A look back at the last Paris Olympics, 100 years ago


Issued on: 24/01/2024 - 

06:22
Video by :Claire PACCALIN

Paris is preparing to hold the Olympics this summer, exactly 100 years on from when the French capital last hosted the Games in 1924. France 24’s FRANCE 24's Stéphanie Trouillard and Claire Paccalin have been taking a look back at what those early Olympic Games were like and finding out what’s left of the 1924 Olympic stadiums, some of which will be used again in the Games this year.

Senegal to begin extracting gas resources with hopes of major economic boost

SO MUCH FOR ENDING FOSSIL FUELS

Issued on: 24/01/2024 -

01:42
Video by:Sam BRADPIECE

A summit on Energy and Petrol in Africa kicked off in Dakar in Sengal on Tuesday. Large oil and gas deposits were discovered off the coast of Senegal close to a decade ago and the country is set to begin extraction later this year.. But while the economic stakes are high, so are the environmental ones. France 24's Sam Bradpiece reports.

Thai court clears, reinstates reformist ex-PM candidate Pita as lawmaker

Thailand's Constitutional Court on Wednesday cleared reformist political leader Pita Limjaroenrat in a case that could have seen him banned from parliament, and reinstated him as an MP.


Issued on: 24/01/2024 -

Former Thai prime ministerial candidate and ex-Move Forward Party leader Pita Limjaroenrat speaks to the media as he arrives at the Constitutional Court in Bangkok on January 24, 2024. © AFP

The 43-year-old led the progressive Move Forward Party (MFP) to win the most votes in last year's general election, but was blocked from becoming prime minister after he was suspended as an MP in July.

His party was excluded from the governing coalition after the powerful establishment was spooked by the MFP's calls to reform the kingdom's strict royal insult laws, the military and business monopolies.

The Constitutional Court on Wednesday ruled by eight votes to one that Pita had not broken rules banning members of parliament from owning shares in media companies.

The case revolved around shares in the long-defunct ITV television station, which Pita says he inherited from his father when he died


"ITV was not operating as media company on the day the party submitted the respondent's name for election," judge Punya Udchachon said in reading the court's verdict in the case.

Read moreLegacy of 2014 coup haunts Thai reformist’s bid for PM

"Holding the shares did not violate the law. The court has ruled his MP status has not ended."

There were jubilant scenes outside the court as dozens of MFP supporters wearing the party's orange colours cheered and chanted "PM Pita".

As he arrived for the hearing earlier, Pita said he was confident of the outcome and thanked MFP supporters.

"No matter the result I will still be working for the people," he said.

"It's only a detour. Regardless of the verdict we will continue fighting."

Even before the ruling, the media-savvy politician insisted he would run for office again -- but if the court had ruled against him, he would have faced disqualification from parliament altogether.

He reiterated in an interview with AFP late last year that he would take another tilt at the premiership, saying he was "not giving up".
Establishment fightback

Pita's case bore similarities to a 2019 case, when popular progressive Thai politician Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit was disqualified as an MP for holding media shares.

Thanathorn's Future Forward party, the predecessor of the MFP, was later dissolved by the courts in a separate case which led to massive pro-democracy demonstrations.

During the 2023 election campaign, Pita re-energised young and urban Thais exhausted after the dwindling protest movement and weary of a near-decade of military rule.

Watch more  Pita Limjaroenrat: New progressive force in Thai politics

Mostly written off by commentators, MFP surprised the establishment when they beat the Pheu Thai party of veteran political playmaker and former premier Thaksin Shinawatra into second place in May.

MFP's pledges to reform Thailand's strict royal insult laws, as well as plans to break up business monopolies and take on the military's influence in politics, spurred the kingdom's elites into action behind the scenes.

Pita was blocked by senators -- appointed by the last junta -- from becoming prime minister, and Pheu Thai formed a coalition that included pro-military parties but shut MFP out of government.

Educated in Thailand and at Harvard, the former Grab executive was drawn into politics in 2018 when he joined Future Forward. He stepped down as MFP leader in September.

Another challenge looms for his former party next week when the Constitutional Court will consider a petition arguing that the MFP's pledge to reform lese-majeste laws amounted to an attempt to overthrow the democratic government with the king as a head of state.

