Tag: Moon

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NASA thanks suppliers for work on the next big moonshot

NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg in lab at L3Harris / Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, Wash.
NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg faces the TV cameras at L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne facility in Redmond, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

REDMOND, Wash. — The first crewed flight around the moon in more than 50 years is still months away, but NASA is already saying thank you to L3Harris Technologies’ Aerojet Rocketdyne segment and other suppliers who are making the trip possible.

Today, NASA’s road trip brought agency officials — plus astronaut Woody Hoburg — to the L3Harris facility in Redmond, which has contributed propulsion systems to NASA missions ranging from space shuttle flights to the Voyager probes’ journeys to the edge of the solar system.

Now NASA is getting ready to launch four astronauts on a round-the-moon mission known as Artemis 2, powered in part by hardware built in Redmond. Hoburg, who spent six months on the International Space Station in 2023 and is awaiting his next crew assignment, told an audience of about 200 L3Harris employees and VIPs that the Artemis 2 crew is well aware of the company’s contribution.

“They’re depending on you, and they know they can count on you,” he said. “Thank you for all the hard work you’re doing to make this amazing adventure possible.”

The Artemis 2 mission is currently targeted for launch next April, or perhaps even earlier, said Howard Hu, NASA’s program manager for the Orion crew vehicle. The mission after that, Artemis 3, is due to lift off no earlier than mid-2027 with the goal of landing astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

L3Harris’ Aerojet Redmond team delivered the hardware for those two Artemis missions — including auxiliary engines for Orion’s European-built service module — years ago. Now the team is working on thrusters for missions as far out as Artemis 8, which is scheduled to go the moon no earlier than 2033.

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Interlune sets up a moon mission to hunt for helium

Illustration: Astrolab rover on the moon
An artist’s conception shows Astrolab’s FLIP rover on the moon. (Astrolab Illustration)

Seattle-based Interlune says it’s struck a deal with California-based Astrolab to send a multispectral camera to the moon to estimate how much helium-3 is present in lunar soil.

Interlune’s camera will be one of the payloads aboard Astrolab’s FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform rover, or FLIP for short. The FLIP rover is scheduled to take a piggyback ride to the moon’s south polar region aboard Astrobotics’ Griffin lander as soon as late 2025.

The mission will mark Interlune’s first off-Earth step in its campaign to identify and extract helium-3 from the moon and return it to Earth. Helium-3 can be used for applications ranging from quantum computing to security screening to fusion energy production. But it’s rare on Earth: Interlune has pegged the commercial price of helium-3 at as much as $20 million per kilogram.

Interlune is betting that lunar helium-3, which is produced when charged particles from the sun hit moon dirt, will become a cheaper source — and a source of revenue for the startup. The multispectral camera that Interlune has developed in partnership with NASA’s Ames Research Center will be used to estimate helium-3 quantities and concentration around Griffin’s landing site, without having to bring samples back to Earth.

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Wireless charging system cleared for moon missions

CubeRover with wireless charging system undergoing tests
A CubeRover with a wireless charging node drives up to a second power node to charge. (Astrobotic Photo)

Astrobotic says it has completed flight model acceptance testing for a wireless charging system that incorporates technology from Seattle-based WiBotic — and that could help rovers roam across the surface of the moon.

The system is designed to provide reliable, high-efficiency power transfer amid the extreme conditions of the lunar surface, including a night that lasts 14 Earth days. It was developed by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic and WiBotic with assistance from the University of Washington, Bosch and NASA’s Glenn Research Center.

“This is the foundation for a unified, interoperable power standard for the moon and Mars,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said in a news release. “We’re offering a wireless charging solution that can support cross-agency, cross-industry missions, built to survive the harshest planetary environments. If your assets need dependable power on the surface, this is the plug they’ll need.”

WiBotic’s co-founder and CEO, Ben Waters, said the system’s successful qualification is a “major step forward.”

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Interlune makes progress on its plans to mine the moon

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

Seattle-based Interlune provided a triple-barreled update today on its progress toward mining helium-3 on the moon and returning that resource to Earth.

The startup joined Vermeer Corp., an industrial equipment manufacturer headquartered in Iowa, to unveil a full-scale prototype of an excavator that’s designed to ingest 100 metric tons of moon dirt in an hour. After the helium-3 is extracted, the machine would drop the rest of the dirt back onto the lunar surface in a continuous motion.

Also today, Interlune announced separate agreements with the U.S. Department of Energy and Maybell Quantum Industries to start supplying lunar helium-3 by 2029.

Helium-3 is an isotope that’s much rarer than the helium-4 that you typically find in lighter-than-air balloons. Helium-3 has a wide range of high-tech applications in fields that include quantum computing, fusion power, medical imaging and weapons detection for national security purposes.

The substance is hard to find on Earth, but it’s more abundant on the moon due to bombardment by solar-wind particles. Interlune aims to take advantage of the potential market by extracting lunar helium-3 and shipping it back to Earth.

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Texas boosts Interlune’s work with simulated moon dirt

Illustration: Interlune robotic harvester on the moon
An artist’s conception shows Interlune’s robotic harvester on the moon. (Interlune Illustration)

Seattle-based Interlune has won a grant of up to $4.84 million from the Texas Space Commission to open a center of excellence at NASA’s Johnson Space Center focusing on simulated moon rocks and soil.

The center would be part of the Texas A&M University Space Institute, which is currently under construction on the grounds of the NASA center in Houston. Construction is due to be completed by September 2026.

Interlune was founded in 2020 with the aim of developing a system to harvest moon dirt, technically known as regolith, and extract resources for use on Earth. One of the key targets for extraction is helium-3, an isotope that can be used for applications ranging from quantum computing to fusion power. Helium-3 is much more abundant on the lunar surface than it is on Earth.

