TechCrunch reports: Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin is pausing its space tourism flights for "no less than two years" in order to focus all of its resources on upcoming missions to the moon, the company announced Friday. The decision puts a temporary halt on a program that Blue Origin has been using to fly humans past the Kármán line, the recognized boundary of space, for the last five years. Blue Origin made the announcement just a few weeks ahead of the expected third launch of its New Glenn mega-rocket, which is slated for late February... The company said Friday that New Shepard has flown 38 times and carried 98 humans to space, along with more than 200 scientific and research payloads. "The move is a clear sign that Blue Origin is going all in on its moon program as the company races with rival SpaceX," reports the Business Standard, "to be the first private company to land humans on the lunar surface for Nasa's Artemis program." Blue Origin holds a $3.4 billion contract with Nasa to develop its Blue Moon lander, designed to shuttle astronauts to and from the moon, with a landing originally targeted for 2029... The company is targeting the launch and landing of a cargo version of its lander as soon as this year, as a test ahead of eventually landing humans. Blue Origin has also presented an accelerated plan to Nasa for developing a lander that may be ready for carrying astronauts ahead of Starship, the large new rocket from Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Universe Today: There's a bright side to every situation. In 2032, the Moon itself might have a particularly bright side if it is blasted by a 60-meter-wide asteroid. The chances of such an event are still relatively small (only around 4%), but non-negligible. And scientists are starting to prepare both for the bad (massive risks to satellites and huge meteors raining down on a large portion of the planet) and the good (a once in a lifetime chance to study the geology, seismology, and chemical makeup of our nearest neighbor). A new paper from Yifan He of Tsinghua University and co-authors, released in pre-print form on arXiv, looks at the bright side of all of the potential interesting science we can do if a collision does, indeed, happen. If Asteroid 2024 YR4 were to hit the Moon, researchers would be able to watch a large lunar impact unfold in real time and collect data on extreme collisions that usually exist only in computer models. Telescopes could follow how a newly formed crater and its pool of molten rock cool and solidify, while the resulting moonquake would offer a clearer picture of its internal structure via the seismic waves it sends through the Moon. Furthermore, researchers could compare the fresh crater to older ones to improve our understanding of the Moon's long history of impacts. Debris blasted off the surface could even deliver small lunar samples to Earth. Altogether, it would be a once-in-a-generation chance to learn more about how the Moon/rocky worlds respond to powerful impacts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: Particles from Earth's atmosphere have been carried into space by solar wind and have been landing on the moon for billions of years, mixing into the lunar soil, according to a new study [published in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment last month]. The research sheds new light on a puzzle that has endured for over half a century since the Apollo missions brought back lunar samples with traces of substances such as water, carbon dioxide, helium and nitrogen embedded in the regolith — the moon's dusty surface layer. Early studies theorized that the sun was the source of some of these substances. But in 2005 researchers at the University of Tokyo suggested that they could have also originated from the atmosphere of a young Earth before it developed a magnetic field about 3.7 billion years ago. The authors suspected that the magnetic field, once in place, would have stopped the stream by trapping the particles and making it difficult or impossible for them to escape into space. Now, the new research upends that assumption by suggesting that Earth's magnetic field might have helped, rather than blocked, the transfer of atmospheric particles to the moon — which continues to this day. "This means that the Earth has been supplying volatile gases like oxygen and nitrogen to the lunar soil over all this time," said Eric Blackman, coauthor of the new study and a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester in New York. Earth's magnetic field "somewhat inflates the atmosphere of Earth" when it's hit by solar winds, according to study coauthor Eric Blackman, a physics/astronomy professor at New York's University of Rochester. He told CNN the moon passes through this region for a few days each month, with particles landing on the lunar surface and embedding in the soil (because the moon lacks an atmosphere that would block them). This also means the moon's soil could actually contain a chemical record of Earth's ancient atmosphere, according to the study — "spanning billions of years..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A mega rocket set to take astronauts around the Moon for the first time in decades is being taken to its launch pad," the BBC reported this morning. NASA is livestreaming their move of the 11-million-pound "stack" — which includes the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft secured to it, all standing on its Mobile Launch Platform. Travelling at less than 1 mile per hour, the move is expected to take 12 hours. The mission — which could blast off as soon as 6 February — is expected to take 10 days. It is part of a wider plan aimed at returning astronauts to the lunar surface. As well as the rocket being ready, the Moon has to be in the right place too, so successive launch windows are selected accordingly. In practice, this means one week at the beginning of each month during which the rocket is pointed in the right direction followed by three weeks where there are no