(AFP)

French trial sought for airline chief over 2004 Egypt crash

Paris (AFP) – French prosecutors have requested that the former chief of Egypt's Flash Airlines stand trial over a 2004 crash off the Sinai Peninsula that killed 148 people, a judicial source said Wednesday.


Issued on: 24/01/2024 

Most people on the doomed Flash Airlines flight were French nationals 

The chartered Boeing 737 plunged into the Red Sea on January 3, 2004, just minutes after take-off from the coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, with all on board perishing, including 134 French citizens.

The families of the victims have demanded that Mohamed Nour, managing director of the low-cost airline at the time, face trial.

The Egyptian national, now 70, was charged with involuntary manslaughter in late 2021 following years of investigation, having initially appeared before a judge only as an official witness.

An expert report from 2009 found that the pilots aboard were inadequately trained and suffering from fatigue because of their intense working hours in the weeks leading up to the accident.

France's aviation authority, the BEA, also determined that the pilot had suffered "spatial disorientation" before the crash, meaning he was unable to properly assess the plane's speed or altitude.

That led prosecutors to drop the case in 2016, saying a trial was unnecessary as the pilots were among the dead.

The move infuriated many victims' families, who in 2019 secured a reopening of the investigation with a Paris appeals court.

Prosecutors made their formal request for a Nour's trial on December 22, the judicial source said.

While the pilots' shortcomings were "the direct cause" of the crash, prosecutors also blame the airline itself for failing to train them properly and to create adequate working conditions, according to their request document seen by AFP on Wednesday.

The airline has since been wound up, but Nour can be prosecuted as the carrier's former legal representative, according to prosecutors.

Two investigating magistrates will now rule on the trial request.

© 2024 AFP

Activists decry 'glaring injustice' of Iran protester's execution

TYRANTS USE THE DEATH PENALTY

Paris (AFP) – The execution of the ninth man to be hanged over protests that swept Iran in 2022 marks a new stage in Tehran's rampant use of the death penalty, rights groups say.

Issued on: 24/01/2024 - 

Ghobadlou was the ninth person to be executed over the protests 

The groups argue that Mohammad Ghobadlou had mental health issues and that his original death sentence had been overturned.

Ghobadlou, 23, was put to death early Tuesday in Ghezel Hesar prison in the city of Karaj outside Tehran.

He had been convicted over the death of a police officer who the authorities say was run over by a car during the protests in September 2022.

"The killing of Mohammad Ghobadlou in Iran, who struggled with mental illness, stands as a glaring injustice, a murder carried out under the guise of a judicial process that lacks any semblance of fairness," said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran

The Instagram account of 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, who is in Tehran's Evin prison, said 61 women political prisoners there would go on hunger strike on Thursday to protest against executions in Iran.

Ghobadlou's hanging took place "under circumstances where even a final verdict for execution did not exist", the post said. It was not immediately clear how long the hunger strike would last.

There has been a surge in executions in Iran in recent months, which activists say is aimed at instilling fear in the population.

According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO, 51 people have been executed in the first weeks of 2024 alone. IHR and other groups say Ghobadlou was the ninth man to be executed over the protests.

The protests erupted in September 2022 following the death in custody of 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini after her arrest for allegedly flouting the strict dress code for women, and were seen as one of the biggest challenges to the clerical leadership in decades.

'Extrajudicial killing'

Rights groups expressed particular shock at the hanging given that the death sentence for Ghobadlou had been essentially overturned in February 2023, when the Supreme Court granted a stay of execution and later referred his case to a new jurisdiction to deal with issues relating to his mental health.

"Mohammad Ghobadlou's execution is an extrajudicial killing according to international law and the Islamic Republic's own laws," said the executive director of IHR, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

It said his lawyers had only been notified after office hours on Monday that the execution would take place on Tuesday morning.

Harrowing footage posted on social media showed his family wailing with grief at the gates of the prison when his execution was confirmed and hours later lying prostrate on his grave.

