I hope you enjoy this bird’s-eye view of all major developments in India’s space trajectory over the last two months! 🚀India’s space budget for FY2024A tailor-made truck carrying the large and tall fairing of a Launch Vehicle Mark III rocket. It housed the Chandrayaan 3 spacecraft stack. Image: ISRODespite the many highs of 2023 for Indian space, the FY2024...

China’s ambition to build a lunar navcom constellationLing Xin reports on China’s ongoing studies to have a phased constellation of 30+ satellites which would provide high-precision navigation as well as high-bandwidth communications for most places on the Moon with up to quadruple coverage. Earlier studies focused on a navcom constellation that optimizes...

I’m glad to share that alongside many inspiring individuals like Louis Burtz, Ranjana Kaul and Yoav Landsman, I’ve been an Affiliate at the Open Lunar Foundation for a while now. We’re thrilled to aid the non-profit’s daunting work of developing key technical and policy building blocks which aim to help ensure that the exploration of our Moon is cooperative...

On the intersection of ispace, NASA CLPS, funding, and scienceIllustration of the APEX 1.0 lunar lander design by ispace US. Image: ispaceThe publicly traded ispace Japan is taking another loan from the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, amounting to $62 million, to continue working on its upcoming three Moon missions:The company’s second lunar lander...

The successful touchdown of Chandrayaan 3 on the Moon last year was pivotal for India’s space ambitions as well as for global lunar exploration. Having taken place amid many lunar landing failures, Chandrayaan 3 kept the worldwide momentum for the Moon going by feeding into the frenzy of sending robotic explorers to our cosmic companion. Chandrayaan...

Top left: Chang’e 6 reentry capsule after safe descent and landing on Earth; Top right: Chang’e 6 lunar sample container after being lifted out of the reentry capsule; Bottom: Part of the Chang’e 6 sample return mission team from CNSA and CAST. Images: Xinhua / CCTV+The first ever samples from the Moon’s farside are now cached on EarthAfter successfully...