Tag: Moon

Intuitive Machines targeting January 2025 for launch of its next lunar lander

9:37 am

The landers either at or targeting the Moon's south pole
The landers either at or targeting the Moon’s south pole

The company Intuitive Machines is now aiming to launch its second Nova-C lunar lander, dubbed Athena, during a January 1-5, 2025 launch window.

The landing site is indicated on the map to the right, on the rim of Shackleton crater and almost on top of the south pole. While Chang’e-7 is targeting the same crater rim, it is not scheduled for launch until 2026.

The lander will not only include a drill for studying the surface below it, it will release a small secondary payload, the Micro-Nova Hopper, which will hopefully hop down into the permanently shadowed craters nearby.

The launch will also carry a lunar orbiter, dubbed Lunar Trailblazar, which will not only do spectroscopy of the lunar surface, looking for water, it will also be used as a communications relay satellite with Athena. That orbiter, designed to demonstrate the ability to build a smallsat at low cost, was previously threatened with cancellation because its builder, Lockheed Martin, went way over budget.

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NASA receives 11 VIPER proposals from the private sector

10:58 am

NASA is now evaluating eleven different proposals from private companies to take over the agency’s canceled VIPER lunar rover.

Equipped with three scientific instruments and a drill, the rover was to be delivered to the Moon by a commercial lander, Griffin, built by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Astrobotic and several other companies have CLPS contracts to deliver NASA science and technology experiments to the Moon. NASA pays for delivery services for its payloads. The companies are expected to find non-NASA customers to close the business case.

NASA is paying Astrobotic $323 million for landing services on top of the cost of VIPER itself. NASA’s commitment to Congress was that VIPER would cost $433.5 million with landing in 2023. By the beginning of this year, that had become $505.4 million with landing in 2024.

It appears NASA canceled the VIPER mission because the agency had doubts Astrobotic would launch Griffin on time. The rover cost overruns, plus additional costs from that launch delay, made NASA management back out.

Though NASA has not revealed any details about the new eleven proposals, we know that Astrobotic’s competitor, Intuitive Machines, is one of those proposals. How it can get it launched to the Moon for less than it would have cost to launch on Astrobotic’s Griffin however is a mystery to me.

Meanwhile, Griffin is still going to launch, with Astrobotic now able to sell that VIPER payload space to others and NASA paying for the flight.

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Ispace targeting a December launch for its second attempt to softland on the Moon

10:41 am

Landing zone for Resilience lander

At a press conference yesterday officials of the Japanese company Ispace announced that they are now targeting a December 2024 launch of their second Hakuto-R lunar lander, dubbed “Resilience”, with the landing site located in the high mid-latitudes of the near-side of the Moon.

The map to the right indicates that location, inside Mare Frigoris. Atlas Crater is where Ispace attempted but failed to soft land its first lunar lander, Hakuto-R1, in April 2023.

This new lander will be launched on a Falcon 9 rocket. It carries six commercial payloads. It also appears the company decided to go for an easier landing site on this second mission. Rather than try to land inside a crater, it is targeting a very large and flat mare region, thus reducing the challenges presented to its autonomous software.

Ispace already has contracts both with NASA ($55 million) and Japan’s JAXA space agency ($80 million) for two more future landers, so a successful landing this time is critical to the company’s future.

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China significantly expands its international partners for its planetary program

10:34 am

According to China’s state-run press, it has recently signed cooperative agreements with a significant number of new nations for either its International Lunar Research Station project (ILRS) or other deep space planetary missions.

During the opening ceremony of a two-day space conference held in Tunxi, east China’s Anhui Province on Thursday, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and its counterpart in Senegal signed an agreement on International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) cooperation.

At the conference, China’s Deep Space Exploration Lab (DSEL) inked memoranda of understanding with 10 institutions from countries including Serbia, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Panama and South Africa. Also among the institutions are the Belt and Road Alliance for Science & Technology, the Foundation for Space Development Africa, and Africa Business Alliance.

Senegal is now the thirteenth nation to join China’s lunar base project, following Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. That partnership also includes about eleven academic or governmental bureaucracies.

The agreements involving China’s deep space exploration involve other missions to other planets, with those nations either providing science instruments or some other contribution. That Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates have signed deals suggests there is a rising desire in the west to team up with China because of its general success in space, compared to the problems other nations often experience when dealing with NASA and the U.S. If so, the competition will certainly heat up in the coming years. I hope in this competition that American private enterprise can make up for the failures of our government.

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Russia claims its next unmanned Moon mission, Luna-26, is on schedule

9:09 am

Phase I of China/Russian Lunar base roadmap
The original phase I plan of Chinese-Russian lunar
base plan, from June 2021.

