BEIJING: China landed an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the moon on Sunday, overcoming a key hurdle in its landmark mission to retrieve the world’s first rock and soil samples from the dark lunar hemisphere.
The landing elevates China’s space power status in a global rush to the moon, where countries including the United States are hoping to exploit lunar minerals to sustain long-term astronaut missions and moon bases within the next decade.
The Chang’e-6 craft, equipped with an array of tools and its own launcher, touched down in a gigantic impact crater called the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the moon’s space-facing side at 6:23 a.m. Beijing time (2223 GMT), the China National Space Administration said.
The mission “involves many engineering innovations, high risks and great difficulty,” the agency said in a statement on its website. “The payloads carried by the Chang’e-6 lander will work as planned and carry out scientific exploration missions.”
The successful mission is China’s second on the far side of the moon, a region no other country has reached. The side of the moon perpetually facing away from the Earth is dotted with deep and dark craters, making communications and robotic landing operations more challenging.
Given these challenges, lunar and space experts involved in the Chang’e-6 mission described the landing phase as a moment where the chance of failure is the highest.
“Landing on the far side of the moon is very difficult because you don’t have line-of-sight communications, you’re relying on a lot of links in the chain to control what is going on, or you have to automate what is going on,” said Neil Melville-Kenney, a technical officer at the European Space Agency working with China on one of the Chang’e-6 payloads.
“Automation is very difficult especially at high latitudes because you have long shadows which can be very confusing for landers,” Melville added.
The Chang’e-6 probe launched on May 3 on China’s Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan, reaching the lunar vicinity roughly a week later before tightening its orbit in preparation for a landing.
Chang’e-6 marks the world’s third lunar landing this year: Japan’s SLIM lander touched down in January, followed the next month by a lander from US startup Intuitive Machines.
The other countries that have sent spacecraft to Earth’s nearest neighbor are the then-Soviet Union and India. The United States is the only country to have landed humans on the moon, starting in 1969.
SAMPLING THE MOON
Using a scoop and drill, the Chang’e-6 lander will aim to collect 2 kg (4.4 pounds) of lunar material over two days and bring it back to Earth.
The samples will be transferred to a rocket booster atop the lander, which will launch back into space, tag up with another spacecraft in lunar orbit and return, with a landing in China’s Inner Mongolia region expected around June 25.
If all goes as planned, the mission will provide China with a pristine record of the moon’s 4.5 billion-year history and yield new clues on the solar system’s formation. It will also allow for an unprecedented comparison between the dark, unexplored region with the moon’s better understood Earth-facing side.
A simulation lab for the Chang’e-6 probe will develop and verify sampling strategies and equipment control procedures, China’s official Xinhua news agency said. It will use a full-scale replica of the sampling area based on exploration results on the environment, rock distribution and lunar soil conditions around the landing site.
China’s lunar strategy includes its first astronaut landing around 2030 in a program that counts Russia as a partner. In 2020 China conducted its first lunar sample return mission with Chang’e-5, retrieving samples from the moon’s nearer side.
The US Artemis program envisions a crewed moon landing by late 2026 or later. NASA has partnered with space agencies including those of Canada, Europe and Japan, whose astronauts will join US crews on an Artemis mission.
Artemis relies heavily on private companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose Starship rocket aims this decade to attempt the first astronaut landing since NASA’s final Apollo mission in 1972.
On Saturday Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa canceled a private mission around the moon he had paid for, which was to have used SpaceX’s Starship, citing schedule uncertainties in the rocket’s development.
Boeing and NASA postponed the company’s first crewed launch of Starliner, a long-delayed capsule meant to become the second US space taxi to low-Earth orbit.
China lands on moon’s far side in historic sample-retrieval mission
https://arab.news/b953n
China lands on moon’s far side in historic sample-retrieval mission
- Chang’e-6 craft touched down in gigantic crater on moon’s space-facing side
- The landing elevates China’s space power status in a global rush to the moon
Benin’s tension with Niger, Burkina Faso opens door for terrorists
- Both Burkina Faso and Niger are located in the Sahel, a region of the world which saw half of 2024’s deaths from terrorist attacks, according to the latest Global Terrorism Index ublished in March
ABIDJAN: Diplomatic tensions between Benin and its junta-led Sahel neighbors Niger and Burkina Faso have led to a security vacuum which jihadists are exploiting with ever-deadlier attacks, analysts said.
