Slim spacecraft landed on the moon and is communicating with earth but is not generating electricity
(I’m really enjoying the soft piano music being played in the background of this Japanese space agency live feed. Very calming in a tense situation!)
The probe is now “scanning the surface” and looking for a place to land, space agency officials say.
Continue reading...The space race of the 20th century put the first person on the moon. Now a new race to the lunar surface – with new global players – is just getting going. Robin McKie reports
Robin McKie is the science editor of the Observer. Over the last 42 years, he’s covered everything from advances in genetics and new discoveries in physics to the urgent scientific issues raised by the Covid pandemic. But one topic excites him more than any other: space – and, more specifically, the moon.
He tells Michael Safi how the first crewed mission to the moon in 1969 captured the imagination of his generation and why the modern-day missions are something to be newly excited by.
Continue reading...If all goes to plan, Jaxa’s lander will make Japan the fifth country ever to land on the moon
Japan is on final approach to become only the fifth country to land on the moon, in what would be a reversal of fortunes as it attempts to join a global space race centred on unravelling the mysteries of the lunar landscape.
If all goes to plan, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim) will begin its descent to the rocky lunar surface at midnight on Friday (1500 GMT) before touching down about 20 minutes later, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa).
Continue reading...The luxury fashion brand announced a collaboration with Axiom Space to outfit astronauts for the 2025 mission to the moon
Prada will take its designs to the next atmospheric level as the Italian fashion house announced its latest partnership with Axiom Space to design spacesuits for astronauts.
This week, the Milan-based luxury brand announced its collaboration with the Texas-based commercial space company to design Nasa’s lunar spacesuits for its 2025 Artemis III mission – the first crewed flight to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Continue reading...Solar-powered vehicle will spend two weeks roaming lunar surface to help scientists understand geology of moon
India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has rolled its rover on to the moon’s surface after its successful landing at the lunar south pole.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced the rover had “ramped down from the lander and India took a walk on the moon”.
Continue reading...India has raised its spacefaring profile and will now be seen as low-cost provider for missions possible
For all the risks, for all that was riding on a successful landing, the descent to the moon’s surface was remarkably uneventful, if not exactly stress-free. The Vikram lander, part of India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, dropped steadily on its thrusters to the rock below, slowed to a hover as it approached the ground, and finally came to a rest on the dusty terrain.
When confirmation came that the lander was down, anxiety in the control room gave way to cheers and applause. With the soft touchdown, India becomes the first country to land a probe at the moon’s south pole, a rugged region where deep craters lie in permanent shadow and where ice could provide water, oxygen and fuel for future missions. The first will be on the moon itself, and in lunar orbit, but they could also supply trips to Mars, with the benefit that the materials do not need to be lifted off the Earth’s surface at great cost. It is a region of key scientific interest.
Continue reading...Vikram lander touches down at lunar south pole shortly after 6pm India time
India has become the first country to successfully land a spacecraft near the south pole of the moon, in a historic moment that drew cheers at watching parties around the country.
“India is on the moon,” Sreedhara Panicker Somanath, the chair of the Indian Space Research Organisation, said as the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft’s Vikram lander touched down shortly after 6pm (1230 BST) near the little-explored lunar south pole in a world first for any space programme.
Continue reading...Chandrayaan-3 moves into prelanding orbit amid failure of Russian mission
As it was announced that Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years had crashed on to the moon, India’s own mission, the Chandrayaan-3 lander, moved into prelanding orbit.
News on Sunday of the Russian failure was met with excitement and nervousness in India: excitement that India was now poised to win the race to become the first country to land a craft on the moon’s south pole; nervousness that its mission could also go horribly wrong at the last moment.
Continue reading...Craft spun into ‘unpredictable’ orbit before planned touchdown could take place, Russia’s state space corporation says
Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years has failed after its Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the moon, dealing a significant setback to the embattled Russian space programme’s attempt to revive its Soviet-era prestige.
The state space corporation Roscosmos said it had lost contact with the craft at 1157 GMT on Saturday after a problem as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit. A soft landing had been planned for Monday.
Continue reading...The Luna-25 mission will seek to land near the south pole of the moon, seeking signs of water or its components
Russia hopes to launch its first successful lunar landing mission for nearly 50 years, with a long-delayed takeoff from the far east of the country scheduled for early on Friday morning that the Kremlin aims to tout as a new achievement in space exploration.
The Luna-25 mission will seek to land near the south pole of the moon, collecting geological samples from the area, and sending back data for signs of water or its building blocks, which could raise the possibility of a future human colony on the moon.