According to Russia’s state-run press, its next unmanned Moon mission, Luna-26, is on schedule for a planned launch in 2027, though that press also claims the launch may happen in 2026 instead.

The problem with this claim is that Russia had for years said that this lunar orbiter would launch by 2025. As expected, the mission has not launched on time, as have all of Russia’s 21st century lunar exploration plans. For example, the previous lunar mission, the Luna-25 lunar lander, was originally supposed to land on the Moon in 2021, was not launched until 2023, and ended up crashing on the Moon when the spacecraft did not function properly during a engine burn in lunar orbit.

In the first phase of the so-called China-Russian partnership to explore the Moon, is shown by the 2021 graph to the right, China continues to do all the heavy lifting, and do so pretty much on the schedule predicted. Russian meanwhile continues to do what I predicted back in 2021, get nothing done on time and when launched have problems.

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NASA awards Intuitive Machines a new lunar lander contract

8:55 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded Intuitive Machines a new lunar lander contract for $116.9 million to carry six NASA/ESA payloads to the surface of the Moon.

The announcement stated that the landing will be in the south pole region of the Moon, but did not reveal the specific location. Of the six science packages, the most important is a European Space Agency-led drill that will obtain samples from as much as three feet down and then analyze them.

The contract calls for a 2027 landing, and will be the fourth targeting the south pole region, following Intuitive Machines first attempted landing there early this year that landed but then tipped over, preventing its science instruments from functioning as planned.

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Firefly delivers its first Blue Ghost lunar lander for final environmental testing

9:58 am

Blue Ghost in clean room
Blue Ghost in clean room

Firefly this week completed the integration of the ten customer payloads onto its first Blue Ghost lunar lander and shipped the lander to JPL in California for final environmental testing before its planned launch before the end of this year.

Following final testing, Firefly’s Blue Ghost will ship to Cape Canaveral, Florida, ahead of its launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket scheduled for Q4 2024. Blue Ghost will then begin its transit to the Moon, including approximately a month in Earth orbit and two weeks in lunar orbit. This approach provides ample time to conduct robust health checks on each subsystem and begin payload operations during transit.

Blue Ghost will then land in Mare Crisium, a basin in the northeast quadrant on the Moon’s near side, before deploying and operating 10 instruments for a lunar day (14 Earth days) and more than 5 hours into the lunar night.

Once launched, Firefly will become the third American company, after Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, to build a privately owned lunar lander and attempt a lunar landing. Since the other two companies were not entirely successful in their landing attempts, Firefly has the chance to be the first to succeed.

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First high resolution images released from Juice’s fly-by of the Earth & Moon

9:34 am

Juice's high resolution view of the Moon
Click for original image.

The Italian science team that runs the high resolution camera on the asteroid probe Juice have now released that camera’s first images, taken to test its operation during the spacecraft’s close fly-by of both the Moon and then the Earth a week ago.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, shows the Moon’s surface during that close fly-by, which got within 435 miles. The camera is dubbed Janus, and was developed by Italy and operated by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.

JANUS will study global, regional and local features and processes on the moons, as well as map the clouds of Jupiter. It will have a resolution up to 2.4 m per pixel on Ganymede and about 10 km per pixel at Jupiter.

The main aim of JANUS’s observations during the lunar-Earth flyby was to evaluate how well the instrument is performing, not to make scientific measurements. For this reason, JANUS took images with various camera settings and time intervals – a bit like if you’re going out to test a DSLR camera for the first time. In some cases, researchers intentionally ‘blurred’ the images so that they can test out resolution recovery algorithms. In other cases, they partially saturated the image to study the effects induced on the unsaturated areas.

As can be seen by the sample image above, the test images appear to have demonstrated that Janus will function as planned when Juice arrives in orbit around Jupiter in 2031 in order to study that gas giant’s upper atmosphere as well as its larger icy moons, Ganymede, Calisto, and Europa.

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JAXA finally shuts down SLIM operations after four months of no contact

9:14 am

SLIM's last image
Click for original image.

Japan’s space agency JAXA today announced that it has now closed down all further attempts to contact its SLIM lunar lander on the surface of the Moon.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) concluded operations of the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on the lunar surface at 22:40 (JST), on August 23, after being unable to establish communication with the spacecraft during the operational periods from May to July*, following the last contact on April 28, 2024.

SLIM was launched onboard the H-IIA Launch Vehicle No.47 (H-IIA F47) on September 7, 2023 from the Tanegashima Space Center and achieved Japan’s first Moon soft landing on January 20, 2024. The landing precision was evaluated with a position error of approximately 10 meters from the target point, confirming the world’s first successful pinpoint landing. In addition, the Multi-Band Camera (MBC) successfully performed spectral observations in 10 wavelength bands on 10 rocks, exceeding initial expectations. Further, despite not being part of the original mission plan, the spacecraft was confirmed to survive three lunar nights and remained operational, demonstrating results that surpassed initial goals.

