Tag: Moon
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NASA taps Blue Origin to deliver lunar rovers for Moon Base initiative
An artist’s conception shows Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander lowering an Astrolab rover to the lunar surface. (NASA Illustration) Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has won NASA’s nod to deliver crew-carrying rovers to the lunar surface as part of the space agency’s decade-long plan to create a base near the moon’s south…
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SpaceX’s Starship V3—still a work in progress—mostly successful on first flight
SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster Friday, with mostly positive results. The powerful rocket, propelled by 33 methane-fueled main engines, climbed away from SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in South Texas at 5:30 pm CDT (6:30 pm EDT; 22:30 UTC) Friday. Within a few seconds, the 408-foot-tall…
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Astrolab to Send Scientific Payloads to Lunar South Pole on FLIP Rover Mission
Astrolab is preparing to send a series of scientific payloads to the Moon later this year aboard its FLIP rover mission aimed at supporting future lunar exploration near the Moon’s south pole. The company said its FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform rover, known as FLIP, will carry multiple research instruments designed to study lunar surface conditions,…
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Potomac Database Systems Targets Lunar Data Market With New Moon Missions
Potomac Database Systems has unveiled plans to develop a series of lunar missions aimed at collecting and selling scientific and operational data from the Moon. The Washington-based company said it intends to focus on supplying commercial and government customers with lunar surface data through three different mission concepts designed to support future exploration and development…
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Interlune wins $6.9M NASA contract to create system to extract helium-3 and hydrogen from moon dirt
Interlune test engineer Alex Lewandowski and mechanical engineer Jessica Wu check test equipment for the mass spectrometer system in the Regolith Lab at the company’s Seattle headquarters. (Interlune Photo) NASA has awarded a $6.9 million contract to Seattle-based Interlune for the development of a system that can extract gases such as helium-3 and hydrogen from…
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NASA chose the right crew to launch a new era of human space exploration
HOUSTON—Their mission is complete. The four people who flew beyond the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission are back home in Houston with their families. But the lessons from Artemis II are just beginning to be told. There are tangible, objective takeaways from the nine-day mission. How did NASA’s Space Launch System rocket perform? Nearly…
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NASA Rolls Out Artemis III Core Stage April 20
When will NASA roll out the Artemis III core stage? NASA will roll the core stage for Artemis III from its Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on Monday, April 20, marking a critical milestone for the mission that will return astronauts to the lunar surface. The core stage represents the top four-fifths of the…
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The gravity of their experience hasn’t quite set in for the Artemis II astronauts
On the home stretch of their nine-day mission, the four astronauts flying aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft are just beginning to reflect on their experience of flying beyond the Moon. Their memories of Monday’s encounter with the Moon are still fresh as they return to Earth, heading for reentry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on…
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Artemis II returns to Earth after historic 10-day mission around the Moon
After 10 days, over 800,000 km traveled, and a historic flyby of the Moon, Artemis II returned to Earth on Friday evening. Orion CM-003 Integrity, which served as the home for the mission’s four-person crew since April 1, reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean before ultimately splashing down off the coast of San Diego,…
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Artemis 2’s trip around the moon enters the home stretch — here’s how to watch the splashdown
A view from a camera mounted on one of the Orion spacecraft’s solar array wings shows Orion’s engines and thrusters in the foreground, and Earth in the background. (NASA via YouTube) The crew of NASA’s round-the-moon test mission crossed the halfway point between the moon and Earth today on their homeward journey — and they’re…