moon

China Plans Asteroid Missions, Space Telescopes and a Moon Base

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China has had a bumper few years in space exploration, and its ambitions are about to get bolder. The China National Space Administration has released an overview of its plans for the next five years, which include launching a robotic craft to an asteroid, building a space telescope to rival the Hubble and laying the … Read more

Space junk: We don’t know whose rocket is about to hit the moon – that’s a problem

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An old rocket will slam into the far side of the moon on 4 March and no one is accepting ownership of the space junk – similar objects could pose a safety risk for future crewed lunar missions Space 23 February 2022 By Jonathan O’Callaghan A representation of space junk in orbit around Earth ESA/ID&Sense/ONiRiXEL … Read more

NASA will update us all on its Artemis 1 moon mission Thursday. Here’s how to follow it live.

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NASA will give an update about its Artemis 1 moon mission on Thursday (Feb. 24), and you can tune in. Artemis 1 will be the first-ever launch of NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket. The mission will send an uncrewed Orion capsule around the moon, to ensure that the SLS-Orion duo is ready to … Read more

Moon mystery: Who launched the rocket that will slam into the lunar far side?

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There’s an ongoing saga about the object that will smash into the far side of the moon early next month. First thought to be the upper stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the DSCOVR Earth-observation spacecraft in February 2015, it was then tagged as a leftover from the launch of China’s Chang’e … Read more

Lunar Rover Discovers Mysterious Glass Spheres on The Far Side of The Moon

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China’s Yutu-2 mission has made another fascinating discovery on the far side of the Moon. Glistening amid the dry, gray dust, the rover’s panoramic camera picked out two small intact spheres of translucent glass.   Such spherules can record information about the Moon’s history, including the composition of its mantle and impact events. Yutu-2 was … Read more

Mystery Deepens as China Denies Owning Space Junk Set to Crash Into Moon

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China on Monday denied responsibility for a rocket set to slam into the Moon, after experts said the piece of space junk likely came from Beijing’s lunar exploration program. Astronomers initially thought the wayward object was a chunk of a SpaceX rocket that blasted off seven years ago and was abandoned in space after completing … Read more

NASA successfully retests moon rocket core stage engines after fault

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All core stage rocket engines on NASA’s moon rocket performed as expected in a recent series of tests that followed a replacement of a faulty control mechanism in one of those engines, the agency said. A faulty controller on the RS-25 engine number 4 forced the space agency to delay its upcoming uncrewed moon mission, … Read more

‘Moon Gallery’ prototype arrives at space station with 64 works of art

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Packed among the scientific research and crew supplies delivered by a cargo craft to the International Space Station early Monday morning (Feb. 21), was a small purple box “housing the seeds of a future, interplanetary culture.” Or so reads the inscription printed on the side of the canister. Dubbed the “Moon Gallery”, the collection of … Read more