Moon Monday
Moon Monday #219: Results from India’s Chandrayaan 3 experiment to benefit future missions eyeing lunar water
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By Jatan Mehta | Dives into lunar exploration, space technology, Indian space, planetary science, and more.
Moon Monday
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.
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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
US Artemis
Moon Monday #206: The state of global lunar exploration in 2024
Plus, my experience at the Galaxy Forum in Wenchang, China to that end.
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On celebrating Chandrayaan 3’s Moon landing, or that of Apollo
Many readers have asked me this week if I plan on blogging something today for the anniversary of Chandrayaan 3’s Moon landing, which India now celebrates as National Space Day. The answer is the same as what I do for Apollo anniversaries: Nothing. Don’t get me wrong. I’
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Mission Director of India’s Chandrayaan 1 lunar orbiter has passed away
Today (June 14), Srinivasa Hegde, Mission Director of India’s first lunar orbiter Chandrayaan 1, passed away. Among its many unique feats, Chandrayaan 1 discovered water on the Moon, which encouraged many nations worldwide to explore our cosmic neighbor, and also catalyzed NASA—a key partner on the mission—to
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Welcome to the era of precision Moon landings
Japan’s SLIM lander has sparked a new era of precision landings, with big implications for lunar science and exploration
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How engineers test Moon landers on Earth
Until a spacecraft is aloft, engineers never really know if their testing regime was appropriate.
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Why explore our Moon
And how we’re going back like never before.
