The Times of Israel is liveblogging Friday’s events as they happen.
US achieves first moon landing in half century with private spacecraft
A spacecraft built and flown by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines LUNR.O has landed near the south pole of the moon, the first US touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever achieved entirely by the private sector.
The six-legged robot lander, dubbed Odysseus, touched down at about 6:23 p.m. EST (2323 GMT), the company and NASA commentators said in a joint webcast of the landing from Intuitive Machines’ mission operations center in Houston.
As planned, the spacecraft was believed to have come to rest at a crater named Malapert A near the moon’s south pole, according to the webcast.
The landing, one day after the spacecraft reached lunar orbit and a week after its launch from Florida, was confirmed by signals beamed back some 239,000 miles (384,000 km) to mission control.
But communication with the vehicle took several minutes to re-establish, and the initial signal was faint, leaving mission control uncertain as to the precise condition and position of the lander, according to flight controllers heard in the webcast.
The spacecraft was not designed to provide live video of the event.
Touchdown came after an 11th-hour glitch with the spacecraft’s autonomous navigation system that required engineers on the ground to employ a work-around solution.
The vehicle is carrying a suite of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations for NASA and several commercial customers designed to operate for seven days on solar energy before the sun sets over the polar landing site.
Your order was delivered… to the Moon! ????@Int_Machines' uncrewed lunar lander landed at 6:23pm ET (2323 UTC), bringing NASA science to the Moon's surface. These instruments will prepare us for future human exploration of the Moon under #Artemis. pic.twitter.com/sS0poiWxrU
— NASA (@NASA) February 22, 2024
The NASA payload will focus on collecting data on space weather interactions with the moon’s surface, radio astronomy and other aspects of the lunar environment for future landers and NASA’s planned return of astronauts later in the decade.
The uncrewed IM-1 mission was sent on its way to the moon on Wednesday atop a Falcon 9 rocket launched by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Today’s landing represented the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft since Apollo 17 in 1972, when NASA’s last crewed moon mission landed there with astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.
To date, spacecraft from just four other countries have ever landed on the moon – the former Soviet Union, China, India and, mostly recently, just last month, Japan. The United States is the only one ever to have sent humans to the lunar surface.
Netanyahu presents security cabinet with his plan for post-war management of Gaza
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has presented the security cabinet with his plan for the management of Gaza after the war.
It is largely a collection of principles he has been vocalizing since the beginning of the war, but it is the first time they have formally been presented to the cabinet.
For over four months, Netanyahu has held off on holding security cabinet discussions regarding the so-called “day after,” fearing this could lead to fractures in his coalition. Some of his far-right ministers aim to use such meetings to push the re-establishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza and the permanent occupation of the Strip — policies the premier says he opposes and would surely lead to the dissipation of Israel’s remaining support in the West.
Netanyahu has sufficed with saying that he will not allow the Palestinian Authority to return to govern Gaza. He has sometimes qualified this assertion by saying that Israel won’t allow the PA in its current form to return to Gaza while other times he has given a more blanket rejection of “Fatahstan” — referring to the political party headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
Notably, the paper of principles presented to security cabinet ministers at tonight’s meeting doesn’t specifically name the PA or rule out its participation in the post-war governance of Gaza.
Instead, it says that civil affairs in Gaza will be run by “local officials” who have “administrative experience” and who aren’t tied to “countries or entities that support terrorism.”
The language is vague but this could cover groups that receive funding from Qatar — as Hamas does — or possibly the PA, whose welfare program includes payments to terrorists.
Israel agrees to release US flour shipment for Gaza after blocking its delivery for one month — official
Israel has agreed to a new arrangement that will allow for a massive American shipment of flour for Gazan civilians to move forward after far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blocked its transfer for over a month, a US official tells The Times of Israel.
Under the new arrangement, the flour capable of feeding 1.5 million Gazans for five months will be ferried into Gaza by the World Food Program, rather than the UNRWA relief agency for Palestinian refugees, the official says.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu privately informed the Biden administration that Israel approved the shipment in early January. The White House announced the development on January 19, as it came under increasing pressure to do more to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
But more than one month later, the flour has yet to enter Gaza.
The shipment arrived at Israel’s Ashdod Port, but Smotrich blocked its transfer to UNRWA, which came under fire last month over allegations that 12 of its staffers participated in the October 7 terror onslaught.
The delay has angered the Biden administration, which has repeatedly noted in recent weeks that Israel the commitments it made to the president.
With the new arrangement finalized, the shipment can move forward immediately, the US official says.
However, even if the flour does make it to Gaza, it is unclear whether it will be distributed to civilians.
Recent days have seen the distribution of humanitarian aid largely ground to a halt due to Hamas police’s refusal to secure the trucks delivering the assistance through Gaza because they have repeatedly come under Israeli fire.