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A Japanese company trying to land a spacecraft on the moon Friday said that the unmanned lander is believed to have crashed into the lunar surface. The Tokyo-based private space exploration company ispace reported that its Resilience lunar lander successfully initiated its descent onto the moon, but lost communication shortly afterward. Resilience made its descent from 100 kilometers above the moons surface to 20 kilometers normally, and its main engine fired to initiate the deceleration process before ispaces connection to the spacecrafts telemetry went dark. Five hours after initiating the landing sequence and attempting to remotely reboot the craft, mission control determined that regaining the connection wasnt possible and declared an end to the mission, known as Mission 2 SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon. According to the companys early findings, the laser range-finder that Resilience used to calculate the distance to the surface of the moon was operating on a delay, an error that likely prevented the lander from slowing down for a successful landing. Given those findings, ispace concluded that its signature spacecraft likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface. A crash landing upends the mission Given that there is currently no prospect of a successful lunar landing, our top priority is to swiftly analyze the telemetry data we have obtained thus far and work diligently to identify the cause, ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said, adding that the company would issue a detailed report on its findings. The failed lunar mission follows ispaces first attempt in 2023, which also ended with a bang. That craft, the Hakuto-R lunar lander, free-fell out of the sky for 5 kilometers before smashing into the lunar surface after onboard sensors miscalculated its altitude. The lunar south pole in the spotlight With interest in Mars on the upswing, humanitys drive to get back to the moon seemed to have waned in recent decades before a recent flurry of new lunar excitement. In 2023, India became the fourth nation to successfully land on the moon, joining the U.S., the former Soviet Union, and China. The following year, Japan joined their ranks when the countrys JAXA space agency nailed a historic pinpoint landing on the moon, but pulled the feat off accidentally upside down. For national space agencies, the spirit of scientific exploration isnt the only thing putting the moon back in focus. The moons icy south pole is believed to house water frozen in shadowed craters, a resource that would prove invaluable for future human activity on the moon, or even as a hydration way-stop for space exploration beyond it. That context is useful for understanding why manned moon missions are back on the docket for NASA, which wants to establish the first long-term presence on the lunar surface and plans to put humans back on the moon in 2028, optimistically. China has its own plans to send astronauts to the moon by 2030, the first stepping stone toward its goal of establishing a lunar research station. Private partnerships power the new space race Lunar interest isnt just waxing among national space agencies. Private spaceflight companies around the globe have scrambled to get into the mix, with some like ispace sending their landers up with a ride from SpaceX rockets. Firefly Aerospace, based near Austin, Texas, made history of its own in March when its Blue Ghost lunar lander reached the lunar surface, making it the first private company to soft-land on the moon. A lunar lander from Houston-based Intuitive Machines followed closely behind but touched down at an odd angle, preventing the solar panels that power it from recharging to carry out its mission objectives. Both lunar missions carried equipment for NASA through a program known as Commercial Lunar Payload Services, an initiative that will allow the agency to conduct scientific research through private moon missions. Between global powers with designs on lunar ice and a lucrative web of public-private partnerships, the moon is the next big prize in the space raceone were going to be hearing a lot more about in the coming years.
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E-Commerce
The list of Rite Aid store closures continues to grow. As the drugstore chain prepares to sell off its remaining assets in the wake of filing for bankruptcy a second time, the total number of locations marked for closure in court documents as of this week is at least 497 nationwide. The chain will eventually sell or shutter all of its 1,277 pharmacies as it winds down operations. According to a court filing on Thursday, the latest list includes 25 additional locations in Ohio, California, Oregon, and Washington state. Bids on Rite Aids remaining assets are due on June 18. Pharmacy assets already sold Rite Aid has already reached agreements to offload some of its assetsnotably, its valuable prescription filesto CVS, the countrys largest pharmacy chain; Walgreens; and the Albertsons and Kroger grocery chains. As Fast Company previously reported, CVS agreed to buy prescription files for 625 of those pharmacies and take over 64 brick-and-mortar Rite Aid locations in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, home to many of the latest closures. Rite Aid’s mass closures present particular challenges for customers in rural areas who rely on the chain for their medications, sparking concerns about pharmacy deserts. The broader wind-down has left many remaining locations with empty shelves as products run out. Fast Company has reached out to Rite Aid for additional information about the timeline of the closures. Here’s what to know. Which Rite Aid stores are among the latest closings? According to this weeks filing, the following 25 locations are set to close and may already be in the process of doing so. CALIFORNIA 2505 Mt Vernon Avenue, Bakersfield, CA 93306 602 Williams Road, Salinas, CA 93905 4322 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90037 1560 Sycamore Avenue, Hercules, CA 94547 32121 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675 1501 West Main Street, El Centro, CA 92243 10823 Zelzah Avenue Bldg D, Granada Hills, CA 91344 19035 Bear Valley Road, Apple Valley, CA 92308 7025 El Camino Real, Atascadero, CA 93422 24330 El Toro Road, Laguna Woods, CA 92637 295 West Main Street, Woodland, CA 95695 1735 E Walnut Avenue, Visalia, CA 93292 300 North Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210 OREGON 2021 NW 185th Avenue, Hillsboro, OR 97124 681 Lancaster Drive NE, Salem, OR 97301 1970 Echo Hollow Road, Eugene, OR 97402 1560 Coburg Road, Eugene, OR 97401 Ohio 1955 Cleveland Road, Wooster OH 44691 WASHINGTON 2131 SW 336th Street, Federal Way, WA 98023 10407 SE 256th Street, Kent, WA 98030 5700 100th Street SW Ste 100, Lakewood, WA 98499 3116 NE Sunset Boulevard, Renton, WA 98056 140th Avenue SE, Renton, WA 98058 196th Street SW, Lynnwood, WA 98036 2860 NW Bucklin Hill Road, Silverdale, WA 98383 Where can I find the full list of Rite Aid closures? Previous filings have revealed closures as noted below: May 5: 47 initial locations May 9: 68 additional locations May 16: 95 additional locations May 23: 151 additional locations May 30: 111 additional locations How did Rite Aid get here? Rite Aids Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings come less than one year after a similar filing in 2023. Like many drugstore chains, including CVS and Walgreens, Rite Aid has struggled with online competition from Amazon and other retailers and with decreased profits from prescription drugs due to lower reimbursement rates.
