Tag: Moon
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Looking past Luna 25’s lunar landing failure: what’s next?
On Aug. 19, at 11:10 UTC, the Russian spacecraft Luna 25 performed a planned orbit maneuver. After an eight-day flight and two orbit corrections, it was parked in a circumlunar 90 by 113-kilometer orbit. It was time to transfer to the pre-landing orbit with the parameters of 18 by 100 kilometers. But something went wrong,…
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Russia’s Luna 25 lander crashes on the Moon
An animation depicts the Luna 25 probe in orbit above the Moon’s surface. Image: Roscomos. Russia’s first mission to the Moon for nearly 50 years ended in failure when the Luna 25 spacecraft crashed onto the surface, the Russian space agency Roscomos said Sunday. In an official statement published to the Telegram social media account…
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Russia heads back to the Moon with Luna 25
Russia’s space agency successfully launched a robotic spacecraft Thursday on a journey to the Moon, the country’s first lunar explorer since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 sample return mission in 1976. The Luna 25 mission lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, located in Russia’s Far East, at 7:10 pm ET (23:10 UTC). Heading east, a…
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NASA’s Artemis II crew meets their Moonship
The three Americans and one Canadian slated to fly on NASA’s Artemis II circumlunar mission had a “pinch me” moment Monday when they got their first chance to visit the Orion spacecraft that will carry them around the Moon and back to Earth. The astronauts had an opportunity to peer through the hatch of the…
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NASA gives Blue Origin $34.7M to work on technology for making solar cells on moon
The Blue Alchemist project aims to produce solar cells from lunar materials. (Blue Origin Photo) Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has won $34.7 million in funding from NASA to support the development of a system that could produce solar cells on the moon from materials that are available on site. The Blue Alchemist project…
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NASA starts building ice-hunting Moon rover
The search for ice at the Moon’s poles has loomed large in the field of lunar science since an instrument on an Indian satellite discovered water molecules inside shadowed crater floors more than a decade ago. NASA is now assembling a golf cart-size rover to drive into the dark polar craters to search for ice…
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For the first time in 51 years, NASA is training astronauts to fly to the Moon
The four astronauts assigned to soar beyond the far side of the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission settled into their seats inside a drab classroom last month at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It was one in a series of noteworthy moments for the four-person crew since NASA revealed the names of the…
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Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing mission launches from India
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander launched from the Second Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India. This will be India’s second attempt to successfully perform a lunar landing after the Chandrayaan-2 lander failed during its descent. The Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (LVM3) rocket lifted off Friday, July…
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NASA concerned SpaceX’s Starship schedule could delay moon landing
Artist’s illustration of the Starship landing system on the moon. Credit: SpaceX A senior NASA official raised concerns Wednesday that “difficulties” with SpaceX’s development of the huge new Starship rocket could delay the Artemis program’s first moon landing with astronauts from late 2025, a mission that will use a derivative of the Starship vehicle to…
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South Korean orbiter returning spectacular views of lunar landscapes
South Korea’s Danuri spacecraft captured this view of Tsiolkovskiy crater March 22 on the far side of the moon. Credit: Korea Aerospace Research Institute Nearly halfway through its primary mission, South Korea’s first spacecraft to explore the moon has been collecting data and snapping pictures of lunar landscapes and craters since maneuvering into orbit late…