Chang’e-5 spacecraft completes 112-hour journey from Earth, according to Beijing’s space agency
A Chinese probe sent to the moon to bring back the first lunar samples in four decades has successfully landed, according to Beijing’s space agency.
China has poured billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022 and eventually sending humans to the moon.
Continue reading...Lunar landing is due in about eight days and entire mission is scheduled to last 23 days
China has launched a robotic spacecraft to bring back rocks from the moon – the first such attempt by any country since the 1970s.
The Long March-5, China’s largest carrier rocket, blasted off at 4.30am Beijing time on Tuesday from Wenchang space launch centre on the island of Hainan carrying the Chang’e-5 spacecraft.
Continue reading...An asteroid hidden behind Mars has been found to closely resemble our moon. Is it a fragment that broke off billions of years ago?
Name: (101429) 1998 VF31 (AKA: the Moon’s Sister).
Age: 4.5bn years, give or take.
Continue reading...Proof of significant amounts of H2O has implications for future lunar missions
Scientists have gathered some of the most compelling evidence yet for the existence of water on the moon – and it may be relatively accessible. The discovery has implications for future missions to the moon and deeper space exploration.
With no significant atmosphere insulating it from the sun’s rays, it had been assumed that the moon’s surface was dry – until the 1990s, when orbiting spacecraft found indications of ice in large and inaccessible craters near the moon’s poles.
Continue reading...Move is part of US space agency’s plan to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by 2030
With competition among Earth’s telecoms providers as fierce as ever, equipment maker Nokia has announced its expansion into a new market, winning a deal to install the first cellular network on the moon.
The Finnish equipment manufacturer said it was selected by Nasa to deploy an “ultra-compact, low-power, space-hardened” wireless 4G network on the lunar surface, as part of the US space agency’s plan to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by 2030.
Continue reading...Agency hopes to attract novel solutions for its Artemis mission to the moon in 2024
“It certainly isn’t the prime focus of the mission,” said Nasa’s Mike Interbartolo. “We’re not going back to the moon so we can say we pooped on the moon, but we don’t want an Apollo situation either.”
Interbartolo, is project manager for the Lunar Loo Challenge, a Nasa competition launched on Thursday that hopes to attract new and innovative solutions to the problem of capturing and containing human waste in space.
Continue reading...Alabama company Dynetics also chosen for moon landing project, as three firms prepare to compete
Nasa has selected three private space companies to lead the development of lunar landers for its forthcoming moon landings.
The three companies are Blue Origin, owned by Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos; Elon Musk’s SpaceX; and Dynetics, based in Huntsville, Alabama, Nasa announced on Thursday.
Continue reading...Executive order says US will oppose any international effort to bar it from removing chunks of moon, Mars or elsewhere in space
The world may be racked by the coronavirus, but Donald Trump has less earthly concerns on his mind, too, after signing an executive order encouraging the US to mine the moon for minerals.
The executive order makes clear that the US doesn’t view space as a “global commons”, opening the way for the mining of the moon without any sort of international treaty.
Continue reading...Space programme seeks to bounce back after 2019 project ended with a crash landing on the lunar surface
India plans to make a fresh attempt at an unmanned mission on the moon this year, the head of the country’s space programme has said, after a 2019 bid ended in a crash landing.
Work was going “smoothly” on the Chandrayaan-3 mission to put a rover probe on the moon’s surface, Indian Space Research Organisation chairman K Sivan said. “We are targeting the launch for this year but it may spillover to next year,” Sivan said. Indian sources said authorities had set November as a provisional target for launch.
Continue reading...Tests to study behaviour of flames in zero gravity suggest fires could be more dangerous on moon than Earth
Playing with fire can be dangerous and never more so than when confined in a space capsule floating 250 miles above the Earth. But in the past week astronauts onboard the International Space Station have intentionally lit a series of blazes in research designed to study the behaviour of flames in zero gravity.
The scientists behind the experiment, called Confined Combustion, say it will help improve fire safety on the ISS and on future lunar missions by helping predict how a blaze might progress in low gravity conditions.
Continue reading...Nasa satellite sends back images showing wreckage of Chandrayaan-2 mission, with debris found scattered nearly a kilometre away
A Nasa satellite orbiting the moon has found India’s Vikram lander, which crashed on the lunar surface in September, the US space agency said on Monday.
