Lunar Landings News and Discussions

[weatheriscool]

Japanese Aerospace Firm Poised to Land Spacecraft on the Moon
After nearly six months in space, Ispace's Resilience lander will (hopefully) touch down on the lunar surface this week.
By Adrianna Nine June 4, 2025

A Japanese aerospace firm called Ispace is set to put a spacecraft on the Moon this week. Resilience, the star of Ispace's HAKUTO-R Mission 2, has spent nearly six months circumnavigating Earth and the Moon in preparation for its final descent. If all goes well, the spacecraft will touch down on the lunar surface Thursday afternoon.

Resilience was a travel companion to Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander, which successfully touched down on a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille on March 2. Together, the landers launched via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 15. But while Blue Ghost took just a month and a half to reach its target, Ispace wanted Resilience to stop and smell the roses along the way. The lander completed a lunar flyby before leveraging the Moon's gravity to initiate a slow, fuel-efficient path toward lunar orbit, which it entered on May 6.

https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/j ... n-the-moon

[wjfox]

In second straight failure, Japanese probe makes mission-ending "hard" landing on the moon

Updated on: June 5, 2025 / 9:16 PM EDT / CBS News

Four-and-a-half months after launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket, a privately-built Japanese lander attempted to touch down on the moon Thursday, but telemetry indicated a higher-than-expected descent velocity moments before communications were lost. The data suggested a mission-ending crash landing.

"Based on the currently available data, the Mission Control Center has been able to confirm the following: The laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar surface experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values," ispace, builder of the Resilience lander, said in a statement.

"As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing. Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface."

After unsuccessful attempts to re-establish communications, flight controllers in Tokyo uplinked commands to reboot the Resilience lander's flight computer. But there was no response.

"Given that there is currently no prospect of a successful lunar landing, our top priority is to swiftly analyze the telemetry data we have obtained thus far and work diligently to identify the cause," said ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/private-ja ... tenacious/

[weatheriscool]

Venturi Space Shows Off Its Pitch for a New Lunar Lander
Pioneering a new deformable wheel design, the Mona Luna rover is designed to withstand harsh lunar temperature swings.
By Jon Martindale June 19, 2025
https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/v ... nar-lander

Monaco-based Venturi Space has debuted a new design for a next-generation lunar rover that it's calling Mona Luna. It's a pitch that it hopes the European Space Agency (ESA) will pick up during its ministerial conference later this year. It includes a new deformable wheel design and a sleek, futuristic look, with instruments held near the center to protect against harsh moon temperature swings throughout the day/night cycle.

The Venturi Space pitch is that the ESA already has a lunar launch vehicle in the Ariane 6, and a lunar lander in the Argonaut for future payload delivery to the Moon. But what it doesn't have, though, is a lunar rover, and Venturi wants to be the company to provide it, as Space.com reports.

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

World's first lunar radio telescope readies for far side mission
By David Szondy
July 27, 2025

https://newatlas.com/space/worlds-first ... e-mission/
Radio astronomers like a bit of peace and quiet, so they're sending an historic first radio telescope to the Moon. To block out Earthside radio signals, the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment (LuSEE-Night) will set up shop on the far side of the Moon.

Radio astronomy has revolutionized our understanding of the universe by opening up the vast electromagnetic spectrum that is invisible to the human eye. With giant radio telescopes to help, we have discovered pulsars, quasars, radio galaxies, interstellar molecules, supermassive black holes, and the microwave echoes of the Big Bang.

Unfortunately, listening to the music of the spheres is a frustrating task because Earth isn't exactly a quiet neighborhood when it comes to radio waves. Never mind terrestrial radio and television broadcasts, or even satellite signals or the ubiquitous presence of cell phones. There are also sparking car engines, microwave ovens, lightning strikes, GPS signals, reflections off the ionosphere, and even bird poop on the antenna to muck things up.

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

China Successfully Tests Lunar Launch Vehicle's First Stage
This was the first static fire of its seven-engine configuration using kerosene and liquid oxygen.
By Jon Martindale August 15, 2025

China has successfully completed a static fire test of the first stage of the rocket that will take Chinese taikonauts to the Moon in the years to come. The test occurred at the LC-301 launch pad at the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island. Though the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) announced the test's success, it did not release any footage. Amateurs nearby, however, managed to capture the engines' 30-odd seconds of firing.

https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/c ... irst-stage

[wjfox]

After recent tests, China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon

An expert explains why this will be enormously bad for the United States.

