Month: January 2024

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washington — Scientists have mapped the largest coral reef deep in the ocean, stretching hundreds of miles off the U.S. Atlantic Coast. 

While researchers have known since the 1960s that some coral were present off the Atlantic, the reef’s size remained a mystery until new underwater mapping technology made it possible to construct 3D images of the ocean floor. 

The largest yet known deep coral reef “has been right under our noses, waiting to be discovered,” said Derek Sowers, an oceanographer at the nonprofit Ocean Exploration Trust. 

Sowers and other scientists, including several at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, recently published maps of the reef in the journal Geomatics. 

The reef extends for about 310 miles (499 kilometers) from Florida to South Carolina and at some points reaches 68 miles (109 kilometers) wide. The total area is nearly three times the size of Yellowstone National Park. 

“It’s eye-opening — it’s breathtaking in scale,” said Stuart Sandin, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who was not involved in the study. 

The reef was found at depths ranging from 655 feet to 3,280 feet (200 meters to 1,000 meters), where sunlight doesn’t penetrate. Unlike tropical coral reefs, where photosynthesis is important for growth, coral this far down must filter food particles out of the water for energy. 

Deep coral reefs provide habitat for sharks, swordfish, sea stars, octopus, shrimp and many other kinds of fish, the scientists said. 

Tropical reefs are better known to scientists – and snorkelers – because they’re more accessible. The world’s largest tropical coral reef system, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, stretches for about 1,430 miles (2,301 kilometers). 

Sowers said it’s possible that larger deep-sea reefs will be discovered in the future since only about 75% of the world’s ocean floor has been mapped in high-resolution. Only 50% of U.S. offshore waters have been mapped. Maps of the ocean floor are created using high-resolution sonar devices carried on ships. 

Deep reefs cover more of the ocean floor than tropical reefs. Both kinds of habitat are susceptible to similar risks, including climate change and disturbance from oil and gas drilling, said Erik Cordes, a marine biologist at Temple University and co-author of the new study.
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LAHORE, Pakistan — The air smells burnt in Lahore, a city in Pakistan’s east that used to be famous for its gardens but has become infamous for its terrible air quality.

Toxic smog has sickened tens of thousands of people in recent months. Flights have been canceled. Artificial rain was deployed last December to battle smog, a national first. Nothing seems to be working.

Lahore is in an airshed, an area where pollutants from industry, transportation and other human activities get trapped because of local weather and topography so they cannot disperse easily. Airsheds also contribute to cross-border pollution. Under certain wind conditions, 30% of pollution in the Indian capital New Delhi can come from Pakistan’s Punjab province, where Lahore is the capital. There are six major airsheds in South Asia, home to many of the world’s worst polluted cities.

Experts are calling for greater cross-border cooperation among countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and India to address air pollution together rather than working in silos on a city-by-city basis. But it’s a tall order when political relations in the region are fraught.

Ties between India and Pakistan are broken. Their interactions are riddled with animosity and suspicion. They have fought three wars, built up their armies and developed nuclear weapons. Travel restrictions and hostile bureaucracies largely keep people from crossing the border for leisure, study and work, although the countries make exceptions for religious pilgrimages.

“There’s a recognition among the technical and scientific community that air pollution doesn’t need a visa to travel across borders,” said Pakistani analyst Abid Suleri, from the nonprofit Sustainable Development Policy Institute. The culprits and problems are the same on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, he said, so it makes no sense for one province to implement measures if a neighboring province across the border isn’t adopting the same practices.

Regional and international forums offer opportunities for candid discussions about air pollution, even if governments aren’t working together directly or publicly, Suleri said, adding that countries should treat air pollution as a year-round problem, rather than a seasonal one arriving with cold weather.

“Airshed management needs a regional plan,” he said. “But 2024 is an election year in India and Pakistan, and government-to-government cooperation hasn’t reached that level.”

Pakistan is weeks away from voting in national parliamentary elections. So far, only the former foreign minister and political party leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has pledged heavy investment in climate adaptability, following record-breaking floods that killed more than 1,700 people.

In India, air pollution doesn’t figure as a core issue that people would vote on, said Bhargav Krishna, a fellow at the New Delhi-based Sustainable Futures Collaborative think tank. But the experience or impact of climate change could make people think about how they vote. 

Krishna said that regional elections sometimes see air pollution-related promises. “It was a feature of every party’s election manifesto in the New Delhi elections in 2020,” he noted.

According to the World Bank, a regional airshed management policy would involve countries agreeing to set common air quality targets and measures that everyone can implement, meeting regularly to share their experiences and, if possible, setting common air quality standards.