The lander’s main goal was to demonstrate the ability to do a precise robotic landing within a 100 meter landing zone. And even though one nozzle fell off during landing, resulting in SLIM landing on its side, it accomplished that goal and then survived three lunar nights, exceeding significantly its expected ability to function in harsh lunar environment.

The image to the right, reduced to post here, was taken by SLIM just before it was shut down for its first lunar night. It looks to the southeast across the width of 885-foot-wide Shioli Crater, the opposite rim the bright ridge in the upper right about a thousand feet away.

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Chinese scientists find method to extract water from Chang’e-5 lunar samples

12:04 pm

Proposed concept for extracting water from lunar regoilth
Proposed concept for extracting water from
lunar regoilth

Chinese scientists have found that by heating Chang’e-5 lunar samples to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit it is possible to extract a significant amount of water. From the paper’s abstract:

FeO and Fe2O3 are lunar minerals containing Fe oxides. Hydrogen (H) retained in lunar minerals from the solar wind can be used to produce water. The results of this study reveal that 51–76 mg of H2O can be generated from 1 g of LR [lunar regolith] after melting at temperatures above 1200 K. This amount is ∼10,000 times the naturally occurring hydroxyl (OH) and H2O on the Moon. … Our findings suggest that the hydrogen retained in LR is a significant resource for obtaining H2O on the Moon, which are helpful for establishing scientific research station on the Moon.

A video in Chinese (hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay) that describes this research can be found here. (If any of my readers understands Chinese and can provide a translation of this video’s narration, I would be very grateful.) It includes an artist’s rendering (screen capture to the right) showing how such a system on the Moon could work to extract water from the soil. Sunlight would be focused by a lensed mirror into a glass-domed container, heating the ground. The water would evaporate, condense on the glass and be sucked into a tube that would transfer it to a water tank.

This design is of course very simple and preliminary. According to Jay, “They need to heat the soil to 1000℃ (1832°F) to get the iron oxide in the lunar soil to split, the oxygen combines with hydrogen to make water and iron (melting point of iron is about 1500℃). You will need a nuclear reactor to produce that much power for an inductive furnace to get that hot. Doing the calculation, it would take about 245kw to heat up a metric ton of dirt in one hour to a 1000℃ degrees. It could be done slower over 24 hours at 10kw.”

Despite the technical difficulties getting such equipment operational on the Moon, that this research suggests water can be produced practically anywhere on the lunar surface is signficant. It suggests that even if no easily accessible water ice is found in the permanently shadowed craters at the poles, lunar bases still have viable options for obtaining water, and they don’t have even be at the poles.

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Pragyan data confirms theory that the Moon’s surface was once largely covered with molten lava oceans

10:03 am


Vikram as seen by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Click for interactive map. To see the original
image, go here.

Data from India’s Pragyan lunar rover that landed in the high southern latitudes of the Moon in August 2023 has now confirmed the theory that the Moon’s surface was once largely covered with molten lava oceans.

Santosh Vadawale, an X-ray astronomer at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, India, and his colleagues analysed radiation data collected by the APXS [one of Pragyan’s instruments], and used this information to identify the elements in the regolith and their relative abundances, which, in turn, revealed the soil’s mineral composition. The team found that all 23 samples comprised mainly ferroan anorthosite, a mineral that is common on the Moon. The results were reported in Nature today.

“It’s sort of what we expected to be there based on orbital data, but the ground truth is always really good to get,” says Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Previous landers obtained similar results. However, the Chandrayaan-3 samples are the first from the subpolar region: previous landers visited equatorial and mid-latitude zones. Together, this suggests that the composition of the regolith is uniform across the Moon’s surface.

These results are no surprise, but they confirm the global nature of the Moon’s early molten history. More important, they demonstrate that India now has the capability to send landers and rovers to other planets that are also capable of doing real research.

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Juice completes fly-by of Moon

9:58 am

Juice's view of the Moon
Click for original image.

Europe’s Juice probe to Jupiter yesterday successfully completed its close fly-by of the Moon, shifting its path as it prepares for a close fly-by of the Earth today.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken during yesterday’s flyby. At its closest approach Juice was only 435 miles above the lunar surface. It will pass the Earth today at a distance of 4,230 miles.

If the Earth fly-by today is successful, Juice will then do flybys of Venus in August 2025, Earth in September 2026, and Earth again in January 2029, arriving in Jupiter orbit in July 2031, where it is designed to study the large icy moons (Europa, Gandymede, and Calisto) of that gas giant.