18 Aug 2025

In recent weeks, the secretive Chinese space program has reported some significant milestones in developing its program to land astronauts on the lunar surface by the year 2030.

On August 6, the China Manned Space Agency successfully tested a high-fidelity mockup of its 26-ton "Lanyue" lunar lander. The test, conducted outside of Beijing, used giant tethers to simulate lunar gravity as the vehicle fired main engines and fine control thrusters to land on a cratered surface and take off from there.

"The test," said the agency in an official statement, "represents a key step in the development of China's manned lunar exploration program, and also marks the first time that China has carried out a test of extraterrestrial landing and takeoff capabilities of a manned spacecraft."

As part of the statement, the space agency reconfirmed that it plans to land its astronauts on the Moon "before" 2030.

Then, last Friday, the space agency and its state-operated rocket developer, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, successfully conducted a 30-second test firing of the Long March 10 rocket's center core with its seven YF-100K engines that burn kerosene and liquid oxygen. The primary variant of the rocket will combine three of these cores to lift about 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/08/a ... -the-moon/

[wjfox]

Former NASA chief says United States likely to lose second lunar space race

3 Sept 2025 22:11

[...]

As part of the "One Big Beautiful Bill" legislation this spring, a provision written by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) added $6.7 billion in funding to support additional flights of the SLS rocket and Orion, as well as to continue construction of the Gateway. And on Wednesday, at the beginning of a hearing to discuss NASA's Artemis Program and the agency's efforts to compete with China for influence at the Moon, Cruz warned the White House that it must not cancel the SLS rocket and Lunar Gateway.

"It would be folly to cut short these missions after much of the hardware has already been purchased and, in some cases, delivered with no commercial alternative readily available," Cruz said. "I look forward to working with the administration to ensure those funds are utilized in accordance with Congressional intent."

The hearing, titled "There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race," had no witnesses who disagreed with this viewpoint. They included Allen Cutler, CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, the chief lobbying organization for SLS, Orion, and Gateway; Jim Bridenstine, former NASA Administrator who now leads government operations for United Launch Alliance; Mike Gold of Redwire, a Gateway contractor; and Lt. General John Shaw, former Space Command official.

The hearing before the committee chaired by Cruz, Commerce, Science, and Transportation, included the usual mishmash of parochial politics, lobbying for traditional space, back slapping, and fawning—at one point, Gold, a Star Trek fan, went so far as to assert that Cruz is the "Captain Kirk" of the US Senate.

Beyond this, however, there was a fair amount of teeth gnashing about the fact that the United States faces a serious threat from China, which appears to be on course to put humans on the Moon before NASA can return there with the Artemis Program. China aims to land humans at the South Pole before the year 2030.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/09/t ... -as-folly/

[wjfox]

Nasa plans first crewed Moon mission in 50 years for February

23 September 2025, 15:57 BST

Nasa has said it hopes to send astronauts on a trip around the Moon as soon as February to prepare for landing there as early as 2027.

The US space agency had previously committed to launching no later than the end of April but said it aims to bring the mission forward.

It's been 50 years since any country has flown a crewed lunar mission. Nasa will send four astronauts there and back in ten days to test systems.

The Artemis II mission is the second launch of the Artemis programme, whose aim is to land astronauts and eventually establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface.

[...]

Artemis Launch Director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson explained that the powerful rocket system built to take the astronauts to the Moon, the Space Launch System (SLS) was "pretty much stacked and ready to go".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy7pegvz17yo

[firestar464]

(it will not land in '27)

[weatheriscool]

DARPA Just Released Its 'Field Guide' for Commercializing the Moon
The US military's plan to make money from the Moon is ambitious, but sorely lacking in concrete details.
By Graham Templeton October 9, 2025

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has released a "field guide" for the commercialization of the Moon. This is an odd sentence to write since, of course, DARPA classically makes weapons systems and other technologies that have at least some military application. From GPS to the Internet, civilian applications have always been offshoots of military projects.