The global body said almost 93% of Pakistanis are exposed to severe pollution levels. In India, it’s 96% of the population. More than 1.5 billion people are exposed to high concentrations of air pollution in these two countries alone. It estimates around 220,000 deaths a year in Pakistan’s Punjab can be attributed to causes related to bad air.

Gray haze hangs pall-like over Punjab’s homes, mosques, schools, streets and farmland. There are 6.7 million vehicles on Lahore’s roads every day. Construction, emissions and waste are rife. There is scant visibility at major intersections after dark. Smog shrouds landmarks like the Mughal-era Badshahi Mosque.

The shopping website Daraz has reported a spike in searches for air purifiers and face masks since last October, especially in Punjab.

Pulmonologist Dr. Khawar Abbas Chaudhry laments the deterioration of Lahore, which he describes as a “once-beautiful” city. The hospital where he works is part of the Bill Gates-backed Evercare Group that has hospitals in the region, including India and Bangladesh, and in East Africa.

Chaudhry says he has seen a 100% increase of patients sickened with respiratory illnesses this winter. He attributes this rise to air pollution.

There are forums within Evercare to discuss issues like air pollution, and he and colleagues, including those from India, talk about smog’s health impact. But this dialogue is only happening within one institution.

“Countries, governments, departments need to be involved,” said Chaudhry. “They need to meet regularly. Ultimately, people need to reach out and that could put some pressure on movers and shakers on both sides of the border.”

Pratima Singh, a senior research scientist at Bengaluru-based Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, has researched air pollution in India for over a decade.

She said South Asian countries could emulate the European Union model of collaboration to deal with pollution challenges, formalize new policies and share data and best practices.

After India launched its National Clean Air Programme in 2019, authorities quickly found it was crucial for cities to understand what was happening in surrounding areas — and the boundary kept expanding. “Everyone started realizing that airshed management is essential if we want to actually solve the problem,” Singh said.

The director of Punjab’s Environment Protection Department, Syed Naseem Ur Rehman Shah, is proud of local achievements to fight air pollution. Emissions from industry and brick kilns are under control, farmers can soon buy subsidized machinery to end the menace of crop stubble burning, and there is a drive toward getting electric three-wheeled tuk-tuks, motorbikes and buses on the roads, he said.

Although things are getting better, Shah said it will take time.

He has gone to India to discuss climate change and said a regional body, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, provides opportunities for countries to talk about air pollution. But he acknowledges the absence of formal cooperation at a ministerial level with India.

A screen in a monitoring room, called the Smog Cell, showed Pakistan’s Air Quality Index to be higher than China’s that day. Shah said the province only exceeds World Health Organization-recommended levels for PM2.5 — fine particulate matter that can be inhaled. Everything else about the air quality is within parameters, he said.

His assessment is of little consolation to Pakistani poet and former ambassador Ata ul Haq Qasmi, who is in Evercare for respiratory issues exacerbated by air pollution. “If my friends aren’t in hospital, they should be,” he said. “You only have to step outside for it (the smog) to grab you.”
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ABUJA, NIGERIA     — Nigeria’s tech startups are facing reluctance from investors, stemming from the shutdown of some prominent young companies last year.

Kingsley Eze co-runs Nairaxi, an e-Commerce, on-demand logistics startup in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Despite its record of handling tens of thousands of successful requests, the firm has been largely funded by Eze, as well as family and friends. 

Eze told VOA that even though he is ready for expansion, it has been difficult to secure financing, amid the tales of failing startups in the country. 

“It’s been very difficult to raise funds, investors are cautious, the interest rate hikes in the Western economy is also a contributing factor to that, coupled with a lot of disappointing or not so good outings for a few startups that were like a beacon of hope for the Nigerian startup ecosystem,” said Eze.

Nigeria has been leading growth in African startups. Nevertheless, the sector faced a significant blow in 2023. Prominent startups such as 54Gene, Lazerpay, Vibra, Payday, and Hytch went out of business — largely over their inability to raise more capital to keep the companies running — losing more than $70 million of foreign investors’ funds. 

Abuja-based economist and investment expert Paul Alaje told VOA he blames the collapses on neglect of business principles. 

“Assumption is the major bane to startup development in Africa, especially Nigeria,” said Alaje. “That the idea worked at first and is technology-driven does not mean the fundamentals of traditional business or a growing business, economic principles behind traditional business, should be neglected when it comes to startups.” 