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E-Commerce
The recent travails of WordPress have caused consternation among the web community that relies on the platform, which powers more than four in ten websites online today. Now, a coalition of prominent WordPress contributors and the Linux Foundation is unveiling a federated update and plugin-distribution network aimed at eliminating what they describe as a critical supply chain security vulnerability at the core of the worlds most widely used website system. The FAIR Package Manager project, to be announced at a conference in Switzerland later today, enables web-hosting companies and large organizations to run their own mirrors of WordPresss core update, plugin, theme, and translation servers. This setup would replace reliance on WordPress.orga domain controlled by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg. Supporters say the new system will strengthen security, reduce costs, and open new commercial opportunities for software that millions depend on for web hosting. The project emerged earlier this year in response to controversial moves by Mullenweg. In September, he cut off access to WP Enginea popular WordPress hosting provideraccusing it of extracting hundreds of millions of dollars in value from the open-source platform without adequate contributions in return. He also alleged that the company breached WordPress trademarks, creating confusion. Amid the fallout, around 150 employees exited Automattic after Mullenweg offered buyouts to those who disagreed with his handling of the situation. In October, when Automattic took over the slug of WP Engines product within the ecosystem, we received phone calls from the chief legal counsels of some of our clientsthese are large corporationssaying, this is a supply chain security issue, says Karim Marucchi, CEO of enterprise agency Crowd Favorite and one of the projects initiators. Around the same time, Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast SEO, was attempting to communicate with Mullenweg. While de Valk shared the view that more equitable contributions to WordPress were needed, he disagreed with Mullenwegs methods. We stopped talking pretty much after that, because I didn’t agree with him, de Valk says. One central concern is that every WordPress site depends on WordPress.org for updates and extensions. When we started looking at this, we realized theres a lot of things in this whole ecosystem that we dont control, de Valk says. One of the things that everybodys eyes were opened on was that WordPress.org was, in fact, not part of the WordPress Foundation, but owned by Matt privately, and that he used it as his private website in many ways. WordPress executive director Mary Hubbard notes that users have always had control over how their sites are updated and where updates originateflexibility that has existed since WordPresss early days. “The beauty of WordPress and open source is that people have complete control to run it how they please and modify how it works,” she tells Fast Company. The FAIR system offers an alternative that remains fully compatible with WordPress but operates independently from WordPress.org. Its still all WordPress, says de Valk. Its just a different distribution. Rather than forking WordPress, FAIR provides server components that anyone can run. Over 100 contributors from more than 10 organizations have been involved in building it over the past six months, according to Marucchi. The group has asked the Linux Foundation to provide neutral oversight. Hubbard pointed out that some large hosts like Newfold/Bluehost have implemented custom mirrors in the past, and emphasized that WordPresss update system has always allowed users to modify where their updates come from. “The important thing is that users know where their updates are coming from and have a choice to change it, regardless of their host, she says. WordPress is a critical piece of infrastructure for communication and for organizations that rely on it for their website, for content management, for blogs and media, says Mike Dolan, SVP of legal and strategic programs at the Linux Foundation. And in order to sustain something like that, you need to have a reliable backend behind it. To avoid centralization, the Linux Foundation has created a technical steering committee cochaired by long-time WordPress leaders Carrie Dils, Mika Epstein, and Ryan McCue. McCue, the architect of the WordPress REST API, called FAIR a platform to power the next decades of WordPress, and noted that the community had fractured and needed to be brought back together. Dolan echoed the sentiment. I think the interesting part about this is the organic nature of this, he says. This is something that is coming out of the community. It’s people who have lifelong and career-long engagement in the WordPress community who are saying we need to go and build this, and they want to work on it together. Jory Burson, VP of standards at the Linux Foundation and a participant in the project, hopes it will lead to a reintroduction and reenergization of the community. She adds that morale is currently low. I think this is going to be very exciting for people, and hopefully move some folks past this negativity and drama. We want to get people focused on the very positive future that we think WordPress still has. Although FAIR was created out of frustration with Automattics control over WordPress.org, its backers insist its not a competing fork. When we get up on stage on Friday, literally the words that are going to come out of our mouth are: Were offering this code to Automattic, WP Engine, GoDaddy, Newfoldeveryone, says Marucchi. If widely adopted, the network could allow developers to ship both free and premium versions of plugins in a single signed packagesomething currently prohibited by the official WordPress repository. That opens up innovation, de Valk says, making it easier to build businesses around plugins and to provide good user experiences. Still, Hubbard emphasizes that fragmentation of WordPresss core infrastructure could create more problems than it solvesdisrupting update processes, inflating server loads, and breaking plugin telemetry used for ensuring compatibility. If this work leads to improvements like signed updates or better fallback systems, were open to that, she says. But it has to be done with the same long-term care that got us here. The FAIR repository is already live on GitHub and accepting contributions. Whether Automattic will participate remains uncertain; regardless, the project team plans to move forward. Youre dealing with a community that has had some trust challenges in the past, and theyre looking for stability, says Dolan. They’re looking for neutrality. They have business that they want to get done.
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