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In recent years, competing countries have made the moon a hotbed of activity not seen since the Apollo 17 astronauts left the lunar surface in 1972.
In one lunar region, Japan’s “Moon Sniper” mission has defied the odds and survived a long lunar night since landing on the side on January 19.
Engineers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency didn’t design the spacecraft to survive a single lunar night, a two-week period of freezing darkness, but the Lunar Sniper continues to take in extreme lunar conditions and send back new images of its landing site.
Elsewhere, an international team of astronomers believe they have come across a crater created a few million years ago when a massive object crashed into the moon’s surface – and deposited a chunk of the moon’s side, or the side facing it the Earth, hurting. into space. The hunk of the moon has become a rare model satellite or near-Earth orbiting asteroid.
The Tianwen-2 mission will visit the space rock later in the decade. But first, China hopes to return to the “hidden side” of the moon.
Lunar update
The Chang’e-6 mission, launched on Friday, aims to bring back the first samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin, or the largest and oldest crater on the moon. Since the arrival of the Chang’e 4 mission in 2019, China has become the only country to land on the far side of the moon, sometimes called the “dark side” of the moon.
The “dark side” of the moon is a misnomer, experts say, and the remote lunar hemisphere gets illuminated – scientists don’t know as much as they’d like about the region.
The far side, with its thicker crust, is very different from the other side explored during the Apollo missions.
Scientists hope that some of the biggest remaining lunar mysteries could be solved, including the true origin of the moon, which could bring back samples from beyond.
Long long ago
Papyrologists studying the Herculaneum scrolls have revealed details about Plato’s last evening and Plato’s final resting place.
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, volcanic ash charred and buried the papyrus scrolls, but experts have gained insights from the fragile artefacts using innovative technology.
According to Graziano Ranocchia, professor of papyrology at the University of Pisa, the burial site of the Greek philosopher and muses within the Platonic Academy of Athens was probably a secret garden near the sacred shrine.
And the translated text, Ranocchia added, revealed that Plato was not a fan of the flute music being played as he languished on his deathbed, noting that he spoke to a guest of his “scarcity sense of rhythm”.
We are a family
Around 75,000 years ago, a Neanderthal woman was laid to rest in a cave with a rock under her head as a cushion.
Now, scientists have pieced together her skull using 200 bone fragments in a “high-stakes 3D puzzle” to recreate the face of Shanidar Z, named after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where the paleoanthropologist discovered Dr Emma Pomeroy the remains in 2018.
“She has a pretty big face for her size,” said Pomeroy, an associate professor of archeology at the University of Cambridge. “She’s got pretty big brow ridges, which we wouldn’t normally see, but I think when you’re dressed in modern clothes you probably wouldn’t look twice.”
Dig this
Amateur archaeologists have discovered a baffling 1,700-year-old artifact that represents “one of the great ecstasies of archaeology,” according to the Norton Disney History and Archeology Group.
The object is 12 sides 3 inches (8 centimeters) across, hollow and covered with holes. It is one of the largest Roman dodecahedrons ever found, and there are only about 130 in the world.
No one knows where they were used, and the dodecahedrons are still absent from Roman literature and mosaics. But the objects may have been associated with ritual or religious rites.
Amazing creatures
Rakus, a Sumatran orangutan living in the Gunung Leuser National Park in South Aceh, Indonesia, surprised scientists when they saw him treat a wound on his face by using a medicinal plant.
This is the first time researchers have documented such behavior in large apps.
Rakus, likely injured by another male orangutan, chewed leaves from a plant locally known as akar kuning which is used in traditional medicine to treat dysentery, malaria and diabetes.
Then, he applied juice from the leaves to his wound, leading researchers to wonder if the pain-relieving treatment was accidental or a learned behavior from other wild orangutans.
Inquiries
Dive deep into these interesting reads:
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— The Boeing Starliner spacecraft, carrying astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on a test flight, has now been given the green light by NASA to attempt a Monday afternoon launch to the International Space Station.
— Do you remember the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”? Geneticists have identified what they call “Kevin Bacon degrees,” which may provide a genetic basis that determines how central you are to your social network.
— Here comes that sound! Learn all there is to know about periodical cicadas in a visual guide to the emergence of a rare species in 2024.
And don’t forget to look up early on Sunday and Monday to see the Eta Aquariid meteor shower dazzle in the night sky.
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