A recent report by Briter Bridges, a London-based business intelligence and research firm, showed a 54% drop in funding for startups between January and October of last year in Africa compared to the same period in 2022. 

Eze said he believes this will make it even harder to navigate the funding terrain.   

“The last statistics we had projected a 60% failure rate for Nigerian startup companies which is not a good bet for most investors,” said Eze. “When everyone is succeeding in the market, it encourages more investors.” 

Alaje said Nigeria’s business ecosystem needs an overhaul. 

((ACT Paul Alaje, Senior Economist (Male, in English) )) 

“Change policy, bring new policies that make it difficult for people who don’t have an idea regarding how business should be properly run,” said Alaje. “Two, show examples of people who got it correctly, including Paystack. We need to become more deliberate at all levels.” 

Paystack, a successful Nigerian payment processing company, was acquired by an Irish-American company for $200 million in 2020. 

According to venture capitalists in Nigeria, poor infrastructure, lack of accountability by business owners, and the foreign exchange crisis aided the collapse of many startups. 

For his part, Eze said he will continue to build his business from the revenues it generates. 
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Tokyo, Japan — Japan on Saturday became only the fifth nation to achieve a soft lunar landing, but its Moon Sniper spacecraft was running out of power because of a problem with its solar battery.

After a nail-biting 20-minute descent, space agency JAXA said its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had touched down and communication had been established.

But without the solar cells functioning, JAXA official Hitoshi Kuninaka said the craft, dubbed the Moon Sniper for its precision technology, would only have power for “several hours.”

As mission control scientists prioritized acquiring data while they could, Kuninaka suggested that once the angle of the sun changed, the batteries might work again.

“It is unlikely that the solar battery has failed. It’s possible that it is not facing in the originally planned direction,” he told a news conference.

“If the descent was not successful, it would have crashed at a very high speed. If that were the case, all functionality of the probe would be lost,” he said.

“But data is being sent to Earth,” he said.

SLIM is one of several recent lunar missions that have been launched by countries and private firms, 50 years after the first human moon landing.

Crash landings, communication failures and other technical problems are rife. Only four other nations have made it to the moon: The United States, the Soviet Union, China and most recently India.

NASA chief Bill Nelson tweeted his “congratulations (to Japan) on being the historic fifth country to land successfully on the moon.”

“We value our partnership in the cosmos and continued collaboration,” he added.

JAXA hopes to analyze data acquired during the landing, which will help determine whether the craft achieved the aim of landing within 100 meters of its intended landing spot.

SLIM was aiming for a crater where the moon’s mantle, the usually deep inner layer beneath its crust, is believed to be exposed on the surface.

Two probes detached successfully, JAXA said. One with a transmitter and another, a mini-rover, is designed to trundle around the lunar surface beaming images to Earth.

This shape-shifting mini-rover, slightly bigger than a tennis ball, was co-developed by the firm behind the Transformer toys.

While the accuracy of the touchdown needs to be verified, “I think the mission is a big success,” said Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Several things could have caused the solar panel problem, he told AFP.

“A wire came loose, a wire was connected the wrong way, or the lander is upside down and can’t see the sun for some reason,” McDowell speculated.

The scientist said he hoped JAXA had been able to download the landing images, but an experiment to study the composition of local rocks may be a lost cause.

“But frankly, that experiment was a bonus and not really that important to the mission,” he said.

Two previous Japanese lunar missions — one public and one private — have failed.

In 2022, the country unsuccessfully sent a lunar probe named Omotenashi as part of the United States’ Artemis 1 mission.

In April, Japanese startup ispace tried in vain to become the first private company to land on the moon, losing communication with its craft after what it described as a “hard landing.” 
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TOKYO — Japan landed a spacecraft on the moon Saturday, an attempt at the world’s first “pinpoint lunar landing.” The milestone puts Japan in a club previously occupied by only the United States, the Soviet Union, India and China.

A raft of countries and companies are also plotting moon missions. Success means international scientific and diplomatic accolades and potential domestic political gains. Failure means a very expensive, and public,

.Here’s a look at high-profile recent and upcoming attempts, and what they might mean.

The United States

NASA plans to send astronauts to fly around the moon next year, and to land there in 2026.

Just this week, however, a U.S. company, Astrobotic Technology, said its lunar lander will soon burn up in Earth’s atmosphere after a failed moonshot.

The lander, named Peregrine, developed a fuel leak that forced Astrobotic to abandon its attempt to make the first U.S. lunar landing in more than 50 years. The company suspects a stuck valve caused a tank to rupture.

