A budding startup called Interlune is trying to become the first private company to mine the moon’s natural resources and sell them back on Earth. Interlune will initially focus on helium-3 — a helium isotope created by the sun through the process of fusion — which is abundant on the moon. In an interview with Ars Technica, Rob Meyerson, one of Interlune’s founders and former Blue Origin president, said the company hopes to fly its harvester with one of the upcoming commercial moon missions backed by NASA. The plan is to have a pilot plant on the moon by 2028 and begin operations by 2030, Meyerson said.

Interlune announced this week that it’s raised $18 million in funding, including $15 million in its most recent round led by Seven Seven Six, the venture firm started by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The resource it’s targeting, helium-3, could be used on Earth for applications like quantum computing, medical imaging and, perhaps some day down the line, as fuel for fusion reactors. ​​Helium-3 is carried to the moon by solar winds and is thought to remain on the surface trapped in the soil, whereas when it reaches Earth, it’s blocked by the magnetosphere.

Interlune aims to excavate huge amounts of the lunar soil (or regolith), process it and extract the helium-3 gas, which it would then ship back to Earth. Alongside its proprietary lunar harvester, Interlune is planning a robotic lander mission to assess the concentration of helium-3 at the selected location on the surface. 

Interlune

“For the first time in history,” Meyerson said in a statement, “harvesting natural resources from the Moon is technologically and economically feasible.” The founding team includes Meyerson and former Blue Origin Chief Architect Gary Lai, Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt, former Rocket Lab exec Indra Hornsby and James Antifaev, who worked for Alphabet’s high-altitude balloon project, Loon. 

SpaceX will be hoping the third time's the charm as it attempts another test launch of its Starship rocket. The previous two efforts ended in failure, though Starship did reach space on the second go-round. A 110-minute launch window for the latest attempt opens at 8AM ET. A livestream covering the launch just kicked off at about 8:50AM ET, and you can follow it here on X. According to the SpaceX X feed, the current target liftoff is set for 9:25AM ET. 

The Federal Aviation Authority authorized the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy Orbital Flight Test 3 on Wednesday afternoon. The agency said in a statement to Engadget that Space X "met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements." 

The FAA grounded Starship for several weeks before the second test flight until the company took 63 "corrective actions." The first launch caused a fire in a state park and led to a lawsuit from environmental groups.

Along with building on top of the previous tests, there are a number of "ambitious" goals SpaceX has in mind for this launch. The company is aiming to carry out the first re-light of a Raptor engine in space, along with ensuring the successful ascent burn of both stages, opening and closing the payload door and conducting a controlled reentry. The spacecraft will fly on a new trajectory and it's expected to splashdown in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX says the updated flight path will afford it the chance to try out new things like engine burns in space while prioritizing public safety.

A startup company called Space One launched a rocket earlier in hopes of becoming the first private entity in Japan to put a satellite in orbit. Unfortunately, its attempt ended in a fiery explosion, mere seconds after lift off at 11AM local time. Its 60-foot-long rocket Kairos launched from the company's Space Port Kii in Wakayama, a prefecture south of Osaka in Japan's Kansai region. Space One director Mamoru Endo told reporters at a conference that the rocket's automated system detected an anomaly five seconds after liftoff and triggered its self-destruct function. The company has yet to figure out what that anomaly is and will be investigating the incident for answers. 

Kairos was carrying payload for the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center, which collects and analyzes imagery information for the Japanese government. That satellite was supposed to be an alternative to an existing Japanese satellite monitoring military facilities in and rocket launches from North Korea. Masakazu Toyoda, the company's president, said during the conference that Space One is "prepared to take up the next challenge." He also emphasized how common failed launches are in space travel. And that is true — SpaceX, for instance, lost several Starship vehicles over the past few years when they blew up during testing. 

