications make it impossible for WHO and our partners to reach those in need,” he said. “We call on Israel to approve requests by WHO and other partners to deliver humanitarian aid. … Health care must always be protected and respected; it cannot be attacked, and it cannot be militarized.”

WHO officials say Gaza is buckling under what they call a perfect storm for the proliferation of disease. As of January 1, it has documented nearly 200,000 respiratory infections and tens of thousands of cases of scabies, lice, skin rashes, and jaundice.

The agency says 2,140 cases of diarrhea among children under five in Gaza were reported in 2021-2022; by November 2023, that number had increased 20-fold to 42,655 cases.

“This is an underestimation,” said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, speaking in Jerusalem. “We lack access to health facilities. …So, the situation is likely to be worse.

“If the situation is not improved, we can expect more outbreaks and deaths,” he warned.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health says at least 23,357 Palestinians have been killed and 59,410 injured since Hamas terrorists invaded Israel October 7, killing 1,200 people, and taking some 220 hostages.

The WHO says it is impossible to access the population in Gaza without an effective deconfliction system in place because of the massive destruction of Gaza’s public health infrastructure and continued intense hostilities.

“We have heard various comments that the U.N. isn’t doing enough,” said Michael Ryan, head of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program.

“If you continue to destroy infrastructure, if you continue to destroy services at this rate, and then you blame the people who come in and support and provide life-saving assistance—who is to blame here?” he said. “We are on the ground, and we are serving. We can do much more. We must be given the means to do much more, but right now that is not possible.”

In a virtual briefing Friday, Col. Elad Goren, head of the civil department of COGAT, the Israeli agency that facilitates aid in Gaza, said the “narrative of blockade — that is completely false.”

He said that U.N. and other humanitarian agencies have told him that there was a “sufficient amount of food in Gaza and we continue to push the humanitarian agencies to collect more trucks at the borders and to distribute them.”

He added that “Israel has not and will not stand in the way of providing humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza that are not a part of terror. They are not our enemy.”

While Gaza continues to dominate headlines globally, WHO chief Tedros warned that millions of people in other countries in conflict, notably Sudan and Ethiopia, are threatened by increasing violence, mass displacement, spread of disease, famine, and death, and must not be forgotten.

In the past month, he said conflict has displaced half-a-million people from Al-Gezira state, which used to be a haven from the conflict in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. 

“Due to security concerns, WHO has temporarily halted its operations in Al-Gezira,” he said. “The state is also considered the breadbasket of Sudan, and fighting there has disrupted the annual harvest, and increased the risk of food insecurity in conflict-affected areas.”

Tedros also said conditions have deteriorated especially for Sudanese children since war erupted in mid-April, noting an estimated 3.5 million children under the age of 5 — one in seven — are acutely malnourished, and “more than 100,000 are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, requiring hospitalization.”

Tedros expressed grave concern about the worsening health crisis in parts of Ethiopia, saying the northwestern region of Amhara has been badly affected by conflict since April and restrictions on movement were hampering efforts to deliver humanitarian assistance.

“Fighting is affecting access to health facilities, either through damage or destruction, roadblocks, and other obstacles,” he said. “Health authorities are unable to deliver training and supplies and are unable to transport samples for laboratory confirmation in many areas.

“Disease outbreaks are spreading in northern Ethiopia, as the result of conflict, drought, economic shocks, and malnutrition, especially in the Tigray and Amhara regions,” where many people reportedly were suffering from near-famine conditions, he said, adding that “the most pressing need is for access to the affected areas, so we can assess the need and respond accordingly.”
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sydney — Australian researchers have found that record heat profoundly affected the global water cycle in 2023, contributing to severe storms, floods and droughts. An Australian National University study published Thursday asserts that rising sea and air temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels have intensified monsoons, cyclones and other storm systems.

The world’s climate is increasingly lurching between extreme events, according to the study. It results in severe storms and cyclones dumping more water than they used to and droughts developing much faster.

The burning of fossil fuels is identified by the report’s authors as “by far the biggest contributor to global warming.”

They say that some of the worst disasters of 2023 were linked to unusually strong cyclones that brought massive rainfall to Libya, Mozambique, Myanmar, New Zealand and Australia. A lack of rainfall and high temperatures exacerbated long-standing droughts in South America, parts of Africa and the Mediterranean.

