An Australian police officer is facing two murder charges after allegedly killing his former boyfriend and his new partner and disposing of their bodies, which are yet to be found.

New South Wales police officer Beaumont Lamarre-Condon, 28, appeared in court on Friday afternoon charged with the murders of Jesse Baird, 26, and Luke Davies, 29.

The couple was last seen at Baird’s home in the eastern Sydney suburb of Paddington on Monday, and fears for their safety rose after their bloodied belongings were found in a skip in Cronulla, around 30 kilometers (18 miles) away.

NSW Police Detective Superintendent Daniel Doherty told reporters at a news briefing Friday that blood was also found in a search of Baird’s home, as well as a “projectile” and a fired cartridge case.

“This has now been ballistically matched to a New South Wales Police firearm … and that firearm belongs to the 28-year-old man who was charged today,” Doherty said.

Police said in a statement that the off-duty officer charged was a senior constable attached to a specialist command.

An NSW Court spokesperson confirmed Lamarre-Condon had appeared in Waverley court Friday charged with two counts of murder. He didn’t apply for bail.

Police said the officer was arrested when he attended Bondi Police Station on Friday morning after his name was published in local media.

Baird was a former television presenter with Network 10, and Davies was a flight attendant, according to local media reports.

Lamarre-Condon had reportedly been in a relationship with Baird, and while Doherty wouldn’t comment on a potential motive, he said a line of investigation will include whether it was a “domestic-style incident.”

Neighbors had come forward to report hearing a loud argument early Monday morning.

Doherty said it will be alleged that Lamarre-Condon hired a van later Monday that was used to dispose of the bodies. The van was located on Friday morning, but police have not revealed what was found inside.

They’re appealing for public help to track the movements of the van between Monday and Friday morning.

“It’s really important we get the movements in relation to that van, as hopefully we can find the bodies and this is important for the family,” Doherty said. “They’re obviously devastated by the news.”

Doherty also said finding the bodies would shed more light on how the men died.

Senegal President Macky Sall said on Thursday that April 2 will be the end of his mandate as president of the West African nation. He added, however, that it was unlikely the election of a new president will be completed before then.

Sall’s announcement could assuage fears he was planning to extend his rule in the country, an issue that had contributed to a tense political climate, and sometimes violent protests in a country seen as one of the stable democracies in the region.

His announcement came after the country’s Constitutional Council, the highest election authority, ruled last week that a 10-month postponement of the vote was unlawful. The election had initially been scheduled for Feb. 25.

“April 2, 2024, will be the end of my term at the head of the country, the end of my binding relationship with the Senegalese people as president of the republic. I would like this debate to be clearly settled,” Sall said during an interview on national television.

Sall said however that he cannot issue a decree to hold the election before a national dialogue takes place.

The dialogue, which would include civil society groups, political parties and candidates, is set to begin on Monday and will likely finish by Tuesday, he said.

He said that candidates who had not been approved by the Constitutional Council would also be invited to the dialogue.

Prominent opposition figures including the firebrand jailed politician Ousmane Sonko and Karim Wade, the son of former president Abdoulaye Wade, were excluded from the list of 19 candidates approved for the election.

“If we find consensus, I will issue the decree immediately to set the date; if consensus is not found, I will refer the matter to the Constitutional Council,” Sall said.

But he added he did not think the process would be finished before April 2.

In case the process runs beyond that date, he said: “What is certain is that there will be no void. We cannot leave a country without a president.”

“I want to make the dichotomy clearly between the election and the end of the mandate,” he said, adding that he will follow the guidance of the Constitutional Council on the matter.

Asked about opposition candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who has been in detention since April, Sall said he could benefit from a provisional release in order to participate in the dialogue.

Sall last week promised he would abide by the Constitutional Council’s request for the vote to be scheduled as soon as possible, after the crisis triggered violent street protests and warnings of authoritarian overreach.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a plan for the Gaza’s future post-Hamas, which includes the “complete demilitarization” of the enclave, closing off the territory’s southern border with Egypt, as well as the overhaul of Gaza’s civil administration and education systems.

The plan comes as Israel sent a negotiating team, led by Mossad Director David Barnea, to Paris on Friday to pursue talks over a potential ceasefire and hostage release deal that may put an end to the four-month long war.