In this case, the agency is "leveraging its expertise to explore the economic potential of the Moon." It's unusual to see no attempt to pretend the plan is primarily about defense; just as strange is the open admission that the military's advanced research arm employs at least some researchers to focus on entirely economic plans. This is coming at a time when the United States' actual civilian space agency budget is being cut ferociously. Military-industrial complex, indeed.

https://www.extremetech.com/science/dar ... g-the-moon

[weatheriscool]

SpaceX Needs $3 Billion or Less for Manned Moon Missions to Kill SLS
October 22, 2025 by Brian Wang

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/10/s ... l-sls.html
SpaceX and Elon Musk can replace SLS, Space Launch System, with the fixed priced $100 million per ton moon missions from 2028 and beyond. This would still be $10 billion for a full 100 ton payload to the moon and $7 billion if the same costs were used but scaled based on fewer refueling launches. SpaceX can get the cost of launching each Super Heavy Starship down to $100 million per launch. Six refueling launches and a main mission launch can be brought down to $1 billion or less eventually. IF SpaceX can get its manned moon missions and combined cargo missions to a fixed price $3 billion, then they could fully kill the $4-6 billion missions for SLS.

SpaceX says it plans to begin Starship cargo missions to the Moon in 2028 and to Mars in 2030, with each mission priced at $100 million per metric ton of payload. That’s $100,000 per kilogram (or $45,359 per pound).

Starship cargo flights to the lunar surface for research, development, and exploratory missions start in 2028, at a rate of $100 million per metric ton.

[wjfox]

China’s is on Track to Beat the US to Extract Lunar Water

October 24, 2025

Forget boots on the Moon. China looks like it’s going to beat the US to extract water from the lunar surface.

Officials from the Chinese National Space Agency confirmed this week that its Chang’e 7 spacecraft is expected to launch in August—putting it on track to beat US lunar water ice exploration missions by a significant margin.

Shacking up: China’s track record on the Moon has improved significantly over the course of the Chang’e campaign. In 2020, as part of the Chang’e 5 mission, China returned samples from the Moon for the first time. Four years later, the country returned samples from the far side of the Moon as part of Chang’e 6.

For Chang’e 7, the technical objectives are another step change.

https://payloadspace.com/chinas-is-on-t ... nar-water/

[firestar464]

[weatheriscool]

That is what happens when you defund science, fire scientist and shit on education. Losertianism results in utter fucking failure and China will eat our lunch and probably own us one day because of it.

[weatheriscool]

SpaceX Proposes 'Simplified' Artemis III Mission in Bid to Keep NASA Contract
Despite all the bluster from CEO Elon Musk, SpaceX has rushed to show it really can meet its deadlines.
By Jon Martindale October 31, 2025

Following NASA's recent opening of the Artemis III mission contract to other providers, SpaceX has rushed out a simplified mission plan in an effort to hold on to the deal. This comes just days after CEO Elon Musk heavily criticised NASA administrators, suggesting no other company but SpaceX could do the job. Clearly, SpaceX feels others might, as it's altering its plans accordingly.

In 2021, SpaceX won the contract to take astronauts to the lunar surface, beating off competition from the likes of Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and the Dynetics HLS lander. Part of this was the sheer grandiose spectacle of Starship: reusability, in-orbit refuelling, deep space compatibility, and more. It's complete overkill for a Moon lander and is far, far bigger and heavier than it needs to be. But it won the contract nonetheless, and development has continued since.

https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/s ... a-contract

[Yuli Ban]

That is what happens when you defund science, fire scientist and shit on education. Losertianism results in utter fucking failure and China will eat our lunch and probably own us one day because of it.

This is what I've been saying, man.
We had our chance. We blew it.

And the sad thing is, I can totally see Trump doing something really fucking stupid and reckless in a last ditch effort to "beat" China back, like getting SpaceX to launch a capsule to the moon before it's functionally ready, and instead of working properly, it shoots past the moon entirely.

And just to rub it in deeply, all that'd accomplish is igniting a contingent of people who become hostile to the idea of space exploration because of the easy meme "Why launch people to die in the void when we could fix our own planet?" as if the two are mutually exclusive, which then just becomes yet another useless culture war