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The Citizen
20-06-2025
- General
- The Citizen
24 hours in pictures, 20 June 2025
24 hours in pictures, 20 June 2025 Through the lens: The Citizen's Picture Editors select the best news photographs from South Africa and around the world. People ride a roller coaster at the new LEGOLAND Shanghai Resort, at the Jinshan district in Shanghai, on June 20, 2025. The largest LEGOLAND in the world will be officially opened in Shanghai on July 5th. (Photo by Hector RETAMAL / AFP) PETA animal rights activists stage a protest outside the venue of Ajinomoto Co. Inc.'s annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo, Japan, 20 June 2025. Animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) activists are protesting Ajinomoto's animal-testing policy and the alleged use of animals in food tests. Picture: EPA-EFE/FRANCK ROBICHON Minehle Wanyoike from Zimbabwe prays in the school chapel during morning classes as part of the Three2Six Refugee Children's Education Project at the Sacred Heart Collage in Johannesburg, South Africa, 19 June 2025. The Three2Six Project, founded in 2008, is a bridging education programme for refugee and migrant children unable to access state schooling. Three host school communities including Sacred Heart College, Observatory Girls Primary School, and Holy Family College, make their facilities available to Three2Six each afternoon from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., after their regular school day ends. The children come from seven African countries, with the largest proportion from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe. Many of the learners are undocumented refugees who moved to South Africa with their parents. Picture: EPA-EFE/KIM LUDBROOK A priest baptizes a child during a mass baptism ceremony, sponsored by local officials, at the San Martin De Porres Church in Bacoor city, Cavite province, southwest of Manila, Philippines, 20 June 2025. More than 200 children were baptized in a mass baptism ceremony, a significant religious and cultural event in a predominantly Catholic country like the Philippines, where the baptismal certificates issued afterward often serve as a de facto birth record for newborns in communities lacking easy access to civil registration. Picture: EPA-EFE/FRANCIS R. MALASIG Students take part in a Yoga session on the eve of the International Day Of Yoga in Bhopal, India on June 20, 2025. International Day Of Yoga is celebrated every year on June 21 to promote the physical, mental, and spiritual benefits of yoga worldwide. It was first proposed by India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the United Nations, which officially declared it in 2014. Picture: Matrix Images / Sanjeev Gupta Israeli Home Front Command team members walk at the site where Iranian ballistic missiles struck residential buildingsat the site where Iranian ballistic missiles struck residential buildings in Beer Sheva, southern Israel, 20 June 2025. Israel and Iran have been exchanging fire since Israel launched strikes across Iran on 13 June 2025 as part of Operation 'Rising Lion.' Picture: EPA-EFE/ABIR SULTAN EPA A staff member remotely controls a bionic arm using force-sensing gloves at the 2025 World Semiconductor Conference & Expo in Nanjing, in China's eastern Jiangsu province on June 20, 2025. (Photo by AFP) Local people clean debris off windows at the site of a drone strike on a residential building in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, early 20 June 2025. At least 4 people were injured, including two teenagers, following an overnight Russian attack by shock drones on Kharkiv and its suburbs, according to the State Emergency Service (SES). Picture: EPA-EFE/SERGEY KOZLOV Chinese-made cars are seen before being loaded onto a ship at the port in Lianyungang, in China's eastern Jiangsu province on June 20, 2025. (Photo by AFP) A visitor attends 'Yolngu Power: The Art of Yirrkala' winter exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, 20 June 2025. Picture: EPA-EFE/DAN HIMBRECHTS MORE: 24 hours in pictures, 19 June 2025
New York Post
05-06-2025
- Science
- New York Post
Japanese lunar lander falls silent while attempting a moon touchdown
