news

Back to the Moon: What Comes Next?

September 1, 2026 By TOM JONES 2 Comments

(twelfth in a series)

Artemis III

The next crewed Artemis mission wil be Artemis III, planned for June 2027. Originally planned for the first crewed return to the lunar surface, Artemis III was reprogrammed to new objectives by NASA once it became clear that the “human landing system (HLS)—the moon landers—would not be ready next year. Rather than endure a long delay, NASA chose to fly Artemis III in a low-Earth-orbit test, sending Orion’s crew up to dock with the two maturing lander designs.

Neither lander will be ready in 2027 to attempt a Moon landing, but SpaceX and Blue Origin plan to orbit their landers with the necessary docking systems to enable Orion to rendezvous and link with each lander in turn. The Artemis III crew will meet SpaceX’s Starship and dock at its nose, but there won’t be a crew compartment inside, so astronauts will not enter the Starship.

An artist’s rendering showing Orion docked to the Starship lander in Earth orbit, on Artemis III. r orbit. (Graphic: SpaceX)

Blue Origin plans to have a partially outfitted cockpit on its Blue Moon Mk 2 lander, enabling the astronauts to dock, then transfer inside Blue Moon for a short visit. If NASA can dock Orion sequentially at both candidate landers, and each one performs well while Orion visits, then NASA may be ready to attempt a crew transfer and landing attempt on Artemis IV. When that landing attempt will come isn’t known, but NASA hopes one or both machines might be ready in 2028.

In this artist’s concept, the Artemis III Orion at lower left approaches the Blue Origin Mk 2 docking port at center. (Blue Origin)

Pathfinders to the Moon

While NASA readies its human lander docking tests for Artemis III, now planned for June of 2027, it is forging ahead with robotic lunar exploration missions to prepare for an astronaut return to the Moon. The agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is harnessing a number of commercial space companies to test needed technologies and scout the location for astronaut landings and an eventual Moon base. NASA has 17 contracts signed for delivery of lunar scientific and commercial experiments through 2028, including sending 60+ agency instruments to the Moon.

One robotic lander is Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, called Endurance, which is aiming at a launch early in 2027. Blue Moon Mk 1 is a large lander, powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and will test a system to offload big cargo elements on the surface. Its launcher is the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket, and Endurance is the first of four Mk 1 landers. This design is the basis for the human lander to be tested on Artemis III.

The Blue Moon Mk 1 robotic lander, to be tested for the first time in early 2027. (Blue Origin)

Firefly Aerospace is preparing its Blue Ghost 2 lander to reach the lunar farside. Following up on the success of the Blue Ghost 1 in March 2025, this lander will carry the LuSEE-Night radio telescope to the quiet farside and deploy a United Arab Emirates rover to explore the surface. Blue Ghost 2 launches next year on a Falcon 9 rocket.

Rendering of Blue Ghost Lander on the Lunar Surface (Firefly Aerospace)

Intuitive Machines is preparing its third robotic mission, the Nova-C lander, Trinity, for a science mission to the enigmatic Reiner Gamma region of the nearside. Burning LOX and methane (CH₄), Trinity will carry both scientific and commercial payloads, including rovers and a plant growth experiment. The company’s first two landers tipped over upon touchdown, so Intuitive Machines is intent on “sticking the landing” with Nova-C Trinity.

Voyager Lunar Systems is building the Griffin-1 lander, carrying the AstroLab FLIP rover to the Moon’s South Pole. Temperatures there range from -334 to +130 degrees F. The 500-kg (over a thousand pounds) FLIP rover will demonstrate how to unload large cargo elements in the rugged polar terrain. Griffin-1 may launch on a Falcon Heavy in late 2026.

Eventually, NASA and its partners will have to focus on the search for water ice—a foundational resource for oxygen and rocket fuel—with an eye toward its lunar base. A robot, like the postponed VIPER ice-seeking rover, will penetrate the murky depths of a shadowed crater, tackling those very chilly temperatures (as low as -410°F, or -246°C in permanently dark terrain). There it will dig into the soil to determine the state of the water ice. Is it lying around like snowflakes? Are there little ice pellets mixed in with the dirt? Will it find slabs of ice a couple of feet down? Nobody knows.

The Moon’s south polar region, shown in a shaded-relief model from Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) elevation data (5-meter sampling). Areas of permanent shadow indicated in blue (where ice may reside). Green dot indicates location of the south pole; green arrows indicate illuminated terrain nearby that receive extended sunlight. [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

With hard information about the physical state of these ice deposits in hand, an astronaut crew at the lunar South Pole can begin the process of exploiting that resource.

