The replacement crew for the International Space Station was launched late Friday, paving the way for the return home of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, two NASA astronauts stuck on the space station for nine months.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 7:03 p.m. from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying Crew-10 members: NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov. The crew is part of a routine six-month rotation.
Crew-10 and the Dragon spacecraft are expected to reach the space station around 11:30 p.m. Saturday.
Returning to Earth alongside Wilmore and Williams will be NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Their return is scheduled for Wednesday, to allow for an overlap of the two crews to brief the new team.
Wilmore and Williams arrived aboard the International Space Station in June 2024 and expected to stay in space for about 10 days. But their return was delayed after mechanical issues with their spacecraft, which, after weeks of troubleshooting was subsequently sent back to Earth without them. Their return was continually pushed back due to other technical delays.
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March 14 is Pi Day, an annual celebration of the mathematical constant of pi, representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
The holiday is observed on March 14 or 3/14 because 3.14 are the first three digits of the infinite number pi — 3.14159 … and on and on.
The celebration of Pi Day was the brainchild of physicist Larry Shaw and was first observed in 1988 at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, a science museum, and has since grown into an international event.
At that first simple salute to pi in 1988, Shaw and his wife, Catherine, took — guess what? — pies — and tea to the museum for the celebration of the infinite number. Shaw became known as the Prince of Pi and reigned over the museum’s annual honoring of the never-ending number for years, until his death in 2017.
Pi Day festivities grew to include the honoring of mathematical genius Albert Einstein because he was born on March 14.
The U.S. House of Representatives officially designated March 14 as National Pi Day in 2009.
The Exploratorium posted on its website that this year’s observance of pi would include the annual Pi Procession, which the museum described as being executed by “a high spirited crowd” through the museum and would circle the museum’s Pi Shrine 3.14 times, while “waving the digits of pi and dancing along” to a brass band.
And, of course, all participants in the revelry would be rewarded with a free slice of pie.
Pi Day is now celebrated around the world by pi lovers and is viewed as a way to arouse interest in the sciences among young people.
Pi lovers had a special treat in 2015, History.com reports. That year Pi Day was celebrated on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 a.m. The combined numbers of the date and time represent the first 10 digits of pi — 3.141592653.
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JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — Researchers warn that type 2 diabetes could affect millions more people in the coming decades after a study published this month revealed the disease is rising far faster among people in sub-Saharan Africa than previously thought.
Take 51-year-old security guard Sibusiso Sithole, for example. Being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes came as a shock, he said, because he walked six miles to and from work every day and never thought his weight was a problem.
Then his wife noticed changes in his health.
Since his diagnosis 13 years ago, Sithole has been on a rigorous treatment for diabetes and high blood pressure.
“I have to take six … medications every day,” he said.
Diabetes is a condition in which the body struggles to turn food into energy due to insufficient insulin. Without insulin, sugar stays in the blood instead of entering cells, leading to high blood-sugar levels. Long-term complications include heart disease, kidney failure, blindness and amputations.
The International Diabetes Federation estimated in 2021 that 24 million adults in sub-Saharan Africa were living with the condition. Researchers had projected that by 2045, about 6% of sub-Saharan Africans — over 50 million — would have diabetes.
The new study, published this month in the medical journal The Lancet, suggested the actual percentage could be nearly double that.
By tracking more than 10,000 participants in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Burkina Faso over seven years, researchers found that poor eating habits, lack of health care access, obesity and physical inactivity are key drivers of diabetes in Africa.
Dr. Raylton Chikwati, a study co-author from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, said another risk factor is living in or moving to the outskirts of cities, or “peri-urban areas.”
“Access to health care, you know, in the rural areas is a bit less than in the urban areas,” Chikwati said, adding that increased use of processed foods in the peri-urban areas was a problem.
Palwende Boua, a research associate at the Clinical Research Unit of Nanoro in Burkina Faso, said long-term studies are rare in Africa but essential to understanding diseases.
“Being able to have a repeated measure and following up [with] the same people … is providing much more information and much valuable information,” Boua said, “rather than having to see people once and trying to understand a phenomenon.”
Boua is preparing a policy brief for Burkina Faso’s government to assist in the fight against diabetes.
For Sithole, managing his diabetes has been a long journey. But with treatment and lifestyle changes, he has regained control over his health.
“What I can tell people is that they must go and check — check the way they eat — because that time I was having too much weight in my body,” he said. “I was wearing size 40 that time. Now I’m wearing size 34.”
Experts stressed that Africans should get their blood-sugar level tested and seek treatment when diabetes is diagnosed.
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The U.S. bird population is declining at an alarming rate, according to a report published Thursday by an alliance of science and conservation groups.
