Tag: Moon
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Interlune wins $4.8M grant for Texas center focusing on simulated moon dirt
An artist’s conception shows Interlune’s robotic regolith harvester on the moon. (Interlune Illustration) Seattle-based Interlune has won a grant of up to $4.84 million from the Texas Space Commission to open a center of excellence at NASA’s Johnson Space Center that would focus on simulated moon rocks and soil. The center would be part of…
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As preps continue, it’s looking more likely that NASA will fly the Artemis II mission
Late Saturday night, technicians at Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the core stage for NASA’s second Space Launch System rocket into position between the vehicle’s two solid-fueled boosters. Working inside the iconic 52-story-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, ground teams used heavy-duty cranes to first lift the butterscotch orange core stage from its cradle in the…
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Here’s the secret to how Firefly was able to nail its first lunar landing
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost science station accomplished a lot on the Moon in the last two weeks. Among other things, its instruments drilled into the Moon’s surface, tested an extraterrestrial vacuum cleaner, and showed that future missions could use GPS navigation signals to navigate on the lunar surface. These are all important achievements, gathering data…
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Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander is on deck to deliver NASA payload to the moon
An artist’s conception shows the Blue Moon MK1 lander on the moon. (Blue Origin Illustration) Update: The first Blue Moon MK1 mission is currently scheduled for no earlier than 2026. NASA says it has penciled in Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 cargo lander to deliver a scientific payload to the moon’s south polar region as…
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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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Yes, we are about to be treated to a second lunar landing in a week
The Apollo 17 mission landed on the Moon on December 11, in 1972. From that point on, literally for decades, NASA and the United States did not go back to the surface of our nearest planetary body. It was not until February 22, 2024, that another American-built spacecraft made a soft landing on the Moon.…
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Firefly’s picture-perfect Moon landing shows the way for lunar exploration
Firefly Aerospace became the first commercial company to make a picture-perfect landing on the Moon early Sunday, touching down on an ancient basaltic plain, named Mare Crisium, to fulfill a $101 million contract with NASA. The lunar lander, called Blue Ghost, settled onto the Moon’s surface at 2:34 am CST (3:34 am EST; 08:34 UTC). A…
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The Moon’s next robotic visitor is lining up for landing this weekend
CEDAR PARK, Texas—Early Sunday morning, while most of America is sleeping, a couple dozen engineers in Central Texas will have their eyes glued to monitors watching data stream in from a quarter-million miles away. These ground controllers at Firefly Aerospace hope that their robotic spacecraft, named Blue Ghost, will become the second commercial mission to…
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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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Launch Roundup: Starship, Ariane 6 and telescope missions delayed, lunar lander flies
Several significant missions were scheduled for this week, including the third lunar lander to launch in just over a month. The Intuitive Machines-2 (IM-2) mission will explore and analyze the Moon’s subsurface, testing new technologies and paving the way for future lunar missions. NASA is also set to launch its SPHEREx observatory, which will map…