Artemis IV

The Artemis IV mission is currently planned to execute NASA’s historic human return to the Moon. Its crew will land in either the Starship or Blue Moon descent craft and explore the area for a couple of weeks. The astronauts will search for ice resources and gather rocks from the surrounding South Pole/Aitken Basin, the largest and oldest impact crater on the Moon. Those rock samples from the deep mantle of the moon should give us a glimpse into the Moon’s very early history and the composition of its otherwise inaccessible interior.

Artemis IV’s crew will rocket from the surface to rejoin Orion in lunar orbit. After transferring crew and lunar samples to Orion, the reunited crew would then fire the main engine to start for home.

The actual landing site hasn’t yet been chosen. Scientists have identified thirteen likely targets to receive further scrutiny and analysis; NASA may not decide on the exact site until close to the Artemis IV mission itself.

When Artemis IV flies depends on the progress of Starship and Blue Moon testing. I’m impressed by SpaceX’s launch record, pace, and ability to recover and reuse its boosters via a rocket-powered landing. Today the company gets NASA cargo and astronauts to the space station reliably and safely.

But adapting Starship, a satellite truck, to the lunar landing mission gives me pause. The Starship and its Super Heavy first-stage booster have lagged consistently behind schedule. Instead of being ready for landing in 2024, the second-stage Starship after thirteen tests has yet to achieve orbital flight.

The first obstacle is complexity. The Starship concept depends on orbital refueling, requiring about fifteen successful Super Heavy launches and fuel transfers to the orbital depot to fuel the Moon-bound lander. The first stage booster and second-stage tankers are to be reused; if one or more is lost, propellant replenishment will halt. How long will it take to launch enough fuel for a single Starship lander?

Second, the Starship’s tall, slender configuration could give it trouble landing on uneven terrain. With its narrow landing legs, Starship’s stability is a concern; two Intuitive Machine robot landers have tipped over at lunar touchdown. Third, Starship will need an elevator to get its crew and cargo down to the surface. That elevator’s reliability will be a key crew safety issue.

The Starship lander would use an elevator to deliver crew and cargo to the Moon’s surface. Propellant tanks and engines occupy the lower portion of the lander. (SpaceX)

Finally, Starship in thirteen flights (more pending) has flown only suborbital missions, and the propellant depot and lunar operations and landing tests still loom large. As someone who helped put the space station together, I’m particularly worried about pulling off more than a dozen robotic dockings and propellant transfers without a hitch, just to enable a single Moon landing for NASA. SpaceX will have to achieve that level of perfection repeatedly for every subsequent surface expedition.

NASA’s backup lander, from Blue Origin, also requires some orbital refueling, but details on that strategy are still lacking. And the propellants are, like Starship, LOX and liquid methane, which tend to boil off and require active refrigeration to survive the weeks from orbital refueling through conclusion of a lunar expedition. One plus: the shorter Blue Moon is a more low-slung design than Starship, less susceptible to tipping.

Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mk 2 landing system on the lunar surface in an artist’s rendering. (Blue Origin).

Once on the Moon, extended presence is what NASA is after. That means an outpost, visited periodically, to learn how we can operate on another planet, and support ourselves with the water and mineral resources there. Those skills will enable us to reach more distant destinations: the nearby asteroids and Mars. We’ll talk about those crucial, enabling resource strategies next time.

Next: This Time to Stay

www.AstronautTomJones.com

Back to the Moon: Tapping Lunar Energy Resources

May 7, 2026 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

(seventh in a series)

Another invaluable lunar resource is energy. One side of the rotating Moon is always bathed in sunlight. If you’re near the equator, as at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Moon’s rotation would give you two weeks of sunlight and then two weeks of extreme cold and darkness. At the south pole, at the Moon’s rotation axis, the sunlight strikes the surface at a very shallow angle, slanting in from around the compass over the course of 28 days.

There are elevated spots near the lunar poles where the low-angle sunlight produces nearly continuous illumination. For example, at the circular crater called Shackleton, the oblique sunlight lights up part of the elevated rim, with the sun shining about 90 percent of the time. Thus, near the pole, you could set up a solar panel and produce power nearly all the time—a much better situation than at the equator, where one must store enough electricity to last through two weeks of darkness.

