Moon Monday #208: What makes a lunar landing mission “successful”?

Before we begin, a note that my thoughts are with everyone affected by the fires in southern California as well as by last week’s 6.8-magnitude earthquake in Xizang, China. The Moon lander duo from ispace Japan and US-based Firefly Aerospace are being targeted for launch by SpaceX on

Moon Monday #207: A whole bunch of global mission updates and lunar developments

And three little things to share.

Indian Space Progress #23: How ISRO et al. laid the groundwork for a decade this year

I’m delighted to welcome GalaxEye Space as the latest sponsor of my Indian Space Progress blog+newsletter! 🚀 Bangalore-based startup GalaxEye is developing hybrid Earth observation satellites with multi-spectral optical imaging plus synthetic aperture radar (SAR) capabilities, with the first launch targeted next year. 🛰️ While 2023 was an incredible year

Moon Monday #206: The state of global lunar exploration in 2024

Plus, my experience at the Galaxy Forum in Wenchang, China to that end.

Moon Monday #205: The one from Wenchang!

Hello from China! I’m at the four-day 2024 international Galaxy Forum, where I along with speakers from over 12 countries are discussing global plans on lunar exploration, science from the Moon, and cooperative approaches to those ends. This week’s Moon Monday thus includes several fresh, firsthand lunar updates

Moon Monday #204: The one with no tying theme, like a VIPER-less Artemis

Read to the end to see a reader gift made of processed lunar regolith. ?

Indian Space Progress #22: How Chandrayaan 1, 2 and 3 leveraged their view from the Moon

ISRO’s Chandrayaan craft have viewed a solar eclipse, studied the Sun’s flares, and observed Earth as an exoplanet, all from the vantage point of lunar orbit.

Moon Monday #203: Artemis updates, China and Luna, ESA<>JAXA, and more

Thank you for having signed up for my no-award winning Moon Monday blog+newsletter! Its motivation was to exist because nothing like it did to capture the world’s march to the Moon. 🌝 If you’re one of the 8,000+ lunatics who enjoys this free curated community resource, you

Moon Monday #202: A bao-burrito-bhel of global lunar updates

Dating farside volcanic samples, awaiting the next wave of landers, and disliking opaque orbital operations.

Moon Monday #201: Scientists can now study exotic Chang’e 6 lunar samples

Plus: New round of Chang’e 5 sample studies, gifting part of the Moon, and Sino-US cooperation

Moon Monday #200: Thank you, a crewed Chinese rover, Artemis updates, and more

Welcome to the 200th edition of my Moon Monday blog+newsletter! 🚀🌗 I’d like to take this moment to highlight four things working on Moon Monday has enabled: 1. An extensive 4-year archive of curated and contextualized global lunar exploration developments, with embedded links to everything. All editions are completely

I write for you, not social media or SEO

Many of my headlines make little sense to Google, Web Search Engines, and for SEO. For example, I titled Moon Monday #199 as “Not the fault in our stars but certainly stressful faults on our Moon”. Most likely, mainstream social media algorithms don’t care much for such headlines either.