Tag: Moon
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A Japanese lander crashed on the Moon after losing track of its location
A robotic lander developed by a Japanese company named ispace plummeted to the Moon’s surface Thursday, destroying a small rover and several experiments intended to demonstrate how future missions could mine and harvest lunar resources. Ground teams at ispace’s mission control center in Tokyo lost contact with the Resilience lunar lander moments before it was…
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ispace’s Resilience lander crash lands on the Moon
The ispace Resilience lunar lander is pictured after it was integrated into the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle adapter about a week ahead of its launch on Jan. 15, 2025. Image: SpaceX via ispace In a horrible case of deja vu, Japan-based company ispace got to the finish line with its robotic lunar lander, but…
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As it happened: ispace makes second attempt at historic Moon landing
A Japanese startup was hoping that the second time will be the charm as it targets a landing on the surface of the Moon Thursday afternoon. Read through our live blog for the latest updates on the landing attempt for ispace and its Resilience lander as they happened.
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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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How Dragonfly will support the search for life on an uninhabitable world
In July 2028, NASA’s next New Frontiers program mission, Dragonfly, will launch to Saturn atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. Six years later, it will descend through the thick clouds and atmospheric layers of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan — finding a world that is both similar to and different from Earth. While on Titan, Dragonfly will…
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The Future of the Starship Program, Block 3 and Mars
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave a talk to employees inside the Starfactory, laying out the future of the Starship Program in terms of hardware and reuse. He also revealed SpaceX’s ambitious plan to colonize Mars over the next decade. Next Generation Starship Block 3 or Next Generation Ship appears to be slated to start with…
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Blue Origin boss: Government should forget launch and focus on “exotic” missions
Eighteen months after leaving his job as a vice president at Amazon to take over as Blue Origin’s chief executive, Dave Limp has some thoughts on how commercial companies and government agencies like NASA should explore the Solar System together. Limp had no background in the space industry before taking the helm of Jeff Bezos’…
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Astrobotic clears wireless charging system for moon missions with help from WiBotic
A CubeRover with a wireless charging node drives up to a second power node to charge. (Astrobotic Photo) Astrobotic says it has completed flight model acceptance testing for a wireless charging system that incorporates technology from Seattle-based WiBotic — and that could help rovers roam across the surface of the moon. The system is designed…
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Webb, Keck observe Titan; find clouds and carbon molecule in northern hemisphere
By combining data from the Keck II telescope and the joint NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope, a group of scientists observed cloud convection in the northern hemisphere of Saturn’s moon Titan — the first time such atmospheric activity has been observed in the region. A majority of Titan’s methane lakes and…
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Interlune announces deals for moon mining equipment — and for selling lunar helium-3
An artist’s conception shows a rocket with a capsule containing helium-3 heading back to Earth from the moon’s surface. (Interlune Illustration) Seattle-based Interlune provided a triple-barreled update today on its progress toward mining helium-3 on the moon and returning that resource to Earth. The startup joined Vermeer Corp., an industrial equipment manufacturer headquartered in Iowa,…