Shoemaker Crater sits nearly at the lunar south pole. Its rim stays nearly continuously illuminated by the slanting rays of the Sun. (ESA Smart 1)

A video here shows the varying illumination over the course of a single lunar month; much of the high terrain at crater rims remains sunlit for more than three weeks out of a month.

In this map of the lunar South Pole (below), the brighter tones show the greatest illumination over the course of a whole year (2026). The darker tones mean that sunlight is much reduced. But notice the bright rim of Shackleton, which is bathed in nearly continuous solar energy. Here on Earth, a rooftop solar panel will produce no electricity for roughly 12 hours out of 24. At Shackleton, you’d enjoy nearly round-the-clock illumination and power. Elevated crater rims, as at Shackleton, would be a very good spot to set up solar panels to power a base or operate a refinery turning water ice into fuel and life support gases.

Illumination map of the lunar South Pole. The shades of gray depict the amount of sunlight received during 2024–white represents greater illumination, and black means no illumination. The floors of many of the craters receive no sunlight at all — they’re permanently shadowed. Conversely, a small number of high spots on mountains and crater rims are in persistent sunshine. (NASA Goddard)

The Moon’s polar resources, then, include water ice and sunlight, two attractive ingredients located close together at the sunlit rims and the adjoining shadowed crater interiors. As discussed earlier, the Moon’s familiar minerals can be used right away as construction materials: bricks, panels, walls, or radiation shielding. But down the road, the Moon’s more exotic elements and compounds are of interest.

The regolith contains elements like iron, very easy to separate. By dragging a magnet through the dirt, you’ll retrieve a lot of native iron carried in by meteorite impact. Thorium, a radioactive element, is an attractive fuel for nuclear fission reactors, enabling the fission process to make more fuel than it consumes. We might imagine the prospect in this century of importing reactor fuel to Earth from the Moon.

Another promising nuclear fuel is He-3, helium three, a rare isotope of helium. Its use in fusion reactors would enable a cleaner fusion reaction and moderate reactor temperatures. Advocates have proposed sifting and mildly heating the Moon’s regolith at large scale to extract enough helium-three to fuel those future nuclear fusion reactors, generating electricity here at home. Another He-3 application is as a coolant to chill quantum computing chips to temperatures near absolute zero, where they are fastest and most efficient.

Earth’s crust contains little He-3, and any of this light helium released from Earth rocks was able over the past four and a half billion years to largely escape from Earth’s atmosphere. In Earth’s mantle, the ratio of He-3 to He-4 (the most common He isotope) is only about 20 parts per million, and that extracted from crustal natural gas is some 70 to 240 parts per billion (roughly a thousand times lower). But on the Moon, He-3 is continually implanted into the regolith’s upper few meters by the solar wind. It’s present at a concentration in sunlit regions at up to 15 parts per billion—still not very plentiful.

Yet with current prices of about $20 million per kilogram, companies like Interlune see lunar helium-three as an attractive natural resource, one justifying a mining operation that would eventually sift a million tons of regolith to recover tens of kilograms of the isotope annually for return to Earth.

Concept for an Interlune Helium-3 mining operation. (Interlune)

The value of lunar He-3 depends on demand from quantum computing, and our ability to design practical fusion reactors—none exist today. Commercial fusion reactors always seem to be 20 years in the future.

That horizon reminds me of my astronaut career, during which a return to the Moon has always seemed 20 years in the future, too. But the Japanese and Chinese have also indicated interest in exploring the economics of eventually extracting helium-three from the Moon. If the mining and extraction process proves profitable, and we do manage to create fusion reactors to use helium-three, our energy supply problems are over. No more worries about carbon emissions, no more worries about mining fossil fuels, and a much-reduced nuclear waste challenge. Fusion would be a limitless energy source. But the promise of He-3 is many years from being realized.

Next: Why Send Humans Back to the Moon?

www.AstronautTomJones.com

Back to the Moon: A Useful World

May 1, 2026 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

(sixth in a series)

The third reason for going back to the Moon is that it is useful. Water is the first of the resources on the moon we will tap—it’s like gold in space because of its scarcity outside Earth’s hydrosphere and atmosphere. If we can tap the Moon’s natural water, we can supply astronauts with drinking water, and they can breathe the oxygen released from water when electrolyzed. By storing hydrogen and oxygen from the Moon’s water, we will stockpile rocket fuel for lifting off the surface or filling the propellant tanks of craft headed outward into the solar system.

