BEIJING: China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe looks set to begin its historic journey back to Earth from the moon’s far side after collecting samples that scientists expect will help answer key questions about the early evolution of the solar system.
Chang’e-6, named after the mythical Chinese moon goddess, was launched on May 3 from the southern Chinese island province of Hainan.
The fully robotic probe landed on Sunday in a previously unexplored location in a gigantic impact crater called the South-Pole Aitken Basin, on the side of the moon that permanently faces away from Earth.
China’s previous Chang’e mission collected samples from the moon’s near side in December 2020, restarting global lunar material retrieval efforts after a gap of 44 years.
The uncrewed Luna 24 mission launched by the former Soviet Union in 1976 collected 170.1 grams (6 ounces) of samples from Mare Crisium, or “Sea of Crises,” on the near side of the moon.
Between 1969 and 1972, six Apollo missions, all crewed, collected 2,200 samples weighing a total of 382 kilograms, also from the side of the moon facing Earth.
James Carpenter, head of the European Space Agency’s lunar science office, said the samples collected by the Apollo missions from the moon’s near side suggested the South-Pole Aitken Basin on the far side was caused by an epoch of extremely heavy bombardment of the solar system, Earth and moon.
“This is a really core event in the history of the whole solar system, but there is some controversy about whether it happened or not,” he said.
“To understand that, you need to anchor those events, and that’s going to be done with samples from the lunar far side from the South-Pole Aitken Basin.”
SMALL WINDOW
After landing, Chang’e-6 had a 14-hour window to drill, excavate, and seal 2 kg of material, with the goal of being the first probe to bring back such samples from the moon’s far side. This compares to the 21-hour window Chang’e-5 had in 2020.
“Once it gets dark, once the sun goes over the horizon, the mission has to end, so there is a limited time window between landing, getting those samples, and getting off the surface again, so it’s quite an exciting mission because it has to be done quickly,” Carpenter said.
While China said it had improved the efficiency of its digging and drilling machines compared with 2020, the mission could still encounter snags at the sampling phase.
Chang’e-5 returned 1.73kg of lunar samples, rather than the planned 2kg, as the drill was only able to create a hole one meter deep, rather than two meters, after encountering impenetrable layers beneath the surface.
The Chang’e-6 samples will be transferred and sealed on a rocket booster atop the lander, which will launch back into space, dock with another spacecraft in lunar orbit and transfer the samples.
A landing in China’s Inner Mongolia is expected around June 25.
Throughout the probe’s journey, payloads from Italian, French, and Pakistani research institutes, as well as the European Space Agency, will collect data on questions pertaining to space and the moon, highlighting the growing international weight of China’s space program, which is competing with the United States to build a lunar outpost in the next decade.
Carpenter said there was “extremely strong” collaboration between European and Chinese scientists in analizing the lunar samples brought back by Chang’e-5, and he hoped this would be repeated for Chang’e-6.
China’s lunar probe could return with answer to origins of solar system
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China’s lunar probe could return with answer to origins of solar system
- Chang’e-6, named after the mythical Chinese moon goddess, was launched on May 3
- A landing in China’s Inner Mongolia is expected around June 25
Vance in India for tough talks on trade
- US Vice President JD Vance’s visit comes two months after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with US President Donald Trump at the White House
NEW DELHI: US Vice President JD Vance began a four-day visit to India on Monday as New Delhi looks to seal an early trade deal and stave off punishing US tariffs.
Vance’s visit comes two months after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with US President Donald Trump at the White House.
A red carpet welcome with an honor guard and troupes of folk dancers greeted Vance after he stepped out into the sweltering sunshine of New Delhi, where he is set to meet with Modi.
Vance’s tour also includes a trip to Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, the white marble mausoleum commissioned by a Mughal emperor.
The US vice president is accompanied by his family, including his wife Usha, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants, with New Delhi’s broadcasters dubbing the visit “semi-private.”
Modi, 74, and Vance, 40, are expected to “review the progress in bilateral relations” and also “exchange views on regional and global developments of mutual interest,” India’s foreign ministry said last week.
India and the United States are negotiating the first tranche of a trade deal, which New Delhi hopes to secure within the 90-day pause on tariffs announced by Trump earlier this month.
“We are very positive that the visit will give a further boost to our bilateral ties,” India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters last week.
Vance was welcomed at the airport by Ashwini Vaishnaw, a senior member of Modi’s government.
Vance’s visit comes during an escalating trade war between the United States and China. India’s neighbor and rival faces US levies of up to 145 percent on many products.
Beijing has responded with duties of 125 percent on US goods.
India has so far reacted cautiously.
After the tariffs were announced, India’s Department of Commerce said it was “carefully examining the implications,” adding it was “also studying the opportunities that may arise.”
Modi, who visited the White House in February, has an acknowledged rapport with Trump, who said he shares a “special bond” with the Indian leader.
Trump, speaking while unveiling the tariffs, said Modi was a “great friend” but that he had not been “treating us right.”