Habitat loss and climate change are among the key contributing factors to the bird population losses, according to the 2025 U.S. State of the Birds report.
More than 100 of the species studied, have reached a “tipping point,” losing more than half their populations in the last 50 years. The report revealed that the avian population in all habitats is declining, including the duck population, previously considered a triumph of conservation. “The only bright spot is water birds such as herons and egrets that show some increases,” Michael Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy, told Reuters.
The decline in the duck population fell by approximately 30% from 2017, but duck population numbers still remain higher, however, than their 1970 numbers, according to an Associated Press account on the report.
“Roughly one in three bird species (229 species) in the U.S. requires urgent conservation attention, and these species represent the major habitats and systems in the U.S. and include species that we’ve long considered to be common and abundant,” Amanda Rodewald, faculty director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Center for Avian Population Studies told Reuters.
Included among the birds with highest losses, Reuters reported, are the mottled duck, Allen’s hummingbird, yellow-billed loon, red-faced cormorant, greater sage-grouse, Florida scrub jay, Baird’s sparrow, saltmarsh sparrow, mountain plover, Hawaiian petrel, Bicknell’s thrush, Cassia crossbill, pink-footed shearwater, tricolored blackbird and golden-cheeked warbler. Some of the birds in this “red alert” group are already protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the news agency said.
“For each species that we’re in danger of losing, it’s like pulling an individual thread out of the complex tapestry of life,” Georgetown University biologist Peter Marra. who was not involved in the new report, told AP. While the outlook may seem dire, it is not without hope, said Marra, who noted the resurgence of the majestic bald eagle.
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PARIS — On the way to investigate the scene of a historic asteroid collision, a European spacecraft swung by Mars and captured rare images of the red planet’s mysterious small moon Deimos, the European Space Agency said Thursday.
Europe’s HERA mission is aiming to find out how much of an impact a NASA spacecraft made when it deliberately smashed into an asteroid in 2022 in the first test of our planetary defenses.
But HERA will not reach the asteroid — which is 11 million kilometers from Earth in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — until late 2026.
On the long voyage there, the spacecraft swung around Mars on Wednesday.
The spacecraft used the planet’s gravity to get a “kick” that also changed its direction and saved fuel, mission analyst Pablo Munoz told a press conference.
For an hour, HERA flew as close as 5,600 kilometers from the Martian surface, at a speed of 33,480 kilometers an hour.
It used the opportunity to test some of its scientific instruments, snapping around 600 pictures, including rare ones of Deimos.
The lumpy, 12.5-kilometer-wide moon is the smaller and less well-known of the two moons of Mars.
Exactly how Deimos and the bigger Phobos were formed remains a matter of debate.
Some scientists believe they were once asteroids that were captured in the gravity of Mars, while others think they could have been shot from a massive impact on the surface.
The new images add “another piece of the puzzle” to efforts to determine their origin, Marcel Popescu of the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy said.
There are hopes that data from HERA’s “HyperScout” and thermal infrared imagers — which observe colors beyond the limits of the human eye — will shed light on this mystery by discovering more about the moon’s composition.
Those infrared imagers are why the red planet appears blue in some of the photos.
Next, HERA will turn its focus back to the asteroid Dimorphos.
When NASA’s DART mission smashed into Dimorphos in 2022, it shortened the 160-meter-wide asteroid’s orbit around its big brother Didymos by 33 minutes.
Although Dimorphos itself posed no threat to Earth, HERA intends to discover whether this technique could be an effective way for Earth to defend itself against possibly existence-threatening asteroids in the future.
Space agencies have working to ramp up Earth’s planetary defenses, monitoring for potential threats so they can be dealt with as soon as possible.
Earlier this year, a newly discovered asteroid capable of destroying a city was briefly given a more than 3% chance of hitting Earth in 2032.
However further observations sent the chances of a direct hit back down to nearly zero.
Richard Moissl, head of the ESA’s planetary defense office, said that asteroid, 2024 YR, followed a pattern that will become more common.
As we get better at scanning the skies, “we will discover asteroids at a higher rate,” he said.
The ESA is developing a second planetary defense mission to observe the 350-metre-wide asteroid Apophis, which will fly just 32,000 kilometers from Earth on April 13, 2029.
If approved by the ESA’s ministerial council, the Ramses mission will launch in 2028, reaching the asteroid two months before it approaches Earth.
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WASHINGTON — The White House has withdrawn the nomination of Dr. David Weldon, a former Florida congressman, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Senate health committee announced Thursday morning that it was canceling a planned hearing on Weldon’s nomination because of the withdrawal.
A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the White House pulled the nomination because it became clear Weldon did not have the votes for confirmation.
Weldon was considered to be closely aligned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary who for years has been one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine activists.
A former Florida congressman, Weldon also has been a prominent critic of vaccines and the CDC, which promotes vaccines and monitors their safety.