More than 29,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the ministry of health in the enclave. Hamas’ October 7 attack killed 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli authorities.

A number of principles are outlined in the document, from changes on the security and civil levels to more long-term plans about who governs the territory.

On the security file, the envisioned plan includes Israel closing off Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, giving Israel complete control of entry and exit from the enclave. At present, Egypt controls access to and from Gaza’s southern border via the Rafah crossing.

Netanyahu’s plan says Israel will cooperate “as much as possible” with Egypt, in coordination with the United States.

There has been no immediate official US reaction to the proposal.

The plan asserts, as Netanyahu has said before, that “Israel will have security control over the entire area west of Jordan,” which includes all of the West Bank and Israel, as well as Gaza.

The Palestinians have long sought an independent state in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Israel will be responsible for “realizing and overseeing” the demilitarization of the Strip, the plan says, except for what is required to maintain public order.

On the civil level, Netanyahu details an overhaul of Gaza’s civil administration and education systems, including an apparent cut-off of funding from Qatar to Gaza – which a previous Netanyahu government approved and facilitated.

The local entities running the civil service “will not be identified with countries or entities that support terrorism and will not receive payment from them,” the plan says.

While it is likely a reference to Qatar, it is not clear if it would also apply to the Palestinian Authority, a revitalized version of which the US has said should run Gaza in the future.

The Netanyahu plan also calls for “de-radicalization” in the education system, which Israel and its allies have long accused of promoting antisemitism and hatred of Israel.

The plan repeats that Israel will work to shut down UNRWA, the main United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees, and work to replace it “with responsible international aid agencies.”

Israel accuses about a dozen UNRWA employees of being directly involved in the October 7 Hamas attack. The agency employs about 13,000 people in Gaza.

Finally, the plan reiterates Israel’s insistence that it will not be forced by the international community to recognize a Palestinian state, a possibility the United Kingdom and US President Joe Biden have begun to float.

“Israel outright rejects international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians,” the Netanyahu outline says, asserting that recognition of a Palestinian state now would be “a huge reward to unprecedented terrorism.”

A woman who left the United Kingdom to join ISIS at the age of 15 has lost her Court of Appeal challenge over the decision to remove her British citizenship.

Shamima Begum flew to Syria in 2015 with two school friends to join the terror group. While there, she married an ISIS fighter and spent several years living in Raqqa.

Begum then reappeared in al-Hawl, a Syrian refugee camp, in 2019. She made international headlines as an “ISIS bride” after pleading with the UK government to be allowed to return to her home country for the birth of her son.

Then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid removed her British citizenship in February that year, and Begum’s newborn son died in a Syrian refugee camp the following month. She told UK media she had two other children prior to that baby, who also died in Syria during infancy.

Giving the ruling on whether the government decision was lawful, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said, according to PA Media: “It could be argued the decision in Ms Begum’s case was harsh. It could also be argued that Ms Begum is the author of her own misfortune.

“But it is not for this court to agree or disagree with either point of view.”

Friday’s ruling does not necessarily signal the end of Begum’s legal battle. Alexander dos Santos, an extradition barrister, told Sky News in the aftermath of the ruling that there is “at least some potential” for her lawyers to appeal again.

He pointed to Begum being left stateless as grounds for this, something her lawyers have argued the British government has not fully considered the consequences of.

Begum has made several public appeals as she fought against the government’s decision, most recently appearing in BBC documentary The Shamima Begum Story and a 10-part BBC podcast series.

In the podcast series she insisted that she is “not a bad person.” While accepting that the British public viewed her as a “danger” and a “risk,” Begum blamed this on her media portrayal.

Her lawyers have argued she was a victim of child trafficking, and that the decision was unlawful as it rendered her stateless.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Eerie, fascinating and at times unnerving, whale songs are one of the most mysterious sounds to have been heard reverberating through the ocean.

How baleen whales, which include humpback whales, are able to sing underwater has eluded scientists since whale songs were first discovered more than 50 years ago.

While toothed whales, which include dolphins and killer whales, developed a vocal organ in their nose to produce sound, baleen whales are thought to use a larynx — or voice box — in their throat to do so, according to a new study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

A baleen whale’s larynx is shaped differently from other mammals. It has long, rigid, cylinder-like cartilages that form a U shape. This structural adaptation allows the leviathan to breathe massive amounts of air in and out when they go to the surface, according to the study.