During his visit to Washington, Modi said that the world’s largest and fifth-largest economies would work on a “mutually beneficial trade agreement.”
While the United States is a crucial market for India’s information technology and services sectors, Washington has made billions of dollars in new military hardware sales to New Delhi in recent years.
Trump could visit India later this year for a summit of heads of state from the Quad – a four-way grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
Second Boeing jet starts return from China as trade war with US escalates
- Confusion over changing tariffs could leave many aircraft deliveries in limbo, with some airline CEOs saying they would defer delivery of planes rather than pay duties, analysts say
SEOUL, South Korea: A second Boeing jet intended for use by a Chinese airline was heading back to the US on Monday, flight tracking data showed, in what appears to be another victim of the tit-for-tat bilateral tariffs launched by President Donald Trump in his global trade offensive.
The 737 MAX took off from Boeing’s Zhoushan completion center near Shanghai on Monday morning and was heading toward the US territory of Guam, data from flight tracking website AirNav Radar showed.
Guam is one of the stops such flights make on the 5,000-mile (8,000-km) journey across the Pacific between Boeing’s US production hub in Seattle and the Zhoushan completion center, where planes are ferried by Boeing for final work and delivery to a Chinese carrier.
On Sunday a 737 MAX painted with the livery for China’s Xiamen Airlines made the return journey from Zhoushan and landed at Seattle’s Boeing Field.
It is not clear which party made the decision for the two aircraft to return to the US.
Trump this month raised baseline tariffs on Chinese imports to 145 percent. In retaliation, China has imposed a 125 percent tariff on US goods. A Chinese airline taking delivery of a Boeing jet could be crippled by the tariffs, given that a new 737 MAX has a market value of around $55 million, according to IBA, an aviation consultancy.
The plane flew from Seattle to Zhoushan just under a month ago.
Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The return of the 737 MAX jets, Boeing’s best-selling model, is the latest sign of disruption to new aircraft deliveries from a breakdown in the aerospace industry’s decades-old duty-free status.
The tariff war and apparent U-turn over deliveries comes as Boeing has been recovering from an almost five-year import freeze on 737 MAX jets and a previous round of trade tensions.
Confusion over changing tariffs could leave many aircraft deliveries in limbo, with some airline CEOs saying they would defer delivery of planes rather than pay duties, analysts say.
‘Just more powerful’: Trump pushes presidential limits in first 100 days
WASHINGTON: With Donald Trump back in the White House you never know what you’re going to get. Will he berate a foreign leader? Rock the global markets? Take vengeance against his foes?
But there has been one constant behind the chaos of his first 100 days — Trump is pushing US presidential power to almost imperial limits.
“I think the second term is just more powerful,” the 78-year-old Republican said during a recent event. “They do it — when I say do it, they do it, right?“
Trump has been driven by a sense of grievance left over from an undisciplined first term that ended in the shame of the 2021 US Capitol riots after his election defeat to Joe Biden.
And while Trump freed hundreds of those attackers from jail on his first day back in office, he is taking no prisoners when it comes to consolidating the power of the White House.
“Trump 2.0 is far more authoritarian-minded and authoritarian in its actions than Trump 1.0,” political historian Matt Dallek of George Washington University told AFP.
Trump has also stepped up the sense of an endless reality show in which he is the star, as he signs executive orders and takes questions from reporters in the Oval Office almost daily.
That slew of orders has unleashed an unprecedented assault on the cornerstones of American democracy — and on the world order.
“We have seen certainly not in modern times such a sustained attack to unwind constitutional safeguards,” added Dallek.
Controversially aided by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, Trump has launched a drive to gut a federal government he regards as part of a liberal “deep state.”
He has invoked a centuries-old wartime act to deport migrants to a mega prison in El Salvador — while warning that US citizens could be next.
He has dug in for a confrontation with judges, and forced a string of punishing deals on law firms involved in previous criminal or civil cases against him.
He has cracked down on the media — which he still dubs the “enemy of the people” — and limited access to news outlets covering him at the White House.
And he has launched an ideological purge, cutting diversity programs, targeting universities and even installing himself as head of a prestigious arts center.
The US Congress, which is meant to have ultimate control over the government’s purse strings, has been sidelined. Republicans have abetted his power grab while crushed Democrats have struggled to muster a response.
“We are all afraid,” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said recently.
“The president appears indifferent to formal — even constitutional — checks on his power,” added Barbara Trish, professor of political science at Grinnell College.
On the foreign stage Trump has made territorial claims over Greenland, Panama and Canada — asserting a sphere of influence that echoes Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expansionist bent.
Trump is meanwhile backed by a court of true believers. Aides with often fringe views, like vaccine-skeptic health secretary Robert Kennedy, take turns to praise him at cabinet meetings.
“Compared to the first term, the president has completely surrounded himself with aides who not only facilitate, but in some cases catalyze, his brazen power moves,” added Trish.
But Trump’s comeback has highlighted some familiar themes.
Trump is closing out his first three months with approval ratings well below all other post-World War II presidents — except for himself, in his first term, according to Gallup.
