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.
CLPS
By Jatan Mehta | Coverage, with context, of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Services Program to send the agency’s science & technology payloads to the Moon on privately owned landers.
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 #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.
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #218: A molten Moon, a date for the SPA, sunset for Blue Ghost as well as inclusive Artemis language, and more
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
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #217: Red A-CLPS 🔥💍
Also drills, flying regolith, a hard landing, Moonlight, and many more mission updates to quench the lunatic in you.
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.
Moon Monday
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.
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #214: Blue Ghost preps for lunar landing, gets its fix in lunar orbit
Plus: Intuitive Machines set to launch second Moon lander, Australia continues lunar tech investments, and more.
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #213: Mission updates from the US, Japan, China, and this Indian
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
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.
Indian Space
ISRO provided ground tracking support for Intuitive Machines’ NASA CLPS Moon landing
Last week I wrote how the annual report of NSIL, an Indian government arm tasked with commercializing ISRO’s space technologies, notes that ISRO provided commercial ground tracking support for a lunar mission by another country in 2023. For some reason, the NSIL report doesn’t specify the mission name.
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.