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 #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

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.

Moon Monday

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

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

And three little things to share.

Indian Space Progress

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

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

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

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.