Space One, backed by Canon and aerospace manufacturer IHI, eventually hopes to offer satellite launch services using small rockets, which it says "offer greater scheduling flexibility than large ones." It's also aiming to provide the "world's shortest lead time from contractual engagement to launch, as well as the world's most frequent launching schedule" while also minimizing the costs of putting satellites into orbit. Since the company must be able to stage a successful launch before customers come knocking on its doors, it will most likely announce its next attempt in the near future. 

Last year, Japanese company ispace also failed to become the first private company to land on the moon when it lost contact with its Hakuto-R lander. But the country's space agency, JAXA, is doing better than its private counterparts: Its SLIM lunar lander successfully touched down in January and is expected to resume its operations in late March after the lunar night is over. 

The Odysseus spacecraft made by Houston-based Intuitive Machines has successfully landed on the surface of the moon. It marks the first time a spacecraft from a private company has landed on the lunar surface, and it’s the first US-made craft to reach the moon since the Apollo missions.

Odysseus was carrying NASA instruments, which the space agency said would be used to help prepare for future crewed missions to the moon under the Artemis program. NASA confirmed the landing happened at 6:23 PM ET on February 22. The lander launched from Earth on February 15, with the help of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

According to The New York Times, there were some “technical issues with the flight” that delayed the landing for a couple of hours. Intuitive Machines CTO Tim Crain told the paper that “Odysseus is definitely on the moon and operating but it remains to be seen whether the mission can achieve its objectives.” Odysseus has a limited window of about a week to send data back down to Earth before darkness sets in and makes the solar-powered craft inoperable.

Intuitive Machines wasn’t the first private company to attempt a landing. Astrobotic made an attempt last month with its Peregrine lander, but was unsuccessful. Intuitive Machines is planning to launch two other lunar landers this year.

Astroscale’s ADRAS-J spacecraft, a demonstration satellite that could inform future space junk cleanup efforts, is now in orbit after a successful launch from New Zealand on Sunday. The satellite was sent to space atop an Electron rocket from Rocket Lab. Its mission, which was selected by Japan’s space agency (JAXA) for Phase I of the Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration program, will see ADRAS-J rendezvous with an old Japanese rocket upper stage that’s been in orbit since 2009.

The accumulation of waste in Earth’s orbit from decades of spaceflight is an issue of growing concern, and space agencies around the world are increasingly working to address it, in many cases tapping private companies to develop potential solutions. One of the most effective ways to deal with space junk could be to deorbit it, or move it to a lower altitude so it can burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. ADRAS-J will be the first to target a piece of existing large debris and attempt to safely approach and characterize it, relying on ground-based data to hone in on its position.

Over the next few months, it’ll make its way to the target and eventually try to get close enough to take images and assess its condition to determine if it can be removed. “ADRAS-J is officially on duty and ready to rendezvous with some space debris!” the company tweeted. “Let the new era of space sustainability begin!”

Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander is well on its way to the moon after launching without a hitch on Thursday, but it managed to snap a few incredible images of Earth while it was still close to home. The company shared the first batch of images from the IM-1 mission on X today after confirming in an earlier post that the spacecraft is “in excellent health.” Along with a view of Earth and some partial selfies of the Nova-C lander, nicknamed Odysseus, you can even see the SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage falling away in the distance after separation.

Odysseus is on track to make its moon landing attempt on February 22, and so far appears to be performing well. The team posted a series of updates on X at the end of the week confirming the lander has passed some key milestones ahead of its touchdown, including engine firing. This marked “the first-ever in-space ignition of a liquid methane and liquid oxygen engine,” according to Intuitive Machines.

If extreme challenges are your cup of tea, NASA has the perfect opportunity for you. The space agency put out a call on Friday for volunteers to participate in its second yearlong simulated Mars mission, the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA 2). For the duration of the mission, which will start in spring 2025, the four selected crew members will be housed in a 1,700-square-foot 3D-printed habitat in Houston. NASA is accepting applications on the CHAPEA website from now through April 2. It’s a paid gig, but NASA hasn’t publicly said how much participants will be compensated.

