Foreign News
Japan’s ‘Moon Sniper’ makes historic lunar landing
Japan’s high-precision “Moon Sniper” lander has touched down on the lunar surface in a first for the country, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has said.
But the agency said it was still “checking its status” due to an issue with the craft’s power supply. Officials also said they needed more time to analyse whether the unmanned spacecraft made a pinpoint landing – one of the priorities of the mission.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) probe began its “power descent sequence” towards the lunar surface early Saturday local time (15:00 GMT Friday), according to JAXA.
Hitoshi Kuninaka, head of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, said they believe that rovers were launched and data was being transmitted back to Earth. But he said SLIM’s solar battery was not generating power and the battery life of the spacecraft would only last a few more hours. The priority now was for the craft to gather as much moon data as possible on the remaining battery.
“It takes 30 days for the solar angle to change on the moon,” Kuninaka said. “So when the solar direction changes, and the light shines from a different direction, the light could end up hitting the solar cell.”
He added that “looking at the trace data, SLIM most certainly achieved a landing with 100-metre accuracy” of its target as it was intended to, versus the conventional accuracy of several kilometres. It will take about a month to verify the preliminary information.
By accomplishing the landing, Japan became the world’s fifth country to put a spacecraft on the moon, after the United States, Russia, China and India.
Japan calls its technology unprecedented and crucial for advancing lunar exploration, particularly in the quest for lunar water and the potential for human habitation.
Speaking in advance of the touchdown, Shinichiro Sakai, JAXA’s SLIM project manager, said “Proving Japan has this technology would bring us a huge advantage in upcoming international missions like Artemis,” referring to US space agency NASA’s crewed moon mission. “No other nation has achieved this.”
Japan has been actively looking to expand its role in space activities, forging partnerships with the US, to address the growing military and technological influence of China, extending even into the realm of space.
Japan is actively participating in NASA’s Artemis programme with the goal of sending one of its astronauts to the moon.
However, JAXA has faced multiple setbacks, including a launch failure in March of the new flagship rocket H3 that was meant to match cost-competitiveness against commercial rocket providers like SpaceX.
JAXA has emphasised that its high-precision technology will become a powerful tool in future exploration of hilly moon poles, seen as a potential source of oxygen, fuel and water. It also plans a joint unmanned lunar polar exploration with India in 2025.
On board Japan’s “Moon Sniper” is a little robot with a big mission: to pop open like a Transformer toy, wiggle across the lunar surface and beam images back to Earth.
The shape-shifting SORA-Q probe – codeveloped by a major toy company – has been compared with a friendly Star Wars droid and a sea turtle because of the way its metal form can navigate the dusty moonscape.
Sora means “universe” in Japanese, while “Q” refers to the words “question” and “quest”, its makers say.
Slightly bigger than a tennis ball and weighing as much as a large potato – eight centimetres (three inches) across and 250 grams (half a pound) – SORA-Q was designed by JAXA with Takara Tomy, the toy company behind the original 1984 Transformers.
After landing on the moon, the probe’s cameras are expected to take valuable images of a crater where parts of the moon’s mantle, usually hidden deep below its crust, are believed to be exposed.
The Philippine House of Representatives has voted to impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte for a second time, threatening her plan to run for president in 2028.
Monday’s vote moves the impeachment process to the Senate for trial, where if convicted, the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte will be disqualified from holding public office.
The 47-year-old is leading early surveys to replace her ally-turned-bitter foe, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The case against the vice-president stemmed from her alleged misuse of public funds and public threats against Marcos, his wife and his cousin, the former House speaker.
Duterte was impeached on the same grounds in 2025, but the Supreme Court blocked it on a technicality before the
senate trial could start.
The case was revived this year. Last week, a House committee that looked into the evidence against the vice-president ruled that there was sufficient grounds to impeach her.
Duterte described the case as “nothing more than a scrap of paper” in a formal written response. She refused to appear in the committee hearings which she said had been politically motivated.