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Universe Today

Asteroid will miss Earth — but may set off lunar light show

Graphic: Diagram showing line of probability for 2024 YR4 collision with moon
The yellow streak represents possible locations of asteroid 2024 YR4 on Dec. 22, 2032, as calculated on April 2, 2025. (NASA / JPL / CNEOS)

Although astronomers have ruled out a smash-up between Earth and an asteroid known as 2024 YR4 in the year 2032, the building-sized space rock still has a chance of hitting the moon. In fact, the chances — slight as they are — have doubled in the past month.

The latest assessment from NASA puts the probability of a lunar impact on Dec. 22, 2032, at 3.8%. That’s an increase from the 1.7% figure that was reported in February. Since then, further observations made by ground-based telescopes and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have somewhat reduced the uncertainty over where exactly the asteroid will be when its orbit intersects Earth’s orbital path (and the moon’s).

Over the course of observing 2024 YR4, astronomers had set the chances of a collision with Earth in 2032 as high as 2.3% — but that wasn’t because of what the asteroid may or may not do over the next seven years. Instead, it merely reflected how little was known about YR4’s precise orbit. The chances of an Earth impact fell to zero more than a month ago as more observations came in.

Something similar might well happen to the chances for a lunar impact. If the calculations progress the way they usually do for asteroid orbits, the chances may go up for a while but then vanish completely. Stay tuned: The Webb telescope is due to check in again with YR4 in late April or early May.

What if it turns out that the asteroid is truly on course to hit the moon? “There might be an unbelievable light show,” former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, who’s in charge of the B612 Foundation’s Asteroid Institute, said last week at the University of Washington.

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Cosmic Space

Get ready to see a total lunar eclipse (or maybe not)

Time-lapse sequence of total lunar eclipse of Sept. 28, 2015
This sequence shows the end-to-end progression of a total lunar eclipse on Sept. 28, 2015. (Credit: Sean Walker via Sky & Telescope)

The first total lunar eclipse since 2022 will turn the full moon an eerie shade of red on the night of March 13-14 — but your chances of seeing it with your own eyes will depend on where you are.

North Americans should have great seats for the eclipse this time around. The key phases of the show, from the time the moon begins to enter the darkest part of Earth’s shadow to the time it leaves, should be visible to the entire continent.

But add some emphasis to the word “should.” In order to see the darkened moon with your own eyes, the skies have to be clear.

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Blue Origin is on deck to send NASA payload to the moon

Illustration: Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander on the moon
An artist’s conception shows the Blue Moon MK1 lander on the moon. (Blue Origin Illustration)

NASA says it has penciled in Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 cargo lander to deliver a scientific payload to the moon’s south polar region as soon as this summer.

The uncrewed lander would rank as the largest spacecraft sent to the moon’s surface, and would set the stage for a larger crewed lander that would be used for moon missions in the 2030s. By that time, if all proceeds according to plan, SpaceX’s Starship would take over the top spot as the world’s most massive moon ship.

Blue Origin was created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2000 and is headquartered in Kent, Wash. For years, Bezos has voiced a strong interest in lunar exploration. “It’s time to go back to the moon, but this time to stay,” he declared in 2017.

NASA’s payload for Blue Origin’s first mission to the moon is a suite of cameras that’s designed to record how the blast from Blue Moon’s engines disturbs the dirt and rocks at the lunar landing site. The data from that experiment — known as Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies, or SCALPSS — would be factored into the preparations for crewed landings.

Similar payloads flew on Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander, which conducted a partially successful mission on the moon last year; and on Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost M1 lander, which landed on the moon earlier this month. The data from the Blue Moon mission would give NASA a better sense of what to expect when a heavier spacecraft touches down.

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Blue Origin puts a lunar spin on its suborbital spaceship

Blue Origin New Shepard booster comes in for a landing
Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard booster descends to a landing in Texas. (Blue Origin via YouTube)

For the first time, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has put its New Shepard suborbital rocket ship through a couple of minutes’ worth of moon-level gravity.

The uncrewed mission, known as NS-29, sent 30 research payloads on a 10-minute trip from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. For this trip, the crew capsule was spun up to 11 revolutions per minute, as opposed to the typical half-revolution per minute. The resulting centrifugal force was equivalent to one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, which is what would be felt on the moon.

The point of the exercise was to test how the payloads performed during the conditions they would face during future lunar missions — for example, how well they could process moon dirt to extract oxygen and other resources, or how well they could work to manufacture solar cells for Blue Origin’s Blue Alchemist project.

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Universe Today

NASA cancels VIPER moon rover due to costs and delays

NASA VIPER rover in clean room
NASA’s VIPER rover sits assembled inside the clean room at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Texas. (Credit: NASA)

NASA says it intends to discontinue development of its VIPER moon rover, due to cost increases and schedule delays — but the agency is also pointing to other opportunities for robotic exploration of the lunar south polar region.

The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover was originally scheduled for launch in late 2023, targeting the western edge of Nobile Crater near the moon’s south pole.

The south polar region is a prime target for exploration because it’s thought to hold deposits of water ice that could sustain future lunar settlements. NASA plans to send astronauts to that region by as early as 2026 for the first crewed lunar landing since 1972.

Unfortunately, the VIPER project ran into a series of delays, due to snags in the testing and development of the rover as well as the Astrobotic Griffin lander that was to deliver the rover to the lunar surface. The readiness date for VIPER and Griffin was most recently pushed back to September 2025.

During an internal review, NASA managers decided that continuing with VIPER’s development would result in cost increases that could lead to the cancellation or disruption of other moon missions in NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. NASA notified Congress of its intent to discontinue development.

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