Fifty years after astronauts bounced around the lunar surface in a stripped-down electric cart, General Motors is back with a rover that’s more like a reliable pickup truck than a one-time toy. The Lunar Terrain Vehicle, or LTV, is developed by a team led by Lunar Outpost, with General Motors handling the battery pack, frame and smarts for standing upright on uneven ground. This vehicle is for NASA’s Artemis missions which will deliver humans to the South Pole starting around 2030.
NASA’s latest lunar venture sounds like a science fiction novel, but it’s real. The Fission Surface Power Project, a multi-year effort to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon, has just completed its first phase. Detailed in a recent NASA release, it lays the groundwork for a small nuclear powered generator that can power habitats, rovers and experiments even during the Moon’s 2 week long nights.
Photo credit: Vladimir Vustyansky
NASA has a bold plan to plant a massive radio telescope in a lunar crater, a project that could redefine how we listen to the universe’s deepest secrets. Dubbed the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT), this isn’t just another space gadget—it’s a 1-kilometer-wide wire mesh dish designed to capture whispers from the cosmos that Earth’s noisy atmosphere and satellites drown out. If approved, it could be operational by the 2030s, built entirely by robots in a pristine, radio-quiet zone on the moon’s far side.
Photo credit: ESA/M. Cowan
Half a century ago, the world watched Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon through grainy, black-and-white footage that felt like a transmission from another era. Today, as humanity gears up for a new wave of lunar exploration with NASA’s Artemis program, the visuals promise to be nothing short of spectacular. High-definition video, vibrant colors, and smooth 60-frames-per-second streams are set to replace the fuzzy images of the Apollo days. But capturing these cinematic moments on the Moon’s harsh, dusty surface is no small feat. At the European Space Agency’s LUNA facility in Cologne, Germany, astronauts and engineers are rehearsing every detail, from snapping selfies in spacesuits to filming dynamic lunar walks, ensuring the next Moon landing is a visual masterpiece.
Bridgestone is getting ready to unveil two new prototypes of their second-generation lunar rover tires at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) booth during the 40th Space Symposium. These tires are designed for small and medium-sized rovers, and they’re lighter than the ones they revealed last year. The updates are all about making them work better on the Moon, where it’s super hot or cold, there’s no air, and the ground is covered in fine, scratchy dust called regolith.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander captured this incredible image of a diamond ring effect during the total solar eclipse on the Moon. This also marks the very first time in history where a commercial company actively operating on the Moon was able to observe a total solar eclipse where the Earth blocks the sun and casts a shadow on the lunar surface.
Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission is currently deemed lost, as its lunar lander, Athena, touched down on the Moon, but appears to be on its side. However, it still managed to transmit a few images of the surface before the team was able to figure out the status of its ice drill, drone and two rovers for NASA.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost captured a stunning up-close view of the Moon’s surface during its most recent flyby. The spacecraft performed a 16-second burn with its RCS thrusters to enter a near-circular low lunar orbit.
