July 15th, 2023
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China’s Landspace booster is one signal of the rise of Chinese liquid-fueled commercial rockets. From the Dongfang Hour: “Landspace achieved a groundbreaking success on July 12, 2023 with the first orbital launch of a methalox rocket worldwide: the Zhuque-2.” “This new rocket also triples the payload capacity of the largest Chinese commercial rocket to date, […]
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Switzerland startup, the Astrostrom company, has designed a Greater Earth Lunar Power Station, or GE⊕-LPS for short. The Greater Earth Lunar Power Station (GE⊕-LPS) is a habitable space station in lunar orbit that is designed to provide solar energy for lunar operations. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the study envisages a solar power […]
China’s LandSpace group launched its liquid oxygen and liquid methane-powered booster from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Gansu Province, China, on July 12. Commenting on the launch that placed it successfully into orbit, Dai Zheng, deputy chief designer and deputy commander of the Zhuque-2 carrier rocket mission, told GLOBALink/China Central Television (CCTV): “Liquid oxygen methane […]
The China Manned Space Agency released Wednesday a preliminary plan for landing a Chinese crew on the Moon before 2030. The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) noted use of two carrier rockets to transfer a Moon lander and a crewed spacecraft into lunar orbit. The two would then rendezvous and dock with each other. Crew […]
French researchers are ready to begin studies of lunar samples retrieved by China’s Chang’e-5 mission, rocketed back from the Moon to Earth in December 2020. The lunar samples are from the 1,700 grams returned to Earth from the Statio Tianchuan in the northeastern Oceanus Procellarum on the near side of the Moon. Two containers of […]
Russia’s Luna-25 robotic Moon lander is at the Vostochny cosmodrome in Amur Oblast, Russia. The craft will be headed for the south pole of the Moon, reportedly targeted for launch on August 11, 2023. At the cosmodrome, Luna-25 will undergo pre-flight checkout and undergo ground tests, and then fitted to a Fregat upper stage and […]
As NASA revs up its plan to “re-boot” the Moon through the Artemis program, a long-term aim calls for explorers to hunker down thanks to “sustainable” infrastructure on the lunar landscape. The key to doing so is use of on-the-spot lunar resources, known in NASAese as in-situ resources utilization, or ISRU for short. Cutting the […]
India’s Chandrayaan-3 Moon lander/rover has completed launch rehearsal by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Target for liftoff is July 14. The lunar lander is headed for the southern region of the Moon’s near side, soft landing about 13 miles (20 kilometers) west of Manzinus U crater rim, at coordinates 69.367621 S, 32.348126 E, as […]
Russia’s long-awaited and delayed robotic re-introduction to Moon exploration, Luna-25, is at its launch site! On July 10, the Luna-25 spacecraft was sent to the cosmodrome, delivered to its takeoff location for a scheduled sendoff this August. In a statement from JSC “NPO Lavochkina,” builder of the Moon lander, and part of the Roscosmos […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale crater is now performing Sol 3885 duties. “Few things are better than planning an action-packed weekend on Mars. It’s even better when the last plan executed like a charm,” reports Natalie Moore, a mission operations specialist at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California. Last week, on […]