"The arbitrary execution of Mohammad Ghobadlou dumbfounded his loved ones and lawyer, who were awaiting his retrial" said Diana Eltahawy, rights group Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Amnesty said documents published by Iranian media show judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei had personally intervened to annul the order for a retrial and allow the execution to go ahead.
'New realms of cruelty'

According to Amnesty, Ghobadlou had been under the supervision of a psychiatric hospital for bipolar disorder since the age of 15, and had stopped taking his medication ahead of the incident.

Before Ghobadlou's hanging Iran had already executed eight men in cases related to the protests, with rights groups accusing Tehran of using capital punishment as a way to instil fear into the people.

Also executed at the same prison on Wednesday was Kurdish-Iranian Farhad Salimi, one of seven men sentenced to death and held in prison for one-and-a-half decades in a case linked to a Muslim cleric's killing in 2008.

Salimi is the fourth of the men to be hanged in the case in recent months, with rights groups warning that the lives of the other three are now at imminent risk.

The executions of Ghobadlou and Salimi "after egregiously unfair trials mark a harrowing descent into new realms of cruelty", Amnesty said.

© 2024 AFP

 Victims of ‘political violence’: The Tunisian opposition figures behind bars

Issued on: 24/01/2024 - 

02:07 Video by: Lilia BLAISE

In Tunisia, more than 50 people have been in prison without trial for months for alleged conspiracy against state security or under a decree punishing the spreading of false information. Most of them are political opponents of President Kais Saied and the Ministry of justice has not been commenting on the cases publicly. For the families and lawyers of the prisoners, waiting for trials is becoming more and more trying. Lilia Blaise, Hamdi Tlili and Fadil Aliriza report.

Scores dead in Mali gold mine collapse

More than 70 people were killed after a tunnel collapsed at a Malian gold mining site last week, a local gold mining group leader and a local official told AFP on Wednesday.


Issued on: 24/01/2024 - 

Mali, which is among the world’s poorest countries, is one of Africa’s leading gold producers.

“It started with a noise. The earth started to shake. There were over 200 gold miners in the field. The search is over now. We’ve found 73 bodies,” Oumar Sidibe, an official for gold miners in the southwestern town of Kangaba, told AFP, of the incident on Friday.

The same toll was confirmed by a local councillor.

Mali’s ministry of mines in a statement on Tuesday had announced the death of several miners but did not give precise figures.

The government offered its “deepest condolences to the grieving families and to the Malian people”.

Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morningSubscribe

It also called on “communities living near mining sites and gold miners to scrupulously respect safety requirements and to work only within the perimeters dedicated to gold panning”.

Mali, which is among the world’s poorest countries, is one of Africa’s leading gold producers.

Gold mining sites are regularly the scene of deadly landslides and authorities struggle to control artisanal mining of the metal.

Mali produced 72.2 tonnes of gold in 2022 and the metal contributed 25 percent of the national budget, 75 percent of export earnings and 10 percent of GDP, the then minister of mines Lamine Seydou Traore said in March last year.

(AFP)

 

Thousands of Argentinian workers expected to protest Milei's budget cuts

Issued on: 24/01/2024 - 

Elon Musk Visits Auschwitz, Twists Holocaust Into Excuse to Make Money

Victor Tangermann
Tue, January 23, 2024 

HE READ ARBEIT MACT FREI AND AGREED

Multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk is no stranger to spreading conspiracy theories, giving neo-Nazis a platform on the internet, and endorsing vicious antisemitic propaganda.

After landing in hot water for an "abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate," as the White House put it in its statement last year denouncing him for promoting horrid antisemitism, Musk is continuing on his apology tour.

First, he flew to Israel in an apparent attempt to quell a growing advertiser exodus fuelled by his hateful antics.

Now, he's using a visit to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau to clear his name. Worse yet, he's spinning the trip into a self-serving and asinine argument for why his social media company X-formerly-Twitter is important.

According to a video presentation that played before Musk took the stage at an event in the nearby Polish city of Krakow, had social media existed in the 1930s, the Holocaust would've never happened — a blindingly ignorant argument.

Musk was joined by right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro for a conversation following the video. The pair even went as far as to show photoshopped pictures of fake tweets, showing verified accounts alerting people of the atrocities taking place in Auschwitz in the 1940s.

One fake Community Notes comment pointed out that the "Jewish community in Auschwitz is striving for food, not thriving" — an inconceivable attempt to make light of one of the darkest chapters in history.

