Lunar Landings News and Discussions

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NASA's Orion capsule enters far-flung orbit around moon
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-nasa-orio ... orbit.html
by Marcia Dunn

NASA's Orion capsule entered an orbit stretching tens of thousands of miles around the moon Friday, 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 $4 billion 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.

As of Friday's engine firing, the capsule was 238,000 miles (380,000 kilometers) from Earth. It's expected to reach a maximum distance of almost 270,000 miles (432,000 kilometers) in a few days. That will set a new distance record for a capsule designed to carry people one day.

"It is a statistic, but it's symbolic for what it represents," Jim Geffre, an Orion manager, said in a NASA interview earlier in the week. "It's about challenging ourselves to go farther, stay longer and push beyond the limits of what we've previously explored."
This image provided by NASA shows flight Day 9 imagery that NASA's Orio

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NASA capsule flies over Apollo landing sites, heads home
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-nasa-caps ... sites.html
by Marcia Dunn

NASA's Orion capsule and its test dummies swooped one last time around the moon Monday, flying over a couple Apollo landing sites before heading home.

Orion will aim for a Pacific splashdown Sunday off San Diego, setting the stage for astronauts on the next flight in a couple years.

The capsule passed within 80 miles (130 kilometers) of the far side of the moon, using the lunar gravity as a slingshot for the 237,000-mile (380,000-kilometer) ride back to Earth. It spent a week in a wide, sweeping lunar orbit.

Once emerging from behind the moon and regaining communication with flight controllers in Houston, Orion beamed back photos of a close-up moon and a crescent Earth—Earthrise—in the distance.

"Orion now has its sights set on home," said Mission Control commentator Sandra Jones.

The capsule also passed over the landing sites of Apollo 12 and 14. But at 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) up, it was too high to make out the descent stages of the lunar landers or anything else left behind by astronauts more than a half-century ago. During a similar flyover two weeks ago, it was too dark for pictures. This time, it was daylight.

Deputy chief flight director Zebulon Scoville said nearby craters and other geologic features would be visible in any pictures, but little else.

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Japanese company's lander rockets toward moon with UAE rover
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-japanese- ... ssion.html
by Marcia Dunn

A Tokyo company aimed for the moon with its own private lander Sunday, blasting off atop a SpaceX rocket with the United Arab Emirates' first lunar rover and a toylike robot from Japan that's designed to roll around up there in the gray dust.

It will take nearly five months for the lander and its experiments to reach the moon.

The company ispace designed its craft to use minimal fuel to save money and leave more room for cargo. So it's taking a slow, low-energy path to the moon, flying 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth before looping back and intersecting with the moon by the end of April.

By contrast, NASA's Orion crew capsule with test dummies took five days to reach the moon last month. The lunar flyby mission ends Sunday with a Pacific splashdown.

The ispace lander will aim for Atlas crater in the northeastern section of the moon's near side, more than 50 miles (87 kilometers) across and just over 1 mile (2 kilometers) deep. With its four legs extended, the lander is more than 7 feet (2.3 meters) tall.

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NASA chief says U.S. will beat China in race to the moon

Bill Nelson decries Beijing's lack of transparency, praises Japan as a partner

When asked if the U.S. will reach the moon before China, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, "I think we will."

December 11, 2022 03:21 JST

WASHINGTON -- As the race between the U.S. and China to reach the moon intensifies, the head of NASA expects U.S. astronauts to land before their Chinese counterparts in 2025 or 2026.

"There are very, very few nations that do not want to be partners with us. China is one. China has always been very secretive," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in an interview with Nikkei, referring to Beijing's stance on developing its own project to send people to the moon. "I think we're in a race with China."

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/ ... o-the-moon

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NASA chief says U.S. will beat China in race to the moon

Bill Nelson decries Beijing's lack of transparency, praises Japan as a partner

When asked if the U.S. will reach the moon before China, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, "I think we will."

December 11, 2022 03:21 JST

WASHINGTON -- As the race between the U.S. and China to reach the moon intensifies, the head of NASA expects U.S. astronauts to land before their Chinese counterparts in 2025 or 2026.

