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NEOM Named Main Partner of Spanish Super Cup

The logo of the Red Sea Development Company (Asharq Al-Awsat)
The logo of the Red Sea Development Company (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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NEOM Named Main Partner of Spanish Super Cup

The logo of the Red Sea Development Company (Asharq Al-Awsat)
The logo of the Red Sea Development Company (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Sport announced Wednesday that NEOM has been named as the main partner of the Spanish Super Cup, while the Red Sea Development Company will be the main tournament sponsor.

The event will take place in Riyadh during the period between January 12 and 16.

The four teams competing in the event are Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao according to the golden square system.

The knockout matches will be held on Jan 12 and 13, and the final match will take place on Jan 16.

The Kingdom first hosted the event in Jeddah. Real Madrid won the first staging of the competition in January 2020, which ended with Los Blancos winning on penalties in the final against city rivals Atletico.

Riyadh’s hosting of the Spanish Super Cup comes as part of the initiative to establish and host international sporting events, which fall under the "Quality of Life" program of the Kingdom's Vision 2030.

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2 Private Lunar Landers Head Toward the Moon in Roundabout Journey

The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
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2 Private Lunar Landers Head Toward the Moon in Roundabout Journey

The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH

In a two-for-one moonshot, SpaceX launched a pair of lunar landers Wednesday for US and Japanese companies looking to jumpstart business on Earth’s dusty sidekick.
The two landers rocketed away in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the latest in a stream of private spacecraft aiming for the moon, The Associated Press reported. They shared the ride to save money but parted company an hour into the flight exactly as planned, taking separate roundabout routes for the monthslong journey.
It’s take 2 for the Tokyo-based ispace, whose first lander crashed into the moon two years ago. This time, it has a rover on board with a scoop to gather up lunar dirt for study and plans to test potential food and water sources for future explorers.
Lunar newcomer Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is flying 10 experiments for NASA, including a vacuum to gather dirt, a drill to measure the temperature below the surface and a device that could be used by future moonwalkers to keep the sharp, abrasive particles off their spacesuits and equipment.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost — named after a species of US Southeastern fireflies — should reach the moon first. The 6-foot-6-inches-tall (2-meter-tall) lander will attempt a touchdown in early March at Mare Crisium, a volcanic plain in the northern latitudes.
The slightly bigger ispace lander named Resilience will take four to five months to get there, targeting a touchdown in late May or early June at Mare Frigoris, even farther north on the moon’s near side.
“We don’t think this is a race. Some people say ‘race to the moon,’ but it’s not about the speed,” ispace’s founder CEO Takeshi Hakamada said this week from Cape Canaveral.
Both Hakamada and Firefly CEO Jason Kim acknowledge the challenges still ahead, given the wreckage littering the lunar landscape. Only five countries have successfully placed spacecraft on the moon since the 1960s: the former Soviet Union, the US, China, India and Japan.
“We’ve done everything we can on the design and the engineering,” Kim said. Even so, he pinned an Irish shamrock to his jacket lapel Tuesday night for good luck.
The US remains the only one to have landed astronauts. NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo, aims to get astronauts back on the moon by the end of the decade.
Before that can happen, “we’re sending a lot of science and a lot of technology ahead of time to prepare for that,” NASA's science mission chief Nicky Fox said on the eve of launch.
If acing their respective touchdowns, both spacecraft will spend two weeks operating in constant daylight, shutting down once darkness hits.
Once lowered onto the lunar surface, ispace’s 11-pound (5-kilogram) rover will stay near the lander, traveling up to hundreds of yards (meters) in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. The rover has its own special delivery to drop off on the lunar dust: a toy-size red house designed by a Swedish artist.
NASA is paying $101 million to Firefly for the mission and another $44 million for the experiments. Hakamada declined to divulge the cost of ispace’s rebooted mission with six experiments, saying it's less than the first mission that topped $100 million.
Coming up by the end of February is the second moonshot for NASA by Houston-based Intuitive Machines. Last year, the company achieved the first US lunar touchdown in more than a half-century, landing sideways near the south pole but still managing to operate.