Topic
Crewed and robotic activity at the Moon, including polar sites and future research stations.
NASA and the Energy Department signed one memorandum covering space nuclear work from fuel production to launch, ahead of a 2028 reactor flight. It takes effect Nov. 1, and a December 2025 executive order already calls for a launch-ready lunar reactor by 2030.
Reality
Five impact flashes Artemis II astronauts saw on the farside led NASA to estimate a one-in-10,000-per-decade chance of a similar strike on a Moon base. The crew counted them by eye and with handheld cameras on a flight carrying minimal science payloads, and the count gives planners of the south-pole base a background rate to design against.
Reality
NASA selected three PRISM science payloads to fly on commercial CLPS landers and survey lunar ice, a possible lava tube and surface hazards for Moon Base. Their findings are meant to shape where and how crews live at an outpost NASA is already planning.
Reality
SpaceX flew Starship to orbit for the first time on September 28, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites despite one of the upper stage's six engines going out at liftoff. The flight moves the vehicle closer to the operational heavy-lift launcher NASA and SpaceX are counting on.
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6 publishersReality
SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time on September 28 and deployed 26 working Starlink V3 satellites, each built to add 1 Tbps of capacity. Buyers can count on that capacity this quarter, while teams hoping to book Starship for their own payloads have one partial orbital flight to judge it by.
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Anna Mittelholz of ETH Zurich and colleagues say a 60-km volcanic body under the Moon's Dewar swirl cooled in a field of at least 11.4 microteslas. They credit a core dynamo like Earth's, since the site's location makes an impact origin unlikely.
Reality
The lunar ice prospector was days from lifting off at Wenchang when Beijing said launch conditions were not met and the year's window was gone.
Reality
China's lunar south pole mission loses its 2026 window to a storm forecast to clear in days. The notice names no cause, and the recovery may not come until February.
Reality
The 2024 strike that punched a 222-metre hole in the Moon slipped past every telescope on Earth and in orbit. It was found by comparing orbiter images months afterwards, and NASA now wants to know what its debris could hit.
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A dense, strongly magnetized rock body buried beneath the Moon's far side cooled slowly in a magnetic field strong enough that ETH Zurich researchers attribute it to a dynamo running in the lunar core.
Reality
McGetchin is the freshest large crater on the Moon's record. Its value to cratering science is that it is unweathered. The once-per-130-years recurrence figure still comes from a size model.
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Two virtual sessions six weeks apart, ending Sept. 8, handed signatories NASA's Planetary Data System and its metadata standard as a working model for the lunar data frameworks they build themselves.
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NASA Goddard modelling says ordinary bacteria and fungi, not only the lab-famous extremophiles, can lie dormant in shaded pockets near the lunar poles. That makes cleanliness a build question.
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