Lead author Albert Van Dijk, a professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University College of Science, told VOA climate change is deeply affecting the global water cycle.

“On the one hand, we see that severe storm and rainfall events carry more water than they used to,” he said. “So cyclones dump more water and start to behave in some erratic ways that causes them to slow down, which happened, for instance, in Australia, but also in other places, dumping a lot of water in one place and causing massive flooding. On the other hand, we’re seeing that droughts develop much faster.”

The research team in Australia used data from thousands of ground stations and satellites to provide real-time information on rainfall, air temperature and humidity in the air.

Severe storms have hit parts of eastern Australia in recent weeks, while other parts of the country have battled bushfires.

In the first few days of summer, in early December, a heat wave warning affected areas in every state and territory, apart from the island of Tasmania.

Increasing natural disasters in Australia have raised concerns among politicians, environmental activists and scientists about the impacts of climate change.

Australia’s government has legislated a target to cut carbon emissions by 43% from 2005 levels by 2030 and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. 
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washington — An ancient species of great ape was likely driven to extinction when climate change put their favorite fruits out of reach during dry seasons, scientists reported Wednesday. 

The species Gigantopithecus blacki, which once lived in southern China, represents the largest great ape known to scientists — standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 650 pounds. 

But its size may also have been a weakness. 

“It’s just a massive animal – just really, really big,” said Renaud Joannes-Boyau, a researcher at Australia’s Southern Cross University and co-author of the study published in the journal Nature. “When food starts to be scarce, it’s so big it can’t climb trees to explore new food sources.” 

The giant apes, which likely resembled modern orangutans, survived for around 2 million years on the forested plains of China’s Guangxi region. They ate vegetarian diets, munching on fruits and flowers in tropical forests, until the environment began to change. 

The researchers analyzed pollen and sediment samples preserved in Guangxi’s caves, as well as fossil teeth, to unravel how forests produced fewer fruits starting around 600,000 years ago, as the region experienced more dry seasons. 

The giant apes didn’t vanish quickly, but likely went extinct sometime between 215,000 and 295,000 years ago, the researchers found. 

While smaller apes may have been able to climb trees to search for different food, the researchers’ analysis shows the giant apes ate more tree bark, reeds and other non-nutritious food. 

“When the forest changed, there was not enough food preferred by the species,” said co-author Zhang Yingqi of China’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. 

Most of what scientists know about the extinct great apes comes from studying fossil teeth and four large lower jaw bones, all found in southern China. No complete skeletons have been found. 

Between around 2 and 22 million years ago, several dozen species of great apes inhabited Africa, Europe and Asia, fossil records show. Today, only gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and humans remain. 

While the first humans emerged in Africa, scientists don’t know on which continent the great ape family first arose, said Rick Potts, who directs the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and was not involved in the study. 
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Washington — Ancient DNA helps explain why northern Europeans have a higher risk of multiple sclerosis than other ancestries: It’s a genetic legacy of horseback-riding cattle herders who swept into the region about 5,000 years ago.

The findings come from a huge project to compare modern DNA with that culled from ancient humans’ teeth and bones — allowing scientists to trace both prehistoric migration and disease-linked genes that tagged along.

When a Bronze Age people called the Yamnaya moved from the steppes of what are now Ukraine and Russia into northwestern Europe, they carried gene variants that today are known to increase people’s risk of multiple sclerosis, researchers reported Wednesday.

Yet the Yamnaya flourished, widely spreading those variants. Those genes probably also protected the nomadic herders from infections carried by their cattle and sheep, concluded the research published in the journal Nature. 

“What we found surprised everyone,” said study co-author William Barrie, a genetics researcher at the University of Cambridge. “These variants were giving these people an advantage of some kind.”

It’s one of several findings from a first-of-its-kind gene bank with thousands of samples from early humans in Europe and western Asia, a project headed by Eske Willerslev of Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen who helped pioneer the study of ancient DNA. Similar research has traced even earlier cousins of humans such as Neanderthals.

Using the new gene bank to explore MS was a logical first step. That’s because while MS can strike any population, it is most common among white descendants of northern Europeans and scientists have been unable to explain why.

The potentially disabling disease occurs when immune system cells mistakenly attack the protective coating on nerve fibers, gradually eroding them. It causes varying symptoms — numbness and tingling in one person, impaired walking and vision loss in another — that often wax and wane.

