Moon Monday
Moon Monday #226: Blue Origin aims to launch its first two Moon missions by next year—with nearly no NASA payloads
Plus: Firefly to carry UAE’s second lunar rover and more.
Artemis
By Jatan Mehta | Coverage, with context, of NASA’s Artemis program to return humans to the Moon after Apollo. This time to (hopefully) stay.
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #225: Lots of global lunar mission updates 🌙
Key news of the month: China has achieved the first ever daytime Earth-Moon distance measurement wherein a 1.2-meter telescope reflected an infrared laser off of a small retroreflector on the 61-kilogram Tiandu 1 lunar orbiter. This was accomplished despite massive interference from our Sun. Tiandu 1 was launched alongside
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #224: A curious find from Chandrayaan 3, Artemis updates, and more
Two announcements before we begin: 1. I’m honored to be moderating a fantastic panel on modern themes in global lunar exploration at the international Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX) on Friday, May 9. If you’re attending GLEX in New Delhi, join us for the session. And, if you’
Moon Monday
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.
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
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.
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.
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