Tag: Moon

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Fiction Science Club

Occupy Mars? Or the moon? It’s time for a reality check

Illustrations: Moon Village and Mars habitat
Artist's concepts show a moon village at left and a Mars habitat at right. (Left image: ESA. Right image: Team SEArch+/Apis Cor via NASA)

It’s an age-old debate in space circles: Should humanity’s first city on another world be built on the moon, or on Mars?

As recently as last year, SpaceX founder Elon Musk saw missions to the moon as a “distraction.” In a post to his X social-media platform, he declared that “we’re going straight to Mars.”

But last week, Musk said he’s changed his mind: “For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years,” he wrote on X.

How realistic is either option, particularly on a 10- to 20-year time frame? In a new book titled “Becoming Martian,” Rice University evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon lays out the possibilities as well as the perils that could make Musk’s job more challenging than he thinks.

“The more research I did on this topic, and the more labs I visited, and papers I read, and experts I spoke with, what became clear to me is that we have some pretty big gaps in our knowledge, in our understanding of what the reality would be like,” Solomon says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

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Interlune digs into opportunities for lunar construction

Interlune prototype excavator being tested on rocky patch of land
Interlune and Vermeer worked together to test a full-scale prototype of an excavator with auxiliary components. (Interlune / Vermeer Photo)

Interlune is leveraging a $150,000 NASA contract to develop develop lunar trenching and excavation technology — and although the primary goal is to extract valuable helium-3 from moon dirt, the project also signals the company’s broader play for lunar infrastructure.

Interlune’s work on the Small Business Technology Transfer Phase 1 contract, done in partnership with the Colorado School of Mines, demonstrates that the Seattle-based startup’s business model isn’t limited to helium-3. In the years ahead, the technologies pioneered by Interlune for resource extraction can also be used for building roads, base camps and other construction projects on the moon.

For example, the excavator that’s the focus of the NASA funding — known as the Scalable Implement for Lunar Trenching, or SILT — will support Interlune’ plan to sift through tons of lunar soil. But it will also support NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to establish a sustainable lunar presence in the 2030s.

“We’re looking at some other tools that would move regolith around, or prepare a site for making a road or building a radiation berm, burying a certain piece of infrastructure like a nuclear reactor,” Interlune CEO Rob Meyerson told me. “So, we’re very interested in participating in the Artemis program in broader ways, and we think the technology we’re developing for helium-3 extraction can support that.”

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Fiction Science Club

Why NASA is going nuclear for a power play on the moon

Illustration: Nuclear power plant with a tower-type radiator
An artist's conception shows a nuclear power plant on the moon. (Lockheed Martin Illustration)

Almost 60 years after America won the first space race, the moon is once again the focus of a competition between superpowers: Who’ll be the first to put a nuclear-powered base on the lunar surface?

And just as President John F. Kennedy set a goal of landing astronauts on the moon and bringing them back safely “before the decade is out,” NASA and the Department of Energy have set another end-of-decade deadline for developing a nuclear reactor for use on the moon. The current plan calls for demonstrating a 40-kilowatt power plant by 2030.

Why 2030? Roger Myers, an aerospace consultant who has been in the business of developing in-space power and propulsion systems for decades at NASA and Aerojet Rocketdyne, says the timing is tied to China’s ambition to set up its own moon base by 2035.

“China has announced many times in the last few years that they plan to land their astronauts, their taikonauts, on the surface of the moon by 2030, and they want to have a sustained presence on the surface of the moon by 2035,” he says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “The United States has a decision to make: Do we want every human on the planet to look up every night and see just a Chinese flag? Or do we want them to see a Chinese and an American flag?”

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Interlune brings in more cash to get set for moon mining

Illustration: Interlune Harvester on the moon
An artist’s conception shows the Interlune Harvester on the lunar surface. (Interlune Illustration)

Seattle-based Interlune is raising additional investment to support its campaign to identify and extract resources on the moon that can be brought back to Earth, starting with helium-3.

The fundraising effort came to light in a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. The $5 million offering takes the form of a Simple Agreement for Future Equity, or SAFE, a contractual arrangement in which investors have the right to receive equity in the company at a later time.

In its initial filing on Jan. 28, Interlune reported that $500,000 of the offering had been sold to a set of six investors. The filing didn’t identify the investors.