It’s not clear what causes MS although a leading theory is that certain infections could trigger it in people who are genetically susceptible. More than 230 genetic variants have been found that can increase someone’s risk. 

The researchers first examined DNA from about 1,600 ancient Eurasians, mapping some major shifts in northern Europe’s population. First, farmers from the Middle East began supplanting hunter-gatherers and then, nearly 5,000 years ago, the Yamnaya began moving in — traveling with horses and wagons as they herded cattle and sheep.

The research team compared the ancient DNA to about 400,000 present-day people stored in a UK gene bank, to see the MS-linked genetic variations persist in the north, the direction the Yamnaya moved, rather than in southern Europe.

In what is now Denmark, the Yamnaya rapidly replaced ancient farmers, making them the closest ancestors of modern Danes, Willerslev said. MS rates are particularly high in Scandinavian countries.

Why would gene variants presumed to have strengthened ancient immunity later play a role in an autoimmune disease? Differences in how modern humans are exposed to animal germs may play a role, knocking the immune system out of balance, said study co-author Dr. Astrid Iversen of Oxford University.

The findings finally offer an explanation for the north-south MS divide in Europe, but more work is needed to confirm the link, cautioned genetic expert Samira Asgari of New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who wasn’t involved with the research, in an accompanying commentary.

Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead at WHO for COVID-19, cited an increase in respiratory diseases across the globe due to the coronavirus but also flu, rhinovirus and pneumonia.

“We expect those trends to continue into January through the winter months in the northern hemisphere,” she said, while noting increases in COVID-19 in the southern hemisphere — where it’s now summer.

While bouts of coughs, sniffling, fever and fatigue in the winter are nothing new, Van Kerkhove said this year in particular, “We are seeing co-circulation of many different types of pathogens.”

WHO officials recommend that people get vaccinated when possible, wear masks, and make sure indoor areas are well ventilated.

“The vaccines may not stop you being infected, but the vaccines are certainly reducing significantly your chance of being hospitalized or dying,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at WHO. 
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Geneva — The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month. 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information. 

“Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable,” the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva. 

He said it was “certain” that cases were on the rise in other places that haven’t been reporting, calling on governments to keep up surveillance and provide continued access to treatments and vaccines. 

Tedros said the JN.1 variant was now the most prominent in the world. It is an omicron variant, so current vaccines should still provide some protection. 

Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead at WHO for COVID-19, cited an increase in respiratory diseases across the globe due to the coronavirus but also flu, rhinovirus and pneumonia. 

“We expect those trends to continue into January through the winter months in the northern hemisphere,” she said, while noting increases in COVID-19 in the southern hemisphere — where it’s now summer. 

While bouts of coughs, sniffling, fever and fatigue in the winter are nothing new, Van Kerkhove said this year in particular, “We are seeing co-circulation of many different types of pathogens.” 

WHO officials recommend that people get vaccinated when possible, wear masks, and make sure indoor areas are well ventilated. 

“The vaccines may not stop you being infected, but the vaccines are certainly reducing significantly your chance of being hospitalized or dying,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at WHO. 
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Islamabad — A senior representative of Afghanistan’s Taliban government told a Pakistan-hosted international health conference Wednesday that his country had recorded an increase in mosquito-borne malaria and dengue fever cases, but infections caused by highly contagious poliovirus declined significantly.

Only 12 children around the world were paralyzed by wild poliovirus in 2023, all of them in Afghanistan and Pakistan — with six reported in each. The two countries, sharing a nearly 2,600-kilometer border, have not detected a polio infection this year.

“Polio is still a great challenge for both Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Qalandar Ebad, the Taliban health minister, said in his English-language speech at the first global health security summit in Islamabad.

Delegates from 70 countries worldwide, including those from the United States and the United Nations, are attending the summit in the Pakistani capital.

“We are trying our best to eradicate the polio virus from the country and fortunately we have good accomplishments in this area,” Ebad said.

The World Health Organization says the polio vaccination campaign in Afghanistan has improved in quality and outreach since the Taliban regained control of the war-ravaged country in August 2021, leading to the cessation of years of nationwide hostilities.

The Taliban minister noted that there was a “slight increase in HIV/AIDS cases” in the impoverished country, but he did not elaborate.

Ebad blamed climate change for some health emergencies facing his South Asian nation of more than 40 million people. He urged the need to assist Afghanistan and other developing countries in improving their national healthcare systems to enable them to utilize locally available expertise to combat infectious diseases.