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Intuitive Machines wants to land VIPER rover on Moon

9:04 am

VIPER's planned route on the Moon
VIPER’s now canceled planned route at the Moon’s south pole

The lunar lander startup Intuitive Machines has now revealed it is putting together an industry partnership to bid on flying NASA’s VIPER lunar rover on its own largest lander, still under development.

In an Aug. 13 earnings call about its second quarter financial results, Intuitive Machines executives said they were planning to respond to a request for information (RFI) that NASA issued Aug. 9 seeking input from companies and organizations interested in taking over the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission that the agency said in July it would cancel.

Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said on the call that his company, which also responded to an earlier call for “expressions of interest” from NASA regarding VIPER, is working with other companies, universities and international partners on responding to NASA’s RFI. He did not identify any of those prospective partners.

…NASA, in its RFI, said that prospective partners would be responsible for the costs of any final testing and other work on the rover itself, as well as delivering it to the lunar surface and operating it once there. NASA, in its July 17 announcement that it would cancel VIPER, said the agency would save at least $84 million by halting work now on the rover, now complete and undergoing environmental testing.

Whether this company can raise the capital to finish this mission, now that NASA has said it cannot, remains unclear. That it is trying, and NASA is not, illustrates however why NASA should get out of the business of building anything and just buy it from the private sector. NASA’s attempt to build VIPER went 3Xs over budget and is considerably behind schedule. Now the private sector see profits in finishing the job, which will in turn save the agency considerable money. Imagine if NASA had done this from the beginning. The savings would have been even greater, and VIPER might right now be even closer to launch.

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Brooklyn startup wins NASA contract to develop wireless communication technology for use on the Moon

9:55 am

The Brooklyn startup Yank Technologies has won a $150K NASA contract to develop wireless communication technology for use on the Moon.

Yank Technologies plans to develop two systems for the lunar surface: Wireless Power Receiver Converters for lunar rovers and Resonant Inductive Connectors for high voltage power transmission on the Moon and Mars.

The Wireless Power Receiver Converters are designed to improve rover efficiency and reduce mass by integrating multiple converters into a single-stage converter that supports various voltages. These converters also enhance charging reliability by accommodating misalignment and varying distances.

Resonant Inductive Connectors are designed to maintain reliable connections with high-voltage lines despite the presence of lunar regolith or Martian dust. Unlike traditional connectors, which are prone to wear and unreliable connections, these connectors are built to withstand harsh environments.

The award was likely made in late June as part of an small business award of similar development contracts to about 250 companies. Though wireless techology is well established, in this case the goal is to lower the weight of this equipment while making it space-hardened. While such work is routinely required, this contract highlights the detail work necessary for making operations on an alien planet practical.

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Chinese scientists discover thin-layered graphene in Chang’e-5 lunar samples

9:47 am

Chinese scientists analyzing one of the lunar samples brought back in 2021 by Chang’e-5 from the Moon’s near side have detected for the first time what they call “natural few-layered graphene.”

You can read the paper here. The samples from Chang’e-5 came from some of what are believed are some of the youngest lava on the Moon. This discovery confirms that conclusion. From the paper:

The identification of graphene in the core–shell structure suggests a bottom-up synthesis process rather than exfoliation, which generally involves a high-temperature catalytic reaction. Therefore, a formation mechanism of few-layer graphene and graphitic carbon is proposed here.

Volcanic eruption, a typical high-temperature process, occurred on the Moon. Lunar soil can be stirred up by solar wind and high-temperature plasma discharge can be generated on the Moon’s surface. … [T]he Fe-bearing mineral particles, such as olivine and pyroxene, in lunar soil might catalyse the conversion of carbon-containing gas molecules in the solar wind or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into graphitic carbon of different thicknesses and morphologies on their surfaces, including few-layer graphene flakes and carbon shells.

These graphene flakes are likely to disappear over time, so its existence reinforces the belief that this lava is young.

Unlike too many American planetary scientists recently — who have repeatedly implied that finding anything even remotely related to life processes suggests the possibility of life on Venus and Mars — the Chinese scientists don’t make the additional absurd claim that finding carbon on the Moon suggests the existence of life. It doesn’t. Kudos to them for being good scientists.

As a result, expect American mainstream media to pay no attention to this result, despite its intriguing and unprecedented nature.

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China scientists propose both a communications and GPS-type infrastructure on the Moon

9:34 am

In line with the remarkably rational and long term plans China has developed for exploring the solar system, Chinese scientists have proposed the country develop both a communications and GPS-type infrastructure on the Moon, with both including constellations of satellites in orbit as well as facilities on the ground.

