By Jatan Mehta | Coverage, with context, of NASA’s Artemis and CLPS programs to return humans and robots to the Moon after Apollo. This time to (hopefully) stay.
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Key news of the month: China has achieved 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 the first ever daytime laser distance measurement using an orbiter, accomplished despite massive interference from
Moon Monday
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’
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And, countries allied with the US are facing delays in their own missions, allowing China to lead in this aspect of lunar exploration too.
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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
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Also drills, flying regolith, a hard landing, Moonlight, and many more mission updates to quench the lunatic in you.
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Plus: Contextualizing the failure of Intuitive Machines’ second Moon mission and that of Lunar Trailblazer as grave losses for NASA.
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Plus: Intuitive Machines and Lunar Trailblazer launch for Luna while KASA plans the same. And, maybe nobody should “dominate” space.
Moon Monday
Plus: Intuitive Machines set to launch second Moon lander, Australia continues lunar tech investments, and more.
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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
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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
Plus: Scientific archives as your Wild Card, a Draw Four for Boeing, UNO Reverse with Japan, and a stack of Artemis updates.
Moon Monday
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
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