“We are witnessing that the funding in Afghanistan is decreasing, but still, in our country, instead of national capacity [building], many international [workers] with higher salaries are recruited, though the national [workers] can perform the same tasks as internationals do,” the Taliban minister asserted.

No foreign country has recognized the Taliban, citing their bans on Afghan women’s access to education and work.

Afghanistan lost billions of dollars in foreign aid after the Taliban takeover as Western countries and international donors suspended their financial support for the country, where the health sector was primarily dependent on the funding.

In his address to Wednesday’s opening session of the summit, Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar urged collective efforts to fight global infectious diseases like COVID-19 and climate change-induced emergencies.

Kakar said that “no state in the world, no matter how powerful it is, can meet such challenges” alone.

While addressing the gathering, Donald Blome, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, backed calls for a collaborative international approach to global health security.

“Coordination with partners is the most effective way to address regional and global health threats,” Blome said. He added that halting infectious disease outbreaks at their point of origin is one of the best and most economical ways to save lives. “Health is the cornerstone to the future of any thriving nation, and the United States will be a strong partner to build this future.”
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washington — The United States is pushing back its planned return of astronauts to the surface of the Moon from 2025 to 2026, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday.

Artemis, named after the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, was officially announced in 2017 as part of the US space agency’s plans to establish a sustained presence on Earth’s nearest space neighbor, and apply lessons learned there for a future mission to Mars.

Its first mission, an uncrewed test flight to the Moon and back called Artemis 1, took place in 2022, after several postponements.

Artemis 2, involving a crew that doesn’t land on the surface, has been postponed from later this year to September 2025, Nelson told reporters.

Artemis 3, in which the first woman and first person of color are to set foot on lunar soil at the Moon’s south pole, should now take place in September 2026.

“Safety is our top priority, and to give Artemis teams more time to work through the challenges,” said Nelson.

NASA is also looking to build a lunar space station called Gateway where spacecraft will dock during later missions.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has won the contract for a landing system for Artemis 3 based on a version of its prototype Starship rocket, which remains far from ready. Both of its orbital tests have ended in explosions.

Delays to Starship have knock-on effects because the spacesuit contractor needs to know how the suits will interface with the spacecraft, and simulators need to be built for astronauts to learn its systems.

And the Artemis 1 mission itself revealed technical issues, such as the heat shield on the Orion crew capsule eroded in an unexpected way, and the ground structure used to launch the giant SLS rocket sustained more damage than expected.

As of March 2023, NASA has agreed to pay approximately $40 billion to hundreds of contractors in support of Artemis, the same watchdog found.

A key difference between the 20th-century Apollo missions and the Artemis era is the increasing role of commercial partnerships, part of a broader strategy to involve the private companies in space exploration to reduce costs and to make space more accessible.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A crippling fuel leak forced a U.S. company on Tuesday to give up on landing a spacecraft on the moon.

Astrobotic Technology’s lander began losing fuel soon after Monday’s launch. The spacecraft also encountered problems keeping its solar panel pointed towards the sun and generating solar power.

“Given the propellant leak, there is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the moon,” Astrobotic said in a statement.

Astrobotic had been targeting a lunar landing on Feb. 23, following a roundabout, fuel-efficient flight to the moon. It could have been the first U.S. moon landing in more than 50 years, and the first by a private company. A second lander from a Houston company is due to launch next month.

Only four countries have pulled off a successful moon landing.

The company said the new goal was to keep the lander operating as long as possible in space, in order to learn as much as possible for its next mission a year or so from now. Flight controllers managed to keep the spacecraft pointed toward the sun and its battery fully charged, with another 40 hours of operations anticipated.

The Pittsburgh-based company did not elaborate on why the Peregrine lander’s propellant system failed just hours into the flight.

NASA paid Astrobotic $108 million to fly its experiments to the moon on this mission, part of the agency’s commercial lunar program.
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PARIS — The year 2023 was the hottest on record, with the increase in Earth’s surface temperature nearly crossing the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, EU climate monitors said Tuesday.

Climate change intensified heatwaves, droughts and wildfires across the planet and pushed the global thermometer 1.48 C above the preindustrial benchmark, the Copernicus Climate Change Service reported.

“It is also the first year with all days over one degree warmer than the preindustrial period,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

“Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years,” she said.