In an emailed statement, Interlune CEO Rob Meyerson said the SAFE funding would help support the company’s preparations for the lunar missions ahead.

“Interlune has elected to raise $5 million on a Simple Agreement for Future Equity from existing and new investors to advance key technical milestones ahead of its next priced round,” Meyerson said. “We have several significant projects in the works, which we’re excited to announce shortly.”

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NASA’s moon rocket makes the slow trip to its launch pad

Space Launch System rocket on its way to launch pad with "Drive Safely" sign in foreground
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and its mobile launcher head for the launch pad at a top speed of 1 mph. (NASA Photo / Keegan Barber)

NASA’s massive Space Launch System rocket crept toward its Florida launch pad today at a top speed of about 1 mph, marking the first step in a journey that will eventually send astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

The 4-mile trek to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center began at 7 a.m. ET (4 a.m. PT) and lasted until evening. Because the rocket with its mobile launcher stands more than 300 feet tall and weighs millions of pounds, the trip required the use of a crawler-transporter — the same vehicle used for the Apollo and space shuttle programs, now upgraded for NASA’s Artemis moon program.

Liftoff for the Artemis 2 mission could come as early as March, but there’s lots to be done in the weeks ahead. After today’s rollout, the mission team will conduct a thorough checkout of the Space Launch System and its Orion crew spacecraft. NASA also aims to conduct a “wet dress rehearsal,” during which the launch team will fuel the rocket and count down to roughly T-minus 30 seconds. (Update: The first such rehearsal took place on Feb. 2 but had to be called off at about T-minus 5 minutes due to a liquid hydrogen leak.)

“We have, I think, zero intention of communicating an actual launch date until we get through wet dress,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told reporters.

Artemis 2 is slated to send three NASA astronauts and one Canadian astronaut on a 10-day journey tracing a figure-8 route around the moon. The trip will take them as far as 4,800 miles beyond the lunar far side — farther out than any human has gone before.

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Year in Space: Get ready for magnificent moon missions

Orion making a lunar flyby
An artist’s conception shows the Orion spacecraft’s main engine firing during a lunar flyby. (NASA Illustration)

Lunar missions once felt like the domain of history books rather than current events, but an upcoming trip around the moon is poised to generate headlines at a level not seen since the Apollo era.

NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, which is due to launch four astronauts on a round-the-moon journey as a warmup for a future lunar landing, is shaping up as the spaceflight highlight of 2026. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who took the agency’s helm this month after a tumultuous year, says it’s the top item on his must-see list.

“What’s not to be excited about?” he said last week on CNBC. “We’re sending American astronauts around the moon. It’s the first time we’ve done that in a half-century. … We’re weeks away, potentially a month or two away at most from sending American astronauts around the moon again.”

The Pacific Northwest plays a significant role in the back-to-moon campaign. For example, L3Harris Technologies’ team in Redmond, Wash., built thrusters for Artemis 2’s Orion crew vehicle. And Artemis 2 isn’t the only upcoming moon mission with Seattle-area connections: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, headquartered in Kent, plans to send an uncrewed Blue Moon Mark 1 lander to the lunar surface in 2026 to help NASA get set for future moon trips.

“We are taking our first steps to help open up the lunar frontier for all of humanity,” Paul Brower, Blue Origin’s director of lunar operations, said in a recent LinkedIn post.

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Universe Today

Impulse Space lays out its plan for deliveries to the moon

Illustration: Impulse Space lunar lander heading for the moon
An artist's conception shows Impulse Space's lunar lander leaving Earth orbit as a payload on a Helios kick stage. (Credit: Impulse Space)

Impulse Space, the California-based venture founded by veteran SpaceX engineer Tom Mueller, today unveiled its proposed architecture for delivering medium-sized payloads to the moon by as early as 2028.

In a blog posting, Mueller said the plan would fill a “critical gap in lunar cargo delivery capabilities.”

Mueller was Employee No. 1 at Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and is widely credited as the rocket scientist behind SpaceX’s success. He left the company in 2020 to found Impulse Space, which is focusing on ways to improve mobility in space.

Impulse’s Mira space tug already has demonstrated its capabilities in two LEO Express missions that took place in low Earth orbit in 2023 and 2025. The company is also developing a kick stage known as Helios, which would be capable of sending payloads to higher orbits.