James Vaughan concept art for a solar-powered lunar ice mine in a shadowed polar crater. (Vaughan)

Water is present on the arid Moon today because the floors of many craters at its poles are in near-perpetual darkness, protected from the slanting sunlight by the raised crater rims. The shadowed floors of these craters radiate their heat directly to space and thus get very cold: below minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit. And as comet ice and water-rich asteroids have struck the Moon, their violent impacts vaporized rocks, liberated the water and created an ephemeral temporary lunar atmosphere, including that water vapor. Water molecules then migrated to and got stuck in those polar cold traps–the molecules condense onto the surface. That 4 billion years of accumulated impact water, along with implanted hydrogen from the solar wind, comprises a reservoir estimated at hundreds of millions of tons.

Blue highlights on the image show the distribution of surface ice at the moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument. (NASA)

In this image of the polar regions of the moon, the light blue dots show water ice deposits—the hydrogen, actually—detected from orbit by satellites. Water ice, when melted, can be broken down further by electricity into oxygen and hydrogen. Those elements are a powerful rocket fuel combination—hydrogen as the fuel and oxygen as the oxidizer. The next steps are to characterize in what form these water deposits exist inside the dark craters, and then test processes that can liberate the water for use in an outpost.

Let’s not forget the Moon’s dirt. The lunar soil has very useful properties that explorers can use to advantage. The Moon’s soils can be used as construction materials like bricks, panels, walls, or radiation shielding, moved and shaped by bulldozers or compressed into molds. Using a lawn-mower-sized microwave transmitter, a lunar paver can sinter the moon’s regolith, fusing the tiny iron particles mixed up in that dirt into a hard pavement. A robot paver could lay down a dust-free landing pad or a roadway for a cargo delivery rover.

Researchers from the Northwestern University in the US have demonstrated the ability to 3D-print structures with simulants of Martian and lunar dust. (NorthWestern University)

Here is a Northwestern University image of some simple tools, resembling Legos, made by a 3D printer from simulated lunar dust (the gray material) and simulated Mars regolith (in orange). This 3D printing technology (using a biopolymer binder) is getting better and more advanced every year. Another idea is to extract native iron from lunar regolith using electromagnets; with that iron, a small steel mill can produce beams, wires, struts, and structures for habitats and industrial mechanisms.

After we build the first key elements of a lunar outpost, the moon’s more exotic elements and compounds are of interest. Blue Origin is conducting research aimed at using solar or nuclear energy to melt and electrolyze lunar regolith, liberating oxygen from the melt and extracting various metals like titanium, iron, and aluminum. The company’s Blue Alchemist project aims to transform regolith into solar power systems, breathable oxygen, propellant-grade oxygen for refueling, metals, and construction materials. Tests of the regolith melt process are underway in the company’s labs.

Blue Alchemy, a Blue Origin project, aims to use melted lunar regolith to extract silicon for Moon-produced solar panels and protective glass coatings. (Blue Origin)

Next: The Moon’s Useful Energy Resources

www.AstronautTomJones.com

Back to the Moon: A Natural and Versatile Laboratory

April 22, 2026 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

(fifth in a series)

Apollo 15’s lunar roving vehicle, photographed by Scott and Irwin at the Hadley-Appenine landing site in July/August 1971. (NASA)

Artemis II’s mission is in the books–a nearly unqualified success. We’ll discuss the Artemis II results later in this series. Now, on to the attractiveness of the Moon as a natural and versatile laboratory.

The varied geology of the Moon is a rich and largely untapped field of research. With their landing sites limited to areas near the lunar equator, the Apollo explorers just scratched the surface of the moon’s scientific potential. On their last three missions, they covered about 56 miles on their lunar rovers, returning in total about 842 pounds of lunar material, but only from six sites. The lunar poles and the far side hold many mysteries that we need to unravel. There are no end of intriguing places on the moon, like the Ina depression with rugged lava flows (?) from a possible eruption perhaps 3.5 billion years ago. We’d love to land there and find out what volcanic or collapse processes created these flat-topped, pancake-like flows and the rough-floored lowlands between them.

Intriguing formation “Ina” in Lacus Felicitatis, as imaged by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The smooth hills, resembling puddles of liquid mercury, contrast with the rough lowlands. Image is 3.5 km wide. Ina may be volcanic or a collapse feature; answers await the arrival of explorers. (NASA/LRO)

Aside from its unique geological offerings, the Moon is interesting as a natural scientific laboratory. The moon has only a wisp of an atmosphere—at the surface, a nearly a complete vacuum. The surface gravity, one-sixth that of Earth, invites some very interesting physics experiments and materials behavior, advantageous over free-fall conditions in running mining processes and lunar resource extraction plants.