Nearly half the year exceeded the 1.5C limit, beyond which climate impacts are more likely to become self-reinforcing and catastrophic, according to scientists.

But even if Earth’s average surface temperature breaches 1.5C in 2024, as some scientists predict, it does not mean the world has failed to meet the Paris Agreement target of capping global warming under that threshold.

That would occur only after several successive years above the 1.5C benchmark, and even then, the 2015 treaty allows for the possibility of reducing Earth’s temperature after a period of “overshoot.”

2023 saw massive fires in Canada, extreme droughts in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, unprecedented summer heatwaves in Europe, the United States and China, along with record winter warmth in Australia and South America.

“Such events will continue to get worse until we transition away from fossil fuels and reach net-zero emissions,” said University of Reading climate change professor Ed Hawkins, who did not contribute to the report.

“We will continue to suffer the consequences of our inactions today for generations,” he said.

The Copernicus findings come one month after a climate agreement was reached at COP28 in Dubai calling for the gradual transition away from fossil fuels, the main cause of climate warming.

“We desperately need to rapidly cut fossil fuel use and reach net-zero to preserve the livable climate that we all depend on,” said John Marsham, atmospheric science professor at the University of Leeds.

The year saw another ominous record: two days in November 2023 exceeded the preindustrial benchmark by more than two degrees Celsius.

Copernicus predicted that the 12-month period ending in January or February 2024 would “exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level.”

Reliable weather records date to 1850, but older proxy data for climate change — from tree rings, ice cores and sediment — show that 2023 temperatures “exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years,” Burgess said.

Records were broken on every continent. In Europe, 2023 was the second-warmest year on record, after 2020.

2023 saw the beginning of a naturally occurring El Nino weather phenomenon, which warms waters in the southern Pacific and stokes hotter weather beyond.

The phenomenon is expected to reach its peak in 2024 and is linked to the eight consecutive months of record heat from June to December.

Ocean temperatures globally were also “persistently and unusually high,” with many seasonal records broken since April.

These unprecedented ocean temperatures caused marine heatwaves devastating to aquatic life and increased storm intensity.

Oceans absorb more than 90% of excess heat caused by human activity and play a major role in regulating Earth’s climate.

Rising temperatures have also accelerated the melting of ice shelves — frozen ridges that help prevent massive glaciers in Greenland and West Antarctica from slipping into the ocean and raising sea levels.

Antarctic sea ice hit record-low levels in 2023.

“The extremes we have observed over the last few months provide a dramatic testimony of how far we now are from the climate in which our civilization developed,” said Carlo Buontempo, Copernicus director.

In 2023, carbon dioxide and methane concentrations reached record levels of 419 parts per million and 1,902 parts per billion, respectively.

Methane is the second-largest contributor to global warming after CO2 and is responsible for around 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the industrial revolution, according to the United Nations Environment Program.
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Researchers in Taiwan are using a special robot to hunt mosquitoes that carry the virus that causes dengue fever. From the southern city of Kaohsiung, Shelley Schlender has our story.
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The impact of climate change is increasingly evident along El Salvador’s coastlines where saltwater is slowly claiming what once was farmland. Veronica Villafañe narrates this report from Claudia Zaldaña
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Cape Canaveral, Florida — The first American spacecraft to attempt to land on the Moon in more than half a century is poised to blast off early Monday — but this time, private industry is leading the charge.  

A brand-new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, should lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 2:18 a.m. (7:18 GMT) for its maiden voyage, carrying Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lunar Lander. The weather so far appears favorable.

If all goes to plan, Peregrine will touch down on a mid-latitude region of the Moon called Sinus Viscositatis, or Bay of Stickiness, on February 23.

“Leading America back to the surface of the Moon for the first time since Apollo is a momentous honor,” Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s CEO John Thornton said ahead of the launch.

Until now, a soft landing on Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor has only been accomplished by a handful of national space agencies: the Soviet Union was first, in 1966, followed by the United States, which is still the only country to put people on the Moon.  

China has successfully landed three times over the past decade, while India was the most recent to achieve the feat on its second attempt, last year.

Now, the United States is turning to the commercial sector to stimulate a broader lunar economy and ship its own hardware at a fraction of the cost, under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

A challenging task  

The space agency has paid Astrobotic more than $100 million for the task, while another contracted company, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, is looking to launch in February and land near the south pole.