"There are very, very few nations that do not want to be partners with us. China is one. China has always been very secretive," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in an interview with Nikkei, referring to Beijing's stance on developing its own project to send people to the moon. "I think we're in a race with China."

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/ ... o-the-moon

New space race?
Trump did it!
No it was Biden!

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Scientists discover ubiquitous, increasing ferric iron on lunar surface
https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientist ... lunar.html
by Chinese Academy of Sciences

The moon has been considered extremely reductive since the Apollo era, as estimated by the low ferric iron content in lunar samples returned in the 1970s. In addition, it has long been a mystery whether a large amount of ferric iron exists on the moon and how it is formed.

Recently, however, a research team led by Profs. Xu Yigang and He Hongping from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered that high ferric iron content is present in agglutinate glass from lunar soil returned by China's Chang'e-5 mission.

The ferric iron was formed from a charge disproportionation reaction of ferrous iron in micrometeoroid impact processes. This revelation has challenged previous knowledge about the form, content, and evolution of lunar ferric iron.

The study was published in Nature Astronomy.

To estimate the ferric concentration in tiny agglutinate particles (~100 μm) formed during micrometeoroid impacts, the researchers observed the surface morphology of particles using scanning electron microscopy.

They sampled a micron-scale foil using a focused ion beam and then examined it using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). Results showed that a large amount of nanophase metallic iron (npFe0) spheres were randomly dispersed in the high-ferric-iron-content agglutinate glass.

The scientists estimated the three-dimensional distribution of iron species with various valences using EELS-based electron tomography technology. "Based on the quantitative results, we proposed that the ferric iron and ~63% of the total npFe0 were formed from charge disproportionation reaction during micrometeoroid impacts, while the rest of the npFe0 was formed by solar wind irradiation," said Prof. He.

The researchers inferred that the newly discovered charge disproportionation reaction is ongoing on the moon as micrometeorites are bombarding the surface of the moon. "The repetitive micrometeoroid impacts on the lunar surface suggest that the impact-induced ferric iron content is progressively increasing," said Prof. Xu.

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Why Go Back to the Moon?
by Katie Pierce
January 10, 2023

Introduction:

(Futurity) In a new book, Joseph Silk explores what the moon can offer humans over the next half century.

As our nearest celestial neighbor, the moon has forever captured the awe of human beings. Some ancient cultures worshipped it as a deity or believed its eclipses to be omens. It was Galileo peering through an early telescope in 1609 who discovered the moon’s rocky surface, and NASA’s Apollo 11 mission in 1969 that sent the first humans to walk upon it.

A half-century has now passed since humans last made direct contact with the moon, with Apollo 17 in 1972. But a new era of exploration has begun with zeal, as a number of space agencies and commercial ventures worldwide launch ambitious lunar projects.

Look forward another half-century or so, says Silk, a Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist, and the moon could be teeming with activity: hotels and villages, lunar mining, ports into deeper space, and giant telescopes that could make the James Webb technology look amateur.

“We will build on the moon. We will colonize the moon. We will exploit the moon. We will do science on the moon,” Silk writes in his new book, Back to the Moon: The Next Giant Leap for Humankind (Princeton University Press, 2022). “Lunar science will open up new vistas on the most profound questions we have ever posed.”

Read more here: https://www.futurity.org/why-go-back-t ... -2855872/

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Might belong in the history forum, but posting it here anyway:

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NASA’s New Moon Spacesuits are Straight Out of Science Fiction — Literally
by Kiona Smith
March 15, 2023

Introduction:

(Inverse) NASA just unveiled its new Lunar Surface Suit, the spacesuit that Artemis III astronauts will wear on the Moon.
At NASA’s Johnson Space Center, an engineer from contractor Axiom Space paraded onstage and waved to the gathered crowd in the new Lunar Surface Suit, whose sharp-looking black, orange, and blue color scheme was designed by Esther Marquis, the costume designer who created the spacesuits for alternate-history space show For All Mankind.

