Space and astronomy news
NASA has big plans for the Moon. Through the Artemis Program, NASA plans to create a program of “sustained exploration and lunar development.” This will include the creation of the Lunar Gateway, an orbital habitat that will facilitate missions to and from the surface, and the Artemis Base Camp that will allow for extended stays. …
Continue reading “NASA's Skyrocketing Need for Cargo Deliveries to the Moon”
The Artemis Program represents NASA’s effort to return to the Moon. One of the goals of the project is to set up long-term exploration of the Earth’s only natural satellite. This will need much bulkier equipment than what the Apollo astronauts carried though, and this equipment needs to be transported to the Moon’s surface. Blue …
Continue reading “NASA Wants Heavy Cargo Landers for the Moon”
Some of the biggest names in aerospace — and the automotive industry — will play roles in putting NASA astronauts in the driver’s seat for roving around on the moon. The space agency today selected three teams to develop the capabilities for a lunar terrain vehicle, or LTV, which astronauts could use during Artemis missions …
Continue reading “Start Your Engines: NASA Picks 3 Teams to Work on Lunar Terrain Vehicle”
On February 15th, Intuitive Machines (IM) launched its first Nova-C class spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. On February 22nd, the spacecraft – codenamed Odysseus (or “Odie”) – became the first American-built vehicle to soft-land on the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. While the …
Continue reading “Lunar Night Permanently Ends the Odysseus Mission”
When NASA astronauts return to the surface of the Moon in the Artemis III mission, the plan is to use a modified SpaceX Starship as their lunar lander. NASA announced last week that SpaceX has now demonstrated an important capability of the vacuum-optimized Raptor engine that will be used for the lander: an extreme cold …
Continue reading “SpaceX Test Fires a Raptor Engine, Simulating a Lunar Landing”
Weiren Wu, the Chief Designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP), recently announced an ambitious plan to put Chinese footprints on the lunar surface by 2030. This announcement came just prior to this year’s Space Day of China, an annual event celebrated on April 24th meant to showcase the space industry achievements of the …
According to a new ESA-supported study, a lunar habitat made from prefabricated inflatable modules could lead to a sustained human presence on the Moon.
Masten Space Systems, which was developing a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis Program, has just filed for bankruptcy!
NASA has struck deals with two commercial teams to provide the spacesuits destined for use when astronauts return to the moon by as early as 2025 — and there’s an extra twist that might have sounded alien to the Apollo moonwalkers a half-century ago. This time, NASA won’t own the suits.
The path back to the moon is long and fraught with danger, both in the real, physical sense and also in the contractual, legal sense. NASA, the agency sponsoring the largest government-backed lunar program, Artemis, has already been feeling the pain on the contractual end. Legal battles have delayed the development of a critical component …
Continue reading “NASA Releases Details on how Starship Will be Part of its Return to the Moon”