Nasa released an image taken by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) that showed the site of the spacecraft’s impact and associated debris field, with parts scattered over almost two dozen locations spanning several kilometres.
Continue reading...Efforts are underway to establish contact, days after communications were lost during failed landing
The lander module from India’s moon mission has been located on the lunar surface, the day after it lost contact with the space station, and efforts are underway to try to establish contact with it, the head of the nation’s space agency said.
The cameras from the moon mission’s orbiter had located the lander, said K. Sivan, the chairman of the Indian Space and Research Organisation (ISRO) according to the Press Trust of India news agency. He added: “It must have been a hard landing.”
Continue reading...Scientists believe the Beresheet’s unusual cargo may be alive and well on the moon
The odds of finding life on the moon have suddenly rocketed skywards. But rather than elusive alien moonlings, the beings in question came from Earth and were spilled across the landscape when a spacecraft crashed into the surface.
The Israeli Beresheet probe was meant to be the first private lander to touch down on the moon. And all was going smoothly until mission controllers lost contact in April as the robotic craft made its way down. Beyond all the technology that was lost in the crash, Beresheet had an unusual cargo: a few thousand tiny tardigrades, the toughest animals on Earth.
Continue reading...With first mission to land on lunar south pole, India aims to join club comprising Russia, US and China
India’s mission to the moon has blasted into space one week after a technical glitch forced scientists to abruptly halt its scheduled launch.
Thousands gathered to watch Chandrayaan-2 take off at 2.43pm local time (0913 GMT) on Monday from Satish Dhawan space centre in Sriharikota, north of Chennai.
Continue reading...India’s mission to the moon has blasted into space one week after a technical glitch forced scientists to abruptly halt its scheduled launch. Thousands gathered to watch Chandrayaan-2 take off on Monday from Satish Dhawan space centre in Sriharikota, north of Chennai. It will travel to the little-explored south pole of the moon
Continue reading...As Donald Trump reiterated his determination that Americans should walk on Mars, Mike Pence marked the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing at the Apollo 11 launch site in Florida on Saturday.
Related: Trump revives the idea of a ‘white man’s country’, America’s original sin | Nell Painter
Continue reading...The Apollo 11 mission inspired the world. What has happened in the ensuing half-century?
When Neil Armstrong stepped on to the moon 50 years ago, it was down to a giant leap of political and scientific imagination. His footprints on the powdery lunar surface changed the way we saw ourselves, confirming that humanity could escape its earthly coils. The mission unleashed a dream of what we as a species might do. Yet only a dozen people have walked on the moon, all between the summer of 1969 and the end of 1972.
Did we lose our primordial urge to explore? Almost certainly not – though Buzz Aldrin this week decried “50 years of non-progress”, probes have travelled to Pluto and beyond. But times have changed. The cold war rivalry that catalysed the space race vanished. The Soviet Union was first with a satellite, dog and astronaut in space. Today Washington and Moscow play the great game in the Middle East, not the heavens, although both are now contemplating a return to the moon: Donald Trump wants to make America great again by putting astronauts there by 2024, though some think China may get there first; Russia talks of landing cosmonauts by 2030.
Continue reading...Photographers from Sydney to Brasilia capture July’s stunning partial lunar eclipse
Stargazers around the world have enjoyed a view of a global lunar eclipse, delighting people from Dehli to Dublin.
The partial eclipse was visible in nearly every part of the world except for North America and the polar climes of Greenland and northern Russia.
Continue reading...Nation’s first attempt at a landing on the moon put on hold due to ‘technical snag’
India’s moon mission, destined for the uncharted south pole, has been put on hold less than an hour before take off, following a technical glitch.
The mission, which was scheduled to launch at 02:51 local time from Sriharikota space centre, north of Chennai, is India’s most ambitious to date.
Continue reading...Tapes identified in 2008 as the only surviving original recording of the first moon landing in 1969 are to go up for auction in July
When Gary George bought a truckload of videotapes for $218 from a US government surplus auction more than 40 years ago, he planned to sell them to television stations – to record over.
Fortunately, he decided to hold on to the three tapes labelled “Apollo 11 EVA”, which have since been identified as the only surviving original recording of the first moon landing, in 1969.
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