A private lunar lander from Japan fell silent while descending to the moon with a mini rover Friday and its fate was unknown. The Tokyo-based company ispace said its lander dropped out of lunar orbit as planned and everything seemed to be going well. But there was no immediate word on the outcome, following the hourlong descent. As the tension mounted, the company's livestream of the attempted landing came to an abrupt end. 'We haven't been able to confirm,' one of the commentators said in Japanese, but Mission Control 'will continuously attempt to communicate with the lander.' Advertisement 4 This image taken from video shows flight controllers at ispace Mission Control in Tokyo awaiting confirmation of their private lunar lander touching down on the moon Friday, June 6, 2025. AP The encore came two years after the company's first moonshot ended in a crash landing, giving rise to the name Resilience for its successor lander. Resilience carried a rover with a shovel to gather lunar dirt as well as a Swedish artist's toy-size red house for placement on the moon's dusty surface. Long the province of governments, the moon became a target of private outfits in 2019, with more flops than wins along the way. Advertisement Launched in January from Florida on a long, roundabout journey, Resilience entered lunar orbit last month. It shared a SpaceX ride with Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, which reached the moon faster and became the first private entity to successfully land there in March. Another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, arrived at the moon a few days after Firefly. But the tall, spindly lander face-planted in a crater near the moon's south pole and was declared dead within hours. Resilience was targeting the top of the moon, a less forbidding place than the shadowy bottom. The ispace team chose a flat area with few boulders in Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a long and narrow region full of craters and ancient lava flows that stretches across the near side's northern tier. 4 A replica of lunar rover Tenacious (front) and Resilience, a moon lander built by Japan-based startup ispace, displayed at a live event for the progress of the Moon landing of Resilience, in Tokyo, Japan, early 06 June 2025. FRANCK ROBICHON/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Advertisement Plans had called for the 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) Resilience to beam back pictures within hours and for the lander to lower the piggybacking rover onto the lunar surface this weekend. Made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic with four wheels, ispace's European-built rover — named Tenacious — sported a high-definition camera to scout out the area and a shovel to scoop up some lunar dirt for NASA. The rover, weighing just 11 pounds (5 kilograms), was going to stick close to the lander, going in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. It was capable of venturing up to two-thirds of a mile (1 kilometer) from the lander and should be operational throughout the two-week mission, the period of daylight. Besides science and tech experiments, there was an artistic touch. Advertisement 4 Employees of 'ispace' react as they wait for the signal from the touchdown of its lunar lander Resilience on the Moon at a venue to watch its landing in Tokyo, Japan, June 6, 2025. REUTERS The rover held a tiny, Swedish-style red cottage with white trim and a green door, dubbed the Moonhouse by creator Mikael Genberg, for placement on the lunar surface. Takeshi Hakamada, CEO and founder of ispace, considered the latest moonshot 'merely a steppingstone,' with its next, much bigger lander launching by 2027 with NASA involvement, and even more to follow. Minutes before the attempted landing, Hakamada assured everyone that ispace had learned from its first failed mission. 'Engineers did everything they possibly could' to ensure success this time, he said. Chief financial officer Jumpei Nozaki promised to continue the lunar quest regardless of the outcome. 4 Takeshi Hakamada, 'ispace' founder and chief executive officer, reacts as he waits with employees for the signal from the touchdown of its lunar lander Resilience on the Moon at a venue to watch its landing in Tokyo, Japan, June 6, 2025. REUTERS Ispace, like other businesses, does not have 'infinite funds' and cannot afford repeated failures, Jeremy Fix, chief engineer for ispace's U.S. subsidiary, said at a conference last month. While not divulging the cost of the current mission, company officials said it's less than the first one which exceeded $100 million. Advertisement Two other U.S. companies are aiming for moon landings by year's end: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Astrobotic Technology. Astrobotic's first lunar lander missed the moon altogether in 2024 and came crashing back through Earth's atmosphere. For decades, governments competed to get to the moon. Only five countries have pulled off successful robotic lunar landings: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan. Of those, only the U.S. has landed people on the moon: 12 NASA astronauts from 1969 through 1972. NASA expects to send four astronauts around the moon next year. That would be followed a year or more later by the first lunar landing by a crew in more than a half-century, with SpaceX's Starship providing the lift from lunar orbit all the way down to the surface. China also has moon landing plans for its own astronauts by 2030.
