
Hari Raya Aidiladha expected to fall on June 6
PETALING JAYA: Muslims in most Islamic countries are expected to celebrate Hari Raya Aidiladha on June 6 (Friday), according to the International Astronomy Center.
The Abu Dhabi-based center announced that the new crescent moon marking the beginning of Zulhijjah 1446H is expected to be visible on Tuesday, May 27, reported the Emirates News Agency (WAM).
The center's director, Mohammad Shawkat Odeh, said the crescent moon can be observed using telescopes in several parts of Central and Western Asia, most regions of Africa, and Europe.
He added that the crescent moon may also be visible without telescopic assistance in some parts of the Americas.
Based on these astronomical calculations, May 28 is expected to be the first day of Zulhijjah, making Aidiladha fall on the 10th day, which is Friday, June 6.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Star
9 hours ago
- The Star
How a Hong Kong startup is going about recycling lithium batteries
A Hong Kong lithium battery recycling start-up is eyeing opportunities at home and in Southeast Asia amid overcapacity and intense competition for recyclable materials in mainland China. Hong Kong Science and Technology Park-based Achelous Pure Metals currently has a capacity to process 150 tonnes of used non-electric vehicle (EV) batteries a year. It has set up its operations in an industrial building in Tuen Mun in the New Territories, which is pending approval from the Environmental Protection Department. The company crushes the batteries into a so-called black mass – a powdery mixture of valuable metals like lithium, cobalt, copper, manganese and nickel – which is then refined into lithium carbonate, cobalt and nickel compounds. 'Our goal is to tackle the growing problem of discarded lithium-ion batteries by bringing scalable, movable, eco-friendly recycling to urban centres starting in Hong Kong, with plans to expand to [Southeast] Asia,' said Alan Wong Yuk-chun, the co-founder and technical director. He said that as the city lacked recycling facilities, small-scale recycling of non-EV batteries could be done in Hong Kong and showcased for overseas business development. Most spent EV batteries were collected and exported, he added. Between two and three tonnes of lithium batteries a day were collected from discarded electrical appliances and power banks in Hong Kong, he said. Achelous has built a pilot version of a robot-assisted system to sort, shred and sift materials derived from the batteries. The system, which is pending a patent, uses a combination of vacuum and heat treatment to evaporate and capture harmful materials and gases like epoxy adhesives and fluorine. The five-year-old start-up has built another pilot project that combines nanoparticles suspended in water or organic solvents that separates molecules based on their charge, to extract and refine valuable metals from the black mass. While Achelous has already deployed its technology at a client's recycling plant in east China's Jiangsu province, which is capable of processing 10,000 tonnes a year, it faces challenges in growing its business due to rampant growth in recycling capacity on the mainland in recent years. 'Our client's factory has to compete for black mass at higher and higher prices, while the prices of end-products like lithium carbonate keep falling amid oversupply,' said Shawn Cheng, Achelous' co-founder and research and development director. The price of battery-grade lithium carbonate, sometimes referred to as 'white gold', plunged nearly 90% to 60,600 yuan (US$7,725) a tonne in May, from 568,000 yuan in November 2022, according to Daiwa Capital Markets. Amid recycling overcapacity in China and US-China trade tensions that threaten to slow demand for lithium batteries, lithium oversupply may peak globally in 2027 before seeing a deficit in the early 2030s, according to a forecast by UK-based commodities consultancy Wood Mackenzie last month. Instead of swimming against the tide, Achelous changed its strategy, setting up a production line in Hong Kong while also seeking to help companies in Southeast Asia build 'micro-factories' to break down lithium batteries and produce black mass to export to its clients in China. The company is in talks with prospective partners to recycle spent lithium batteries from handheld transceivers used by the security industry in Hong Kong, and from discarded electronics in Malaysia and Singapore. 'We want to help [our] partners meet their future recycled content obligations and set up a system to keep track of the materials' footprint for compliance,' Cheng said. Globally, demand for recycled battery materials has been mostly driven by regulations implemented in 2023 by the European Union. The battery and recycling industry is working towards a 50% target for lithium recovery by 2027, rising to 80% by 2031. For cobalt, copper, lead and nickel, the target is 90% by 2027 and 95% by 2031. – South China Morning Post


The Sun
10 hours ago
- The Sun
Japan's ispace fails again: Resilience lander crashes on moon
TOKYO: Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the lunar surface during its touchdown attempt on Friday, marking another failure two years after an unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join U.S. firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace in making successful commercial moon landings amid a global race that includes state-run lunar missions from China and India. Although the failure means another multi-year pause in Japan's commercial access to the moon, the country remains committed to the U.S.-led Artemis program and a wide range of Japanese companies are studying lunar exploration as a business frontier. Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, had problems measuring its distance to the surface and could not slow its descent fast enough, the company said, adding it has not been able to communicate with Resilience after a likely hard landing. 'Truly diverse scenarios were possible, including issues with the propulsion system, software or hardware, especially with sensors,' ispace Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie told a press conference. A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent when flight data was lost less than two minutes before the scheduled touchdown time during a public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo. Shares of ispace were untraded, overwhelmed by sell orders, and looked set to close at the daily limit-low, which would mark a 29% fall. As of the close of Thursday, ispace had a market capitalisation of more than 110 billion yen ($766 million). 