Intuitive Machines (IM) has chosen SpaceX and the SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket for its second moon mission. At present, both of the Intuitive Machines missions headed to the moon in the next three years will be launched by SpaceX. This will be the Intuitive Machines IM-2 Polar Mission, and will bring the IM Nova-C lander to the moon, where it'll deploy the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment (PRIME-1) drill by December 2022.
NASA has created four small cameras, each about the size of a computer mouse, to figure out what happens underneath a lunar lander when it lands on the moon. The small cameras are dubbed Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies or SCALPSS. NASA's cameras are expected to head to the moon this year as a payload aboard the Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander spacecraft.
NASA has briefly detailed the eight lunar tech finalist concepts for future missions, ones that provide potential ways to illuminate the dark parts of the Moon, improve exploration, and more. The concepts come from university students across the US and will be presented as part of NASA's Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge kicking off today.
A company from the UK called Spacebit has announced that it will put a rover on the moon in 2021. The mission will mark the first UK mission to the lunar surface. The rover the team is sending is very different from rovers typically sent to the moon and other planets.
China's coming off a very successful mission with the Chang'e 5 returning its samples to Earth recently. With one complicated and successful mission under its belt, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) has begun to talk about plans for future space missions. The agency outlined a new three-step plan detailing its plans for future moon and deep space exploration.
NASA is preparing astronauts for missions in the Orion spacecraft with the arrival of the spacecraft simulator at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The simulator allows astronauts, engineers, and flight controllers to train and practice for mission scenarios using Orion for future missions to the moon. Orion is the spacecraft that will be used for the first Artemis missions to the moon.
SpaceX's recent activities have definitely taken up a large portion of space science news but it is hardly the only one with its eyes looking to the heavens. Establishing some presence in outer space is obviously a race among the world's superpowers and China just broke a few records, many of it its own, these past weeks. Its Chang'e 5 spacecraft has just returned from a historic lunar mission, bringing with it the Earth's first moon rocks and dirt in over four decades.
So far, the Chinese Chang'e 5 mission has gone off without a hitch. China has announced the orbiter-reentry capsule of the probe has performed its first moon-Earth transfer injection maneuver. The maneuver was conducted Saturday morning, placing the probe into an elliptical lunar orbit and preparing it to return to Earth.
NASA has announced the private companies it will use to collect 'extraterrestrial resources.' The space agency previously revealed intentions to tap commercial enterprises for space resource collection, underscoring its continued work with private businesses to speed up its missions and cut down costs. The arrangement will kick off with these companies collecting lunar regolith.
Several days after launching the lunar probe, officials in Beijing have announced that the Chang'e 5 vessel is on its way back to Earth carrying Moon rocks for study. Assuming the lander arrives intact, this will represent the first time lunar rock samples have been brought to Earth since the 1970s. Chang'e 5 took off from the Moon around 11 AM EST on Thursday.
China announced yesterday that it's Chang'e-5 probe had successfully touched down on the lunar surface. The probe completed its drilling, sampling, and sealing process for its lunar soil samples at 04:53 BJT on Wednesday. The successfully gathered samples marked the first automatic sampling to take place on the moon.
It would appear that China has landed on our moon, once again. The Chang'e-5 mission (嫦娥五号) works with China's mission module ready to bring back samples from the surface of our nearest space neighbor. The landing was expected to take place near the mountain Mons Rumker, in the Oceanus Porocellarum region on our moon. The announcement was made in a statement from state-run CGTN news this morning.