Moon Monday
Moon Monday #220: Lunar science galore from the Chandrayaans
Plus mission updates and some tangents.
Links
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
Space for fun
Fun with Moon exploration headlines
I’ve been having so much fun with headlines on my Moon Monday blog+newsletter lately: * Not the fault in our stars but certainly stressful faults on our Moon * Little LUNA on Earth * A bao-burrito-bhel of global lunar updates * Suit up to walk under Moonlight * Let’s be high on
Indian Space Progress
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
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #206: The state of global lunar exploration in 2024
Plus, my experience at the Galaxy Forum in Wenchang, China to that end.
Visual Space
Let’s explore our Moon’s mountains! 🌖
The Moon is home to some amazing mountains. Unlike the millions of years it takes for most mountains on Earth to form via slowly colliding tectonic plates, most lunar mountains form near-instantly through asteroid or cometary impacts. Here are some resources to explore them. 🗻 1. With cool elevation graphs and
Links
Reading menu: Weird cosmic worlds
A neutron star is like a huge atomic nucleus held together by gravity rather than the strong nuclear force. But we don’t fully understand how neutrons interact at extreme temperatures and densities. It’s possible that within a neutron star the neutrons break down into a soup of quarks,
Space for fun
Fun with serious SLS rocket headlines
I've been having some fun writing eerily reflective headlines on my Moon Monday newsletter about the clumsy progress of NASA’s SLS rocket that cost $23 billion. * NASA’s Moon rocket crawls to the launchpad * NASA’s Moon rocket just won’t move fast enough * The SLS rocket’
Articles
My articles on Indian space
Here are all notable articles and blog posts I’ve published on India’s largely successful—but also very opaque—space program, including all of its planetary missions. I keep updating any evergreen posts within this list, and will maintain the list itself for the convenience of readers, so make
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The Moon link list
A quick reference page with links to frequently referred to topics on Moon Monday.
Links
How NASA defines “Special Regions” for Mars missions
Here’s something interesting I came across last year while writing the article “How NASA decides where to land on Mars”. NASA had some restrictions in place for selecting the region its Perseverance rover will land on and explore. From its landing site selection page: The Mars 2020 Science Definition
Chandrayaan
On ISRO’s Chandrayaan 2 orbiter data release
The initial dataset is underwhelming and there is no sign of when ISRO will release the next set.