In the 5th Avenue Lego store in Manhattan, in the back toward the stairs going to the second level, there’s a small gray brick spinning lethargically on a thin pedestal.
NASA aims to set up a long-term human presence on the Moon, but maintaining a habitat on the surface will require some innovative infrastructure. To one day transport cargo across the dusty, cratered landscape, NASA is considering a magnetic levitation railway system.
The European Space Agency (ESA) launched a Moon mission game in Fortnite that lets you bounce around on the lunar surface, picking up resources and building a habitat in the same way future astronauts will establish human presence on Earth’s dusty satellite.
China is planning to send its next lander to the lunar surface, this time targeting an impact crater with a sun-lit rim that could hold precious resources for long-duration stays on the Moon.
Thales Alenia Space and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) are embarking on a pioneering venture to construct the first permanent human outpost on the Moon, a critical component of NASA’s Artemis program.
Rocket launches are expensive and laborious, but for decades they’ve been the price of doing business for space agencies hoping to get their latest satellite, telescope, or team of astronauts into the great blue yonder.
NASA is likely to face some serious money issues in the upcoming year that could affect the space agency’s science program, but not its Artemis Moon plans. At the same time, NASA’s wildly expensive Mars Sample Return mission is now under some very serious Senatorial scrutiny, with its future potentially in doubt.