North Benin, which borders both Niger and Burkina Faso, has seen a recent rise in strikes targeting army positions, with an attack last week claimed by Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists killing 54 soldiers, the deadliest toll given by officials so far.
Benin’s government has blamed those attacks on a spillover from Niger and Burkina Faso, both ruled by army officers who took power in coups on the promise of quashing the Sahel region’s long-running terror scourge.
But with Niger and Burkina Faso’s juntas accusing Benin of hosting army bases for Western powers hoping to destabilize them — accusations Benin denies — there is little collaboration between the two sides on tackling the issue.
“If Benin goes it alone and there is no response from the other side, it will remain in a state of crisis, with terrorist groups having found an El Dorado on its borders,” said Beninese political scientist Emmanuel Odilon Koukoubou at the Civic Academy for Africa’s Future, a think tank.
The Beninese government shares that view.
“Our situation would be much easier if we had decent cooperation with the countries which surround us,” government spokesman Wilfried Leandre Houngbedji said on Wednesday.
“If on the other side of the border there were (security) arrangements at the very least like ours, these attacks would not take place in this way or even happen at all,” he insisted.
Both Burkina Faso and Niger are located in the Sahel, a region of the world which saw half of 2024’s deaths from terrorist attacks, according to the latest Global Terrorism Index ublished in March.
For the second year running, Burkina Faso took the top spot in the GTI’s list of countries worst affected by terrorism.
Niger meanwhile ranked fifth, just behind fellow junta-led Sahel ally Mali.
“The growing presence of jihadists in the south of Burkina Faso and Niger along with the limited capacity of the armed forces of Sahel countries along their borders have allowed jihadist groups to create cells in territories like north Benin,” Control Risks analyst Beverly Ochieng said.
And the forested areas of Benin’s W and Pendjari national parks near the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger “offer an additional layer of cover for jihadist activities,” Ochieng said.
“With only limited aerial surveillance, Islamists can move about within these zones without being detected,” she added.
The W national park was the scene of the April 17 attack, which Benin said resulted in the death of 54 soldiers, though the Al-Qaeda affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, or JNIM, claimed to have killed 70.
The JNIM is “the most influential group” in north Benin, said Lassina Diarra, Director of the Strategic Research Institute at the International Academy against Terrorism in Jacqueville, Ivory Coast.
This was “because there is a sociological, ethnic and territorial continuity with southern Burkina Faso, which is beyond the control of that state,” Diarra added.
According to Control Risks’ Ochieng, “it is likely that the JNIM wats to use this area (of north Benin) to encircle Burkina Faso, thus reinforcing its influence and presence.”
On Thursday, a key regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States, known as ECOWAS, again underlined “the imperious necessity of an indispensable and reinforced cooperation” to tackle the problem.
But in a West Africa that is more fractured than ever, that is easier said than done.
Besides turning their backs on the West, the junta-led trio of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali have all pulled out of ECOWAS, accusing the bloc of being a tool for what they see as former colonial ruler France’s neo-imperialist ambitions.
Banding together as the Alliance of Sahel States or AES, the three have created a unified army and conduct joint anti-jihadist operations.
Yet the trio has closed off cooperation on rooting out Islamist violence in countries they consider too pro-Western, Benin and Ivory Coast among them.
That said, the AES cooperates with Togo and, since December, Ghana, while Nigeria has mounted a diplomatic charm offensive to renew its security cooperation with Niger, suspended since the coup which brought the junta to power in July 2023.
For its part, Benin needs to back up military action with social support, by stepping up community-building to prevent the mass recruitment of Beninese people into jihadist groups, according to the analysts.
“However, this will remain difficult without cooperation from the Sahel, as this is where the root of the insurgency lies,” warned Ochieng.
Ex-Taliban commander pleads guilty in killings of US soldiers and kidnapping of journalists
- Hajji Najibullah entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to providing material support for acts of terrorism
- “As a result of material support I provided to the Taliban, US soldiers were killed,” Najibullah said
NEW YORK: A former Taliban commander pleaded guilty Friday to providing weapons and other support for attacks that killed American soldiers and for key roles in the 2008 gunpoint kidnapping of a reporter for The New York Times and another journalist.
Speaking through an interpreter, Hajji Najibullah entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to providing material support for acts of terrorism and conspiring to take hostages.
The bearded Najibullah, wearing a black skull cap over his shaved head, told Judge Katherine Polk Failla that he provided material support including weapons and himself to the Taliban from 2007 to 2009, knowing that his support “would be used to attack and kill United States soldiers occupying Afghanistan.”
