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On Thursday (Feb. 22), a phone booth-sized spacecraft named Odysseus made history. Landing at the moon’s south pole at 6:23 p.m. ET, Odysseus — built by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines — became the first U.S. lander to touch down on the moon in more than 50 years, and the first private lander to ever reach the lunar surface. This success was a welcome break from a string of lunar failures, with five of the previous nine attempted moon landings ending poorly for various nations and private companies. Weeks earlier, on Jan. 19, Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM) spacecraft successfully completed the country's first moon landing — albeit ending up upside down on the lunar surface due to an engine malfunction during descent. The lopsided lander's solar cells faced the wrong direction and failed to power its instruments and communications, forcing engineers to shut it down in fear of battery discharge. (Engineers briefly restor...

A plane carrying Israelis home from the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles has made an emergency stop in Saudi Arabia before flying back to Tel Aviv TEL AVIV, Israel -- A plane carrying Israelis home from the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia before flying back to Tel Aviv on Tuesday, in what Israel praised as a sign of goodwill as Washington works to establish formal relations between the two countries. The Air Seychelles flight carrying 128 passengers was forced to land Monday because of an electrical malfunction. Israel's Foreign Ministry said the passengers spent the night at an airport hotel in Jeddah and were flown back by the airline on an alternate plane. Passengers described a frightening stretch of time as an acrid burnt smell filled the cabin and the pilot came over the intercom to say the plane would be forced to make an emergency stop in Saudi Arabia, a kingdom with which Israel has no air links or diplomatic ti...