Moon Monday #222: How China navigated failure to nail down lunar navigation success
Plus: Exploration and science updates from the US, South Korea, and Europe.
Latest
Moon Monday #221: The US is failing to explore lunar water as the principal goal of Artemis
And, countries allied with the US are facing delays in their own missions, allowing China to lead in this aspect of lunar exploration too.
Moon Monday #220: Lunar science galore from the Chandrayaans
Plus mission updates and some tangents.
Newly approved Chandrayaan 5 LUPEX mission will drill for water on the Moon and aid Artemis | Indian Space Progress #25-26
Plus: A host of new lunar science results from Chandrayaan 2 and 3. Enjoy this 3200-word Chandrayaan-special. 🌙
Moon Monday #219: Results from India’s Chandrayaan 3 experiment to benefit future missions eyeing lunar water
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Moon Monday #218: A molten Moon, a date for the SPA, sunset for Blue Ghost as well as inclusive Artemis language, and more
There’s a lot in this Moon Monday edition to unpack. Grab yourself a coffee or another mild drug of choice and let’s get started. 🤓 Chang’e 6 samples produce two more big results Until now, all the direct evidence of our Moon being covered in a global magma
Moon Monday #217: Red A-CLPS 🔥💍
Also drills, flying regolith, a hard landing, Moonlight, and many more mission updates to quench the lunatic in you.
If nasaspaceflight.com and its forum are blocked for you too, here’s how to access them
Sometime last year, nasaspaceflight.com (NSF) stopped loading for me. I could not access any page on its website, all of which said “Sorry, you have been blocked” no matter which browser I tried. Since then I’ve been accessing the NSF site in alternate ways because of their valuable
Moon Monday #216: Firefly Blue Ghost brings precision landing and lunar sci-tech bounties
Plus: Contextualizing the failure of Intuitive Machines’ second Moon mission and that of Lunar Trailblazer as grave losses for NASA.
Moon Monday #215: Firefly performs first actual soft lunar landing for the US in the 21st century, bags key firsts
Plus: Intuitive Machines and Lunar Trailblazer launch for Luna while KASA plans the same. And, maybe nobody should “dominate” space.
Joining Open Lunar’s orbit as their Science Communications Lead
I’m thrilled to share that over and above my flagship Moon Monday blog+newsletter, I’ve joined the Open Lunar Foundation as their ‘Science Communications Lead’. In that role, I’ll help communicate Open Lunar’s research work on technical and policy building blocks towards cooperative and sustainable lunar
Moon Monday #214: Blue Ghost preps for lunar landing, gets its fix in lunar orbit
Plus: Intuitive Machines set to launch second Moon lander, Australia continues lunar tech investments, and more.
Moon Monday
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
Articles
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
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.
Moon Monday
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
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
Indian Space
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
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
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.
Space for fun
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
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.
Guides
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.
Articles
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.