The Mars Dune Alpha habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center is designed to simulate what life might be like for future explorers on the red planet, where the environment is harsh and resources will be limited. There’s a crew currently living and working there as part of the first CHAPEA mission, which is now more than halfway through its 378-day assignment. During their stay, volunteers will perform habitat maintenance and grow crops, among other tasks. The habitat also has a 1,200-square-foot sandbox attached to it for simulated spacewalks.

To be considered, applicants must be a US citizen aged 30-55, speak English proficiently and have a master’s degree in a STEM field, plus at least two years of professional experience, a minimum of one thousand hours piloting an aircraft or two years of work toward a STEM doctoral program. Certain types of professional experience may allow applicants without a master’s to qualify too. CHAPEA 2 is the second of three mission NASA has planned for the program, the first of which began on June 25, 2023. 

Intuitive Machines' Odysseus has started making its way to the moon and could make history as the first privately built lander to touch down on the lunar surface. The lander was ferried to space by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket using a booster that already had 17 flights under its belt before this one and could even fly again in the future, seeing as it had safely returned to Earth on the company's Landing Zone 1. Both SpaceX and Intuitive Machines have confirmed that Odysseus has successfully been deployed and has started its multi-day journey to the moon. 

To be exact, Intuitive Machines has set its sights on the Malapert A crater near the moon's south pole as Odysseus' landing site. The spacecraft can operate for around 14 Earth days when powered by sunlight, but the company is hoping for touchdown to take place by February 22. Odysseus, the first of the Nova-C type landers Intuitive Machines is planning to launch this year, is carrying five NASA payloads in addition to commercial cargo. 

The mission's objectives include demonstrating precision landing and testing certain communication and navigation node capabilities. It will also observe how rocket plumes and space weather interact with the lunar surface. IM-1 was one of the missions NASA had chosen to take its scientific instruments to the moon over the next few years as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The first of the CLPS missions to take off was Astrobotic's Peregrine Mission 1, which unfortunately experienced an anomaly that prevented the lander from pointing its solar panels at the sun and caused it to leak propellant. Peregrine never made it to the moon and ended its journey by burning up in the Earth's atmosphere upon reentry. 

Houston-based space company Intuitive Machines is gearing up for an actual moonshot at the end of this month, when it’ll try to land a spacecraft named Odysseus on the lunar surface — ideally without it breaking in the process. The mission follows Astrobotic’s unsuccessful attempt in January; that company’s lander, Peregrine, never made it to the moon due to a propellant leak that cut its journey short. Peregrine’s failure means Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission could be the first ever commercial moon landing if it makes it there intact.

Intuitive Machines is hoping to make its landing attempt on February 22, targeting the Malapert A crater near the moon’s south pole for touchdown. This arrival date is dependent on Odysseus, one of the company’s Nova-C class landers, leaving Earth atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sometime between February 14 and February 16. The launch window opens at 12:57AM ET on Wednesday.

Odysseus is the first of three Nova-C landers Intuitive Machines plans to send to the moon this year, all of which will have commercial payloads on board and NASA instruments as contracted under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. At 14 feet tall (4.3 meters), the lander is roughly the size of a giraffe and can carry about 280 pounds (130kg) of cargo. Its mission, if it nails a soft landing, will be a short but potentially valuable one for informing future excursions to the region, including NASA’s upcoming crewed Artemis missions. Orbiting probes have found evidence of water ice at the lunar south pole, which could be used for astronaut subsistence and even fuel, making it an area of high interest for human exploration.

NASA

The solar-powered craft and any functional equipment it’s carrying are only expected to be in working condition for about a week before the onset of lunar night, a 14-day period of frigid darkness that the company says will leave the lander inoperable. But while everything’s up and running, the various instruments will gather data at the surface. NASA awarded Intuitive Machines a $77 million contract for the delivery of its payloads back in 2019, and there are six NASA instruments now hitching a ride on Odysseus.

