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
Radar data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has helped scientists confirm that the lunar pit of Mare Tranquillitatis indeed does lead into a wide lava tube/cave for at least 80 meters. These results corroborate what scientists long suspected about many lunar pits leading to underground passages based
Moon Monday
Going deeper into VIPER Much has been said about NASA’s July 17 announcement to cancel the VIPER rover supposed to fly to the Moon’s south pole on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander mid-decade as part of the agency’s CLPS program to uniquely explore water ice there. Instead of
Moon Monday
China’s ambition to build a lunar navcom constellation Ling Xin reports on China’s ongoing studies to have a phased constellation of 30+ satellites which would provide high-precision navigation as well as high-bandwidth communications for most places on the Moon with up to quadruple coverage. Earlier studies focused on
Moon Monday
On the intersection of ispace, NASA CLPS, funding, and science The publicly traded ispace Japan is taking another loan from the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, amounting to $62 million, to continue working on its upcoming three Moon missions: * The company’s second lunar lander M2/RESILIENCE, launching end of 2024
Moon Monday
I’m truly excited to welcome Astrolab as the latest yearly sponsor of my Moon Monday blog+newsletter! 🚀 California-based Venturi Astrolab Inc. (Astrolab) is developing a fleet of large multi-purpose rovers for advanced exploration of our Moon. To that end, Astrolab leads one of the three teams NASA selected earlier
Moon Monday
I’m delighted to share that The Orbital Index is continuing being a Moon Monday sponsor for the third year in a row! 🚀 Their crisp, technical archive of weekly space updates over the last five years is genuinely worth perusing, and searching within, because Andrew, Ben and Sarajane ensure it’
Moon Monday
NASA selects science instruments to be deployed on the Moon by Artemis III astronauts In a historic return since Apollo, NASA aims to land astronauts on our Moon again in late 2026 with Artemis III. What science instruments will they carry to deploy on the lunar south pole for advancing
CLPS
In Moon Monday #166, I wrote how Intuitive Machines and NASA skewed the success criteria of the former’s first Moon landing mission. I did not think the article would be taken as well as it was: Celestial Citizen, in their latest Continuum newsletter: While a private endeavor like Intuitive
Moon Monday
An FYI before we begin: If you follow me on social media—especially LinkedIn, Twitter, the Fediverse or Bluesky—read this life update from my other blog: Embracing a simple but effective digital life. An intuitive success criteria? It turns out more retrospective corrections are needed for the February 22
Moon Monday
I’m thrilled to welcome Off Planet Research as the newest sponsor of Moon Monday! The Everett-based company specializes in creating lunar soil simulants that help test landers, rovers, and science experiments with high fidelity. Personally, I’m intrigued by their icy regolith simulant OPRFLCROSS2 as it falls under a
CLPS
An announcement before we begin this week’s Moon Monday: I’m honored and stoked to have been invited by the European Space Agency to deliver a talk on Chandrayaan 3 and India’s lunar ambitions at the Space for Inspiration event this Thursday, January 18. If you’re attending
CLPS
Astrobotic launches its first spacecraft built to land on the Moon At 7:18 UTC today, January 8, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander blasted off to space onboard the inaugural flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket, at long last marking the formal start of missions part of NASA’s CLPS
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