Weldon becomes the third Trump administration nominee who didn’t make it to a confirmation hearing. Previously, former congressman Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration for attorney general and Chad Chronister for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
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WASHINGTON — A fossil of a partial face from a human ancestor is the oldest in western Europe, archaeologists reported Wednesday.
The incomplete skull — a section of the left cheek bone and upper jaw – was found in northern Spain in 2022. The fossil is between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old, according to research published in the journal Nature.
“The fossil is exciting,” said Eric Delson, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the study. “It’s the first time we have significant remains older than 1 million years old in western Europe.”
A collection of older fossils from early human ancestors was previously found in Georgia, near the crossroads of eastern Europe and Asia. Those are estimated to be 1.8 million years old.
The Spanish fossil is the first evidence that clearly shows human ancestors “were taking excursions into Europe” at that time, said Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program.
But there is not yet evidence that the earliest arrivals persisted there long, he said. “They may get to a new location and then die out,” said Potts, who had no role in the study.
The partial skull bears many similarities to Homo erectus, but there are also some anatomical differences, said study co-author Rosa Huguet, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Tarragona, Spain.
Homo erectus arose around 2 million years ago and moved from Africa to regions of Asia and Europe, with the last individuals dying out around 100,000 years ago, said Potts.
It can be challenging to identify which group of early humans a fossil find belongs to if there’s only a single fragment versus many bones that show a range of features, said University of Zurich paleoanthropologist Christoph Zollikofer, who was not involved in the study.
The same cave complex in Spain’s Atapuerca Mountains where the new fossil was found also previously yielded other significant clues to the ancient human past. Researchers working in the region have also found more recent fossils from Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens.
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NASA’s newest space telescope rocketed into orbit Tuesday to map the entire sky like never before — a sweeping look at hundreds of millions of galaxies and their shared cosmic glow since the beginning of time.
SpaceX launched the Spherex observatory from California, putting it on course to fly over Earth’s poles. Tagging along were four suitcase-size satellites to study the sun. Spherex popped off the rocket’s upper stage first, drifting into the blackness of space with a blue Earth in the background.
The $488 million Spherex mission aims to explain how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years, and how the universe expanded so fast in its first moments.
Closer to home in our own Milky Way galaxy, Spherex will hunt for water and other ingredients of life in the icy clouds between stars where new solar systems emerge.
The cone-shaped Spherex — at 500 kilograms, or the heft of a grand piano — will take six months to map the entire sky with its infrared eyes and wide field of view. Four full-sky surveys are planned over two years, as the telescope circles the globe from pole to pole, 650 kilometers up.
Spherex won’t see galaxies in exquisite detail like NASA’s larger and more elaborate Hubble and Webb space telescopes, with their narrow fields of view.
Instead of counting galaxies or focusing on them, Spherex will observe the total glow produced by the whole lot, including the earliest ones formed in the wake of the universe-creating Big Bang.
“This cosmological glow captures all light emitted over cosmic history,” said the mission’s chief scientist Jamie Bock of the California Institute of Technology. “It’s a very different way of looking at the universe,” enabling scientists to see what sources of light may have been missed in the past.
By observing the collective glow, scientists hope to tease out the light from the earliest galaxies and learn how they came to be, Bock said.
“We won’t see the Big Bang. But we’ll see the aftermath from it and learn about the beginning of the universe that way,” he said.
The telescope’s infrared detectors will be able to distinguish 102 colors invisible to the human eye, yielding the most colorful, inclusive map ever made of the cosmos.
It’s like “looking at the universe through a set of rainbow-colored glasses,” said deputy project manager Beth Fabinsky of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
To keep the infrared detectors super cold — minus minus 210 degrees Celsius — Spherex has a unique look. It sports three aluminum-honeycomb cones, one inside the other, to protect from the sun and Earth’s heat, resembling a 3-meter shield collar for an ailing dog.
Besides the telescope, SpaceX’s Falcon rocket provided a lift from Vandenberg Space Force Base for a quartet of NASA satellites called Punch. From their own separate polar orbit, the satellites will observe the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, and the resulting solar wind.
The evening launch was delayed two weeks because of rocket and other issues.
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Medecins Sans Frontiere says cholera is on the rise in Haiti. The nongovernmental health organization, also known as Doctors Without Borders, says 150 Haitians were treated for cholera between Feb. 15 and March 6. The Cite Soleil neighborhood reported 19 infections. MSF expressed concern about the trend as Haitians have less access to clean water at a time when gang violence victims are living on the streets in unsanitary conditions.  
Click here for the full story in Creole.
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MEXICO CITY — The number of monarch butterflies wintering in the mountains west of Mexico City rebounded this year, doubling the area they covered in 2024 despite the stresses of climate change and habitat loss, experts said Thursday.