“As a result of material support I provided to the Taliban, US soldiers were killed,” Najibullah said.
He said his material support also included his role as a Taliban commander in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province, “where the fighters under me were prepared to, and sometimes did, conduct attacks against US soldiers and their allies using suicide bombers, automatic weapons, improvised explosive devices and rocket propelled grenades.”
Najibullah, 49, said he also participated in the hostage taking of David Rohde “and his companions” so demands could be made for ransom and for the release of Taliban prisoners held by the US government.
“I created proof-of-life videos of David Rohde and his companions in which they were forced to convey the Taliban’s demands,” he said.
The former Times reporter and Afghan journalist Tahir Ludin were abducted when they were on their way to interview a Taliban leader.
Both men made a dramatic escape from a Taliban-controlled compound in Pakistan’s tribal areas more than seven months after their Nov. 10, 2008, kidnapping. Their driver, Asadullah Mangal, was a third kidnapping victim. He escaped a few weeks after Ludin and Rohde.
Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize winner who now works as senior executive editor for national security at NBC News, attended the plea proceeding.
An email sent to Rohde seeking comment said he was out of the office until Monday.
After the plea, Najibullah was led from the courtroom in shackles and handcuffs by US marshals to face an Oct. 23 sentencing. Federal sentencing guidelines, as acknowledged by a plea agreement signed by Najibullah and prosecutors, recommend a life prison sentence.
How Pope Francis touched a migrant’s heart, saying ‘we’re all the same people’
- “In the eyes of Pope Francis, we are not migrants, we’re all the same people,” not Filipino or Indian or Asian, said Abano
- Francis, himself the son of Italian immigrants in Argentina, placed the plight of migrants and refugees at the heart of his moral agenda
VATICAN CITY: Diane Karla Abano, a Filipino migrant living in Rome, has vivid memories of the day that Pope Francis touched her heart and made her feel at home, kissing her two young daughters during an audience in St. Peter’s Square in May, 2018.
“The moment that I reached out to the pope and saw his smile, I don’t know, all the hurt, all the pain that I felt, it changed into happiness and hope,” Abano said, her voice breaking and tears welling in her eyes as she showed photos of the event.
“In the eyes of Pope Francis, we are not migrants, we’re all the same people,” not Filipino or Indian or Asian, said Abano.
She was back in St. Peter’s Square this week, queuing up with tens of thousands of other mourners to pay her last respects to a man whose brief blessing proved transformative.
Francis, himself the son of Italian immigrants in Argentina, placed the plight of migrants and refugees at the heart of his moral agenda during his 12-year papacy, personally intervening to assist asylum seekers and pushing governments to do much more to help.
He repeatedly spoke out for the poor and marginalized, and criticized countries that shunned migrants.
His first trip outside Rome after he was elected pope in 2013 was to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa to pay tribute to the thousands of people who had drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe and a better life.
In 2016 he visited the Greek island of Lesbos and brought a dozen Syrian refugees back to Italy with him on his plane. In 2021, he flew to Cyprus and again ensured safe passage for a group of 50 asylum seekers.
Among them was Grace Enjei, who had escaped fighting in her native Cameroon in 2020 and had ended up stranded in the so-called “buffer zone” that divides the island as she sought to reach territory that falls within the European Union.
Just before the trip, Vatican officials told her that the pope had learnt of the plight of those caught in a legal limbo, and had arranged for them to be relocated to Italy.
“We were so happy, like, we were singing the whole night, we were dancing, we were celebrating actually. Something so, so, so good, like it was real good, we were so happy,” said Enjei.
Days after she arrived in Italy, Enjei was unexpectedly invited to celebrate Pope Francis’ birthday.
“He was like ‘these are the people from the buffer zone?’ and we were like, ‘Yes, yes, yes’. He said, ‘Oh, you guys are welcome, I heard about your story, and I was so touched, so I needed to do something’,” Enjei said.
BRIDGES NOT WALLS
The late pope repeatedly urged political leaders to defend migrants, saying their safety should take precedence over national security concerns.
In 2015 he became the first pope to address the US Congress, where he recalled his own migrant background and said it was natural for people to cross borders in search of better opportunities for them and their families.
“Is this not what we want for our own children?” he said. “I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants.”
In 2016 he publicly clashed with Donald Trump — who was then campaigning for his first term in the White House — over his plans to build a wall between the United States and Mexico to keep out migrants.
