Plus: Firefly to carry UAE’s second lunar rover and more.

Our Moon may be one of the largest satellites in the Solar System but its exploration has been concentrated on select areas. One of these is low lunar orbit, where mapping spacecraft from three countries have been concurrently flying from pole to pole between 50 to 150 kilometers above the

Key news of the month: China has achieved the first ever daytime Earth-Moon distance measurement wherein a 1.2-meter telescope reflected an infrared laser off of a small retroreflector on the 61-kilogram Tiandu

Two announcements before we begin:

1. I’m honored to be moderating a fantastic panel on modern themes in global lunar exploration at the international Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX) on Friday, May 9. If you’re attending GLEX in New Delhi, join us for the session. And, if

ISRO has been publishing monthly summaries of the varied activities and programs of India’s Department of Space (DOS) for years. Lately though, there have been consistent delays in publishing them by a month or two, and sometimes even more. The summaries have been trimmed too, now conveying less

And more such interesting Moon exploration updates from China’s National Space Day on April 24.

Plus: Exploration and science updates from the US, South Korea, and Europe.

And, countries allied with the US are facing delays in their own missions, allowing China to lead in this aspect of lunar exploration too.

Plus mission updates and some tangents.

Plus: A host of new lunar science results from Chandrayaan 2 and 3. Enjoy this 3200-word Chandrayaan-special. 🌙

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There’s a lot in this Moon Monday edition to unpack. Grab yourself a coffee or another mild drug of choice and let’s get started. 🤓

Chang’e 6 samples produce two more big results

Also drills, flying regolith, a hard landing, Moonlight, and many more mission updates to quench the lunatic in you.

Sometime last year, nasaspaceflight.com (NSF) stopped loading for me. I could not access any page on its website, all of which said “Sorry, you have been blocked” no matter which browser I tried. Since then I’ve been accessing the NSF site in alternate ways because

Plus: Contextualizing the failure of Intuitive Machines’ second Moon mission and that of Lunar Trailblazer as grave losses for NASA.