Space Race Heats Up: Historic Moon Missions and Canceled Dreams

Boeing and NASA's Starliner crew flight is set for June 5 after an aborted attempt. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa canceled his private 'dearMoon' mission citing feasibility issues. Meanwhile, China successfully landed on the moon's far side, marking a landmark achievement in lunar sample retrieval.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Boeing, NASA target June 5 for Starliner's debut crew flight

Boeing and NASA said on Sunday that their teams are preparing to launch the new Starliner space capsule on June 5 after scrubbing its inaugural test flight launch attempt on Saturday. The Starliner capsule had stood ready for blast-off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday before a ground system computer triggered an automatic abort command that shut down the launch sequence.

Japanese billionaire Maezawa cancels moon flyby mission

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa cancelled his "dearMoon" mission, which the project said would have been the first private flight around the moon, the mission announced on Saturday. The team had originally aimed to make the circumlunar flight with celebrities on board by the end of last year but that became "unfeasible", the mission said in a statement on its website.

China lands on moon's far side in historic sample-retrieval mission

China landed an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the moon on Sunday, overcoming a key hurdle in its landmark mission to retrieve the world's first rock and soil samples from the dark lunar hemisphere. The landing elevates China's space power status in a global rush to the moon, where countries including the United States are hoping to exploit lunar minerals to sustain long-term astronaut missions and moon bases within the next decade.

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