“We think that it’s going to allow… more cost effective and more rapidly accomplished trips to the lunar surface to prepare for Artemis,” said NASA’s Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration.

Artemis is the NASA-led program to return astronauts to the Moon later this decade, in preparation for future missions to Mars.

Controlled touchdown on the Moon is a challenging undertaking, with roughly half of all attempts ending in failure. Absent an atmosphere that would allow the use of parachutes, a spacecraft must navigate through treacherous terrain using only its thrusters to slow descent.

Private missions by Israel and Japan, as well as a recent attempt by the Russian space agency have all ended in failure — though the Japanese Space Agency is targeting mid-January for the touchdown of its SLIM lander launched last September.

Making matters more fraught is the fact it is the first launch for ULA’s Vulcan, although the company boasts it has a 100 percent success rate in its more than 150 prior launches.

ULA’s new rocket is planned to have reusable first stage booster engines, which the company, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, expects will help it achieve cost savings.

Science instruments, human remains

On board Peregrine are a suite of scientific instruments that will probe radiation and surface composition, helping to pave the way for the return of astronauts.

But it also contains more colorful cargo, including a shoebox-sized rover built by Carnegie Mellon University, a physical Bitcoin, and, somewhat controversially, cremated remains and DNA, including those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, legendary sci-fi author and scientist Arthur C. Clarke, and a dog.

The Navajo Nation, America’s largest Indigenous tribe, has said sending these to the Moon desecrates a body that is sacred to their culture and have pleaded for the cargo’s removal. Though they were granted a last-ditch meeting with the White House, NASA and other officials, their objections have been ignored.  

The Vulcan rocket’s upper stage, which will circle the Sun after it deploys the lander, is meanwhile carrying more late cast members of Star Trek, as well as hair samples of presidents George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.  
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New Delhi — India has achieved another milestone in space exploration by successfully placing a spacecraft in an orbit from which it will study the sun for five years.

India joined a select group of nations already studying the sun four months after it became the first country to land an unmanned spacecraft on the moon’s southern polar region, cementing its reputation as a nation that is emerging on the frontlines of space exploration.

The Indian Space Research Organization said that the space observatory, Aditya L-1, reached the position from which it can monitor the sun’s outer layer and send data back to Earth on Saturday. The spacecraft, which was launched September 2, took four months to reach its destination.

“The orbit of Aditya-L1 spacecraft is a periodic Halo orbit which is located roughly 1.5 million km [kilometers] from earth,” according to an ISRO statement.

Aditya-L1 is named after the Hindu god of the sun, called Aditya in Sanskrit. “L1” refers to Lagrange point 1, the location in space between the sun and Earth, where the satellite has been parked.

“This demonstrates India’s capability to travel over a million kilometers away from the Earth’s orbit. It is a capability that very few countries have and India is the first in Asia to do so,” according to Chaitanya Giri, associate professor of environmental sciences at Flame University in Pune. “The ability to maintain deep space communication with a spacecraft that has traveled so far and sustain a mission for a long period is also significant.”

The Indian mission is scheduled to study the sun for five years. The “Lagrange 1” point, where the spacecraft has been positioned provides an uninterrupted view of the sun, even during eclipses.

The major focus of the mission is to gain a better understanding of space weather, variations in the environment in space between the Earth and the sun, which is crucial for protecting satellites and other spacecraft, according to space scientists.

“It is vital to understand space weather at a time when there are thousands of satellites in space,” Ajay Lele, space scientist and former senior fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, said.

“Space weather is about disturbances that happen on the sun such as solar winds, solar flares and coronal mass ejections. These three components need to be studied,” he said.

Aditya-L1 is expected to be able to give warnings about space storms that can have an impact on Earth, occasionally affecting the operation of satellites and radio communications.

The spacecraft is equipped with seven scientific instruments to study solar wind particles and magnetic fields.

Solar observatory missions have been launched so far by the U.S. space agency NASA, the European space agency, Japan and China.

India’s space program, which began in the 1960s, has gained prominence under Prime Minister Narendra Modi — it is seen as part of his efforts to promote India’s global stature.

“India creates yet another landmark. It is a testament to the relentless dedication of our scientists in realizing among the most complex and intricate space missions,” Modi said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday.

Other major missions planned by the Indian space agency include a manned mission to space that is due to be launched this year and an interplanetary mission to Mars.