And no, we're not making this up.

"There are a million things you can say here but the most obvious one is before Nazi Germany built death camps they revoked the rights of free movement for Jewish people," author Aaron Gordon wrote in a post on Bluesky, "and even if they could leave most countries barred all but a token number of refugee Jews from entry."

"Cartoon history shit," he added.

Beyond spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories on his social media network, Musk has also argued that Black students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) shouldn't become pilots, as he claimed their IQs aren't high enough.

"It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE," he tweeted earlier this month, intentionally mixing up the letters of the acronym for "diversity, equity, and inclusion."

The racist outburst was met with outrage from civil rights groups.

"The only thing anyone needs to hear from Musk about diversity in the workplace is an apology," Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, told NBC News, calling his statements "abhorrent and pathetic" at the time.

Meanwhile, Musk is still fumbling in trying to clear his name.

"Two-thirds of my friends are Jewish," he told audiences at the event in Krakow, as quoted by the New York Times. "I’m Jewish by association. I’m aspirationally Jewish."

According to Musk, he had never heard about antisemitism "at dinner conversations" and called it "like an absurdity — at least in my friend circles."

That's rich, coming from a man who's thrown his considerable weight behind antisemitic conspiracy theories.

More on Musk: Elon Musk Cosigns Racist Claim That Black Students Have Low IQs

LUNAR MISSIONS

Japan Trying to Bring Dead Moon Lander Back to Life

Victor Tangermann
Mon, January 22, 2024 


Bring Me to Life

Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) lander had to be shut down just three hours after touching down on the lunar surface last week.

The lander, which technically speaking still managed to make Japan the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon, didn't quite stick the landing. For hours, teams at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency struggled to get the spacecraft to charge its batteries using its solar panels.

As it turns out, the issue is that the panels were pointing west and away from the Sun.


While that may sound like the small spacecraft's fate is sealed, JAXA isn't ready to give up just yet. There's still a chance SLIM may jump back to life, giving it a potentially new lease on life.

"If sunlight hits the Moon from the west in the future, we believe there's a possibility of power generation, and we're currently preparing for restoration," JAXA wrote in a new statement.
Going Under

At first, the mission appeared to go as planned, with the spacecraft making a controlled descent to the Moon's cratered surface. Several hours of radio silence from JAXA followed, triggering speculation about the lander's fate.

Behind the scenes, teams had to act quickly as battery capacity was diminishing quickly.

"The battery was disconnected according to our procedures with 12 percent power remaining, in order to avoid a situation where the restart (of the lander) would be hampered," the latest statement reads.

Scientists are now poring over the data SLIM managed to collect before it went dark.

"We were able to complete the transmission of technical and image data acquired during the descent and on the lunar surface before the power was switched off," JAXA said. "We’re relieved and beginning to get excited after confirming a lot of data has been obtained."

It's a glimmer of hope — with the possibility of the Sun charging the spacecraft's solar panels still on the table, scientists are eager to have SLIM jump back into action.

And even if it doesn't, it's still a considerable feat that's worth celebrating, especially considering all of the failed landing attempts that preceded it.

"The post-landing posture didn’t go as planned, but we may be able to produce plenty of results and we’re happy that the landing succeeded," JAXA's statement reads.

More on the mission: Japanese Moon Lander Dying After Touching Down on Lunar Surface
Sunlight May Reignite Japan’s Struggling 'Lunar Sniper' on the Moon
George Dvorsky
Mon, January 22, 2024


Artistic depiction of SLIM on the Moon.

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, achieved a historic soft landing with SLIM on Friday morning, but the lander ran into instant trouble by not being able to collect solar energy and generate electricity. Hopeful for some westerly sunshine, JAXA is cautiously optimistic that SLIM could spring back to life in a couple of weeks.

Shortly after its landing on Friday, January 19, JAXA reported issues with SLIM’s solar cells, which were not generating sufficient electricity. On Monday, JAXA revealed that it had shut down the system approximately three hours after landing to conserve its remaining power, as the space agency noted on X. The decision was made when SLIM’s battery level fell to 12 percent, as this low battery level threatened to cause issues for future recovery if mission controllers didn’t disconnect it in time.

