Russia joined the growing list of lunar lander failures today. Luna-25 crashed into the Moon following an anomaly yesterday after a command was sent to change the spacecraft’s orbit. Communications were lost and the spacecraft  crashed into the surface. Luna-25 is the fifth lunar probe in a row launched by several countries and companies to fail since 2019. India was one of those failures in 2019, but it will try again with Chandrayaan-3, which is orbiting the Moon right now with landing scheduled for Wednesday.

Read More Read More

Russia’s space agency Roscosmos is reporting today that Luna-25 experienced an anomaly after being commanded to adjust its orbit around the Moon in preparation for landing on Monday. Luna-25 is Russia’s first lunar probe in almost 50 years and Russian hopes are riding high that it will demonstrate that the country that racked up a number of robotic lunar “firsts” in the early years of the Space Age is still a player. Experts are analyzing the situation at the moment.

Read More Read More

The fourth and final session of the United Nations Open-Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats will take place at the end of this month. Previous discussions at OEWG and elsewhere highlighted the challenges of talking about a topic where terminology varies considerably within and among nations and other stakeholders. Now there is at least a starting point with the new “Lexicon for Outer Space Security” released by the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research and the Secure World Foundation.

Read More Read More

The State Department is starting discussions with U.S. stakeholders to organize an International Lunar Year. The ILY will build on the International Geophysical Year that heralded the beginning of the Space Age, the International Space Year of the early 1990s, and other international “years” that coordinate global scientific efforts and educate the public.

Read More Read More

Intuitive Machines announced today that its first lunar landing mission is set for launch between November 15-20, 2023. IM-1 will land at the Moon’s South Pole as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

Read More Read More

Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com in the last week, August 7-13, 2023, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.

Read More Read More

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of August 13-19, 2023 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until September except for pro forma sessions.

Read More Read More

Russia successfully launched the Luna-25 probe today almost 50 years after its last spacecraft landed on the Moon. Amidst backlash from its invasion of Ukraine that included the cancellation of significant space cooperation with other countries, Russia clearly wants to demonstrate it still is a player in space exploration. Today’s launch is one step, but landing on the Moon is fraught with risks as others recently experienced.

Read More Read More

NASA said today the next two missions in NASA’s program to return astronauts to the Moon, Artemis II and Artemis III, remain on track for launch in late 2024 and late 2025, but a lot of work remains. That is especially true for Artemis III, the mission currently slated to put astronauts back on the lunar surface. The head of the Artemis program broached the possibility that a “different mission” could be flown if all the hardware is not ready because the point is to keep flying and keep learning.

Read More Read More

Boeing’s Mark Nappi said today that the Starliner Crew Flight Test will be ready to go in March 2024, but fitting it into the busy space station and United Launch Alliance schedules will be complicated. Boeing had planned to launch CFT in July, but additional technical problems emerged in May leading to an indefinite delay.

Read More Read More