Moon

The Moon is a remarkably ambitious project that aims to recreate the experience of being on the Moon here on Earth. It will consist of the world's largest spherical building, offer an "authentic" Moon walk, and will be surrounded by skyscrapers.

With its metaphorical feet held over the allegorical fire by NASA, SpaceX has released a new, simplified plan to build a lander to put US astronauts back on the Moon now that the competition for the spacecraft has been reopened due to delays.

We're used to rovers exploring the Moon or Mars to have legs and wheels for moving around, but a team at Texas A&M led by Robert Ambrose wants to go more geometrical with a new mobile robot shaped like a ball for literally rolling about rough terrain.

SAGA Space Architects has used a shipping container to create a tiny shelter with an out-of-this-world focus. Named FLEXHab, its compact interior sleeps up to four people and functions as a simulated lunar habitat.

We're going to be on the Moon more often soon, and we'll need places to rest and work there. Building habitats and maintaining them will be tough, but bacteria could come to the rescue by helping repair cracked bricks made from lunar soil.

2024 has been a year in space that has seen successes, failures, a clutch of firsts, and some goodbyes – not to mention a long-distance probe rescue, spacesuits on the catwalk, and a couple of cosmic oddities. Let's have a look back.

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.

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.

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.

It's a genuine joy watching Apollo-era astronauts bounce around on the lunar surface, and it's hysterically funny watching them fall over and struggle to get back up in their spacesuits. MIT wishes to rob us of this hilarity for future missions.