The annual butterfly count doesn’t calculate the individual number of butterflies, but rather the number of acres they cover as they gather on tree branches in the mountain pine and fir forests.

Monarchs from east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada overwinter there. Mexico’s Commission for National Protected Areas (CONANP) said that this year, butterflies covered 1.79 hectares) compared to only 0.9 hectares the year before.

Last year’s figure represented a 59% drop from 2023, the second lowest level since record keeping began.

After wintering in Mexico, the iconic butterflies with black and orange wings fly north, breeding multiple generations along the way for thousands of miles. The offspring that reach southern Canada begin the trip back to Mexico at the end of summer.

Gloria Tavera Alonso, the Mexican agency’s director general of conservation, said the improved numbers owed to better climatic factors and humidity.

Drought along the butterflies’ migratory route had been listed as a factor in last year’s decline. The impact of changes in weather year after year mean fluctuations are expected.

For that, Jorge Rickards, Mexico director general for the World Wildlife Fund, said “you can’t let down your guard” and must continue to expand conservation efforts.

Tavera Alonso credited ongoing efforts to increase the number of plants the butterflies rely on for sustenance and reproduction along their flyway.

Butterflies have not been faring well north of the border. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has been counting western overwinter populations of monarch butterflies — a separate population from those that winter in central Mexico — along the California coast, northern Baja California and inland sites in California and Arizona for the last 28 years. The highest number recorded was 1.2 million in 1997.

The organization announced in February that it counted just 9,119 monarchs in 2024, a decrease of 96% from 233,394 in 2023. The total was the second-lowest since the survey began in 1997. And the first countrywide systematic analysis of butterfly abundance in the United States found that the number of butterflies in the Lower 48 states has been falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century, with 114 species showing significant declines and only nine increasing, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science.

Experts say that monarchs face risks across North America in large part due to the reduction in milkweed where the monarchs lay their eggs. The plant has been disappearing due to drought, wildfires, herbicides and urbanization.

In December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that monarch butterflies receive protection as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
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CAIRO — Nearly 100 people died of cholera in two weeks since the waterborne disease outbreak began in Sudan’s White Nile State, an international aid group said.

Doctors Without Borders — also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF — said Thursday that 2,700 people have contracted the disease since Feb. 20, including 92 people who died.

Of the cholera patients who died, 18 were children, including five no older than 5 and five others no older than 9, Marta Cazorla, MSF emergency coordinator for Sudan, told The Associated Press.

Sudan plunged into war nearly two years ago when tensions simmered between the Sudanese army and its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group, or RSF, with battles in Khartoum and elsewhere across the country.

RSF launched intense attacks last month in the White Nile State, killing hundreds of civilians, including infants. The Sudanese military announced at the time that it made advances there, cutting crucial supply routes to RSF.

During the RSF attacks in the state on Feb. 16, the group fired a projectile that hit the Rabak power plant, causing a mass power outage and triggering the latest wave of cholera, according to MSF. Subsequently, people in the area had to rely mainly on water obtained from donkey carts because water pumps were no longer operational.

“Attacks on critical infrastructure have long-term detrimental effects on the health of vulnerable communities,” Cazorla said.

The cholera outbreak in the state peaked between Feb. 20 and 24, when patients and their families rushed to Kosti Teaching Hospital, overwhelming the facility beyond its capacity, according to MSF. Most patients were severely dehydrated. MSF provided 25 tons of logistical items such as beds and tents to Kosti to help absorb more cholera patients.

Cazorla said that numbers in the cholera treatment center had been declining and were at low levels until this latest outbreak.

The White Nile State Health Ministry responded to the outbreak by providing the community access to clean water and banning the use of donkey carts to transport water. Health officials also administered a vaccination campaign when the outbreak began.

Sudan’s health ministry said Tuesday that there were 57,135 cholera cases, including 1,506 deaths, across 12 of the 18 states in Sudan. The cholera outbreak was officially declared on Aug. 12 by the health ministry after a new wave of cases was reported starting July 22.

The war in Sudan has killed at least 20,000 people, though the number is likely far higher. The war has driven more than 14 million people from their homes, pushed parts of the country into famine and caused disease outbreaks.
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Nearly two months after an explosion sent flaming debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos, SpaceX launched another mammoth Starship rocket on Thursday, but lost contact minutes into the test flight as the spacecraft came tumbling down and broke apart.