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis told reporters. Trump, who will attend the pope’s funeral on Saturday, said at the time that it was “disgraceful” for a religious leader to question a person’s faith.
Francis was critical again as the US president began his second term, telling American bishops in a letter in February that he disagreed with migrant deportations.
The pope faced resistance not just from politicians, but also sometimes from within his own Church with a number of parishes, especially in Eastern Europe, unhappy over his call for religious communities to take in refugees.
But speaking from her new home in Rome, Enjei stressed the positive impact that Francis had on so many people, not just herself.
“It’s not only about me. He has helped so many people, and we thank him for the fight he’s fighting for the migrants. We really appreciate and thank him so much,” she said.
Sheikh Mohammed visits UAE pavilion at Osaka-Kansai Expo
- Dubai ruler praises the pavilion’s design, which draws inspiration from the traditional ‘Al Areesh’
- “Today I also met with our unsung heroes and our mission at Expo 2025 Osaka, Japan,” Sheikh Mohammed noted
OSAKA: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, visited the UAE Pavilion at the Expo 2025 Osaka in Japan on Friday.
The Dubai Ruler said on X, “I was delighted today to visit Expo 2025 Osaka in Japan. I was even more delighted to visit the UAE Pavilion at the Expo.”
The Dubai ruler praised the pavilion’s design, which draws inspiration from the traditional ‘Al Areesh’, — the ancient houses built from palm fronds and trunks
“I admired the design of our national pavilion, which is inspired by the palm tree and is based on a new concept of ‘Al Areesh’, the ancient houses built from palm fronds and trunks. The content of Al Areesh, however, speaks about our projects in space, our future initiatives in the health sector and our progress in sustainability projects. Our pavilion represents our commitment to the authenticity of the past and our passion for the future,” he added.
He highlighted that while the structure honors tradition, its content showcases the UAE’s ambitious projects in space, health care innovation, and sustainability initiatives.
He also extended special thanks to Sheikha Mariam bint Mohammed bin Zayed for her supervision of the pavilion’s design and development, noting her excellence in presenting the UAE’s story to the world.
“Today I also met with our unsung heroes and our mission at Expo 2025 Osaka, Japan, who welcome more than 15,000 visitors daily, conveying our story to the world and adding new friends to our country every day,” Sheikh Mohammed noted.
“Our relationship with Japan dates back to 1972. Today, our relations with all countries of the world are strong through our global participation and hosting of international events. We also share our unsung heroes, young men and women, who travel the world to convey our story, our identity, our culture, and our passion for the future,” he added.
Saudi, Indian militaries complete first army-to-army talks
- Discussions in New Delhi focus on Sada Tanseeq drill, knowledge sharing
- Agreement follows Indian PM’s visit to Kingdom earlier this week
NEW DELHI: The first army-to-army talks between the Indian Army and the Royal Saudi Land Forces have resulted in an annual defense cooperation plan that includes joint drills, expert exchanges, and operational logistics, India’s military said on Friday.
The talks took place in New Delhi on April 23-24.
“Discussions focused on the annual defense cooperation plan, covering joint exercise Sada Tanseeq, training, military education, domain expert exchanges and engagements in areas of mutual interest,” the public information arm of the Indian Ministry of Defense said on X.
“Both sides also explored avenues of collaboration in operational logistics, battlefield management systems & niche technologies to enhance interoperability and capability development,” it said.
The Sada Tanseeq exercise, the first edition of which took place in Rajasthan in January and February, aims to enhance interoperability and joint operational capabilities between the two nations’ land forces, particularly in semi-desert terrain.
The exercise involved 90 troops from both sides focusing on training for operations under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which pertains to actions regarding threats to peace, breaches of peace and acts of aggression.
The talks in Delhi followed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Saudi Arabia and meetings with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman earlier this week.
During the visit the two sides expanded the Saudi-Indian Strategic Partnership Council to include a ministerial committee for defense cooperation and agreed to enhance defense industry collaboration.
“It is significant that the first army-to army staff level talks were held immediately after the bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the crown prince, who decided to form a ministerial-level defense cooperation committee to give a push to already deepening defense and strategic relations between India and Saudi Arabia,” defense and strategic affairs expert Ranjit Kumar told Arab News.
“The two countries have already conducted joint army exercises in 2021 and 2023. Later, the navies of the two nations have also organized two rounds of joint naval exercises. These are indicative of growing proximity between the Indian and Saudi defense forces, which may lead to new strategic equations in the region.”
