Moon Monday #213: Mission updates from the US, Japan, China, and this Indian

CLPS and Artemis updates * On February 13, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Moon lander part of NASA’s CLPS program successfully fired its engines for 4 minutes and 15 seconds to enter an elliptical orbit around Luna. Over the rest of February, Blue Ghost will fire its engines multiple times

Critical scientific documents go missing from NASA-backed lunar community website

A whole host of documents presenting work and recommendations of US scientists and engineers in service of NASA’s Moon exploration goals have gone missing from the website of the agency-backed Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG). The missing documents include but is not limited to the key 2023 CLOC-SAT report

Moon Monday #212: UNO Skip, then UNO Flip, ft. VIPER and Artemis

Plus: Scientific archives as your Wild Card, a Draw Four for Boeing, UNO Reverse with Japan, and a stack of Artemis updates.

Sharing Moon Monday’s approach to avoiding (Artemis) hot takes and speculative coverage

Some of you have been wondering and asking why I haven’t covered potential Artemis changes in the new US administration on my Moon Monday blog+newsletter. So here’s the thing. In the nearly three months since the US electoral outcome, speculations on shifts in the Artemis program have

Indian Space Progress #24: High on docking, low on navigation. Cool new projects, same old budget

This edition marks two years of publishing the monthly Indian Space Progress blog+newsletter. I started it with the goal of trying to compile, capture, and globally contextualize true trajectories of India’s evolving (civil) space capabilities. More than 7500 of you subscribers spread across the globe have found it

ISRO provided ground tracking support for Intuitive Machines’ NASA CLPS Moon landing

Last week I wrote how the annual report of NSIL, an Indian government arm tasked with commercializing ISRO’s space technologies, notes that ISRO provided commercial ground tracking support for a lunar mission by another country in 2023. For some reason, the NSIL report doesn’t specify the mission name.

Moon Monday #211: A long march of lunar papers from China, and mission updates

Chinese researchers have published a whole range of papers lately on their recent lunar exploration outcomes as well as ongoing scoping of future ambitions. Here’s a contextualized compilation. 1. Studying rocks from the first lunar farside samples brought to Earth by the Chang’e 6 mission has revealed that

Moon Monday #210: Mission updates from Japan, the US, China, South Korea, India, and Finland

Read to the end to know how I avoid (Artemis) hot takes on Moon Monday.

Fun with Moon exploration headlines

I’ve been having so much fun with headlines on my Moon Monday blog+newsletter lately: * Not the fault in our stars but certainly stressful faults on our Moon * Little LUNA on Earth * A bao-burrito-bhel of global lunar updates * Suit up to walk under Moonlight * Let’s be high on

Moon Monday #209: Let’s be high on launch and low on provocation

Updates on CLPS, ispace, Artemis, Chandrayaan 4, and more. Read to the end for a fact check on an op-ed.

How to follow CLPS Moon mission updates

With a fleet of NASA-supported robotic Moon landers part of the agency’s CLPS program launching throughout this decade, I’ve compiled an exhaustive rundown for you to be up to speed on these novel missions: All about CLPS Moon landing missions 🌗 I update this page every month or two.

Everything you need to know about NASA CLPS Moon landing missions

A look at the armada of robotic landers NASA is riding to the Moon this decade.