This time, wreckage from the explosion was seen streaming from the skies over Florida. It was not immediately known whether the spacecraft’s self-destruct system had kicked in to blow it up.

The 123-meter rocket blasted off from Texas. SpaceX caught the first-stage booster back at the pad with giant mechanical arms, but engines on the spacecraft on top started shutting down as it streaked eastward for what was supposed to be a controlled entry over the Indian Ocean, half a world away. Contact was lost as the spacecraft went into an out-of-control spin.

Starship reached nearly 150 kilometers in altitude before trouble struck and before four mock satellites could be deployed. It was not immediately clear where it came down, but images of flaming debris were captured from Florida, including near Cape Canaveral, and posted online.

“Unfortunately, this happened last time too, so we have some practice at this now,” SpaceX flight commentator Dan Huot said from the launch site.

SpaceX later confirmed that the spacecraft experienced “a rapid unscheduled disassembly” during the ascent engine firing. “Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses,” the company said in a statement posted online.

Starship didn’t make it quite as high or as far as last time.

NASA has booked Starship to land its astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX’s Elon Musk is aiming for Mars with Starship, the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket.

Like last time, Starship had mock satellites to release once the craft reached space on this eighth test flight as a practice for future missions. They resembled SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites, thousands of which orbit Earth, and were meant to fall back down following their brief taste of space.

During the last demo, SpaceX captured the booster at the launch pad, but the spacecraft blew up several minutes later over the Atlantic. No injuries or major damage were reported.

According to an investigation that remains ongoing, leaking fuel triggered a series of fires that shut down the spacecraft’s engines. The on-board self-destruct system kicked in as planned.

SpaceX said it made several improvements to the spacecraft following the accident, and the Federal Aviation Administration recently cleared Starship once more for launch.
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PARIS — An Ariane 6 rocket roared skyward with a French military reconnaissance satellite aboard Thursday in the first commercial flight for the European heavy-lift launcher.

The rocket took off smoothly from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, quickly disappearing into thick clouds. Video images beamed back from the rocket showed the Earth’s beautiful colors and curvature.

The rocket’s mission was to deliver the CSO-3 military observation satellite into orbit at an altitude of around 800 kilometers.

It was the first commercial mission for Ariane 6 after its maiden flight in July 2024.
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Collisions with boats are the cause of at least 20% of manatee deaths in Florida every year. But as Valdya Baraputri reports, that’s not the only threat faced by these gentle giants of the sea. Camera: Laurentius Wahyudi and Nabila Ganinda
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WASHINGTON — A drill to search for ice. A 4G network test. Three rovers and a first-of-its-kind hopping drone.

After becoming the first private firm to land on the moon last year, Intuitive Machines is aiming for its second lunar touchdown on Thursday, carrying cutting-edge payloads to support future human missions.

The Houston-based company is targeting no earlier than 12:32 p.m. ET (1732 GMT) at Mons Mouton, a plateau near the lunar south pole — farther south than any robot has ventured.

NASA will livestream the landing an hour before touchdown as Athena, the 4.8-meter hexagonal lander — about the height of a giraffe — begins its descent.

“It kind of feels like this mission is straight out of one of our favorite sci-fi movies,” said Nicky Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science.

Intuitive Machines’ first landing in February 2024 was a landmark achievement but ended with its lander tipping onto its side, an outcome the company is determined to avoid this time.

The pressure is on after Texas rival Firefly Aerospace successfully landed its Blue Ghost lander on Sunday, becoming the second private company to reach the moon.

Both missions are part of NASA’s $2.6 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which partners with private industry to cut costs and support Artemis, the initiative to return astronauts to the moon and eventually reach Mars.

A hopper named Grace

Athena is targeting highland terrain about 160 kilometers from the moon’s south pole, where it will deploy three rovers and a unique hopping drone named Grace, after late computer science pioneer Grace Hopper.

One of Grace’s boldest objectives is a hop into a permanently shadowed crater, a place where sunlight has never shone — a first for humanity.

While NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter proved flight is possible on Mars, the moon’s lack of atmosphere makes traditional flying impossible, positioning hoppers like Grace as a key technology for future exploration.

MAPP, the largest of Athena’s rovers and roughly the size of a beagle, will assist in testing a Nokia Bell Labs 4G cellular network linking the lander, itself, and Grace — technology designed to one day integrate into astronaut spacesuits.

Yaoki, a more compact rover from Japanese company Dymon, is designed to survive drops in any orientation, making it highly adaptable.

Meanwhile, the tiny AstroAnt rover, equipped with magnetic wheels, will cling to MAPP and use its sensors to measure temperature variations on the larger robot.