NASA is working to commercialize lunar deliveries by private businesses while the U.S. government tries to get astronauts back to the moon.

For now, the United States’ ability to spend large sums and marshal supply chains give it an advantage over China and other moon rivals. Private sector players such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have made crewed space missions a priority.

Another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, plans to launch its own lunar lander next month.

India

Last year, India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, where scientists believe that perpetually darkened craters may hold frozen water that could aid future missions.

In 2019, a software glitch caused an Indian lander to crash on its lunar descent. So the $75 million success in August brought widespread jubilation, with people cheering in the streets and declaring India’s rise as a scientific superpower.

Indian scientists said that the next step is a manned lunar mission.

The success is seen as key to boosting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity before a crucial general election this year.

India has been pushing for a space program since the 1960s and aims to visit the International Space Station next year in collaboration with the United States.

New Delhi also sees victory in space as important in its rivalry with nuclear-armed neighbor China. Relations between India and China have plunged since deadly border clashes in 2020.

China

China landed on the moon in 2013, and last year launched a three-person crew for its orbiting space station. It hopes to put astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade.

In 2020, a Chinese capsule returned to Earth from the moon with the first fresh lunar rock samples in more than 40 years. China’s first manned space mission in 2003 made it the third country after the USSR and the United States to put a person into space.

China’s space ambitions are linked to its rivalry with the United States as the world’s two largest economies compete for diplomatic, political and military influence in Asia and beyond.

China built its own space station after it was excluded from the International Space Station, in part because of U.S. objections over the Chinese space program’s intimate ties to the military.

China and the United States are also considering plans for permanent crewed bases on the moon. That has raised questions about competition and cooperation on the lunar surface.

Russia

Also last year, Russia’s Luna-25 failed in its attempt to land in the same area of the moon that India reached.

It came 47 years after the Soviets landed on the moon, and Russian scientists blamed that long break, and the accompanying loss of space expertise, for the recent failure.

The Soviets launched the first satellite in space in 1957 and put the first human in space in 1961, but Russia’s program has struggled since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union amid widespread corruption and Western sanctions that have hurt scientific development.

Russia is planning for another moon mission in 2027.

Russia’s failures and the growing role of private companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX have cost Russia its once-sizable niche in the lucrative global space launch market.

Just as India’s success was seen as evidence of its rise to great power status, Russia’s failure has been portrayed by some as casting doubt on its global influence and strength.
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tokyo — Japan’s spacecraft arrived on the surface of the moon early Saturday, but it wasn’t immediately clear if the landing was a success, because the Japanese space agency said it was still “checking its status.”

More details about the spacecraft, which is carrying no astronauts, would be given at a news conference, officials said. If the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, landed successfully, Japan would become the fifth country to accomplish the feat after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.

SLIM came down onto the lunar surface at around 12:20 a.m. Tokyo time Saturday (1520 GMT Friday).

As the spacecraft descended, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s mission control said that everything was going as planned and later said that SLIM was on the lunar surface. But there was no mention of whether the landing was successful.

Mission control kept repeating that it was “checking its status” and that more information would be given at a news conference. It wasn’t immediately clear when the news conference would start.

SLIM, nicknamed “the Moon Sniper,” started its descent at midnight Saturday, and within 15 minutes it was down to about 10 kilometers (six miles) above the lunar surface, according to the space agency, which is known as JAXA.

At an altitude of five kilometers (three miles), the lander was in a vertical descent mode, then at 50 meters (165 feet) above the surface, SLIM was supposed to make a parallel movement to find a safe landing spot, JAXA said.

About a half-hour after its presumed landing, JAXA said that it was still checking the status of the lander.

SLIM, which was aiming to hit a very small target, is a lightweight spacecraft about the size of a passenger vehicle. It was using “pinpoint landing” technology that promises far greater control than any previous moon landing.

While most previous probes have used landing zones about 10 kilometers (six miles) wide, SLIM was aiming at a target of just 100 meters (330 feet).

The project was the fruit of two decades of work on precision technology by JAXA.

The mission’s main goal is to test new landing technology that would allow moon missions to land “where we want to, rather than where it is easy to land,” JAXA has said. If the landing was a success, the spacecraft will seek clues about the origin of the moon, including analyzing minerals with a special camera.

The SLIM, equipped with a pad to cushion impact, was aiming to land near the Shioli crater, near a region covered in volcanic rock.

The closely watched mission came only 10 days after a moon mission by a U.S. private company failed when the spacecraft developed a fuel leak hours after the launch.