“So far, Impulse’s mission has unfolded in the orbits closest to Earth, but our work to improve in-space mobility doesn’t end at geostationary orbit,” Mueller wrote. “That’s why we’re unveiling some of our initial plans for the next stages of our roadmap, starting with the moon.”

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Blue Origin and Luxembourg will map moon resources

Illustration: Oasis-1 satellite in lunar orbit
An artist’s conception shows the Oasis-1 satellite mapping water ice deposits on the moon. (Blue Origin Illustration)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s working with partners in Luxembourg on a campaign called Project Oasis, which aims to identify and take advantage of valuable resources on the moon.

The project’s first mission, known as Oasis-1, will send a small satellite into lunar orbit to map reserves of water ice, helium-3, radionuclides, rare earth elements, precious metals and other materials that could be used by space settlers or sent back to Earth.

“Once we know what’s really there and how to access it, everything changes,” Pat Remias, vice president for advanced concepts and enterprise engineering at Blue Origin, said today in a news release. “Project Oasis creates the foundation for a thriving space economy that benefits everyone, including the billions of individuals on Earth who will benefit from space-based resources.”

Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin has already been working on a project called Blue Alchemist, which focuses on technologies that can process moon dirt to produce the components for solar cells and transmission wires. Another promising avenue involves turning deposits of water ice into drinkable water — and turning that H2O into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket propellant.

Such technologies could be applied broadly to in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU, on the moon as well as on Mars and in asteroid mining operations.

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How billionaires boost America in space race with China

Blended image of Elon Musk celebrating after launch of NASA astronauts, and Jeff Bezos celebrating after first crewed New Shepard launch
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have both celebrated space victories. (Left: GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota, 2020. Right: Blue Origin Photo, 2021)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has only just begun to launch a heavy-lift rocket that was a decade in the making — its orbital-class New Glenn launch vehicle, which had its first flight in January. But it’s already planning something even bigger to rival Starship, the super-rocket built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Bezos simply isn’t ready to share those plans yet.

Actually, a super-heavy-lift rocket concept known as New Armstrong (named in honor of first moonwalker Neil Armstrong) has been talked about for almost as long as New Glenn (whose name pays tribute to John Glenn, the first American in orbit). Bezos mentioned the idea way back in 2016, but said at the time that it was “a story for the future.”

Details about New Armstrong are still a story for the future, according to an account in “Rocket Dreams,” a book about the billionaire space race written by Washington Post staff writer Christian Davenport.

“They’ve been very quiet about it,” Davenport says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “I asked Jeff specifically about that at the New Glenn launch, and he didn’t want to talk about it.”

In the book, he quotes Bezos as saying only that “we are working on a vehicle that will come after New Glenn and lift more mass.”

New Armstrong is one of the few mysteries that Davenport wasn’t able to crack in his account of the space rivalry between Bezos and Musk. Davenport first addressed that rivalry seven years ago in a book titled “Space Barons,” but this updated saga is set in the context of an even bigger rivalry between America and China. Both nations are aiming to send astronauts to the moon by 2030, if not before.

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Blue Origin will work on getting VIPER rover to the moon

Illustration: VIPER rover and Blue Moon lander on the moon
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s VIPER rover and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 lander on the lunar surface. (Blue Origin Illustration)

NASA has selected Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture to help it resurrect a mission to send a robotic prospector to the moon’s south polar region.

Blue Origin will be tasked with drawing up a plan to deliver the VIPER rover to the moon in late 2027, using its uncrewed Blue Moon MK1 cargo lander. This would be Blue Origin’s second lunar lander. The first lander is due for launch as early as this year, with the objective of delivering NASA’s SCALPSS camera system and a retroreflective array to the lunar surface.

The newly announced task order, known as CS-7, was awarded through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and has a total potential value of $190 million.

“NASA is leading the world in exploring more of the moon than ever before, and this delivery is just one of many ways we’re leveraging U.S. industry to support a long-term American presence on the lunar surface,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said today in a news release.

VIPER is designed to explore permanently shadowed regions near the moon’s south pole for signs of volatile materials, including water ice. Such ice could be extracted to produce drinkable water and breathable oxygen as well as hydrogen for rocket fuel. VIPER is an acronym that stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover.

Duffy said the VIPER mission will “help inform future landing sites for our astronauts and better understand the moon’s environment – important insights for sustaining humans over longer missions, as America leads our future in space.”

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