A first phase would establish satellites in elliptical frozen orbits around the moon. A second phase would see further … satellites and spacecraft at Earth-moon Lagrange points 1, 2, 4 and 5, a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), and a spacecraft in geostationary orbit, termed a cislunar space station.

A third and final phase would add satellites in existing and new distant retrograde orbits (DRO), forming a near-moon space and extended space constellations. The system also includes comprehensive ground-based facilities.

While this plan is simply a proposal, it fits with China’s overall strategies for lunar exploration, all of which are designed carefully so that they can be scaled up for more complex operations there as well as elsewhere in the solar system. And based on China’s track record in space in the past decade, we should be entirely confident this program or some variation will be built.

That is, unless China undergoes a major economic collapse and a change in leadership that has different priorities.

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Scientists find hydrogen molecules in Chang’e-5 lunar samples

9:18 am

According to China’s state-run press, scientists analyzing the lunar samples brought back by its Chang’e-5 lander have detected extensive “hydrated” molecules in Moon’s regolith.

The mineral’s structure and composition bear a striking resemblance to a mineral found near volcanoes on Earth. At the same time, terrestrial contamination or rocket exhaust has been ruled out as the origin of this hydrate, according to the study.

The Chinese article keeps referring to these molecules as a form of “water molecules” but that is dead wrong. These are mineral molecules that simply have hydrogen as a component. There is no water here.

The discovery suggests that the detection of hydrogen on the surface of the Moon, both in the permanently-shadowed craters at the poles as well as lower latitudes, might not be water at all, but hydrated minerals. If so, the Moon is going to be a much more difficult place to establish colonies or even research bases, as getting water (and hydrogen and oxygen) is going to require a much more difficult mining and processing effort.

For several years the data has increasingly pointed in this direction. And for several years I have noticed a strong unwillingness of scientists and the press to recognize the trend (as illustrated by the above article’s false insistence that these are water molecules). Water ice has not been ruled out yet in the permanently-shadowed craters at the poles, but the evidence is mounting against it.

I suspect this reluctance is fueled by a desire to not say anything that might discourage exploration of the Moon, and the possibility of water there has been the main driver for all the recent lunar exploration programs. I can’t play that game. As much as I want humanity to explore the Moon and the solar system, we mustn’t do it based on lies. The facts need to be reported coldly.

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NASA cancels its VIPER payload on Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander

9:06 am

VIPER's planned route on the Moon
VIPER’s now canceled planned route at the Moon’s south pole

Late yesterday NASA announced it was canceling the VIPER rover that was the primary payload on Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander, scheduled for launch in the fall of 2025.

NASA stated cost increases, delays to the launch date, and the risks of future cost growth as the reasons to stand down on the mission. The rover was originally planned to launch in late 2023, but in 2022, NASA requested a launch delay to late 2024 to provide more time for preflight testing of the Astrobotic lander. Since that time, additional schedule and supply chain delays pushed VIPER’s readiness date to September 2025, and independently its CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) launch aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lander also has been delayed to a similar time. Continuation of VIPER would result in an increased cost that threatens cancellation or disruption to other CLPS missions. NASA has notified Congress of the agency’s intent.

Knowing a bit of history is important to understand this decision. In the first half of the 2010s VIPER was called Resource Prospector, and was intended as an entirely NASA-built lunar lander and rover mission with a budget of about billion dollars. In 2018 however the Trump administration cancelled it as part of its decision to shift from missions designed, built, and owned by NASA to making NASA simply a customer buying products from private sector. Rather than spend a billion on one lunar lander/rover mission, NASA would use that money to buy multiple lunar landers from private companies, and put its instruments on those.

NASA then decided to repurpose the rover portion of Resource Prospector, turning it into VIPER to launch on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander. However, that project still carried with it all the problems that curse all government-designed, government-built, and government-owned projects. It had no fixed price contract but instead had the typical government unlimited checking account, and thus its costs kept rising with repeated delays in construction.

When then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine revealed the project at the 2019 International Astronautical Congress, the estimated cost was $250 million. By the time NASA was ready to make a cost commitment to Congress, that grew to $433.5 million with landing in 2023. That landing date slipped to 2024 with a cost of $505.4 million. Now it has slipped again to 2025 and with a cost of $609.6 million, more than 30 percent above the commitment. That triggered an automatic cancellation review, Kearns said, which took place last month.

Some of the cause of the 2023 delay was because Astrobotic’s Griffin lander wasn’t ready either. Now however it appears VIPER still won’t be ready for the 2025 launch, even though the lander will be ready.

NASA has therefore decided to stop throwing good money after bad, and kill the rover. It however has not killed its funding for Astrobotic’s Griffin, and the mission will go forward, with the company offering its now open payload space to others. It also may use this space to fly a demonstration mission of its own proposed LunarGrid solar power system.

