Imagine encouraging a cloud to make more snow. It's not magic or psychology, it's cloud seating.

Scientists have been cloud seating since about the 1940s to increase winter snowfall in the mountains.

It's Friday, February 23rd, and you guessed it, it's also Science Friday.

I'm Cyfry producer Kathleen Davis.

I don't know about you, but the past few winters have not had nearly as much snow as I grew up with and I know that I'm not alone in this feeling.

A handful of states across the country have been using a technique called cloud seeding to get more precipitation on the ground. We'll talk about that story in just a minute, but first let's hear a roundup of the biggest science stories of the week with guest host Sophie Bushwick.

On Thursday evening, the Odysseus lunar lander successfully landed on the moon.

This mission wasn't created by NASA or another government space agency, but by a private company called Intuitive Machines, making it the first commercial mission to make a successful soft landing on the surface of the moon.

The mission was part of a NASA program called Clips, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services

Program, which hopes to make moon missions faster and cheaper.

There are other commercial Moon missions planned

for later this year.

Joining me now to talk about that

and other stories from the Week in Science

is Umer-E-Fahn, senior correspondent at Fox.

Welcome back Umer.

Hey Sophie, thanks for having me.

Last week we talked about the launch of this craft, so bring us up to date.

Right, as you noted, this is the first private spacecraft launched by any company or any

country to land on the moon but it was also launched aboard a private space

vehicle a SpaceX rocket.

And Thursday evening it began its descent and what was remarkable about it was that this was

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