Also aboard Athena is PRIME-1, a NASA instrument carrying a drill to search for ice and other chemicals beneath the lunar surface, paired with a spectrometer to analyze its findings.

Sticking the landing

Before any experiments can begin, Intuitive Machines must stick the landing — a challenge made harder by the moon’s lack of atmosphere, which rules out parachutes and forces spacecraft to rely on precise thrusts and navigation over hazardous terrain.

Until Intuitive Machines’ first mission, only national space agencies had achieved the feat, with NASA’s last landing dating back to Apollo 17 in 1972.

The company’s first lander, Odysseus, came in too fast, caught a foot on the surface and toppled over, cutting the mission short when its solar panels could not generate enough power.

This time, the company has made critical upgrades, including better cabling for the laser altimeter, which provides altitude and velocity readings to ensure a safe touchdown.

Athena launched last Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which also carried NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer probe — but not everything has gone smoothly. Ground controllers are struggling to re-establish contact with the small satellite, designed to map the moon’s water distribution.

These missions come at a delicate time for NASA, amid speculation that the agency may scale back or even cancel the crewed moon missions in favor of prioritizing Mars — a goal championed by U.S. President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk. 
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NEW DELHI — The U.S. government will stop sharing air quality data gathered from its embassies and consulates, worrying local scientists and experts who say the effort was vital to monitor global air quality and improve public health.

In response to an inquiry from The Associated Press, the State Department said Wednesday that its air quality monitoring program would no longer transmit air pollution data from embassies and consulates to the Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow app and other platforms, which allowed locals in various countries, along with scientists around the world, to see and analyze air quality.

The change was “due to funding constraints that have caused the Department to turn off the underlying network” the department said in a statement. However, it added, embassies and consulates were directed to keep their monitors running and the sharing of data could resume if funded is restored. The funding cut, first reported by The New York Times, is one of many under President Donald Trump.

The U.S. air quality monitors measured dangerous fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, which can penetrate deep into the lungs and lead to respiratory diseases, heart conditions, and premature death. The World Health Organization estimates that air pollution kills around 7 million people each year.

Reaction was immediate from scientists who said the data were reliable, allowed for air quality monitoring around the world and helped prompt governments to clean up the air.

Bhargav Krishna, an air pollution expert at New Delhi-based Sustainable Futures Collaborative, called the loss of data “a big blow” to air quality research.

“They were part of a handful of sensors in many developing countries and served as a reference for understanding what air quality was like,” Krishna said. “They were also seen to be a well-calibrated and unbiased source of data to cross-check local data if there were concerns about quality,” he added.

“It’s a real shame,” said Alejandro Piracoca Mayorga, a Bogota-based freelance air quality consultant. U.S. embassies and consulates in Lima, Sao Paulo and Bogota had the air monitoring. “It was a source of access to air quality information independent of local monitoring networks. They provided another source of information for comparison.”

Khalid Khan, an environmental expert and advocate based in Pakistan, agreed, saying the shutdown of air quality monitoring will “have significant consequences.”

Khan noted that the monitors in the city of Peshawar in Pakistan, one of the most polluted cities in the world, “provided crucial real-time data” which helped policymakers, researchers and the public to make decisions on their health.

“Their removal means a critical gap in environmental monitoring, leaving residents without accurate information on hazardous air conditions,” Khan said. He said vulnerable people in Pakistan and around the world are particularly at risk because they are the least likely to have access to other reliable data.

In Africa, the program provided air quality data for over a dozen countries including Senegal, Nigeria, Chad and Madagascar. Some of those countries depend almost entirely on the U.S. monitoring systems for their air quality data.

The WHO’s air quality database will also be affected by the closing of U.S. program. Many poor countries don’t track air quality because stations are too expensive and complex to maintain, meaning they are entirely reliant on U.S. embassy monitoring data.

In some places, however, the U.S. air quality monitors propelled nations to start their own air quality research and raised awareness, Krishna said.

In China, for example, data from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing famously contradicted official government reports, showing worse pollution levels than authorities acknowledged. It led to China improving air quality. 
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Ukrainians in Czechia raised nearly 19,000 dollars to help a Ukrainian war veteran and dancer get back on the floor. Yevhen Skripnichuk lost his leg while fighting the Russians. Omelyan Oshchudlyak has the story. Camera:  Yuriy Dankevych     
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MELBOURNE, Australia — James Harrison, whose blood plasma donations are credited with An Australian man credited with saving 2.4 million babies through his record-breaking blood plasma donations over six decades, has died at 88, his family said Tuesday.