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A pit on the Moon reveals some really bad journalism

3:54 pm

Mare Tranquilitatis Pit

At the start of this week three different major news organizations posted articles about a so-called “discovery” of a cave on the Moon that could sustain a human colony.

What all three articles [now updated with a fourth] demonstrated however was how little research was done by the journalists who wrote the articles, as well as the lack of any editorial supervision to make sure the news organization publishing the stories didn’t look stupid.

Here are the articles in question:

The original paper that these stories are based on can be read here. It didn’t take me more than five seconds to immediately recognize that the pit in question, dubbed the Mare Tranquillitatis pit, has been known about for years. I in fact wrote about it as long ago as 2011, when researchers used Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to take oblique images of it. One such image is to the right, cropped and enhanced to post here.

The new research has simply used the radar instrument on LRO to take oblique radar data to see if there are any cave passages at its base, and found that there could be voids leading off from the pit as much as “tens of meters” long, or about 100 feet or so.

This is good research, but the finding is hardly significant. Numerous other studies have suggested the same results, all tantalizing but entirely unconfirmed until we can send some probe (manned or manned) into these pits. In addition, hundreds of similar lunar pits have been documented for more than a decade.

Yet the first two articles above treated this cave as God’s gift to humanity, as if it was the first such pit found on the Moon that could hold a human base, while the third provided so little information about the background of this work that the article was essentially worthless.

I write this as a warning to my readers. Mainstream news sources no longer do the proper due diligence that should be expected from writers and editors. If you want good information, you need to go to sources that specialize in the subject (such this website), and you must go to more than one in order to understand the subject entirely.

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Europe targets 2031 for the first mission of its own lunar lander

10:48 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved a target date of 2031 for the first mission of its own unmanned lunar lander, dubbed Argonaut, and launched on the most powerful version of the Ariane-6.

On 16 July, the agency published a call for Argonaut Mission 1 Phase A/B1 development aimed at demonstrating the technical and programmatic feasibility of the Argonaut mission concept. The call included a proposed launch date of 2031 for the first Argonaut mission to the Moon.

The Argonaut lunar lander will be launched aboard an Ariane 64 rocket. Once operational, ESA envisions it being used for a wide variety of applications, from cargo logistics to acting as an in-situ resource utilization plant. The agency has already completed pre-phase A studies for what it calls the European Charging Station for the Moon. This system would be launched aboard an Argonaut lunar lander and would essentially act as a gas station on the Moon that would be used to support crewed missions on the surface of the Moon.

As I’ve noted previously, ESA routinely sets a glacial pace on all its government-run projects. Do not expect this government lander to fly on this schedule. More likely by 2031 there will be many cheaper and available options from the private sector, and European companies wanting to put payloads down on the Moon will turn to those, especially because Argonaut is apparently being forced to use the expensive expendable Ariane-6 rocket. The cost for going on Argonaut is simply going to be too high.

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South Korea: Numerous close calls between its lunar orbiter and others

9:58 am

A South Korean official has revealed that during the ongoing mission of its lunar orbiter Danuri it has had to act to avoid dozens of potential collisions with three other spacecraft.

In a presentation at the Secure World Foundation’s Summit for Space Sustainability here July 11, Soyoung Chung, senior researcher at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s (KARI’s) strategy and planning directorate, said her agency had received 40 “red alarms” of potential collisions among spacecraft orbiting the moon in the last 18 months.

The warnings primarily involve close approaches involving KARI’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter from India’s space agency ISRO, which are all in similar low orbits around the moon. The three agencies voluntarily share information about the orbits of their spacecraft using a NASA platform called MADCAP that generates collision warnings.

In addition, engineers had to institute a maneuver to avoid Japan’s SLIM lunar lander, and in that case the warning occurred only a day before the potential collision was to occur.

The official noted that at present there is no system to coordinate lunar orbits and spacecraft, as exists for Earth orbit. South Korea and Romania have proposed giving this power to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which based on UN politics would likely be a very bad thing for the commercial space industry. I guarantee that UN agency would quickly favor government missions in its decision, and would also favor authoritarian governments over capitalist nations.

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Reanalysis of Apollo seismic data finds 22,000 previously undetected quakes

2:50 pm

By taking a new look at the data from the seismometers placed on the lunar surface by the Apollo missions during the 1970s, Keisuke Onodera of the University of Tokyo was able to find approximately 22,000 previously undetected quakes, almost tripling the rate of seismic activity on the Moon. From the paper’s abstract:

In the 1970s, two types of seismometers were installed on the nearside of the Moon. One type is called the Long-Period (LP) seismometer, which is sensitive below 1.5 Hz. The other is called the Short-Period (SP) seismometer, whose sensitivity is high around 2–10 Hz. So far, more than 13,000 seismic events have been identified through analyzing the LP data, which allowed us to investigate lunar seismicity and its internal structure.