launch opportunities. The potential launch dates are: — 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11 February — 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11 March — 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 April "The crew of four will travel beyond the far side of the moon, which could set a new record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth, currently held by Apollo 13," reports CNN: But why won't Artemis II land on the lunar surface? "The short answer is because it doesn't have the capability. This is not a lunar lander," said Patty Casas Horn, deputy lead for Mission Analysis and Integrated Assessments at NASA. "Throughout the history of NASA, everything that we do is a bit risky, and so we want to make sure that that risk makes sense, and only accept the risk that we have to accept, within reason. So we build out a capability, then we test it out, then we build out a capability, then we test it out. And we will get to landing on the moon, but Artemis II is really about the crew..." The upcoming flight is the first time that people will be on board the Artemis spacecraft: The Orion capsule will carry the astronauts around the moon, and the SLS rocket will launch Orion into Earth orbit before the crew continues deeper into space... The mission will begin with two revolutions around Earth, before starting the translunar injection — the maneuver that will take the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and on toward the moon — about 26 hours into the flight, Horn said. "That's when we set up for the big burn — it's about six minutes in duration. And once we do this, you're on your way back to Earth. There's nothing else that you need to do. You're going to go by the moon, and the moon's gravity is going to pull you around and swing you back towards the Earth...." Avoiding entering lunar orbit keeps the mission profile simpler, allowing the crew to focus on other tasks as there is no need to pilot the spacecraft in any way. "The Artemis program's first planned lunar lander is called the Starship HLS, or Human Landing System, and is currently under development by SpaceX..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy plan to deploy a nuclear fission reactor on the Moon by 2030 to provide continuous, long-duration power for lunar bases, science missions, and future Mars exploration. space & defense reports: NASA said fission surface power will provide a critical capability for long-duration missions by delivering continuous, reliable electrical power independent of sunlight, lunar night cycles or extreme temperature conditions. Unlike solar-based systems, a nuclear reactor could operate for years without refuelling, supporting habitats, science payloads, resource utilisation systems and surface mobility. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said achieving long-term human presence on the Moon and future missions to Mars will require new approaches to power generation. He said closer collaboration with the Department of Energy is essential to delivering the capabilities needed to support sustained exploration and infrastructure development beyond Earth orbit. The fission surface power system is expected to produce safe, efficient and scalable electrical power, forming a foundational element of NASA's Moon-to-Mars architecture. Continuous power availability is seen as a key enabler for permanent lunar bases, in-situ resource utilisation and expanded scientific operations in permanently shadowed regions. Further reading: You Can Now Reserve a Hotel Room On the Moon For $250,000

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A newly founded startup called GRU Space is taking deposits of up to $1 million to eventually build inflatable hotels on the Moon. The bet is that space needs destinations, not just rockets, even if the first customers are essentially early adopters of sci-fi optimism. Ars Technica reports: It sounds crazy, doesn't it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late December when I spoke to founder Skyler Chan, a single full-time employee aside from himself. And Chan, in fact, only recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. [...] The GRU in the company's name, by the way, stands for Galactic Resource Utilization. The long-term vision is to derive resources from the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and beyond to fuel human expansion into space. If all that sounds audacious and unrealistic, well, it kind of is. But it is not without foundation. GRU Space has already received seed funding from Y Combinator, and it will go through the organization's three-month program early this year. This will help Chan refine his company's product and give him more options to raise money. Regarding his vision, you can read GRU Space's white paper here. Presently, the company plans to fly its initial "mission" in 2029 as a 10-kg payload on a commercial lunar lander, demonstrating an inflatable structure capability and converting lunar regolith into Moon bricks using geopolymers. With its second mission, the company plans to launch a larger inflatable structure into a "lunar pit" to test a scaled-up version of its resource development capabilities. The first hotel, an inflatable structure, would be launched in 2032 and would be capable of supporting up to four guests at a time. The next iteration beyond this would be the fancier structure, built from Moon bricks, in the style of the Palace of the Fine Arts. "SpaceX is building the FedEx to get us there, right?" Chan said. "But there has to be a destination worthy to stay in. Obviously, there is all kinds of debate around this, and what the future is going to be like. But our conviction is that the fundamental problem we have to solve, to advance humans toward the Moon and Mars, is off-world habitation. We can't keep everyone living on that first ship that sailed to North America, right? We have to build the roads and structures and offices that we live in today."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.