Besides scientific space explorations such as these, India is also looking to enhance its military capabilities in space, according to experts. The first signal that it is giving a military profile to its space program came in 2019 when it conducted an anti-satellite weapon test to demonstrate that it could shoot down satellites in space — a capability that only the United States, China and Russia have.

India has plans to develop 50 new satellites based on artificial intelligence technology in the next five years to beef up the country’s border surveillance and enhance its “geo-intelligence” capabilities, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairman S. Somanath said last month.

Enhancing surveillance capabilities from space from a military perspective is key for India, according to experts. Its concerns center both on its Himalayan borders with China, where disputed borders between the two have sparked military tensions, and on the Indian Ocean region, where China has been increasing its influence.
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BISMARCK, ND — The first person to spot it was a shovel operator working the overnight shift, eyeing a glint of white as he scooped up a giant mound of dirt and dropped it into a dump truck.

Later, after the truck driver dumped the load, a dozer driver was ready to flatten the dirt but stopped for a closer look when he, too, spotted that bit of white.

Only then did the miners realize they had unearthed something special: a 2-meter-long mammoth tusk that had been buried for thousands of years.

“We were very fortunate, lucky to find what we found,” said David Straley, an executive of North American Coal, which owns the mine.

The miners unearthed the tusk from an old streambed, about 12.1 meters deep, at the Freedom Mine near Beulah, North Dakota. The 18,210-hectare surface mine produces up to 14.5 million metric tons of lignite coal per year.

After spotting the tusk, the crews stopped digging in the area and called in experts, who estimated it to be 10,000 to 100,000 years old.

Jeff Person, a paleontologist with the North Dakota Geologic Survey, was among those to respond. He expressed surprise that the mammoth tusk hadn’t suffered more damage, considering the massive equipment used at the site.

“It’s miraculous that it came out pretty much unscathed,” Person said.

A subsequent dig at the discovery site found more bones. Person described it as a “trickle of finds,” totaling more than 20 bones, including a shoulder blade, ribs, a tooth and parts of hips, but it’s likely to be the most complete mammoth found in North Dakota, where it’s much more common to dig up an isolated mammoth bone, tooth or piece of a tusk.

“It’s not a lot of bones compared to how many are in the skeleton, but it’s enough that we know that this is all associated, and it’s a lot more than we’ve ever found of one animal together, so that’s really given us some significance,” Person said.

Mammoths once roamed across parts of Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Specimens have been found throughout the United States and Canada, said Paul Ullmann, a University of North Dakota vertebrate paleontologist.

The mine’s discovery is fairly rare in North Dakota and the region, as many remains of animals alive during the last Ice Age were destroyed by glaciations and movements of ice sheets, Ullmann said.

Other areas have yielded more mammoth remains, such as bonebeds of skeletons in Texas and South Dakota. People even have found frozen carcasses in the permafrost of Canada and Siberia, he said.

Mammoths went extinct about 10,000 years ago in what is now North Dakota, according to the Geologic Survey. They were larger than elephants today and were covered in thick wool. Cave paintings dating back 13,000 years depict mammoths.

Ullmann calls mammoths “media superstars almost as much as dinosaurs,” citing the Ice Age film franchise.

This ivory tusk, weighing more than 22.6 kilograms, is considered fragile. It has been wrapped in plastic as paleontologists try to control how fast it dehydrates. Too quickly, and the bone could break apart and be destroyed, Person said.

Other bones also have been wrapped in plastic and placed in drawers. The bones will remain in plastic for at least several months until the scientists can figure how to get the water out safely. The paleontologists will identify the mammoth species later, Person said.

The mining company plans to donate the bones to the state for educational purposes.

“Our goal is to give it to the kids,” Straley said.

North Dakota has a landscape primed for bones and fossils, including dinosaurs. Perhaps the best-known fossil from the state is that of Dakota, a mummified duckbilled dinosaur with fossilized skin, Ullmann said.

The state’s rich fossil record is largely due to the landscape’s “low-elevation, lush, ecologically productive environments in the past,” Ullmann said.

North Dakota’s location adjacent to the Rocky Mountains puts it in the path of eroding sediments and rivers, which have buried animal remains for 80 million years or more, he said.

“It’s been a perfect scenario that we have really productive environments with a lot of life, but we also had the perfect scenario, geologically, to bury the remains,” Ullmann said.
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