On the other hand, most of the SP data have remained unanalyzed because they include numerous artifacts. This fact leads to the hypotheses that (a) we have missed lots of high-frequency seismic events and (b) lunar seismicity could be underestimated.

To verify these ideas, I conducted an analysis of the SP data. … I discovered 22,000 new seismic events, including thermal moonquakes, impact-induced events, and shallow moonquakes. Among these, I focused on analyzing shallow moonquakes—tectonic-related quakes. Consequently, it turned out that there were 2.6 times more tectonic events than considered before. Furthermore, additional detections of shallow moonquakes enabled me to see the regionality in seismicity. Comparing three landing sites (Apollo 14, 15, and 16), I found that the Apollo 15 site was more seismically active than others. These findings can change the conventional views of lunar seismicity.

The data also suggests the northern hemisphere is more active than the southern.

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Kazakhstan joins China’s lunar base project

9:03 am

Kazakhstan today became the twelth nation to join China’s International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, and the first besides Russia with a real viable space industry.

The agreement appears to also include language allowing both nations to use each other’s spaceports. Since Kazakhstan’s main area of participation in space is its Baikonur spaceport, built during the Soviet days and up to now used exclusively by the Russians, this agreement could be a big deal. As the article notes,

China is currently working to boost pad access for emerging commercial launch service providers. The Baikonur cosmodrome was set up by the Soviet Union in Kazakhstan. It is leased to Russia until 2050. The country also hosts the Sary Shagan Test Site. Kazakhstan shares a border with Xinjiang, in China’s west.

“Kazakhstan will need to diversify away from Russia if it wants to have a big future in space,” Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor specializing in space policy and military uses of outer space at the University of Leicester, told SpaceNews.

This deal indicates once again the foolishness of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. It highlighted to all of its neighbors that they need to form alliances with others to strengthen their hand should Russia turn its aggressive eye in their direction. Kazakhstan has now done so, to Russia’s long term detriment.

China’s twelve partner nations are Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. In addition, about eleven academic or governmental bureaucracies have signed on along with several other countries (Bahrain and Peru) who have not signed on but are involved in other ways.

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China: Chang’e-6 collected more than four pounds of material from Moon

9:11 am

According to China’s state-run press today, its Chang’e-6 sample return mission collected 1,953.2 grams, more than four pounds, from the Aitkin Basin on the far side of the Moon.

Based on preliminary measurement, the Chang’e-6 mission collected 1,935.3 grams of lunar samples, according to the CNSA. “We have found that the samples brought back by Chang’e-6 were more viscous compared to previous samples, with the presence of clumps. These are observable characteristics,” Ge Ping, deputy director of the CNSA’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, who is also the spokesperson for the Chang’e-6 mission, told the press at the ceremony.

Researchers will then carry out the storage and processing of the lunar samples as planned and initiate scientific research work.

If all goes as plans, they will be ready to begin distributing samples for study to Chinese researchers in about six months.

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Chang’e-6 sample return capsule opened in China

10:27 am

According to China’s state-run press, the return capsule carrying samples from the far side of the Moon was opened yesterday “during a ceremony at the China Academy of Space Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation in Beijing.”

No other details were released. The pictures at the link appear to show engineers removing an internal capsule from inside the return capsule, which makes sense. For many scientific reasons the actual samples must be kept sealed from the Earth’s atmosphere in order to make sure they are not contaminated. The actual lunar material will not be exposed and touched until it is placed inside a very controlled environment.

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Chang’e-6 brings back the first lunar samples from Moon’s far side

9:10 am

Engineers inspecting and opening Chang'e-6 return capsule
Engineers inspecting and opening Chang’e-6’s
sample return capsule after landing today.
Click for original image.

According to China’s state-run press, the sample return capsule of its Chang’e-6 lunar mission successfully landed today in the inner Mongolia region of China, bringing back the first lunar samples from Moon’s far side.

Under ground control, the returner separated from the orbiter approximately 5,000 km above the South Atlantic. The capsule entered the Earth’s atmosphere at about 1:41 p.m. at an altitude of about 120 km and a speed of nearly 11.2 km per second. After aerodynamic deceleration, it skipped out of the atmosphere and then began to glide downwards, before re-entering the atmosphere and decelerating for a second time.
At around 10 km above the ground, a parachute opened, and the returner later landed precisely and smoothly in the predetermined area, where it was recovered by a search team.

