Indian Space Progress
An update about the last Indian Space Progress edition before we begin this one: My review of India’s Gaganyaan mission to send astronauts to space has been republished on Jeff Foust’s revered community blog The Space Review! ^_^ How ISRO is building a reusable spaceplane Almost a year after
Moon Monday
China doubles down on lunar infrastructure with the launch and orbital insertion of Queqiao 2 On March 20 at 00:31 UTC, China’s Long March 8 rocket launched the 1200-kilogram Queqiao 2 lunar communications relay satellite on a Moon-ward trajectory with an orbit of 200 by 420,000 kilometers.
Moon Monday
NASA’s road to Luna advances through Starship SpaceX’s third launch of its fully integrated Starship Super Heavy rocket on March 14 achieved orbital velocity, clearing a major milestone of the long path to putting humans on the Moon again since NASA has selected Starship’s lunar variant to
CLPS
In Moon Monday #166, I wrote how Intuitive Machines and NASA skewed the success criteria of the former’s first Moon landing mission. I did not think the article would be taken as well as it was: Celestial Citizen, in their latest Continuum newsletter: While a private endeavor like Intuitive
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With the SLIM Moon mission, Japan has brought us into a whole new regime of precision landings. One with big implications for the future of lunar exploration and science, including NASA’s Artemis program to send humans to Luna. To piece together this story, I spoke to experts from JAXA,
Moon Monday
NASA’s FY2024 budget for Luna The US Congress will provide NASA with $24.9 billion for FY2024, a budget two billion less than the Presidential request and half a billion less than FY2023. Accounting for inflation only makes the cut deeper. However, the US Congress has prioritized and maintained
Indian Space Progress
India selects first set of Gaganyaan astronauts Unveiling four years of secrecy, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on February 27 the first four astronauts selected to fly on the country’s initial set of human spaceflight missions mid-decade via ISRO’s ambitious Gaganyaan program. The selectees are all
Moon Monday
An FYI before we begin: If you follow me on social media—especially LinkedIn, Twitter, the Fediverse or Bluesky—read this life update from my other blog: Embracing a simple but effective digital life. An intuitive success criteria? It turns out more retrospective corrections are needed for the February 22
Moon Monday
I’m thrilled to welcome Off Planet Research as the newest sponsor of Moon Monday! The Everett-based company specializes in creating lunar soil simulants that help test landers, rovers, and science experiments with high fidelity. Personally, I’m intrigued by their icy regolith simulant OPRFLCROSS2 as it falls under a
Moon Monday
As the publicly traded company Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft approaches the Moon for a soft landing attempt, it’s a good time to remind you—my dear readers—that as stated in my public Editorial Independence Policy, I do not own shares of any space company, primarily to keep my
Moon Monday
Intuitive Machines set to launch for Luna SpaceX and Intuitive Machines are targeting a Falcon 9 rocket launch of the latter’s first Moon lander during a three-day window opening on February 14 at 5:57 UTC. The mission, named IM-1, will carry six NASA science & technology payloads as
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Until a spacecraft is aloft, engineers never really know if their testing regime was appropriate.
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