Tag: Moon
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Former Atlas launch pad gets a new tenant
Artist’s concept of the Moon Express MX-1 spacecraft flying to the moon. Credit: Moon Express A decommissioned launch facility at Cape Canaveral where some of America’s first interplanetary missions left Earth will now be used as a test site for a commercial moon lander. Moon Express signed an agreement Thursday with Space Florida, a state…
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Chinese pathfinder probe arrives in lunar orbit
China’s lunar test probe and returned this stunning view of the Earth and the far side of the moon in October. Credit: Xinhua/SASTIND A Chinese spacecraft launched in October has settled into a circular orbit around the moon for rendezvous simulations and reconnaissance ahead of a planned lunar sample return mission, according to state media…
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UK team announces plan to crowd-source moon mission
Artist’s concept of the Lunar Mission One spacecraft landing on the moon. Credit: Lunar Missions Ltd. Scientists hope private backers will kick-start a mission to land a robotic probe on the South Pole of the moon within the next 10 years, drill deep into lunar bedrock and analyze primordial core samples to study the origins…
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Chinese probe returns from flight around the moon
Ground teams in China inspect the a space capsule after its return from a flight around the moon. Credit: Xinhua/Ren Junchuan Completing an eight-day test flight around the moon to verify technologies for a planned lunar sample return mission, an unpiloted Chinese space capsule re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at blazing speed Friday and parachuted to a…
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First commercial mission to the moon launched from China
Artist’s concept of the Manfred Memorial Moon Mission, which remains attached to the upper stage of a Long March 3C rocket for a flight around the moon. Credit: LuxSpace A modest privately-funded instrument package built by a company in Luxembourg became the first commercial to the moon to get off the ground with a fiery…
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China launches lunar sample return test mission
The Chinese have launched the third phase of its lunar exploration program on Thursday. Launch of the Chang’e-5-T1 mission took place at 1800UTC, utilizing a Long March-3C/G2 launch vehicle from the LC2 launch complex of the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, Sichuan Province. The mission is aimed at testing the technologies that are vital for the…
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Chinese probe launched on round-trip flight to the moon
A Chinese Long March 3C rocket lifted off at 1800 GMT (2 p.m. EDT; 2 a.m. Beijing time). Credit: Xinhua China launched a demonstrator probe Thursday on a round-trip flight around the moon to test out a heat shield and landing capsule planned for use on a lunar sample return mission in 2017. The unmanned…
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45 years after Tranquility: One small step to a bright future
Forty-five years ago, people across the world held their breaths as a hair-raising, heart-pounded descent occurred a quarter of a million miles away from Earth. At the Sea of Tranquility, on 20 July 1969, two humans succeeded in what many had considered impossible: landing and walking on the surface of another world. Cruise to the…
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Apollo 11 marks 45 years since historic launch
Wednesday marked the 45th anniversary of the launch of the most important space mission in human history. On this day, 1969, Apollo 11 lifted off from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center (Cape Kennedy) on the mission that would succeed in landing the first humans on the surface of another world. Mission background: On 25 May…
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Bigelow: Moon Property rights would help create a lunar industry
Robert Bigelow, founder and President of Bigelow Aerospace, believes that space property rights are essential in order to establish a space industry operating beyond Low Earth Orbit. In an effort to move forward the discussion on property rights, Bigelow is seeking clarification from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) on whether launching…