By Jatan Mehta | The world’s only newsletter dedicated to covering and contextualizing global lunar exploration updates, including plans to return humans to our Moon this decade.
Moon Monday
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
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
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
Moon Monday
Grab some tea, coffee, or beverage of your choice because this week’s Moon Monday is a sci-tech deep dive! 🌝 Chandrayaan 3 contributes to learning our Moon’s origin and evolution The first ever ground-based measurements of high-latitude lunar soil and rocks made by the Chandrayaan 3 rover’s Alpha
Moon Monday
First lander to drill on the Moon’s south pole delayed for good Jeff Foust reports that NASA will provide an additional $12.4 million to Intuitive Machines for its upcoming second Moon landing mission (IM-2) part of the agency’s CLPS program for work related to changing the landing
US Artemis
Before we begin this week’s Moon Monday, I’m excited to share that I’ll be conducting a study on Indo-US lunar exploration as an Adjunct Scholar at the Takshashila Institution! As India too takes on increasingly complex Moon missions, my aim with the study is to identify specific
US Artemis
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
US Artemis
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
US Artemis
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
US Artemis
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
How will ISRO go from Chandrayaan 3 to an Indian on the Moon? Clarifying and laying down India’s plans for increasingly complex robotic lunar missions, where human spaceflight comes in, and what realistic timelines look like.
Moon Monday
The first ever samples from the Moon’s farside are now cached on Earth After successfully collecting samples from the Moon’s farside and stowing them in lunar orbit earlier by excellently orchestrating multiple Mooncraft over months, CNSA made the Chang’e 6 mission’s lunar orbiter module fly towards
Share via Email →