In the respiratory tract, the evolved nasal and oral plugs protect the airways from water when the marine mammal breathes and eats.

Air sacs also evolved in a way that may allow a baleen whale to recycle air while creating vocal sounds, according to researchers.

Unlocking how whales vocalize could help scientists gain a better understanding of how human-made noise pollution in marine waters impacts the sea giants.

The scientists also created computer models of the whales’ voice boxes that simulated aspects they could not measure in the lab, such as the effect of muscle contraction on sound production.

Through this simulation, researchers found that the baleen whales’ voice box “have a completely novel mechanism that is not described in any other animal,” Elemans said.

Among the specialized structures was a fatty cushion that vibrates when air is pushed out from the lungs, allowing the whales to create low-frequency sounds underwater to communicate over large distances.

Since the ocean is dark, sound is the primary means whales have to find each other and, therefore, mate, Elemans said. The study solves a puzzle “for a whole group of really iconic animals,” he added.

“They’re like the biggest animals that ever roamed this planet. They’re super intelligent, they’re very vocal, they’re very social. And for those animals, we now figured out how they’ve been able so successfully to communicate with each other on the water. And this evolved probably like 40 million years ago and has allowed the whales today to be successful,” he continued.

Human disruptions

However, this “cool” mechanism also “limits” the whales, Elemans said.

The baleen whales were only able to make low-frequency sounds from the water’s surface to a depth of around 328 feet (100 meters) maximum, the study team found. That’s because the whales cannot be too far from the ocean surface since they need air to produce their calls, which have a maximum sound frequency of 300 hertz.

This depth and frequency overlap with noises made by most human-made vessels, which is nowadays often of 30 to 300 hertz near the ocean surface, according to the study.

This means that most boating noises mask calls between baleen whales, reducing the distance over which they can communicate.

“We really have to change the noise we make, the type of noise we make, when we make it, where we make it. And we hope that this study can help to … mitigate the noise we make,” Elemans said.

The finding that the whales are limited in the frequency of sound they can make “is important, as human-made noise pollution in the ocean is an ever-increasing problem that disrupts the lives of marine mammals,” he added.

“This highlights the vital role that studying and digitising animal morphology has in answering some of the greatest questions regarding the life of the (world’s) most elusive and mysterious animals,” he continued.

The study, which “just started to scratch the surface,” involved young animals belonging to only a few animal species, said Elemans, adding that his team would like to study adult animals next.

The mother of Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic penal colony last week, said Thursday she had seen her son’s body and was being pressured to hold a secret funeral.

Lyudmila Navalnaya said she had seen her son’s body on Wednesday in a morgue in Salekhard, the Siberian town near the prison where Navalny had been held since December, after being denied access to it for days after his death.

She also saw a medical report stating his cause of death as being natural, Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said on X. The late Kremlin critic’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, reiterated on Thursday that she believes Russian President Vladimir Putin killed her husband and urged the media not to be diverted by Russian government narratives.

In a video posted on her son’s YouTube channel, Navalny’s mother said: “According to the law, they should have given me Alexey’s body right away, but they haven’t done it yet. Instead, they blackmail me and set conditions for where, when and how Alexey should be buried.”

“I’m recording this video because they started threatening me. Looking into my eyes they say that if I don’t agree to a secret funeral they will do something with my son’s body,” she said.

Navalnaya claimed that an investigator named Voropayev told her: “Time is working against you. The corpse is decomposing.” She did not give the full name of the official.

She also claimed the Russian Investigative Committee looking into the circumstances of her son’s death would like to bury his body “secretly without saying goodbye.” She said the investigators “claim that they know the cause of death and that they have all the medical legal documents,” and that she had signed his medical death certificate.

Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, told Russian journalist Alexander Plyushchev the committee had set numerous conditions for Navalny’s mother to follow before they would release the body.

Among those conditions, he claimed, were that that any funeral should be kept “among the family” and not announced, to prevent crowds from gathering, and that the body should be transported to Moscow on a special plane. The family would also have to be accompanied by an employee of the committee at all times before the funeral, he said, and Navalny’s body would have to be kept in either the Moscow or Vladimir region prior to burial because the committee was “afraid that the morgue will be stormed.”

