Tag Archives: Moon

NASA’s second thoughts about VIPER opened an opportunity for someone else to book that ride to the moon. Just because its cargo was canceled did not mean Astrobotic’s journey was off — it remains scheduled for later this year. And on Wednesday, a small startup named Venturi Astrolab Inc. announced it had claimed that opportunity to accelerate its own lunar …

Two canyons near the south pole of the moon rival the Grand Canyon, both in depth and length. Unlike the sinuous chasm in Arizona, the two lunar canyons, known as Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck, are straight, as if the crust of the moon had been cut by a knife. And unlike the Grand Canyon, carved over millions years by …

For a few months last fall, a school-bus-size space rock named 2024 PT5 gained fame as Earth’s new “mini-moon.” Astronomers rushed to study the object while it was still close enough to Earth to observe in detail. Now, one team has concluded that 2024 PT5 is a chunk of the real moon. The rock was most likely flung into space …

During his Inaugural Address on Monday, President Donald J. Trump again promised to launch American astronauts to Mars. Seated nearby, Elon Musk, a political benefactor of Mr. Trump who founded SpaceX in the hope that it would one day be able to send colonists to Mars, beamed with enthusiasm and offered two thumbs up. The gargantuan Starship rocket that Mr. …

For years, the World Monuments Fund has sought to draw attention and resources to endangered cultural heritage sites including Machu Picchu in Peru, temples in Cambodia and the old city of Taiz in Yemen. But this year’s list of at-risk sites goes much further afield: to the moon. “The moon seems so far outside of our scope,” said Bénédicte de …

A space twofer is scheduled to take place early Wednesday morning — two lunar missions for the price of one rocket launch. A SpaceX Falcon 9 will lift off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying the Blue Ghost lander built by Firefly Aerospace of Austin, Texas, and the Resilience lander from Ispace of Japan. When is …

For thousands of years, Cardea has been known as the Roman goddess of doorways and transitions, a guardian of thresholds. On Monday, she joined the celestial ranks of fellow mythological figures like Mars, Venus and Andromeda. But Cardea is not a planet or a constellation. She is as a quasi-moon — a very-real type of asteroid that appears to be …

The first full moon of the year will glide through the sky on Monday night. For lucky stargazers in some parts of the world, it will also pass in front of the more-brilliantly-red-than-usual Mars in an event known as a lunar occultation. But that’s not all January’s sky has to offer. A new comet, expected to be the brightest of …