The Moon

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Flying Lunar Lander Sees Moon's South Pole, Earth 'in the Rearview Mirror'
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost captured some stunning sights on its way to the Moon's Mare Crisium basin.
By Adrianna Nine February 18, 2025

A new lander is on its way to the Moon, and it's managed to catch some breathtaking views during its journey. As it made its way toward lunar orbit last week, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost captured mesmerizing footage of Earth "in the rearview mirror." That clip was quickly followed up by images of the Moon's south pole, complete with countless of its trademark impact craters.

In an X post on February 11, Firefly wrote that it had "confirmed Blue Ghost's first trajectory correction maneuver was performed with such accuracy" that it was "skipping the next one" entirely. As their name suggests, these maneuvers are used to adjust a spacecraft's path, typically by firing the spacecraft's thrusters in a sideward direction. From the sound of it, the first of two planned trajectory correction maneuvers compensated so well for Blue Ghost's imperfect path that the second one was no longer necessary.

https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/f ... iew-mirror

[weatheriscool]

Chang'e-6 samples suggest 4.25-billion-year-old impact formed moon's South Pole–Aitken basin
https://phys.org/news/2025-03-samples-b ... -moon.html
by Li Yali, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Scientists have long sought to determine the age of the moon's South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin, the largest and oldest known impact crater on the lunar surface. Recently, a research team led by Prof. Chen Yi from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has dated the formation of the basin to 4.25 billion years ago by analyzing the first-ever rock samples returned from the SPA basin by China's Chang'e-6 mission.

The findings are published in National Science Review.

The SPA basin, a vast impact structure spanning the moon's far side, is believed to have formed during a period of intense asteroid bombardment that shaped much of the solar system within its first few hundred million years. Despite its significance, the exact age of the SPA basin has remained elusive, hindering efforts to understand its role in lunar and planetary history.

[weatheriscool]

Lunar soil could support life on the Moon, say scientists

by Cell Press
https://phys.org/news/2025-07-lunar-soi ... tists.html

Scientists have developed a technology that may help humans survive on the moon. In a study published in the journal Joule, researchers extracted water from lunar soil and used it to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and chemicals for fuel—potentially opening new doors for future deep space exploration by mitigating the need to transport essential resources like water and fuel all the way from Earth.

"We never fully imagined the 'magic' that the lunar soil possessed," said Lu Wang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.

"The biggest surprise for us was the tangible success of this integrated approach. The one-step integration of lunar H2O extraction and photothermal CO2 catalysis could enhance energy utilization efficiency and decrease the cost and complexity of infrastructure development."

Space agencies have floated the idea of using the moon as an outpost for far-flung explorations of the cosmos for decades. However, the need to supply such a base with adequate resources to support its inhabitants—especially water—has been a barrier to making it a reality.

[caltrek]

This Trio of Robots Could Explore Lunar Caves
By Evan Gough
September 12, 2025

Introduction:

(Universe Today) Protecting astronauts and equipment during missions outside of Earth's protective sphere is critical to successful space exploration. The Moon is a malign environment where powerful solar radiation bombards the surface unimpeded.

The Moon's temperature swings, the wildest in the Solar System, reach highs of 121 Celsius and lows of -146 Celsius. Some polar locations are in a permanent -240 Celsius deep freeze.

There are also micrometeorites. With no atmosphere to stop them, micrometeorites pummel the surface at extremely high velocities up to 70 km/second (157,000 mph.) Some research shows that up to 10,000 kg of micrometeorites strike the Moon every day.

Astronauts need protection from all of these hazards. Orbital images of the Moon show that there are numerous lava tubes on the Moon that could keep astronauts safe. These were formed during ancient lava eruptions. When part of a lava tube ceiling collapses it leaves an opening called a skylight that shows up in images.

There are also visible sinuous rilles on the surface indicating the path and length of some tubes. While many have collapsed almost completely, others have not. Some rilles reach great lengths. Rima Sharp, a rille on the lunar near side, is up to 566 km long, though some researchers say it is actually two separate rilles.

Read more here: https://www.universetoday.com/articles ... ar-caves

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https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady5169

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China (Barely) Beats the US to Developing a New Lunar Standard Time
The way in which time progresses on the Moon is becoming increasingly relevant as both countries push toward their next lunar landings.
By Graham Templeton January 14, 2026
https://www.extremetech.com/science/chi ... ndard-time

Time dilation is a funny thing. We think of time as an immutable, shared reality, but you can technically observe time dilation simply by comparing the ticking of two atomic clocks, one at sea-level and one on a mountaintop. Once you get to the altitude of a satellite, the effect becomes even more pronounced.

So, once you get all the way to the altitude of the Moon, clocks start acting really weird.

That becomes an issue when you're trying to develop (and perhaps even colonize) the Moon as quickly as possible, since so many precision technologies rely on perfect, or near-perfect, agreement in time. For some time, multiple projects have sought to create a standardized, time-shifted system for translating the Earth's time flow to the Moon's time flow.

A paper recently published in Astronomy and Astrophysics details a new piece of software that purports to achieve this: the Lunar Time Ephemeris, or LTE440. Its developers are a team of Chinese scientists at the Purple Mountain Observatory near Nanjing.

[firestar464]

Just use it tbh. Why bother wasting resources on creating a new one?

[caltrek]

NASA Plans to Put a Nuclear Reactor on The Moon by 2030
By Michele Starr
January 15, 2026

Introduction:

(Science Alert) NASA and the US Department of Energy have reaffirmed their joint project to develop a nuclear fission reactor for the surface of the Moon.

According to an announcement from the space agency, the two bodies hope to complete the development phase – likely including testing on Earth – of this facility by 2030. The reactor would be designed to provide continuous power for years for planned lunar surface missions, eliminating the need for constant fuel resupply from Earth.

"This agreement," says NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, "enables closer collaboration between NASA and the Department of Energy to deliver the capabilities necessary to usher in the Golden Age of space exploration and discovery."

They have their work cut out. It's challenging enough to build a nuclear reactor that is safe and reliable on Earth. The Moon is a whole different ball game. Its environmental conditions present huge problems for fission reactor design, the biggest of which is the management of waste heat.

ere on Earth, reactor cooling towers use water, which releases the excess energy as steam borne away by the atmosphere. However, fluids behave differently in low-gravity and low-pressure conditions; the Moon is a near-vacuum, with no real, swirling atmosphere to help dissipate heat.

Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-plan ... heres-why