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Saudi Coffee Company Licensed to Build Factory in Jazan

Photo by SPA
Photo by SPA
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Saudi Coffee Company Licensed to Build Factory in Jazan

Photo by SPA
Photo by SPA

Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu President Eng. Khalid Al-Salem handed over to the Saudi Coffee Company the license to establish the first coffee-production factory in Jazan for basic and transformational industries.
The license followed Jazan's signing a package of investment agreements and capital contracts, SPA reported.
The factory, which will extend over an area of 30,000 square meters, is designed to produce and export the finest types of Saudi coffee, and boost local and global supply chains, in line with the goals of Saudi Vision 2030. It will thus contribute to the sustainability of the coffee sector.
The Saudi Coffee Company is owned by the Public Investment Fund; it focuses on supporting the local coffee production and promoting coffee globally.
The company also plays a major role in developing sustainable agriculture in Jazan region, a major home for fine Saudi coffee, and raising the Kingdom’s ability to export the finest Saudi coffee beans to international markets.

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Japan Startup Hopeful Ahead of Second Moon Launch

Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi soars through the air during the trial round of the Four Hills FIS Ski Jumping tournament (Vierschanzentournee), in Innsbruck, Austria on January 4, 2025. (Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / AFP)
Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi soars through the air during the trial round of the Four Hills FIS Ski Jumping tournament (Vierschanzentournee), in Innsbruck, Austria on January 4, 2025. (Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / AFP)
TT
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Japan Startup Hopeful Ahead of Second Moon Launch

Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi soars through the air during the trial round of the Four Hills FIS Ski Jumping tournament (Vierschanzentournee), in Innsbruck, Austria on January 4, 2025. (Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / AFP)
Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi soars through the air during the trial round of the Four Hills FIS Ski Jumping tournament (Vierschanzentournee), in Innsbruck, Austria on January 4, 2025. (Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / AFP)

Japanese startup ispace vowed its upcoming second unmanned Moon mission will be a success, saying Thursday that it learned from its failed attempt nearly two years ago.

In April 2023, the firm's first spacecraft made an unsalvageable "hard landing", dashing its ambitions to be the first private company to touch down on the Moon.

The Houston-based Intuitive Machines accomplished that feat last year with an uncrewed craft that landed at the wrong angle but was able to complete tests and send photos.

With another mission scheduled to launch next week, ispace wants to win its place in space history at a booming time for missions to the Moon from both governments and private companies.

"We at ispace were disappointed in the failure of Mission 1," ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada told reporters.

"But that's why we hope to send a message to people across Japan that it's important to challenge ourselves again, after enduring the failure and learning from it."

"We will make this Mission 2 a success," AFP quoted him as saying.

Its new lander, called Resilience, will blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 15, along with another lunar lander built by US company Firefly Aerospace.

If Resilience lands successfully, it will deploy a micro rover and five other payloads from corporate partners.

These include an experiment by Takasago Thermal Engineering, which wants to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas with a view to using hydrogen as satellite and spacecraft fuel.

- Rideshare -

Firefly's Blue Ghost lander will arrive at the Moon after travelling 45 days, followed by ispace's Resilience, which the Japanese company hopes will land on the Earth's satellite at the end of May, or in June.

For the program, officially named Hakuto-R Mission 2, ispace chose to cut down on costs by arranging the first private-sector rocket rideshare, Hakamada said.

Only five nations have soft-landed spacecraft on the Moon: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India and, most recently, Japan.

Many companies are vying to offer cheaper and more frequent space exploration opportunities than governments.

Space One, another Japanese startup, is trying to become Japan's first company to put a satellite into orbit -- with some difficulty so far.

Last month, Space One's solid-fuel Kairos rocket blasted off from a private launchpad in western Japan but was later seen spiraling downwards in the distance.

That was the second launch attempt by Space One after an initial try in March last year ended in a mid-air explosion.

Meanwhile Toyota, the world's top-selling carmaker, announced this week it would invest seven billion yen ($44 million) in Japanese rocket startup Interstellar Technologies.

"The global demand for small satellite launches has surged nearly 20-fold, from 141 launches in 2016 to 2,860 in 2023," driven by private space businesses, national security concerns and technological development, Interstellar said.