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A private robotic rover touched down on the moon Thursday, becoming the first US spacecraft in more than 50 years to land on the lunar surface. The landing of the vehicle, built by Intuitive Machines, also marked the first time in history a private company successfully pulled off the incredible feat. The craft – dubbed Odysseus – landed some 250,000 miles away near the south pole of the moon around 6:23 p.m. ET — although communication between the rover and crews on the ground were weak, officials said. “We’re evaluating how we can refine that signal,” said mission director Tim...

In a surprising turn of events, the ‘bittwersweet’ triumph by the Japanese Space Agency JAXA has taken a turn for the better, as the SLIM spacecraft has regained power. The module performed a historical and very precise lunar landing a a little over a week ago, but ran out of electricity because it ‘ended up upside down in the moon surface’, with solar panels facing the wrong direction. But on late Sunday (28), JAXA finally re-established communication with its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM). The spacecraft touchdown made Japan the fifth country to put a spacecraft on the moon,...

[dayglored comment] Those of us who have been forced to wait forever as Windows copies some huge file... well here's a way to make the wait more tolerable. Copying a large file from one drive to another, or over a network, can take quite a while, and there’s nothing you can do in that time, but wait. However, an enterprising developer has found a way to make the copy dialog more interesting -- he’s added a fully playable version of the arcade classic Lunar Lander to it. And this is no basic addition -- you can choose your difficulty level...

WASHINGTON — The House Science Committee will mark up its portion of a multitrillion-dollar spending bill this week that includes several billion dollars for NASA infrastructure but nothing for lunar lander development. The committee will allocate $45.51 billion in spending for agencies under its jurisdiction, such as NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation. That will be combined with portions of the bill assigned to other committees into the final version to be considered by the full House. An updated draft of the bill, dated Sept. 4, offers good and bad news for NASA. It...

NASA has updated a planned call for proposals for lunar landers to enable a human mission in 2024, broadening the scope to include integrated lander concepts. In a procurement filing issued late April 26, NASA updated an earlier notice published April 8 that announced plans to solicit proposals for an ascent stage for a human-rated lunar lander. Instead, the upcoming procurement will seek proposals for “a complete integrated lander” that includes an ascent module as well as a descent module and transfer stage. A formal call for proposals, part of NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships, or NextSTEP, program...

Lockheed Martin is unveiling new designs for a human lunar lander concept that can take people to and from the lunar surface. And the company says it can be ready within the next five years.... The vehicle consists of two elements: a lander portion that can travel down to the ground, and an ascent vehicle that can lift astronauts off the Moon’s surface. The lander is meant to travel to and from a new space station that NASA wants to build around the Moon called the Gateway. If all of these elements are created, astronauts would travel to the Gateway...

Tucked away inside Israel’s Beresheet lunar lander, currently on its way to the Moon, is a massive archive documenting humanity’s achievements. The collection of images, text and symbols is the first part of a project to build a “Lunar Library” and part of a bigger push to create a space-based archive of Earth. According to the Arch Mission Foundation (AMF), the library contains 30 million pages of human history that covers a wide range of subjects, languages and time periods, all stored on a DVD-sized archive made of 25 nickel discs that are each only 40 microns thick. An 84-page document...

On board Beresheet is a specially designed disc encoded with a 30-million-page archive of human civilization built to last billions of years into the future. The backup for humanity has been dubbed "The Lunar Library" by its creator, the Arch Mission Foundation (AMF). The disc aboard Beresheet is about the size and thickness of a DVD, but consists of 25 stacked thin nickel films that AMF insists can resist radiation, extreme temperatures and other harsh conditions found in space for billions of years. There is, of course, no way to test how long it will last, but if it survives...

It has been nearly 50 years since an American became the first human being to walk on the Moon and plant the U.S. flag. Judging from the successful landing of China's Chang'e-4 probe on the far side of the Moon and China's ambitious plans, including military ones, it may not be that long before a Chinese astronaut picks up that flag and brings it back to us. We have our own plans, to be sure, and that includes President Trump's already underway U.S. Space Force, yet we still are paying the price for the overreliance on private enterprise to do...

WASHINGTON: On matters of space flights and exploration, India has put its cards on table for the United States to see - literally. At a luncheon meeting on Wednesday hosted by a Washington DC think-tank on K-Street, better known as a hang-out for lobbyists than space buffs, the tables were all named after Indian space pioneers – Dhawan, Chandrasekhar, Sarabhai... It was an audacious display by a country that till recently was banished from the US space business by a rigid sanctions regime that didn't allow the transfer of a screw, let alone its drivers. But this week, a top-flight...

LOS ANGELES - NASA raised the stakes in its prize competitions Friday with the announcement of the $2.5 million Lunar Lander Analog Challenge, intended to spur innovations for a new means to safely land on the surface of the moon. While funded by NASA, the next great space prize is administered by the founders of the last one - the X Prize Foundation, creators of the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first privately funded, manned space program. That prize was claimed by Mojave's SpaceShipOne in 2004. This new competition, part of NASA's series of Centennial Challenge prize races,...

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 22, 2006--The X PRIZE Foundation (XPF) is moving forward with plans to offer a $2 million Lunar Lander Challenge (LLC) by releasing draft rules of the competition today, making them available for public comment. The LLC was originally introduced in a Letter of Intent executed between XPF and NASA's Centennial Challenges manager, Brant Sponberg, at the 2005 X PRIZE Cup. It is planned that the challenge will take place at this year's X PRIZE CUP event on October 21-22, 2006 in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The LLC will require a rocket capable of vertical takeoff and...