Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has unveiled an ambitious space programme for the country over the next decade, which includes developing satellite systems and sending a Turkish astronaut on a space mission. The programme is ambitious in its timescale, with Erdogan aiming to establish “first contact with the Moon” in 2023 (‘The Moon Programme’), marking … Read more
A China National Space Administration spacecraft has touched down successfully on the Moon and started to collect its first rock samples, state media has reported. The lunar probe, known as Chang’e 5, was launched last week from the tropical island of Hainan. The uncrewed mission aims to retrieve 2kg of lunar samples from a previously … Read more
A British firm has won a European Space Agency (ESA) contract to develop methods to process Moon dust into its constituent elements of oxygen and metal alloys. With plans afoot to build a base on the Moon (possibly powered by nuclear fission) as a jumping-off point for a mission to Mars, work is being undertaken to … Read more
Aerospace manufacturer Thales Alenia Space – which maintains a presence in the UK – will construct a chemical refuelling station, to be launched in 2027, to support Nasa’s Lunar Gateway. The Lunar Gateway is a planned space station which will orbit the moon and serve as a hub for communications, experimentation and as a stepping … Read more
Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia has been selected by Nasa to deploy a “space-hardened” 4G network on the surface of the Moon, as part of its plans to establish a sustainable human presence on Earth’s planetary satellite by 2028. Nasa’s ambitious ‘Artemis’ project aims to return humans to the Moon; to set up a long-term human … Read more
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to the Moon in 2024, according to a senior official. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, announced the news, which follows the launch of a Mars probe earlier this year by the UAE. “It will be an Emirati-made lunar rover … Read more