On an actual mission, the suit will be mostly white — visibility is key for astronauts, which is why EVA suits tend to be white, and the pressure suits worn during launch and re-entry tend to be bright orange. But NASA and Axiom clearly wanted to make a splash today, and that’s no surprise. The Lunar Surface Suit is a critical piece of hardware for the Artemis program, and it’s NASA’s first new spacesuit design in more than 40 years.
“We have not had a new suit since the suits that we designed for the Space Shuttle, and those suits are currently in use on the Space Station,” says Johnson Space Center director Vanessa Wyche as part of the announcement.

Engineers at Johnson Space Center spent almost a decade designing and testing early versions of the spacesuit, as well as developing a list of stringent requirements for safety, heating and cooling, mobility, and dust resistance. And now it’s in the hands of engineers at contractor Axiom Space, who will produce the final product. They’ll also own it — NASA’s brand-new spacesuit won’t actually be NASA property.

Read more here: https://www.inverse.com/science/check- ... face-suit


NASA

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The four astronauts NASA selected for historic moon flyby mission

Source: CNN Space-Science

CNN — Astronauts who will helm the first crewed moon mission in five decades were revealed on Monday, queuing up the quartet to begin training for the historic Artemis II lunar flyby that is set to take off in November 2024. The astronauts are NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.

Wiseman is a 47-year-old decorated naval aviator and test pilot who was first selected to be a NASA astronaut in 2009. He’s completed one prior spaceflight, a 165-day trip to the International Space Station that had launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket in 2014. Most recently, Wiseman served as chief of the astronaut office before stepping down in November 2022, making him eligible for a flight assignment. Hansen, 47, is a fighter pilot who was selected by the Canadian Space Agency for astronaut training in 2009. He is one of only four active Canadian astronauts, and he recently became the first Canadian to be put in charge of training for a new class of NASA astronauts.

Glover is a 46-year-old naval aviator who returned to Earth from his first spaceflight in 2021 after piloting the second crewed flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and spending nearly six months aboard the International Space Station. The veteran of four spacewalks earned a master’s degree in engineering while moonlighting as a test pilot. “It’s so much more than the four names that have been announced,” Glover said during the Monday announcement at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We need to celebrate this moment in human history. … It is the next step in the journey that will get humanity to Mars.”

Koch, 44, is a veteran of six spacewalks. She holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, with a total of 328 days in space. Koch is also an an electrical engineer who helped develop scientific instruments for multiple NASA mission. She’s also spent a year at the South Pole, an arduous stay that could well prepare her for the intensity of a moon mission.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/03/world/ar ... index.html

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SpaceX’s Starship will carry an SUV-sized rover to the Moon in 2026

While its next-generation rocket has yet to fly, that’s not stopping SpaceX from booking Starship flights. On Friday, a startup named Astrolab revealed that it had recently signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s private space firm to reserve a spot on an uncrewed Starship cargo mission that could launch as early as mid-2026. “This is SpaceX’s first commercial cargo contract to the lunar surface,” Jaret Matthews, CEO of Astrolab, told The New York Times, adding his company was one of a few customers involved in the flight.

https://www.engadget.com/spacexs-starsh ... 26510.html

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Starship Could Carry Jeep-Sized Rover to the Moon as Early as 2026
The rover's size enables it to serve as an unpressurized passenger vehicle, experimentation point, and payload delivery vehicle all at once.
By Adrianna Nine April 4, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/s ... ly-as-2026

Thanks to a new commercial contract between SpaceX and aerospace startup Astrolab, the biggest lunar rover yet will hitch a ride on Starship when the rocket makes its debut trip to the Moon.

Astrolab announced Friday that it had reached an agreement with SpaceX regarding the transport of its Flexible Logistics and Exploration (FLEX) rover. Per the agreement, SpaceX will use its super-tall Starship rocket and corresponding Super Heavy booster to bring FLEX to the Moon whenever SpaceX is ready to do so.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk initially hinted that Starship’s orbital test would occur sometime in late 2022. When that didn’t happen, he said there was a possibility launch would occur in February 2023, and if not then, sometime in March. We’ve now passed both of those windows. Although SpaceX has finally rolled Starship’s Ship 24 out to Starbase’s orbital launch pad, anything could happen between now and the rocket’s estimated April 10 liftoff.