Lunar Landings News and Discussions

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SwRI Team Uncovers Clues About What Future Astronauts May Find on the Moon
June 15, 2026

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) SAN ANTONIO — June 15, 2026 — Scientists from the Center for Lunar Origin and Evolution (CLOE), Southwest Research Institute’s team in NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, have helped uncover new details about the formation of the Moon’s oldest and largest impact crater, providing fresh insight into what future Artemis astronauts could encounter near the lunar south pole. The findings are outlined in two new companion studies.

Researchers studied the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, a massive impact structure on the Moon’s far side. Scientists consider the basin one of the Moon’s oldest surviving features, providing insight into the early solar system. Regions near SPA are also potential landing sites for NASA’s Artemis missions.

“The basin offers scientists a rare opportunity to study the Moon’s earliest history,” said Dr. William Bottke, director of CLOE and executive director of SwRI’s Science Directorate in Boulder, Colorado. He is a co-author of the studies. “The collision struck the lunar surface with such force that it may have excavated material from deep inside the Moon, including portions of the lunar mantle.”

Using advanced models and simulations, the research team recreated the SPA-forming impact and identified new evidence about the direction and composition of the object that struck the Moon. Their work shows that an impactor approaching from the north and traveling south hit at a low angle and produced the elongated, tapered shape of the SPA basin.

“Our simulation produces the right shape and nature of the impact basin. It also tells us about the projectile that created it and the direction of the impact,” said Dr. Shigeru Wakita of Purdue University, lead author of the SPA impact study.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1131937

To read the paper titled “A southward differentiated impactor forms the tapered shape of the South Pole-Aitken impact basin on the Moon,” visit the Science Advances website at: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aea1984

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NASA Announces Four New Lander Missions
By David Dickinson
July 1, 2026

Introduction:

(Sky and Telescope) On June 30th, NASA announced additional details about its new plans for the Moon.

The agency announced new contracts at a press conference, delivered as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program: Two awards go to Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic and one award each to Texas-based companies Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines. The contracts, which total $590.4 million, aim to put four landers on the Moon by late 2028.

All of the landers targeting 2028 launch will carry identical instrumentation to study the radiation environment on the way to the Moon and stereo cameras to document the plume of regolith raised up during landing. They will also carry a Laser Retroflector Array for lunar rangefinding. The landers may carry other payloads as well, but those haven't been decided yet.

Read more here: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy- ... or-2028/

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Building a Long term Base on the Moon Will Require Extensive Planning – a Planetary Geologist Describes the Considerations that Go Into It
By Clive Neal
July 14, 2026

Introduction:

(The Conversation) Lots of excitement for space bubbled up in spring 2026. The Artemis II mission took a crew of four on a flyby around the Moon, and NASA officials announced their goal of constructing a permanent lunar outpost by 2030.

With that announcement, NASA outlined a definitive set of goals for getting humans to the surface of the Moon. That way, people can learn how to live and work productively off Earth before going much farther away, to Mars. Yes, we’re going to the Moon again, but this time to stay.

As a geologist, I have spent 40 years studying the Moon and human space exploration. When the crew of Artemis II crossed behind the Moon and lost contact with Earth, it brought back my memories of Apollo 8 doing so for the first time in 1968. That experience had marked my first “Apollo moment” of many over the next four years. This generation has now had their first “Artemis moment,” and just as it was in 1968, such moments are inspirational.

The excitement could continue to grow if NASA can maintain its aspirational mission manifest of 79 launches and 73 lunar landings between now and 2036. These missions are mostly robotic, uncrewed landings until after 2027, when the agency has two human landings per year planned.

But the devil is in the details. Building a lunar base is no easy feat, and with this ambitious slate of missions will come lots of technical challenges.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/building-a ... t-285899


NASA has broken its road map toward a lunar base into three phases.
NASA

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