Moon

The Artemis II and III missions slated to return US astronauts to the Moon have been set back. At a press conference, NASA officials said that problems with the heat shield and life support systems would delay the launches until 2026 and 2027.

China is planning to put people on the Moon around 2030 and is showing off the new space suits they'll be wearing. At a media event, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) had two astronauts put the suits through their paces for the cameras.

Few photography subjects offer the breadth of beauty as astronomy, and the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards celebrate that. The winners for 2024 have now been crowned, including breathtaking cosmic shots.

Our solar system might still bear the scars from an extremely close shave with an alien star. Such an encounter – the closest pass we know of – would have shaken up objects on the outskirts and might even mean there’s no Planet Nine after all.

Honeybee Robotics has outlined a plan to build a kind of power grid on the Moon, with a network of Statue of Liberty-sized towers containing solar panels and batteries that provide power and communications, and even act as streetlights.

When you live on the Moon, your only option for commuting back to Earth or on to Mars will be some kind of rocket. But each launch will kick up a hellstorm of debris. Building walls to contain the mess could be a perfect job for autonomous rovers.

Graphene has been found on the Moon. The so-called “wonder material” was detected in a sample of lunar soil returned by a Chinese lander.

Rolls-Royce has received an additional £4.8 million (US$6.2 million) in funding from the UK Space Agency (UKSA) to develop key technology for a nuclear micro-reactor that could one day power lunar bases and spacecraft propulsion.

If you've wondered where future Moon explorers will live, it may be in natural caves deep beneath the lunar crust. Radar data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter confirms that giant lava tubes lead to tunnels large enough to house entire bases.

Scientists have developed what could be a much quicker and easier technique for astronauts to make building-construction bricks out of lunar soil. The secret lies in heating that moon dust, then sticking it in an aerospace-grade microwave oven.

A somewhat scorched Chang'e-6 return craft landed in Inner Mongolia yesterday, bringing with it the first rock and dust samples from the far side of the Moon – and hopes of unlocking some lunar secrets.

Commercial operations on the Moon won't just be round-the-clock but round-the-calendar as ispace, inc. and the University of Leicester partner to develop nuclear heaters to allow future landers and rovers to survive the freezing lunar night.