James Harrison, a retired state railway department clerk, died in a nursing home on the central coast of New South Wales state on Feb. 17, according to his grandson, Jarrod Mellowship.

Harrison had been surprised to be recognized by Guinness World Records in 2005 as the person who had donated the most blood plasma in the world, Mellowship said.

Despite an aversion to needles, he made 1,173 donations after he turned 18 in 1954 until he was forced to retire in 2018 at age 81.

“He did it for the right reasons. As humble as he was, he did like the attention. But he would never do it for the attention,” Mellowship said.

The record was beaten in 2022 by American Brett Cooper from Walker, Michigan.

Australian Red Cross Blood Service pays tribute to donor

The Australian Red Cross Blood Service said Harrison was renowned as the “Man with the Golden Arm.”

He was credited with saving the lives of 2.4 million babies through his plasma donations, the national agency responsible for collecting and distributing blood products, also known as Lifeblood, said in a statement.

Harrison’s plasma contained a rare antibody known as anti-D. The antibody is used to make injections that protect unborn babies from hemolytic disease of the newborn, in which a pregnant woman’s immune system attacks her fetus’ red blood cells. The disease is most common when a woman has an Rh negative blood type and her baby’s is Rh positive.

Australia has only 200 anti-D donors who help 45,000 mothers and their babies annually.

Lifeblood chief executive Stephen Cornelissen said Harrison had hoped that someone in Australia would one day beat his donation record.

“James was a remarkable, stoically kind and generous person, who was committed to a lifetime of giving, and he captured the hearts of many people around the world,” Cornelissen said in a statement.

“It was James’ belief that his donations were no more important than any other donors’ and that everyone can be special in the same way that he was,” Cornelissen added.

Antibody helps donor’s family

Mellowship said his mother, Tracey Mellowship, Harrison’s daughter, needed the treatment when he and his brother Scott were born.

Jarrod Mellowship said his own wife, Rebecca Mellowship, also needed the treatment when three of their four children were born.

There is speculation that Harrison developed a high concentrations of anti-D as a result of his own blood transfusions during major lung surgery when he was 14 years old.

“After the surgery, his dad Reg told grandad, you’re only really alive because people donated blood,” Jarrod Mellowship said. “The day he turned 18, he started donating.”

The application of anti-D in fighting hemolytic disease of the newborn was not discovered until the 1960s.

Harrison was born in Junee in New South Wales. He is survived by his sister Margaret Thrift, his daughter, two grandsons and four great grandchildren.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — A private lunar lander carrying a drill, vacuum and other experiments for NASA touched down on the moon Sunday, the latest in a string of companies looking to kickstart business on Earth’s celestial neighbor ahead of astronaut missions.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander descended from lunar orbit on autopilot, aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome in an impact basin on the moon’s northeastern edge of the near side.

Confirmation of successful touchdown came from the company’s Mission Control outside Austin, Texas, following the action some 360,000 kilometers away.

“You all stuck the landing. We’re on the moon,” Firefly’s Will Coogan, chief engineer for the lander, reported.

An upright and stable landing makes Firefly — a startup founded a decade ago — the first private outfit to put a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over. Even countries have faltered, with only five claiming success: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan.

A half hour after landing, Blue Ghost started to send back pictures from the surface, the first one a selfie somewhat obscured by the sun’s glare.

Two other companies’ landers are hot on Blue Ghost’s heels, with the next one expected to join it on the moon later this week.

Blue Ghost — named after a rare U.S. species of fireflies — had its size and shape going for it. The squat four-legged lander stands 2 meters tall and 3.5 meters wide, providing extra stability, according to the company.

Launched in mid-January from Florida, the lander carried 10 experiments to the moon for NASA. The space agency paid $101 million for the delivery, plus $44 million for the science and tech on board. It’s the third mission under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program, intended to ignite a lunar economy of competing private businesses while scouting around before astronauts show up later this decade.

Firefly’s Ray Allensworth said the lander skipped over hazards including boulders to land safely. Allensworth said the team continued to analyze the data to figure out the lander’s exact position, but all indications suggest it landed within the 100-meter target zone in Mare Crisium.

The demos should get two weeks of run time, before lunar daytime ends and the lander shuts down.

It carried a vacuum to suck up moon dirt for analysis and a drill to measure temperature as deep as 3 meters below the surface. Also on board: a device for eliminating abrasive lunar dust — a scourge for NASA’s long-ago Apollo moonwalkers, who got it caked all over their spacesuits and equipment.

On its way to the moon, Blue Ghost beamed back exquisite pictures of the home planet. The lander continued to stun once in orbit around the moon, with detailed shots of the moon’s gray pockmarked surface. At the same time, an on-board receiver tracked and acquired signals from the U.S. GPS and European Galileo constellations, an encouraging step forward in navigation for future explorers.