'We're not facing any immediate financial deterioration or distress because of the event,' CFO Jumpei Nozaki said in the press conference, citing recurring investor support. In 2023, ispace's first lander crashed into the moon's surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design was mostly unchanged in Resilience. $16 MILLION PAYLOAD Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace's Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads worth a total of $16 million, including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university. The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain about 900 km (560 miles) from the moon's north pole. If the landing had been successful, the 2.3-metre-high lander and the rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing of regolith, the moon's fine-grained surface material, on a contract with U.S. space agency NASA. Resilience in January shared a SpaceX rocket launch with Firefly's Blue Ghost lander, which took a faster trajectory to the moon and touched down successfully in March. Intuitive Machines, which last year marked the world's first commercial lunar touchdown, also landed its second Athena lander in March, although in a toppled position just as with its first mission. Japan last year became the world's fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander. The government last year signed an agreement with NASA to include Japanese astronauts in Artemis lunar missions and has supported private companies' research projects for future lunar development, assuming ispace's transportation capabilities. 'Expectations for ispace have not faded,' Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in an X post. Although ispace will likely remain Japan's most advanced lunar transportation company, some Japanese firms may start to consider transport options from foreign entities to test their lunar exploration visions, said Ritsumeikan University professor Kazuto Saiki, who was involved in the SLIM mission. For its third mission in 2027, ispace's U.S. unit is building a bigger lander as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services for the Artemis program. The company projects six more missions in the U.S. and Japan through 2029. 'NASA increasingly needs private companies to improve cost efficiency for key missions with limited budgets,' ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed budget cuts. 'To meet NASA's expectations, we'll support our U.S. subsidiary to keep up with development and play a role.' ($1 = 143.5600 yen)


The Sun
10 hours ago
- The Sun
Japan's ispace moon lander likely crashed during landing
TOKYO: Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the lunar surface during its touchdown attempt on Friday, marking another failure two years after an unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join U.S. firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace in making successful commercial moon landings amid a global race that includes state-run lunar missions from China and India. Although the failure means another multi-year pause in Japan's commercial access to the moon, the country remains committed to the U.S.-led Artemis program and a wide range of Japanese companies are studying lunar exploration as a business frontier. Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, had problems measuring its distance to the surface and could not slow its descent fast enough, the company said, adding it has not been able to communicate with Resilience after a likely hard landing. 'Truly diverse scenarios were possible, including issues with the propulsion system, software or hardware, especially with sensors,' ispace Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie told a press conference. A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent when flight data was lost less than two minutes before the scheduled touchdown time during a public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo. Shares of ispace were untraded, overwhelmed by sell orders, and looked set to close at the daily limit-low, which would mark a 29% fall. As of the close of Thursday, ispace had a market capitalisation of more than 110 billion yen ($766 million). 'We're not facing any immediate financial deterioration or distress because of the event,' CFO Jumpei Nozaki said in the press conference, citing recurring investor support. In 2023, ispace's first lander crashed into the moon's surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design was mostly unchanged in Resilience. $16 MILLION PAYLOAD Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace's Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads worth a total of $16 million, including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university. The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain about 900 km (560 miles) from the moon's north pole. If the landing had been successful, the 2.3-metre-high lander and the rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing of regolith, the moon's fine-grained surface material, on a contract with U.S. space agency NASA. Resilience in January shared a SpaceX rocket launch with Firefly's Blue Ghost lander, which took a faster trajectory to the moon and touched down successfully in March. Intuitive Machines, which last year marked the world's first commercial lunar touchdown, also landed its second Athena lander in March, although in a toppled position just as with its first mission. Japan last year became the world's fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander. The government last year signed an agreement with NASA to include Japanese astronauts in Artemis lunar missions and has supported private companies' research projects for future lunar development, assuming ispace's transportation capabilities. 'Expectations for ispace have not faded,' Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in an X post. Although ispace will likely remain Japan's most advanced lunar transportation company, some Japanese firms may start to consider transport options from foreign entities to test their lunar exploration visions, said Ritsumeikan University professor Kazuto Saiki, who was involved in the SLIM mission. For its third mission in 2027, ispace's U.S. unit is building a bigger lander as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services for the Artemis program. The company projects six more missions in the U.S. and Japan through 2029. 'NASA increasingly needs private companies to improve cost efficiency for key missions with limited budgets,' ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed budget cuts. 'To meet NASA's expectations, we'll support our U.S. subsidiary to keep up with development and play a role.' ($1 = 143.5600 yen)