One, the Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA), will “function as a permanent location mark” from its position on the moon after landing to help incoming spacecraft determine their distance from the surface, according to NASA. The lander is also carrying the Navigation Doppler LIDAR for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing (NDL), a sensor that measures velocity and altitude to better guide the descent, and the Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator (LN-1) to support communication and autonomous navigation in future missions.

NASA is also sending instruments to study surface plumes — everything that gets kicked up when the lander touches down — along with radio waves and the effects of space weather. That includes the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS), which will capture images of these dust plumes, and the Radio wave Observation at the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath (ROLSES) instrument.

The rest of the payloads on board Odysseus are commercial. Columbia Sportswear worked with Intuitive Machines to incorporate the brand’s Apollo-inspired Omni-Heat Infinity thermal reflective material, which is being used for this mission to help protect the cryogenic propulsion tank, according to Intuitive Machines. Students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University developed a camera system dubbed the EagleCam that will attempt to separate from the lander before it touches down and snap a picture of the moment from a third-person point of view. EagleCam is also equipped with an experimental dust-removal system.

Intuitive Machines

There are even some Jeff Koons sculptures heading to the moon, which will have physical and NFT counterparts back on Earth. In Koons’ Moon Phase piece, 125 small stainless steel sculptures of the moon at different phases are encased in a clear cube made by 4Space, with the names of important historical figures from around the world listed below each sphere. The International Lunar Observatory Association, based in Hawaii, and Canadensys Aerospace are sending a 1.3-pound dual-camera system called ILO-X, with which they’ll attempt to capture wide and narrow field images of the Milky Way from the moon.

Odysseus is also carrying small discs called “Lunagrams” from Galactic Legacy Labs that contain messages from Earth, including text, images, audio and archives from major databases such as the Arch Mission Foundation and the English-language version of Wikipedia. Similar archival materials were sent to space with Peregrine last month. The information technology company Lonestar plans to demonstrate its Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) by storing data on the lander and transmitting documents ( including the US Declaration of Independence) between Earth and the moon. It’ll follow this up with a prototype mini data center on Intuitive Machines’ next launch.

Now, the pressure is on for the Odysseus Nova-C lander to actually get to the lunar surface safely. This year started off rocky for moon missions, with the failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine and a descent hiccup that caused JAXA’s SLIM spacecraft to faceplant into the lunar surface (though the latter was miraculously able to resume functions to some degree after a few days). Intuitive Machines will have other chances to get it right if it doesn’t this time — it has multiple missions already booked up — but only one private lander can be “first.”

Japan's lunar lander has regained power a full nine days after it landed on the moon's surface nearly upside down and was subsequently switched off, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) announced. A change in the sun's position allowed the solar panels to receive light and charge the probe's battery, allowing JAXA to re-establish communication. 

Things were looking dire shortly after the SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) touched down. The agency immediately noticed a problem with power generation, but was able to launch a pair of probes onto the moon's surface. The Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2) snapped an incredible photo of SLIM, showing it to be upside down with its panels pointing away from the sun. The cause was found to be a malfunction of the main engine.

JAXA thought there was a chance the probe could recover once the sun's rays pointed more toward the solar panels, and that's exactly what transpired. Shortly after power was regained, it snapped another picture of a previously imaged rock formation called "toy poodle" using a multi-band spectral camera. The team is also targeting several other rocks with canine-themed names, including "St. Bernard," "Bulldog" and "Shibainu."

The upside-down landing may have seemed like an unrecoverable fault, but it looks like the mission can now proceed more or less as planned. While the baseball-sized LEV-2 explores the surface (relaying data via the LEV-1 probe, which also has two cameras), SLIM will grab whatever science it can. 

In any case, the mission was already deemed a success, as the primary goal was a precision landing. It did just that, hitting a spot just 55 meters (180 feet) of its target. It's not known how much longer SLIM can function, as it was never designed to survive a solar night and the next one happens on Thursday.