Despite these challenges, there is some positive news from JAXA. The agency reported that technical and image data acquired during SLIM’s descent and active time on the lunar surface were successfully transmitted back to Earth before power was switched off. JAXA plans to release more details by the end of the week, including word on whether SLIM managed to land within its constrained target area. We’re looking forward to seeing the photos taken from the surface as well.

In addition to its primary mission (the precision landing), SLIM carried two smaller rovers, which preliminary data suggests were ejected as planned before the lander touched down. It also housed various scientific instruments, including an infrared camera, thermometer, and radiation detector. The success of these elements of the mission remains to be fully assessed.

This milestone for JAXA comes in the wake of a recent setback in lunar exploration when Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander failed shortly after reaching space due to a propellant leak. Landing on the Moon remains an incredibly challenging endeavor, even with 21st-century technology.

Japanese lunar lander touches down and Axiom space launches its third mission with SpaceX

Aria Alamalhodaei
Mon, January 22, 2024 

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. What a week! For the second week in a row, we have lunar lander news to report on. Plus, a final update on Astrobotic's Peregrine lander, news on the Artemis program and the first crewed launch of the year.

Want to reach out with a tip? Email Aria at aria.techcrunch@gmail.com or send me a message on Signal at 512-937-3988. You can also send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at tips@techcrunch.com. For more secure communications, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and links to encrypted messaging apps.
Story of the week

How could the story of the week be anything other than SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon), the Japanese lunar lander that touched down on the moon on Friday?

This makes Japan the fifth country to put a lander on the moon, joining the ranks of the United States, China, Russia and India. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) confirmed that they had received telemetry data from SLIM just after 10:20 AM EST.

While the landing was a success, not all went to plan, unfortunately: JAXA later said that the lander's solar cells are not currently generating electricity, which means that the mission lifetime will be greatly reduced. There's a small chance that the solar cells could charge as the angle of the sun changes, but that depends on whether the cause is due to a pointing issue or some other anomaly, JAXA officials said in a press conference.

But even with the issue, the mission achieved a huge portion of its goal, which was to demonstrate a soft lunar landing using optical navigation technology. This new type of technology can help ensure "pinpoint" landings, or landings with an accuracy of around 100 meters, as opposed to many kilometers.

Image Credits: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Launch highlights

We saw our first crewed mission this year – but even more notably, it was a completely private mission (as in not a NASA astronaut mission). Axiom Space launched its third mission with launch partner SpaceX on Thursday, with the crew successfully docking with the International Space Station at 5:42 AM EST on Saturday, January 20.

Axiom's plan is to continue flying these private missions to the ISS at a pace of around two missions per year through 2026, which is when the company hopes to launch its first commercial space station module, Derek Hassmann, chief of mission integration and operations at Axiom Space, said during a prelaunch press conference. Axiom's fourth flight, Ax-4, is scheduled for later this year, though a specific launch window has not been announced.

axiom 3 mission
Image credit: SpaceX

Loren Grush very nicely lays out some of NASA's forward-thinking strategy with its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program: accept some risk. The program was established to help kickstart the development of payload delivery surfaces to the moon's surface, and it stands in sharp contrast to NASA's standard quo.

Astrobotic's Peregrine lander, which suffered a fatal propulsion leak that prevented the spacecraft from having any chance of landing on the moon, is the result of a CLPS award. While Astrobotic did not complete the mission, Grush describes how NASA designed the program to be more risk-tolerant than its other endeavors.

peregrine astrobotic ula vulcan. lunar laner loaded in nose of rocket
Astrobotic Peregrine Lunar Lander

This week in space history

Thirty-two years ago this week, microgravity research was born. In 1992, NASA launched the first International Microgravity Laboratory on board the space shuttle Discovery, and it carried a number of scientific research and experiments looking into the effects of zero G on materials and living organisms. The lab was pressurized, so the mission also carried a crew of seven; they returned to Earth after eight days in space.

Crew of STS-42
Image credit: NASA


NASA bounces laser off 'Oreo-sized' mirror on the moon for 1st time, paving the way for high-precision lunar landings

Harry Baker
Mon, January 22, 2024 

The Chandrayaan 3 mission's Vikram lander photographed on the moon's surface by the Pragyan rover.