Only when those conditions were met would the family receive Navalny’s death certificate, Zhdanov said.

Navalny’s mother was first denied the cemetery of her choice, and then both parties agreed to hold the funeral at Khovanskoye cemetery in Moscow, Zhdanov said, adding that the parties hadn’t agreed on the farewell hall. Navalny’s mother was pressured into agreeing to these conditions, Zhdanov added.

“Unfortunately, I have not seen her words so I cannot comment on that,” Peskov said. He added that the Kremlin was “dealing with different issues which are of great importance for our country.”

Navalny’s wife, Navalnaya, had earlier accused Russian authorities of “hiding” his body in an attempt to disguise the cause of his death. She said they were “lying pathetically” and waiting for “traces of another of Putin’s Novichoks to disappear.” The Kremlin has said an investigation into the circumstances around Navalny’s death is “underway” and the results are currently “unknown.”

Navalny’s mother’s claims to have seen his body come almost a week after his death was announced on February 16. The news drew barbed reaction from Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden, who pinned the blame on his Russian counterpart, saying that “what has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality.”

Russia meanwhile has accused the US of “hysteria,” regarding his death. “The US acts as the prosecutors, as the judge, and as the punisher all in one, and this hysteria regarding the death of Navalny is a prime example of that,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday at a G20 press conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “These people have no right to interfere in our home affairs, especially given their own problems,” Lavrov said.

US President Joe Biden met with Navalny’s wife and daughter in California on Thursday, where he expressed his condolences and his “admiration” for Navalny’s “extraordinary courage and his legacy of fighting against corruption.”

Navalny was Russia’s highest-profile opposition leader and spent years criticizing Putin, who has been in power for nearly a quarter of a century, at great personal risk. His death came weeks before the country’s presidential elections scheduled for March 17, which is widely seen by the international community as little more than a formality that will secure Putin a fifth term in power.

He returned to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated after being poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. On arrival Navalny was swiftly arrested – on charges he dismissed as politically motivated – and spent the rest of his life in prison.

The Russian prison service said Navalny “felt unwell after a walk” in his Siberian penal colony and “almost immediately” lost consciousness.

Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in prison in August after being found guilty of creating an extremist community, financing extremist activists and various other crimes. He was already serving sentences of 11-and-a-half years in a maximum security facility on fraud and other changes he denies.

He was initially imprisoned in a penal colony about 150 miles east of Moscow, but his lawyers in December said they had lost contact with him for nearly three weeks. After filing 680 requests to locate him, his team announced on December 25 that they had “found” Navalny more than 1,000 miles away at the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, known as “Polar Wolf.”

Navalny spent his final weeks in the IK-3 colony, where he described the “freezing” conditions to a Moscow court, telling them he slept under a newspaper for warmth.

This is a developing story and will be updated

At least 13 people have been injured in a large blaze that ripped through an apartment building in the Spanish city of Valencia, local emergency services said Thursday.

Valencia’s Emergency Services said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that six firefighters and seven residents were among those treated for injuries in several hospitals across the city.

The fire continued into the evening, with flames and smoke pictured billowing through the complex.

Nearby residents looked on in horror, with one telling Reuters the scenes were “tremendous, unbelievable – I can’t believe it.”

The mayor of Valencia, María José Alcalá, asked residents in a post on X to avoid the scene in order to help rescue services.

Hotel rooms were being organized to house people whose homes were affected by the fire, emergency services said.

Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander, also called Odysseus or “Odie,” is on the lunar surface after experiencing unexpected issues hours prior to landing.

“I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus announced on a live webcast. “Welcome to the moon.”

The exact state of the lander is not yet clear, but the company has confirmed it has made contact and acquired a signal from the spacecraft.

If successful, the lander could be the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the moon, and the first US-made vehicle to touch down on the lunar surface since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago. This mission is of key interest to Intuitive Machines’ primary customer, NASA, which is seeking to scout the moon using robotic explorers developed by private contractors before sending astronauts there later this decade through its Artemis program.

Odysseus landed at 6:24 p.m. ET Thursday after using its methane-fueled, onboard engine to steer itself toward the cratered surface and rapidly reduce its speed by 4,000 miles per hour (1,800 meters per second).

