Moon Mission

Nasa delays moon mission again, over 50 years after Apollo landings

NASA announced more delays Thursday in sending astronauts back to the moon more than 50 years after Apollo. Administrator Bill Nelson said the next mission in the Artemis program -- flying four astronauts around the moon and back is now targeted for April 2026. It had been on the books for September 2025, after slipping from this year. The investigation into heat shield damage from the capsule's initial test flight two years ago took time, officials said, and other spacecraft improvements are still needed. This bumps the third Artemis mission a moon landing by two other astronauts to at least 2027. NASA had been aiming for 2026. NASA's Artemis program, a follow-up to the Apollo moonshots of the late 1960s and early 1970s, has completed only one mission. An empty Orion capsule circled the moon in 2022 after blasting off on NASA's new Space Launch System rocket. Although the launch and lunar laps went well, the capsule returned with an excessively charred and eroded bottom heat .

India eyeing 2028 deadline for Chandrayaan-4 sample-return mission to Moon

The South Pole region is the first choice for the landing of Chandrayaan-4 as it has an abundance of water ice. Scientists suspect that the ice can be mined for life support and rocket fuel

Chandrayaan-3 landed on one of the oldest craters on Moon: PRL-Isro study

Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan-3 landed within a buried impact crater, which is around 160 km in size and approximately 4.4 km deep, and likely to be older than the South Pole Atkin (SPA) basin, according to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). This is revealed based on analysis of images obtained by navigation cameras on Chandrayaan-3 Pragyan rover and Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter's optical high resolution camera, according to scientists from Physical Research Laboratory and ISRO, who published their study in peer-reviewed journal 'Icarus'. The Chandrayaan-3 mission with the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover landed in the high latitude highland region near the south pole of the Moon, an ISRO statement noted. The landing site is located approximately 350 km from the SPA basin rim, an ancient and the largest impact basin in the Solar System. This landing site has undergone the complex emplacement sequence of SPA basin ejecta followed by the nearby and distant impact basins and ..

Moon's temperature dropped during lockdown due to fewer human activities

Indian scientists revealed that the moon's temperature reduced significantly during the lockdown period on Earth in 2020, underscoring the link between Earth and the Moon

Pragyan rover spots 160-km-wide oldest geological crater on Moon's surface

Chandrayaan-3 mission discovered a 160-km-wide crater on the Moon's South Pole, revealing key details about lunar geological history. The crater was discovered by the Pragyan rover

'Not far from sending astronauts to moon': Scientists after Chandrayaan 4

Responding to the Union cabinet's nod to India's fourth lunar mission, the Indian scientific community said that the country is not far from sending a 'cosmonaut' to the moon.Speaking to ANI, the former director of the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad Center, Tapan Misra, said, "We should be able to land a lander there and collect stones and lunar soil and bring it back to the orbiter, and with this orbiter, we should come back and land safely and retribute. This is the very first step towards sending an Indian cosmonaut to the Moon. We will not be far from sending a cosmonaut to the moon."He further said, "The Govt of India has approved 3 programmes and one of them is Chandrayaan 4. We are happy that Chandrayaan 3 landed there...we demonstrated 2 critical technologies, we can send something to the moon and bring it back, and we can fire a rocket after landing and waiting for 14 days, it's a major development."Describing the Chandrayaan 4 mission, RC Kapoor, Astronomer & ...

Cabinet clears Chandrayaan-4, Venus Orbiter Mission for space exploration

Moon mission Chandrayaan-4 will cost Rs 2104.06 cr while Rs 1,236 crore has been earmarked for Venus Orbiter Mission

What's on the Moon's far side? China's Chang'e-6 samples reveal first clues

The Chang'e-6 mission samples represent a combination of mature lunar soil mixed with recently ejected materials

Foes on earth, pals on Moon: India-China may tie-up for lunar nuclear plant

India wants to join Russia's ambitious plans for a nuclear power plant on the Moon, which is part of a broader lunar base project in collaboration with China

Moon's seismic activity likely linked to past meteorite impacts: Isro

Seismic activity in the Moon's soil could be due to impact from meteorites in the past or local heat-related effects, according to ISRO's preliminary analysis of data received from Chandrayaan-3's quake-detecting instrument. However, detailed studies are needed to get more insights from the data, they said. Their research paper, published in the journal Icarus, is a summary of observations made on 190 hours of data recorded by the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA). ILSA is one of the five major major scientific instruments, all of them carried by Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander and Pragyaan rover together. Chandrayaan-3 made a soft-landing on the Moon's south pole on August 23, 2023. The quake-detecting ILSA was operated continuously until September 2, 2023, after which it was switched off and was packed back up, before the lander was relocated to a new point roughly 50 centimetres away from the initial one, the researchers from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO

Chandrayaan-3: India must leverage this giant leap for Global South

For fledgling space organisations in the Global South, Chandrayaan-3's success is a landmark achievement, rivalling China's Chang'e 4 mission, which uniquely landed on the moon's far side

Chandrayaan-3 data confirms Moon's surface was once an ocean of magma

Latest Chandrayaan-3 data, as reported by Isro, has confirmed the theory that states that the lunar surface was once covered by an ocean of magma

Good news for human explorers! Newly found cave could house crews on Moon

Radar data gathered by Nasa's lunar reconnaissance orbiter (LRO) revealed that the deepest known pit on the moon leads to a cave 45 metres wide and up to 80 metres long

Chang'e-7 mission: Egypt, Bahrain join China to build hyperspectral camera

The Egyptian Space Agency, Bahrain's National Space Science Agency, and Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics signed an agreement for the joint development of hyperspectral camera

China's Chang'e-6 spacecraft makes historic landing on far side of moon

The China National Space Administration announced that Chang'e-6 "successfully landed at the designated landing area," the Xinhua News Agency reported

AgniKul fires up reusable rocket dream, orbital launch next target

Agnibaan is a two-stage launch vehicle capable of carrying up to 100 kilograms of payload to an extent of around 700 km to low earth orbit

China sending probe to get samples from less-explored far side of moon

China is preparing to launch a lunar probe on Friday that would land on the far side of the moon and return with samples that could provide insights into geological and other differences between the less-explored region and the better-known near side. The unprecedented mission would be the latest advance in the increasingly sophisticated and ambitious space exploration program that is now competing with the US, still the leader in space. China already landed a rover on the moon's far side in 2019, the first country to do so. Free from exposure to Earth and other interference, the moon's somewhat mysterious far side is ideal for radio astronomy and other scientific work. Because the far side never faces Earth, a relay satellite is a needed to maintain communications. The Chang'e lunar exploration probe is named after the Chinese mythical moon goddess. The probe is being carried on a Long March-5 YB rocket set for liftoff on Friday evening from the Wenchang launch centre on the south

China launches 3-member Shenzhou-18 crew to its Tiangong space station

The Shenzhou-18 spacecraft, along with its three passengers, launched atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China on Thursday

Chandrayaan-3 linked Kaynes Tech's founder joins Forbes' billionaires list

Ramesh Kunhikannan is among the 25 Indians who made a debut on the Forbes World's Billionaires list of 2024. His Kaynes Technology had supplied electronic systems for the mission

US directs Nasa to create standard time for Moon amid growing space race

Space agency has to have a Coordinated Lunar Time by 2026 to streamline the work of lunar missions