Moon Monday
Moon Monday #227: Proposed cuts, cancellations, continuations, and changes to NASA’s lunar missions
And other mission updates.
Articles
By Jatan Mehta | Dives into lunar exploration, space technology, Indian space, planetary science, and more.
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.
Articles
Why Moon missions need their own Wikipedia and beyond
Our Moon may be one of the largest satellites in the Solar System but its exploration has been concentrated on select areas. One of these is low lunar orbit, where mapping spacecraft from three countries have been concurrently flying from pole to pole between 50 to 150 kilometers above the
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #223: International researchers to study Chang’e lunar samples, including US ones but without NASA funding
And more such interesting Moon exploration updates from China’s National Space Day on April 24.
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.
ISRO Chandrayaan
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
Moon Monday #219: Results from India’s Chandrayaan 3 experiment to benefit future missions eyeing lunar water
👀 🧊 🌘
US Artemis
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.
US Artemis
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.
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
US Artemis
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
Indian Space
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