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The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE will be awarded to the first privately funded teams to build robots that successfully land on the lunar surface, explore the Moon by moving at least 500 meters (~1/3 of a mile), and return high definition video and imagery. The Google Lunar X PRIZE expires whenever all prizes are claimed, or at the end of 2015. As of midnight on December 31st, 2010, the team registration for the Google Lunar X PRIZE is closed. No additional applicants will be accepted to join the competition. ...too late

please see the act report on this from a few years ago - its on the wiki - should we maybe make an update analysis? any volunteers? Giusi?

I'll have a look

The paper I talked about with the proof of a gigantic lava tube discovered in 2017 from data of the Japanese lunar mission

Given the size of this thing we may consider a project on city urban planning inside. I would see a rocket-port outside the crater, some lift systems to get in, a closed dome with artificial atmosphere where to develop the city possible trekking routes on the lunar surface, a mirror system to get sunlight in, an energy factory just outside the entry.

More on these Japanese moon base plans... Those initial surveyor bots will pave the way for the construction of the unmanned moon base near the lunar south pole, which the robots will construct for themselves.

Armadillo Aerospace have officially completed the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Level 2, on a rainy day at Caddo Mills, Texas. Reports came in

Can we do something about this?

they also have this application for Mac and probably also PC : http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/games/simulation_and_sports/lunarroversimulator.html

who is interested in following this a bit closer?

More arguments for a lunar base? "They found the most mass-efficient path involves launching a crew from Earth with just enough fuel to get into orbit around the Earth. A fuel-producing plant on the surface of the moon would then launch tankers of fuel into space, where they would enter gravitational orbit. The tankers would eventually be picked up by the Mars-bound crew, which would then head to a nearby fueling station to gas up before ultimately heading to Mars."

There was a paper with a very similar concept (reaching Mars via DRO) at the AAS meeting in January by Conte et al. First, the total Delta V required for a trip Earth -> LLO -> MLO is higher than Earth -> MLO. The trick is that Earth -> LLO requires less Delta V than Earth -> MLO and hence less mass has to be carried along *from Earth*. Essentially what both approaches have in common is that they say "if there's a free gas station orbiting the moon, it's cheaper to fly empty and fill up there on the way". The AAS paper actually does a decent job at estimating the "real" cost by also including estimates of the cost of a lunar base. https://pure.strath.ac.uk/portal/files/44275737/Conte_etal_AAS2015_Earth_Mars_transfers_through_Moon_distant_retrograde_orbit.pdf

There goes your moon base...

first science results reported in Nature (as far as I know) from the Yutu-2 and Chang'e mission .... and they look very good!

Sure they are very useful! It will be even better if they manage to fit the data to modeled circulation of the lunar magma ocean that was formed posterior to the "Theia" body collision with Earth. The collision was the cause of the magma ocean in the first place. The question now is how this circulation pattern of the lava-moon "froze" in time upon phase transition to solid. Because, what crystallizes last in sequence, is more rich in "incompatible" with the crystal structure, elements, we might combine data+models to predict their location. Those incompatible tracers are mainly radioactively decaying elements that produce heat (google publications about lunar KREEP elements (potassium (K), rare earth elements(REE), and phosphorus(P)). By knowing where the KREEP is: - we know where to dig for them mining (if they are useful for something, eg. Phosphorus for plants to be grown on the Moon) - we avoid planning to build the future human colony on top of radioactives, of course. The hope is that the Moon, due to lack of plate tectonics, has preserved this "signature of the freezing sequence". Let's see.

thanks Nasia! very interesting comment

NASA has confirmed the presence of water on the moon's sunlit surface, a breakthrough that suggests the chemical compound that is vital to life on Earth could be distributed across more parts of the lunar surface than the ice that has previously been found in dark and cold areas.

Here is one of the associated papers that appeared in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1198-9

Nice renders!!!

looks like a mythbuster paper!

First paper I know of that seems to confirm what we see with our daughters since they are born ... Would this also be observable with astronauts? We should have some data from the ISS it seems to me...

Oct. 22, 2013 NASA Laser Communication System Sets Record with Data Transmissions to and from Moon NASA's Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) has made history using a pulsed laser beam to transmit data over the 239,000 miles between the moon and Earth at a record-breaking download rate of 622 megabits per second (Mbps).

In 2017 a private moon landing could make news. If the mission is successful, said GeekWire, Moon Express could become the first privately backed venture to achieve a soft lunar landing. Bob Richards is CEO of Moon Express and he announced the launch plan earlier this month at the Space Technology & Investment Summit in San Francisco.

Bob Richards ist ja kein unbeschriebenes Blatt ...