In a major development, Nasa has found evidence of the hard landing of the Japanese lunar lander HAKUTO-R Mission 1, which crashed on the moon’s surface a month earlier, reported CBS News Wednesday.
The Japanese moon lander, designed by the company ispace, was launched on December 11, 2022, and was to land in the moon’s Atlas crater on April 25.
The ispace team said in a news release that the “lander’s descent speed rapidly increased as it approached the moon. It then lost contact with Mission Control.”
“Based on this, it has been determined that there is a high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the Moon’s surface,” the company said.
On April 26, Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a robotic spacecraft orbiting around the moon with cameras provided topographic maps of the lunar surface, and captured 10 images around the landing site.
Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) can be seen in this picture. — Nasa/File
The 10 captured images and the one clicked before the landing helped scientists, operating the spacecraft, begin to look for the Japanese lander in a 28-by-25-mile region.
The team identified what NASA called “an unusual surface change” near where the lander was supposed to end up.
The photo by Nasa’s orbiter shows “four prominent pieces of debris” and several changes in the lunar surface, including some changes that could indicate a small crater or pieces of the lander.
In a statement, Nasa said, “the photos are just the first step in the process. The site will be further analysed over the coming months.”
According to the US space agency, the orbiter will make further observations of the site in different lighting conditions and from other angles.
Despite the crash, the company ispace is eyeing to launch further moon probes.
Seen to the right of the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a crane positions the Orion crew access arm so it can be attached to the mobile launcher. — Nasa/File
Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace, told CBS News before the failed launch that the company’s goal is to help develop a lunar economy and create an infrastructure that will augment Nasa’s Artemis programme and make it easier to access the surface of the moon.
Under the company’s lunar mission, another lander is set to take another rover to the moon in 2024. The third mission is currently under preparation.
Hakamada said that if possible, the goal is to set “high-frequency transportation to the lunar surface to support scientific, exploration, and technology demonstration missions.”
“We are planning to offer frequent missions to the surface. After 2025, we plan to offer two to three missions per year,” said the CEO.
The New York-based cybersecurity firm Wiz has discovered a cache of sensitive data from the Chinese artificial intelligence business DeepSeek that was mistakenly exposed to the public internet.
In a blog post released on Wednesday, Wiz reported that examinations of DeepSeek’s infrastructure revealed that the company had inadvertently exposed over a million lines of unencrypted data. The materials were digital software keys and chat logs that seemingly documented prompts transmitted from consumers to the company’s complimentary AI assistant.
The chief technical officer of Wiz stated that DeepSeek promptly safeguarded the data following the notice from his organisation.
“It was removed in under an hour,” stated Ami Luttwak. “However, this was exceedingly easy to locate, leading us to believe we are not the sole discoverers.”
DeepSeek did not promptly respond to a request for comment.
DeepSeek’s rapid success after the introduction of its AI helper has exhilarated China and incited concern in America. The Chinese company’s evident capacity to rival OpenAI’s skills at a significantly reduced cost has raised concerns regarding the viability of the business models and profit margins of U.S. AI behemoths like Nvidia and Microsoft.
By Monday, it surpassed the U.S. competitor ChatGPT in downloads from Apple’s App Store, prompting a worldwide decline in technology stocks.
WhatsApp has initiated testing of a bulk channel administration feature on iOS for select beta users, enabling the simultaneous selection of many channels, hence enhancing the efficiency of managing following channels.
This essential update enables users to perform bulk activities, including muting many channels simultaneously, designating them as read, and altering notifications. If the chosen channels are muted, users will now have the option to activate notifications. Users can swiftly silence unmuted channels in one action.
Additionally, this feature enables users to unfollow many channels simultaneously, thereby optimizing the process of decluttering their channel list. This change is particularly beneficial for users that oversee numerous subscriptions, as reported by WABetaInfo.
Previously, users were required to manage each channel individually, rendering tasks such as muting or designating channels as read laborious and time-consuming.
The functionality provides enhanced flexibility and control over channel subscriptions, enabling users to efficiently manage notifications. The solution streamlines laborious operations for consumers who subscribe to numerous channels, hence enhancing their entire experience.
Accessibility The bulk management feature is presently accessible exclusively to a limited number of beta testers who installed the latest WhatsApp beta for iOS using the TestFlight application. WhatsApp, owned by Meta, plans to expand the feature’s availability to a larger user base in the next weeks.
This update demonstrates WhatsApp’s dedication to enhancing user experience by offering a clear and efficient method for managing channels and notifications.
Even after two weeks, the global submarine cable AAA-1 problem that was discovered on January 2 near Qatar has not been fixed, causing sluggish internet connection in several Pakistani towns.
According to a representative for Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), the issue has affected customers’ capacity to effectively access social media applications and browse the online. Even with initiatives to fix the problem, social networking sites still lag during busy times.
Internet traffic has been redirected via alternate channels to lessen the impact, and more capacity has been set up to stabilize the service.
The PTCL representative promised that “Internet service across the country is operating normally, and there will be no issues with web browsing,” noting that social media applications’ lag is common during