After the impeachment vote on Monday, Duterte’s defence counsel said in a statement that “the burden now rests on the accusers to substantiate their claims” according to the law.
Monday night’s impeachment vote served as a barometer of Marcos’ support in the House. 257 of the 290 lawmakers in attendance voted to impeach Duterte, more than the one-thirds required to advance the case to trial.
But unlike in the House, a conviction in the Senate is uncertain, if a trial does start and runs its course.
In Philippine politics that is dominated by patronage and dynastic alliances, House members, who are elected per legislative district are friendlier to the incumbent president, compared to senators.
The country’s 24 senators are elected on the national level and the Senate is a traditional springboard for those hoping to run for president or vice-president in the future.
In the 2025 mid-term vote, where half of the Senate was elected, candidates allied with Duterte fared better than those who ran under Marcos’ coalition.
But the outcome of an impeachment vote will be difficult to predict under the country’s multi-party system with shifting alliances.
Duterte announced her intention to run for president in February, much earlier than expected. Marcos is limited by the constitution to a single six-year term.
She holds a 17-point lead over her nearest rival based on a survey in March by Manila pollster WR Numero.
In the 2022 elections, Duterte was the survey frontrunner to succeed her father, but she formed an alliance with Marcos and ran for vice-president instead to consolidate their support bases and fend off a reformist wave. The pair won by a landslide.
But the alliance soon unravelled as they pursued divergent political agendas.
Marcos’ allies in the House, led by cousin, then speaker Martin Romualdez, investigated allegations of fund misuse in Duterte’s office.
At the height of public scrutiny, Duterte hosted a late night online press conference, where she said she told one person that “if I get killed, go kill BBM [President Marcos], [First Lady] Liza Araneta, and [House Speaker] Martin Romualdez”.
Then in March last year, Marcos allowed theInternational Criminal Court to arrest Rodrigo Duterte and detain him at The Hague, where he now awaits trial for crimes against humanity over the hundreds who died in his so-called war on drugs.
[BBC]
A car bombing at a police post, followed by an intense firefight, has killed at least 21 officers in northwestern Pakistan, according to police and security sources.
An alliance of armed groups known as the Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan has claimed responsibility for the attack in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, late on Saturday.
[Aljazeera]
A person has died after jumping an airport perimeter fence in the US state of Colorado and being struck by a Frontier Airlines plane, according to authorities.
Denver International Airport said the unusual incident occurred late Friday, after the unidentified individual gained access to the tarmac.
It said the “pedestrian jumped the perimeter fence and was hit just two minutes later while crossing the runway”.
A brief engine fire followed the collision, which was put out by emergency responders, according to the airport.
It said that 12 of the 231 people on board suffered minor injuries, with five hospitalised.
The airport said investigators had examined the fence line where the individual entered and “found it to be intact”.
It added that the struck individual “is not believed to be an employee of the airport”.
“We are extremely saddened by this incident and express our sympathies to those involved,” the airport said.
Both local authorities and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were investigating the incident.
Airport safety in the US came under renewed scrutiny earlier this year amid a prolonged shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which temporarily left both Transportation Security Agents (TSA) and air traffic controllers working without pay.
While instances of people being killed on airport tarmacs are rare, Friday’s incident came a day after a Delta employee was killed after an airport vehicle struck an airbridge at Orlando International Airport.
In March, two pilots were killed after an Air Canada Express plane crashed into a fire-rescue vehicle at LaGuardia Airport in New York.
About 225,000 people travel through Denver International Airport a day.
[Aljazeera]
Philippine VP Sara Duterte impeached for a second time
US and French nationals test positive for hantavirus after leaving ship
Thailand’s divisive ex-PM is out of jail, but is the Thaksin era over?
Andy Flower fined for ‘use of an audible obscenity’ during Mumbai Indians clash
Royal Challengers Bengaluru eliminate Mumbai Indians and go top after tense finish
Car bomb attack and ambush in northwest Pakistan kill at least 21 police
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