Moon Monday
Moon Monday #202: A bao-burrito-bhel of global lunar updates
Dating farside volcanic samples, awaiting the next wave of landers, and disliking opaque orbital operations.
Moon Monday
By Jatan Mehta | The world’s only newsletter dedicated to covering and contextualizing global lunar exploration updates, including plans to return humans this decade.
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #201: Scientists can now study exotic Chang’e 6 lunar samples
Plus: New round of Chang’e 5 sample studies, gifting part of the Moon, and Sino-US cooperation
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #200: Thank you, a crewed Chinese rover, Artemis updates, and more
Welcome to the 200th edition of my Moon Monday blog+newsletter! 🚀🌗 I’d like to take this moment to highlight four things working on Moon Monday has enabled: 1. An extensive 4-year archive of curated and contextualized global lunar exploration developments, with embedded links to everything. All editions are completely
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #199: Not the fault in our stars but certainly stressful faults on our Moon
Let’s study Moonquakes to not let them shake a Moonbase.
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #198: Suit up to walk under Moonlight, and grab global mission updates
First look at the Artemis Moonwalking suit Following China’s unveiling of its lunar spacesuit last month, Axiom Space has revealed the latest design of its AxEMU suit that astronauts will wear on NASA’s crewed Artemis III lunar surface mission later this decade. The first-time unveiling of the suit
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #197: Starship Artemis, and lunar mission updates
NASA’s road to the Moon inches through Starship SpaceX’s fifth launch of its fully integrated Starship Super Heavy rocket on October 13 was a resounding success, with both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship second stage completing their flight as well as soft return objectives. With this
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #196: Confusion about lunar water and LUPEX, and papers plus mission updates
You can now follow my articles on some non-questionable social networks that also federate (interoperate): Flipboard, Mastodon and Bluesky. The hunt for water on the Moon continues US researchers find that permanently shadowed regions up to 77° latitude—which is outside the Moon’s south pole—could host surface and
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #195: Little LUNA on Earth, a Sino spacesuit, and communicating navcom
You know how I remarked in the previous Moon Monday about having two feature stories instead of one to adequately contextualize big new developments? Well, this week’s Moon Monday has three! For Europe, China, and the US. 🙈 Europe’s new test facility brings more of those lunar vibes on
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #194: On the approval of India’s Chandrayaan 4 sample return mission, and first look at Chang’e 6 samples
This week’s Moon Monday has not one but two feature stories! So much has been happening in lunar exploration this whole year that I’ve transitioned to writing deep dives more frequently so as to adequately capture and contextualize big updates. If you appreciate my efforts to bring you
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #193: Repurposing lunar missions to enable deep space exploration, and launches on the horizon
After a week full of chores, writing this week’s Moon Monday yesterday and today has made me feel alive again. Hope you enjoy this edition as there’s a lot to contextualize! 🤓 Continuing the trend, China repurposes Chang’e 6 orbiter module The Chang’e 6 orbiter module, which
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #192: From trying to revive VIPER to advancing Australian lunar technologies
The latest effort to save VIPER Members of the US Congress are stepping up efforts in the ongoing scramble to save the VIPER rover mission, which was envisioned to uniquely study lunar water deposits. Specifically, representatives in the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology wrote an open letter to
Moon Monday
Moon Monday #191: A stream of CLPS and Artemis lunar mission updates
Intuitive Machines to launch a fourth Moon mission for NASA NASA has awarded Intuitive Machines a $116.9 million contract to deliver six science & technology payloads to the Moon’s south pole in 2027. The mission part of NASA’s CLPS program is the fourth and largest such task