Continue reading...Chandrayaan-3 launches from island in southern India in follow-up to failed effort four years ago
An Indian spacecraft has blazed its way towards the far side of the moon in a follow-up mission to its failed effort nearly four years ago to land a rover softly on the lunar surface, India’s space agency said.
Chandrayaan-3, the word for “moon craft” in Sanskrit, took off from a launch pad in Sriharikota, an island in southern India, with an orbiter, a lander and a rover, in a demonstration of India’s emerging space technology. The spacecraft will embark on a journey lasting slightly over a month before landing on the moon’s surface later in August.
Continue reading...Hakuto-R may have miscalculated altitude, says company after losing contact with spacecraft
Japan’s ispace said its attempt to make the first private moon landing had failed after losing contact with its Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lander when it unexpectedly accelerated and probably crashed on the lunar surface.
The startup said it was possible that as the lander approached the moon, its altitude measurement system had miscalculated the distance to the surface.
Continue reading...Ispace loses communication with Hakuto-R lunar lander, ending a mission that began more than four months ago
A Japanese startup attempting the first private landing on the moon has lost communication with its spacecraft and said that it assumes the lunar mission had failed.
Ispace said that it could not establish communication with the uncrewed Hakuto-R lunar lander after its expected landing time, a frustrating end to a mission that began with a launch from the US more than four months ago.
Continue reading...Administrator Bill Nelson says Beijing could seek ‘own’ resource-rich areas and next two years could be key to US-China contest
The US is locked in a space race with China and the country needs to “watch out” that its rival does not gain a foothold and try to dominate lunar resources, Nasa’s top official has warned.
The assessment came from the Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and Florida senator, who went on to warn that China could eventually claim to “own” the moon’s resource-rich areas.
Continue reading...US space agency rejoices after re-entry of spacecraft that should clear way for possible lunar landing of astronauts by 2025
Fifty years to the day after astronauts last walked on the moon, Nasa’s uncrewed Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific on Sunday at the end of a mission that should clear the way for a possible lunar landing of astronauts by 2025.
The US space agency rejoiced in a near-perfect re-entry of the capsule which splashed down to the west of Mexico’s Baja California near Guadalupe Island. Though it carried no astronauts, the spacecraft did contain three test dummies wired with vibration sensors and radiation monitors to divine how humans would have fared.
Continue reading...Nasa considers capsule’s flight a dress rehearsal for the next moon flyby in 2024, with astronauts
Nasa’s Orion capsule has entered an orbit stretching tens of thousands of miles around the moon, as it neared the halfway mark of its test flight.
The capsule and its three test dummies entered lunar orbit more than a week after launching on the $4bn demo that’s meant to pave the way for astronauts. It will remain in this broad but stable orbit for nearly a week, completing just half a lap before heading home.
Continue reading...Head of Orion lunar programme says Artemis 1 mission is ‘first step to long-term deep-space exploration’
Astronauts are on course to be living and working on the moon before the end of the decade, according to a Nasa official.
Howard Hu, the head of the US agency’s Orion lunar spacecraft programme, said humans could be active on the moon for “durations” before 2030, with habitats to live in and rovers to support their work.
Continue reading...Barring technical issues and Florida’s weather, Artemis 1 will launch after midnight Wednesday on a 15-day, 1.3m-mile journey
Fifty years ago this month, mission managers at the US space agency Nasa gave the final go-ahead for what would turn out to be humanity’s most recent odyssey to the moon. Few realized at the time it would be more than half a century before Nasa would be ready to return, not least Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan, whose belief as he stepped back into the lunar module in December 1972 was that it would be “not too long into the future” that astronauts were there again.
Four minutes after midnight Wednesday, late technical issues and Florida’s weather gods notwithstanding, Artemis 1, the most powerful rocket ship in history, will attempt to close that decades-long gap.
Continue reading...Head of US space agency suggests maiden test flight will probably be delayed until the middle of October
Nasa called off its latest attempt to launch the groundbreaking Artemis 1 moon rocket on Saturday after failing to stem a fuel leak discovered during tanking. It was the second time in five days that technical issues had kept the spacecraft on the launchpad.
Mission managers at Kennedy Space Center waited until late in the countdown to scrub the liftoff after the failure of several workarounds to try to plug the leak of liquid hydrogen as it was being pumped into the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
Continue reading...Fuel leak comes after Nasa fixed an engine issue that postponed the original launch attempt five days earlier
Nasa’s pioneering moon rocket sprang a hazardous fuel leak Saturday, throwing into doubt chances of a successful launch on a test flight that must go well before astronauts climb aboard.
The Artemis 1 was poised to make a second attempt to fly on Saturday afternoon after the US space agency declared it had identified and fixed an engine issue that caused the postponement of the original launch attempt five days earlier.
Continue reading...