NASA has successfully bounced a laser beam off of an "Oreo-sized" mirror on India's historic lunar lander and back to the orbiting spacecraft that fired it. This feat is the first time that such a maneuver has ever been carried out, and it could help facilitate high-precision landings during future missions to the moon.

In August 2023, India became the fourth nation to land a spacecraft on Earth's largest satellite when the country’s Chandrayaan-3 mission deployed the Vikram lunar lander near the Manzinus crater in the moon's south pole region. The lander, which was also carrying the Pragyan rover, spent weeks collecting data on the moon — including valuable evidence of moonquakes — but failed to wake up after a scheduled power down in September. But the defunct lander is still of great interest to NASA.

Before the misssion began, the agency arranged to have a small, multi-sided mirror, known as a laser reflector array or retroreflector, attached to the lander. The 2-inch-wide (5 centimeters) device, which is made from eight quartz-corner-cube prisms set into a dome-shaped aluminum frame, is designed to reflect lasers to orbiting spacecraft from almost any incoming angle.

Related: Humanity's future on the moon: Why Russia, India and other countries are racing to the lunar south pole

Ever since the lander went offline, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is the only laser-armed spacecraft currently circling the moon, has repeatedly tried to bounce lasers off the retroreflector with no success. But on Dec. 12, 2023, after eight failed attempts, LRO finally hit the array from 62 miles (100 kilometers) away and received a laser ping in return.

The long-awaited success is an important proof-of-concept for NASA, which is planning to use more retroreflectors in future missions to the moon, including the upcoming Artemis missions.

"We've showed that we can locate our retroreflector on the surface from the Moon's orbit," Xiaoli Sun, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who led the mission, said in a statement. "The next step is to improve the technique so that it can become routine for missions that want to use these retroreflectors in the future."

A gold colored semi-sphere covered with 8 round mirrors

This is not the first time scientists have bounced lasers off the moon. In the past, NASA has successfully reflected Earth-fired lasers off reflective panels that were left behind on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions. This has revealed that the moon is slowly moving away from Earth by about 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) every year.

However, the new retroreflectors were designed with a more practical use in mind. NASA plans to use the devices to help unmanned spacecraft land next to existing objects on the moon by being able to measure exactly how far away they are from the surface (based on how long it takes for the lasers to bounce back to the spacecraft).

This would be important for building future lunar bases and could also allow astronauts to land in complete darkness on the far side of the moon. Similar "precision markers" help incoming astronaut capsules and cargo pods to dock with the International Space Station's airlocks.

Related: 15 incredible images of Earth's moon

An aerial view of the Vikram lunar lander from orbit

It took LRO multiple attempts to successfully reflect lasers off the Vikram lander because the orbiter was not designed with such precise maneuvers in mind. The spacecraft, which is currently operating 13 years past its original mission parameters, was designed to map the lunar surface. To do this, it fires bursts of thin laser lines toward the moon and measures how long it takes for them to bounce back to the spacecraft. But because these lines are spaced far apart, it made it hard to accurately hit such a small target.

Future spacecraft that target the retroreflectors will have more precise lasers and likely be firing them from much closer distances. So, in theory, they should be able to hit their tiny targets every time, according to NASA.

related stories

—NASA's 1st successful 2-way laser experiment is a giant leap for moon and Mars communications

—South Korea's lunar orbiter unveils jaw-dropping images of Earth and the moon

—Earth receives laser-beam message from 10 million miles away in new NASA experiment

NASA is planning to put more retroreflectors on the moon to run similar experiments in the future. However, their last few attempts have not gone well.

One of their proposed retroreflectors was onboard the privately-owned Peregrine lunar lander, which recently burned up in Earth's atmosphere after suffering a catastrophic propellant leak shortly after launching on Jan. 8. Another was attached to Japan's SLIM lander, which successfully landed on the moon on Jan. 19 but may already be dead after a problem with its power source. (It is currently unclear if the retroreflector on the SLIM lander could still be used by NASA.)

These issues may have set back NASA's research into retroreflectors. But since the first manned Artemis mission has been delayed until 2026, they will likely get several more chances before those missions come around.