The landing set the stage for a fresh crush of visitors angling for a piece of lunar business.

Another lander — a tall and skinny 15-footer built and operated by Houston-based Intuitive Machines — is due to land on the moon Thursday. It’s aiming for the bottom of the moon, just 160 kilometers from the south pole. That’s closer to the pole than the company got last year with its first lander, which broke a leg and tipped over.

Despite the tumble, Intuitive Machines’ lander put the U.S. back on the moon for the first time since NASA astronauts closed out the Apollo program in 1972.

A third lander from the Japanese company ispace is still three months from landing. It shared a rocket ride with Blue Ghost from Cape Canaveral on January 15, taking a longer, windier route. Like Intuitive Machines, ispace is also attempting to land on the moon for the second time. Its first lander crashed in 2023.

The moon is littered with wreckage not only from ispace, but dozens of other failed attempts over the decades.

NASA wants to keep up a pace of two private lunar landers a year, realizing some missions will fail, said the space agency’s top science officer Nicky Fox.

“It really does open up a whole new way for us to get more science to space and to the moon,” Fox said.

Unlike NASA’s successful Apollo moon landings that had billions of dollars behind them and ace astronauts at the helm, private companies operate on a limited budget with robotic craft that must land on their own, said Firefly CEO Jason Kim.

Kim said everything went like clockwork.

“We got some moon dust on our boots,” Kim said.
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SEATTLE — President Donald Trump’s plan to pull federal funding from institutions that provide gender-affirming care for transgender youth will remain blocked on a long-term basis under a federal judge’s ruling in Seattle late Friday. 

U.S. District Court Judge Lauren King previously granted a two-week restraining order after the Democratic attorneys general of Washington, Oregon and Minnesota sued the Trump administration — Colorado has since joined the case. 

King’s temporary order expired Friday, and she held arguments that day before issuing a preliminary injunction blocking most of Trump’s plan pending a final decision on the merits of the case. 

The judge found the states lacked standing on one point: the order’s protections against female genital mutilation. Female genital mutilation is already illegal in the four states that are part of the lawsuit, and the judge said the record “is bereft of any evidence” that the plaintiffs plan to perform such procedures. 

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown praised the ruling. An email message was sent to the White House seeking comment. 

Two of Trump’s executive orders are at issue in the case. 

One, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism,” calls for stripping federal money from programs that “promote gender ideology.” 

The other, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” calls for the federal government to cut off research and educational grants for institutions, including medical schools and hospitals, that provide gender-affirming care to people under age 19. Several hospitals around the country ceased providing care, including puberty blockers and hormone treatments, following the order. 

Medicaid programs in some states cover gender-affirming care, and Trump’s “Protecting Children” order suggests that practice could end. It also raises the prospect that medical professionals could be criminally charged for providing gender-affirming care under a law that bans medically unnecessary genital mutilation of underage females — a notion that the states suing Trump call repugnant and legally unsupportable. 

Young people who persistently identify as a gender that differs from their sex assigned at birth — a condition called gender dysphoria — are far more likely to suffer from severe depression and to kill themselves if they do not receive treatment, which can include evaluation by a team of medical professionals; a social transition, such as changing a hairstyle or pronouns; and eventually puberty blockers or hormones. Surgery is extremely rare for minors. 

In her ruling Friday, the judge said the order was not limited to children or to irreversible treatments and that it doesn’t target medical interventions performed on cisgender children. 

“In fact, its inadequate ‘means-end fit’ would prevent federally funded medical providers from providing necessary medical treatments to transgender youth that are completely unrelated to gender identity,” she wrote. “For example, a cisgender teen could obtain puberty blockers from such a provider as a component of cancer treatment, but a transgender teen with the same cancer care plan could not.” 

In his arguments Friday, Washington Assistant Attorney General William McGinty stressed the urgency of the issue. 

“There are going to be young people who are going to take their lives if they can no longer receive this care,” he said. 

King, the judge in Seattle, grilled Justice Department attorney Vinita Andrapalliyal in court about the meaning and effect of Trump’s executive orders. 

The judge continued to press, saying she was “looking for a legitimate government interest” that would justify Trump’s orders. 

The four Democratic attorneys general suing in Seattle argued that the orders violate equal rights protections, the separation of powers and the states’ right to regulate issues not delegated to the federal government. 

The Trump administration disputed those claims in court filings. “The President’s authority to direct subordinate agencies to implement his agenda, subject to those agencies’ own statutory authorities, is well established,” Justice Department attorneys wrote. 
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