Tag: lunar
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Blue Origin Wins NASA Contract to Deliver VIPER Rover to Lunar South Pole
The United States’ space agency NASA has awarded Blue Origin a contract worth about $190 million to deliver its VIPER rover to the lunar surface, giving new life to a mission previously shelved due to cost overruns and delays. Under the award, Blue Origin will transport the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) aboard its…
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Zeno Power to Acquire Nuclear Waste for Long-Duration Space Missions
Zeno Power has signed an agreement with French nuclear fuel cycle manager Orano to acquire Americium-241, an isotope the U.S. startup plans to repurpose for powering long-duration and deep-space missions. The company said it will make a “multi-million-dollar” annual payment to Orano for the supply, which will be sourced from the firm’s recycling site in…
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Firefly Secures $10 Million From NASA for Additional Lunar Mission Data
Firefly Aerospace said it received an additional $10 million from NASA after delivering extra scientific data and imagery collected during its Blue Ghost Mission 1 to the Moon earlier this year. The mission, which spanned 45 days en route to the lunar surface and two weeks of operations on it, yielded nearly 120 gigabytes of…
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Artemis II astronauts discuss mission status ahead of in-capsule training
Scheduled to launch in February 2026, the Artemis II Orion capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket are currently at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for final integration and stacking. The Artemis II astronauts — comprised of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — recently spoke…
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HAKUTO-R Mission 2 lost during landing attempt
Just over two years after the Japanese company ispace attempted but failed to land its HAKUTO-R Mission 1, the HAKUTO-R Mission 2 Resilience lander attempted a lunar landing this week but was not successful. Mission 2 was to touch down on the lunar surface at 60.5 degrees north and 4.6 degrees west, in Mare Frigoris,…
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Blue Origin Unveils New Transporter Design for Artemis Lunar Missions
Blue Origin has released new details about its plans for a propellant transporter that will support its lunar landing missions under NASA’s Artemis program, as the company moves closer to launching its first robotic lander to the Moon. At the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium meeting on May 19, John Couluris, senior vice president of lunar…
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Blue Ghost successfully starts lunar surface mission while IM-2 lands sideways
NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is now seeing more results from the work done by providers to fulfill its task orders in the past few years, though not without challenges. Two robotic lunar landers from different US commercial providers landed on the lunar surface, with one successfully landing upright and starting its mission,…
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Falcon 9 launches second lunar mission of 2025 with IM-2 lander
SpaceX launched its second lunar mission of 2025, just over a month after flying the Firefly Blue Ghost and HAKUTO-R M2 Resilience landers to the Moon atop a single Falcon 9. Another Falcon 9, this time with the Intuitive Machines IM-2 NOVA-C lander on board, launched successfully from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy…
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Falcon 9 launches two landers to the Moon on the same mission
SpaceX launched not one but two lunar landers to the Moon on the same mission, on the 100th launch from the same pad where the Apollo 11 crew launched to the Moon. A Falcon 9 successfully lifted off during an instantaneous window on Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 1:11 AM EST (06:11 UTC) from Launch Complex…
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China Retrieves Nearly Two Kilograms of Lunar Samples from Moon’s Far Side
China’s Chang’e-6 reentry capsule successfully landed back on Earth on June 25, concluding a 53-day mission that retrieved 1,935.3 grams of lunar samples from the moon’s far side. The capsule, recovered as planned in Inner Mongolia’s grasslands of Siziwang Banner, was airlifted to Beijing and opened on June 26 to retrieve the sample canister, the…