A couple of hours before landing, an apparent issue with Odysseus’ navigation systems force the lander to rely on experimental technology, resulting in a “dynamic situation,” according to Gary Jordan, a NASA communications manager.

“Intuitive Machines made the decision to reassign the primary navigation sensors from Odysseus … to use the sensors on NASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar,” according to the webcast.

The Lidar payload is an experimental technology that aimed to test out how future landers would make more precise landings on the moon. It’s designed to shoot laser beams to the ground to give exact measurements of speed and direction of flight, according to Farzin Amzajerdian, NASA’s principal investigator for the instrument.

With its landing legs and sensors pointed toward the lunar terrain, Odysseus relied on the Lidar payload to locate a safe landing spot.

The IM-1 mission comes amid a renewed international dash for the lunar surface. Since the end of the Soviet-US space race of the 20th century, China, India and Japan have all landed spacecraft on the moon — with the latter two making their first touchdowns within the past six months.

The phone booth-size lander spent the past week in space, traveling about 620,370 miles (1 million kilometers) through the void before placing itself in lunar orbit on Wednesday morning. A model of the spacecraft is seen below.

What Odysseus is bringing to the moon

Intuitive Machines is aiming to land Odysseus near Malapert A, an impact crater close to the moon’s south pole — an area characterized by treacherous and rocky terrain.

Malapert A is a region that’s relatively flat in comparison with its surroundings, according to NASA. And the location is strategic: The south pole is of broad international interest because it’s suspected to be home to stores of water ice, which could be converted to drinking water or even rocket fuel for future missions.

Tucked on board Odysseus are six science payloads designed in various NASA laboratories that are expected to operate for up to seven days on the lunar surface.

“The NASA payloads will focus on demonstrating communication, navigation and precision landing technologies, and gathering scientific data about rocket plume and lunar surface interactions, as well as space weather and lunar surface interactions affecting radio astronomy,” according to the space agency.

Payloads from the commercial sector are also on board. They include insulation material developed by Columbia Sportswear, designed to shield Odysseus from the harsh temperatures on the moon, and commemorative payloads such as a sculpture of the moon phases designed in consultation with artist Jeff Koons.

Additionally, there is a camera along for the ride developed by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. The device was set to pop off the lander and capture a selfie of Odysseus. Those images are expected about three hours after touchdown, though other snapshots may be shared sooner.

After one week, lunar night will shroud the landing zone in darkness, plunging the spacecraft into freezing cold. The dramatic swing in temperatures will be difficult — likely leaving the vehicle inoperable.

The odds of success

This mission comes after another commercial NASA partner, Astrobotic Technology, waved off its attempt to land on the moon hours into its mission last month. A critical fuel leak left the Peregrine lander without enough gas to reach the surface.

“We’re going 1,000 times further (into space) than the International Space Station,” Altemus said. “Then we’re flying to an orbiting body that has no atmosphere to slow down (the spacecraft). … It all has to be done with a propulsion system. And we’re doing it autonomously or robotically with no intervention from humans.”

The US is anxious to regain a presence on the moon as NASA aims to carry out robotic science missions, seeking to learn more about the lunar environment through private partners as it focuses on preparing to land astronauts on the moon. The space agency is targeting 2026 for the first crewed mission back to the surface.

The Artemis program has already experienced delays. Altemus said he envisions that companies such as Intuitive Machines — operating under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS initiative — could bolster US lunar efforts if astronaut missions face further schedule setbacks, especially with competition from China.

Israel’s war cabinet agreed to send a negotiating team, led by Mossad Director David Barnea, to Paris on Friday to pursue talks over a potential ceasefire and hostage release deal, an Israeli official said.

The negotiating team is expected to be empowered to engage in substantive negotiations rather than simply listening to proposals as they did during meetings in Cairo last week, the official said.

The full Israeli cabinet is expected to vote on the matter overnight to give final approval for the trip.

The decision came during a war cabinet meeting Thursday night, at the end of a day that saw President Joe Biden’s Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk meeting with top Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli official said that the Israeli government was waiting for confirmation that the medication had reached the hostages in Gaza before agreeing to return to the negotiating table.

That proof, combined with positive indications from talks in Cairo on Wednesday and prodding from US officials, ultimately triggered the Israeli agreement to send a negotiating team to Paris.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander, also called Odysseus or “Odie,” is on the lunar surface after experiencing unexpected issues hours prior to landing.

