NASA's plan to return to the Moon in 2024 could be delayed, with a new proposal suggesting the US space agency reduce its emphasis on another lunar landing and instead focus on a human mission to Mars. Until now, the so-called Moon to Mars Program had scheduled putting the first woman, and the next man, on the Moon in just four years time.
If we took a compass to the moon today, it wouldn't work because the moon has no magnetic field. That wasn't always the case. Scientists at MIT have pinned down the timing of the demise of the lunar dynamo. Scientists say that at one point in the lifecycle of the moon, billions of years ago, it had a magnetic field that was likely stronger than the field that the Earth has today.
NASA's Super Guppy aircraft landed this week in Ohio to drop off NASA's newest Moon capsule. This Orion capsule is part of the Artemis I mission with an aim for the surface of our close lunar relative. This Orion spacecraft is currently arriving at NASA's Plum Brook Station where it'll be going through a series of tests before it reaches its next stage of preparedness for its flight to our Earth's Moon.
NASA has announced the five private American space companies it has tapped to deliver payloads to the Moon under its Artemis program. The list is rounded out by some familiar names, including SpaceX and Blue Origin. The disclosure follows NASA's July announcement during which it opened to proposals from companies willing to provide this service.
Outside of St. Louis, Missouri on the night of November 11, 2019, a sonic boom was heard. At the same time, sightings from 7 different states tipped the appearance of a fireball falling from space. The next day, local Maine Mineral and Gem Museum sent out a bounty of sorts. The first person to bring them a one kilogram (or larger) chunk of this meteorite would get a $25,000 USD reward.
Decades ago, NASA astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt were part of the Apollo 17 mission to the moon. As part of their duties, they gathered samples from the moon by driving a 4cm wide tube into the Moon's surface. The samples have remained in the container for over 40 years. As part of the NASA Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) initiative, the sample is being opened and studied using tools that weren't available when they were first collected.
Today in Houston, Texas, Boeing announced that they'd officially submitted a proposal to NASA as part of the Artemis space program. The Boeing submission today was for an integrated Human Lander System (HLS) that'll bring astronauts to our Earth's moon, then back up again to lunar orbit. Boeing's proposal emphasized a "Fewest Steps to the Moon" approach with NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1B.
Spacebit is a company that we've previously spoken about with regard to their space spiders. They're bringing some jumping, crawling machines to the moon in the near future, and they've got some ideas for how to make the whole project all the more public and fun for the masses. One of these ideas is to gather a whole bunch of photos from interested people on the internet to engrave upon a piece of metal that'll be sent with the spiders.
With NASA's Artemis program tasked to return humans to the moon by 2024, today a coalition of companies headed up by Blue Origin announced that they will be working together on a lunar lander they'll pitch for the project. Blue Origin calls this group, comprised of four different companies, a "national team" that will each play a part in developing a "Human Landing System for the Artemis mission.
This bit of robotics from the folks at Spacebit is known as "The Walking Rover". It's effectively a moon spider - albeit with 4 legs instead of 8, and a box-like body of metal rather than organic. It's powered by the sun via solar panels and stores energy on rechargeable batteries. It weighs around 1.3kg, works with Swarm Intelligence, is part of a Modular Robotics Platform, and it can jump.
It's not SpaceX's own lander, but a private spacecraft made by Intuitive Machines to deliver a payload to NASA. "Our partnership with Intuitive Machines is a great example of two private companies working together with NASA to advance space exploration." said SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell. This is part of NASA's CLPS program - that's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, announced for the first time earlier this year (2019) in the month of May.
So you'd like to know about the xEMU, also known as the NASA Exploration Extravehicular Activity Mobility Unit. Let's take a look! You can see it right here - right in this article - from a few different perspectives. We're looking mostly at the NASA request for information documentation provided to the people who'll manufacture the suit and provide parts. As such, this look may contain different imagery from what you've seen in other publications.