The returner is set to be airlifted to Beijing for opening, and the lunar samples will be transferred to a team of scientists for subsequent storage, analysis and study, said the CNSA. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence is important. China has now successfully flown this atmospheric skip maneuver twice on returning from the Moon. Though both missions were unmanned, the technical knowledge gained from these flights is critical for their plans to send astronauts to the Moon in the next few years.

I have embedded China’s broadcast of the landing below. The sample capsule will now be carefully opened and the samples distributed first to Chinese scientists and later to China’s various partners in its lunar base project. The samples themselves came from a small mare region on the edge of Apollo Crater inside South Aitken Basin, one of the largest impact basins on the Moon. It is thus hoped that the samples were excavated from deep within the Moon during the impact, and will provide new data on the Moon’s make-up and history.
» Read more

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Are Chang’e-6’s lunar samples on the way back to Earth?

9:30 am

In Friday’s June 21, 2024 quick links, changes to lunar orbit of China’s Chang’e-6 sample return spacecraft were detected by ham operators. As I noted, “It isn’t clear whether this was the previous orbit adjustment, a new one, or the burn that would send the sample return capsule back to Earth.”

According to Space News today, the spacecraft with the samples is on its way back to Earth, based on additional information detected by amateurs. China however has released no information on the status of the spacecraft.

Upon return to Earth, the reentry capsule is expected to touch down at Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia during an half-an-hour long window opening at 1:41 a.m. Eastern (0541 UTC) June 25. The information is according to airspace closure notices. CNSA has not openly published timings of mission events in advance.

Earlier reports (which I can’t find now) had said the return was tentatively scheduled for June 25, 2024, so this Space News report makes sense. The lack of information from China is par for the course.

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter snaps picture of Chang’e-6 on far side of the Moon

10:23 am

Chang'e-6's landing site
Click for original image of Chang’e-6 on the Moon

The science team running Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have now released an image of China’s Chang’e-6 lander on far side of the Moon, taken on June 7, 2024 one week after the spacecraft touched down.

Chang’e 6 landed on 1 June, 2024, and when LRO passed over the landing site almost a week later, it acquired an image showing the Chang’e 6 lander on the rim of an eroded ~50 meter diameter crater.

The LROC team computed the landing site coordinates as 41.6385°S, 206.0148°E, at -5256 meters elevation relative to the average lunar surface, with an estimated horizontal accuracy of plus-or-minus 30 meters.

The overview map to the right, showing the entire far side of the Moon, shows that picture as the inset in the lower left, cropped to post here. The black and white dot in the center is Chang’e-6’s lander, with the surrounding brightened ground showing the blast area produced by the engines during touchdown.

According to the LRO press release, the large dark area that surrounds the lander — as seen in the wider inset in the upper right — is a “basaltic mare deposit” — similar to the vast dark frozen lava seas evident to our own eyes on the near side of the Moon.

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Bill Anders, the thoughtful astronaut who liked to go fast

12:27 pm

Bill Anders suiting up for the December 1968 launch of Apollo 8
Bill Anders suiting up for the December 1968
launch of Apollo 8

The death of Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on June 7, 2024 requires that I give the public my own personal taste of the man, whom I met and interviewed when I was writing my 1998 history of the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8.

The first time I met Bill Anders was in 1997. Anders had told me to fly into Los Angeles for our first interview. A few days before my arrival, however, his wife Valerie realized that both she and Anders would not be in Los Angeles, but in San Diego.

Rather than have me change flights, Anders agreed to drive up to LA, pick me up at the airport, and drive me to San Diego so I could interview Valerie. During the two hour drive I would be able to interview him.

Anders was waiting for me as I exited the terminal. As I have noticed routinely, he seemed much smaller than I expected, as does every astronaut at first meeting. Anders guided me to a low-slung sports car, which he slid into with ease. I — being 6′ 4″ — had to crowbar my way in.

And then Anders demonstrated instantly one reason he was chosen to fly to the Moon. He started the car, and backed out of the parking space and out of the lot at what seemed to me to be about seventy miles an hour. And he did it with total control.
» Read more

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Lunar samples transferred to Chang’e-6 return vehicle

7:54 am

According to China’s state-run press, the ascent vehicle has docked with the Chang’e-6 orbiter and successfully transferred its lunar samples to the return spacecraft that will bring those samples back to Earth.

The ascender of China’s Chang’e-6 probe successfully rendezvoused and docked with the probe’s orbiter-returner combination in lunar orbit at 2:48 p.m. (Beijing Time) on Thursday, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced.

The container carrying the world’s first samples from the far side of the moon had been transferred from the ascender to the returner safely by 3:24 p.m., the CNSA said.

That return is scheduled for later this month. In the meantime the orbiter will adjust its position in preparation for sending the return capsule back.

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