And there are signs of the same volatile leader the world saw from 2017 to 2021.
Trump’s wild televised meltdown in the Oval Office with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — abetted by hawkish Vice President JD Vance — deeply alarmed allies who were already unnerved by his pivot to Russia.
Then there was his introduction of sweeping global tariffs — only to reverse many of them after tanking global markets proved to be the only real check on his power.
When asked how he had reached one of his tariff decisions Trump replied: “Just instinctively.”
The question now is whether Trump — who at one point referred to himself as “THE KING” on his Truth Social platform — will be willing to give up power.
Trump recently said that when he repeatedly mentioned a Constitution-defying third term he was “not joking.”
Beijing slams ‘appeasement’ of US in trade deals that hurt China
- Threatens countermeasures against those who “appease” Washington in the blistering tariff war
- China has vowed to fight a trade war “to the end,” slamming US “unilateralism and protectionism"
BEIJING: China on Monday hit out at other countries making trade deals with the United States at Beijing’s expense, promising countermeasures against those who “appease” Washington in the blistering tariff war.
While the rest of the world has been slapped with a blanket 10 percent tariff, China faces levies of up to 145 percent on many products. Beijing has responded with duties of 125 percent on US goods.
A number of countries are now engaged in negotiations with the United States to lower tariffs, parallel to Washington’s full trade war against top US economic rival China.
But Beijing warned nations on Monday not to seek a deal with the United States that compromised its interests.
“Appeasement will not bring peace, and compromise will not be respected,” a spokesperson for Beijing’s commerce ministry said in a statement.
“To seek one’s own temporary selfish interests at the expense of others’ interests is to seek the skin of a tiger,” Beijing said.
That approach, it warned, “will ultimately fail on both ends and harm others.”
“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests,” the spokesperson said.
“If such a situation occurs, China will never accept it and will resolutely take reciprocal countermeasures,” they added.
US President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin.
Trump said Thursday that the United States was in talks with China on tariffs, adding that he was confident the world’s largest economies could make a deal to end the bitter trade war.
“Yeah, we’re talking to China,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I would say they have reached out a number of times.”
“I think we’re going to make a very good deal with China,” he said at the White House.
China has vowed to fight a trade war “to the end” and has not confirmed that it is in talks with Washington, though it has called for dialogue.
It has slammed what it calls “unilateralism and protectionism” by the United States — and warned about an international order reverting to the “law of the jungle.”
“Where the strong prey on the weak, all countries will become victims,” Beijing said Monday.
Indians battle respiratory issues, skin rashes in world’s most polluted town
- According to government data, the number of respiratory infection cases in the region rose to 3,681 in 2024 from 2,082 in 2022
BYRNIHAT, India: Two-year-old Sumaiya Ansari, a resident of India’s Byrnihat town which is ranked the world’s most polluted metropolitan area by Swiss Group IQAir, was battling breathing problems for several days before she was hospitalized in March and given oxygen support.
She is among many residents of the industrial town on the border of the northeastern Assam and Meghalaya states — otherwise known for their lush, natural beauty — inflicted by illnesses that doctors say are likely linked to high exposure to pollution.
Byrnihat’s annual average PM2.5 concentration in 2024 was 128.2 micrograms per cubic meter, according to IQAir, over 25 times the level recommended by the WHO.
PM2.5 refers to particulate matter measuring 2.5 microns or less in diameter that can be carried into the lungs, causing deadly diseases and cardiac problems.
“It was very scary, she was breathing like a fish,” said Abdul Halim, Ansari’s father, who brought her home from hospital after two days.
According to government data, the number of respiratory infection cases in the region rose to 3,681 in 2024 from 2,082 in 2022.
“Ninety percent of the patients we see daily come either with a cough or other respiratory issues,” said Dr. J Marak of Byrnihat Primary Healthcare Center.
Residents say the toxic air also causes skin rashes and eye irritation, damages crops, and restricts routine tasks like drying laundry outdoors.
“Everything is covered with dust or soot,” said farmer Dildar Hussain.
Critics say Byrnihat’s situation reflects a broader trend of pollution plaguing not just India’s cities, including the capital Delhi, but also its smaller towns as breakneck industrialization erodes environmental safeguards.
Unlike other parts of the country that face pollution every winter, however, Byrnihat’s air quality remains poor through the year, government data indicates.
Home to about 80 industries — many of them highly polluting — experts say the problem is exacerbated in the town by other factors like emissions from heavy vehicles, and its “bowl-shaped topography.”
“Sandwiched between the hilly terrain of Meghalaya and the plains of Assam, there is no room for pollutants to disperse,” said Arup Kumar Misra, chairman of Assam’s pollution control board.
The town’s location has also made a solution tougher, with the states shifting blame to each other, said a Meghalaya government official who did not want to be named.
Since the release of IQAir’s report in March, however, Assam and Meghalaya have agreed to form a joint committee and work together to combat Byrnihat’s pollution.