“I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus announced on a live webcast. “Welcome to the moon.”

The exact state of the lander is not yet clear, but the company has confirmed it has made contact and acquired a signal from the spacecraft.

If successful, the lander could be the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the moon, and the first US-made vehicle to touch down on the lunar surface since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago. This mission is of key interest to Intuitive Machines’ primary customer, NASA, which is seeking to scout the moon using robotic explorers developed by private contractors before sending astronauts there later this decade through its Artemis program.

Odysseus landed at 6:24 p.m. ET Thursday after using its methane-fueled, onboard engine to steer itself toward the cratered surface and rapidly reduce its speed by 4,000 miles per hour (1,800 meters per second).

A couple of hours before landing, an apparent issue with Odysseus’ navigation systems force the lander to rely on experimental technology, resulting in a “dynamic situation,” according to Gary Jordan, a NASA communications manager.

“Intuitive Machines made the decision to reassign the primary navigation sensors from Odysseus … to use the sensors on NASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar,” according to the webcast.

The Lidar payload is an experimental technology that aimed to test out how future landers would make more precise landings on the moon. It’s designed to shoot laser beams to the ground to give exact measurements of speed and direction of flight, according to Farzin Amzajerdian, NASA’s principal investigator for the instrument.

With its landing legs and sensors pointed toward the lunar terrain, Odysseus relied on the Lidar payload to locate a safe landing spot.

The IM-1 mission comes amid a renewed international dash for the lunar surface. Since the end of the Soviet-US space race of the 20th century, China, India and Japan have all landed spacecraft on the moon — with the latter two making their first touchdowns within the past six months.

The phone booth-size lander spent the past week in space, traveling about 620,370 miles (1 million kilometers) through the void before placing itself in lunar orbit on Wednesday morning. A model of the spacecraft is seen below.

What Odysseus is bringing to the moon

Intuitive Machines is aiming to land Odysseus near Malapert A, an impact crater close to the moon’s south pole — an area characterized by treacherous and rocky terrain.

Malapert A is a region that’s relatively flat in comparison with its surroundings, according to NASA. And the location is strategic: The south pole is of broad international interest because it’s suspected to be home to stores of water ice, which could be converted to drinking water or even rocket fuel for future missions.

Tucked on board Odysseus are six science payloads designed in various NASA laboratories that are expected to operate for up to seven days on the lunar surface.

“The NASA payloads will focus on demonstrating communication, navigation and precision landing technologies, and gathering scientific data about rocket plume and lunar surface interactions, as well as space weather and lunar surface interactions affecting radio astronomy,” according to the space agency.

Payloads from the commercial sector are also on board. They include insulation material developed by Columbia Sportswear, designed to shield Odysseus from the harsh temperatures on the moon, and commemorative payloads such as a sculpture of the moon phases designed in consultation with artist Jeff Koons.

Additionally, there is a camera along for the ride developed by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. The device was set to pop off the lander and capture a selfie of Odysseus. Those images are expected about three hours after touchdown, though other snapshots may be shared sooner.

After one week, lunar night will shroud the landing zone in darkness, plunging the spacecraft into freezing cold. The dramatic swing in temperatures will be difficult — likely leaving the vehicle inoperable.

The odds of success

This mission comes after another commercial NASA partner, Astrobotic Technology, waved off its attempt to land on the moon hours into its mission last month. A critical fuel leak left the Peregrine lander without enough gas to reach the surface.

“We’re going 1,000 times further (into space) than the International Space Station,” Altemus said. “Then we’re flying to an orbiting body that has no atmosphere to slow down (the spacecraft). … It all has to be done with a propulsion system. And we’re doing it autonomously or robotically with no intervention from humans.”

The US is anxious to regain a presence on the moon as NASA aims to carry out robotic science missions, seeking to learn more about the lunar environment through private partners as it focuses on preparing to land astronauts on the moon. The space agency is targeting 2026 for the first crewed mission back to the surface.

The Artemis program has already experienced delays. Altemus said he envisions that companies such as Intuitive Machines — operating under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS initiative — could bolster US lunar efforts if astronaut missions face further schedule setbacks, especially with competition from China.