SLIM was launched on a Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket in September. It initially orbited Earth and entered lunar orbit on Dec. 25.

Japan hopes a success will help regain confidence for its space technology after a number of failures. A spacecraft designed by a Japanese company crashed during a lunar landing attempt in April, and a new flagship rocket failed its debut launch in March.

JAXA has a track record with difficult landings. Its Hayabusa2 spacecraft, launched in 2014, touched down twice on the 900-meter-long (3,000-foot-long) asteroid Ryugu, collecting samples that were returned to Earth.

Experts say a success of SLIM’s pinpoint landing, especially on the moon, would raise Japan’s profile in the global space technology race.

Takeshi Tsuchiya, aeronautics professor at the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, said it was important to confirm the accuracy of landing on a targeted area for the future of moon explorations.

“It is necessary to show the world that Japan has the appropriate technology in order to be able to properly assert Japan’s position in lunar development,” he said. The moon is important from the perspective of explorations of resources, and it can also be used as a base to go to other planets, like Mars, he said.

SLIM is carrying two small autonomous probes — lunar excursion vehicles LEV-1 and LEV-2, which were due to be released just before landing.

LEV-1, equipped with an antenna and a camera, is tasked with recording SLIM’s landing. LEV-2, is a ball-shaped rover equipped with two cameras, developed by JAXA together with Sony, toymaker Tomy and Doshisha University.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Turkey’s first astronaut and three other crew members representing Europe were launched from Florida on Thursday on a voyage to the International Space Station in the latest commercially arranged mission from Texas startup Axiom Space. 

A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the Axiom quartet lifted off about an hour before sunset from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, beginning a planned 36-hour flight to the orbiting laboratory. 

The launch was shown live on an Axiom webcast. 

The autonomously operated Crew Dragon was expected to reach the space station early Saturday morning and dock with the orbiting outpost 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. 

The mission was the third such flight organized by Houston-based Axiom over the past two years as the company builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by foreign governments and private enterprise into Earth’s orbit. 

The company charges its customers at least $55 million for each astronaut seat. 

Originally scheduled for Wednesday, the launch was postponed for 24 hours to allow more time for final inspections and data analysis, including for an issue related to the parachute system used to slow the capsule’s return descent before splashdown, Axiom and SpaceX said. 

Plans for the Axiom-3 mission call for the crew to spend roughly 14 days aboard the station conducting more than 30 scientific experiments, most of them focused on the effects of spaceflight on human health and disease. 

More symbolically, the mission reflects the growing number of nations venturing to Earth’s orbit as a way of enhancing global prestige, military prowess and satellite-based communications. 

Turkey, a longtime applicant for EU membership, was poised to enter the exclusive-but-expanding club of space station guest countries by sending Alper Gezeravcı, 44, a Turkish air force veteran, on his nation’s debut human spaceflight as an Ax-3 mission specialist. 

He was being joined by Italian Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei, 49, Ax-3’s designated pilot; Swedish aviator Marcus Wandt, 43, another mission specialist; and retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, 65, a dual citizen of Spain and the United States, acting as mission commander. Lopez-Alegria, an Axiom executive, also commanded the company’s first mission to the space station in April 2022. 

Axiom billed the flight as “the first all-European commercial astronaut mission” to the space station. 

In May 2023, Axiom-2 launched a team of two Americans and two Saudis, including Rayyanah Barnawi, a biomedical scientist who became the first Arab woman ever sent to orbit, on an eight-day mission to the space station. 

SpaceX, the privately funded rocket and satellite company of billionaire Elon Musk, provides Axiom’s launch vehicles and crew capsules under contract, as it has for NASA missions to the space station. SpaceX also runs mission control for its rocket launches from the company’s headquarters near Los Angeles. 

NASA, besides furnishing the launch site at Cape Canaveral, assumes responsibility for the astronauts once they rendezvous with the space station. 

Axiom, an eight-year-old venture headed by NASA’s former space station program manager, is one of a handful of companies building a commercial space station that’s intended to eventually replace the international facility, which NASA expects to retire around 2030. 

Launched to orbit in 1998, the International Space Station has been continuously occupied since 2000 under a U.S.-Russian-led partnership that includes Canada, Japan and 11 countries that belong to the European Space Agency.
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The American Red Cross has declared a critical blood shortage, with supplies running the lowest in 20 years. The number of donors in the country has declined by 40%, for reasons that include COVID, seasonal infections, and bad weather. Angelina Bagdasaryan visited a blood donation station in Los Angeles and talked with some of the donors. Anna Rice narrates her story.
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