Because many lunar craters are bowl-shaped due to the physics of impact cratering, they are inviting as sites for radio telescopes on the quiet, far side of the moon. The moon’s bulk shields the far side from the radio and TV noise from Earth, creating a very quiet listening environment for a radio telescope exploring the universe. We can imagine just draping the radio telescope’s light wire mesh down in the natural bowl of a crater, creating a very sensitive parabolic dish for radio astronomy.

NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts proposal for a far-side lunar radio telescope.

As the moon circles the Earth, its radio-shielded far side sweeps across a large portion of the celestial sphere, enabling a telescope nestled in a crater to scan interesting targets for a good part of every month. Such a telescope would see more of the sky if located on the lunar equator, so future Artemis crews (or robotic missions) may not limit their visits only to the lunar south pole. I’ll watch this design evolution with interest.

Next: The Moon’s Usefulness

www.AstronautTomJones.com

Back to the Moon: The Right Lunar Orbit

February 11, 2026 By TOM JONES 2 Comments

(third in a series)

As the Moon circles the Earth and both bodies make their way around the sun, we’d like to maintain near-constant communication between astronauts and their home planet. During Apollo, astronaut landings were restricted to the lunar near-side, in direct line-of-sight radio communication with Earth. Back then, the command module pilot would be out of touch for half of every orbit—an hour–as he circled the lunar farside. One way around that outage is a large, looping orbit called a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO). That orbit has some favorable characteristics at the Moon. Its orbital plane around the Moon is nearly perpendicular to a line from Earth, and rarely carries a craft behind the Moon, so direct communications are nearly always possible. (Putting comm relay satellites in lunar orbit could also eliminate blockages and their communication problems.)

The NRHO is a big, loopy orbit, with an orbital period of about a week. At perilune the orbit is very close to the moon, while most of the orbit out to apolune and back gives one an excellent view of the moon and the distant Earth. From the halo orbit, we can with very little rocket energy drop down to an orbit favorable for landing, or just as easily rocket back to Earth.

The NRHO contrasts with Apollo’s low, equatorial orbit. Apollo orbited only about 60 miles above the moon, circling once every 2 hours. But that orbit severely limited where the Apollo spacecraft could take its astronauts, and it was quickly perturbed by the moon’s lumpy gravity field. The NRHO offers a well-behaved orbit that allows good communications back to Earth and is in sunshine nearly all the time (for power generation). It won’t carry us behind the moon and cut us off for long periods. And the orbit gives us access to orbits to access the surface at nearly any time and to nearly any place on the moon that we would like to go, not limited to sites near the equatorial plane at which the Apollo missions were targeted.

Exploded view of Orion spacecraft. Service module propellant tanks and main engine visible at left and lower right.

However, the NRHO has some drawbacks. An Artemis lander must use fuel to maneuver into a near-rectilinear halo orbit to meet Orion, and then use still more fuel to drop into a lower orbit for approach to landing. Further, a lander aborting from the Moon’s surface in an emergency might take as long as three and a half days to reach an Orion waiting in the NRHO. Unfortunately, Orion’s propulsion system, housed in its European-built service module, doesn’t have enough fuel to drop the spacecraft into a low lunar orbit to rescue a crew. Due to lift limitations of the SLS booster, Orion has just enough propellant to break out of its NRHO when it’s time for an Earth return. The pros and cons of an NRHO vs. a different, lower lunar orbit are worth further examination.

Nevertheless, reason number one for going back to the moon is that it’s accessible, and we should take advantage of that attribute, no matter what orbit we finally choose.

Next: The Moon is Interesting

www.AstronautTomJones.com

Back to the Moon: Who Will Get There Soonest?

September 2, 2025 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

In late August I talked with NewsNation on the accelerating competition between China and the U.S. to return to the Moon. NASA plans to speed up deployment of a lunar surface nuclear reactor, to power an outpost and resource extraction, are a good step forward, but the administration should be strongly supporting the Artemis lunar return missions, with a ~2027 lunar return on Artemis III (a stretch as the effort stands now). All China has to do for a “W” is to duplicate Apollo 11, while we attempt a much more ambitious lunar return with more people, longer stays, and long-term infrastructure. But greater complexity plus static budgets mean “slow.” Perceptions of global tech superiority matter; we need to change that pace–quickly.

My comments here (note–the nuclear commenter in the clip is incorrect; NASA is building a fission reactor):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0vOF89mLT0