Jatan’s Planet

India’s Chandrayaan program has been becoming incrementally indigenous. Being able to self plan and execute planetary missions can lead to uniquely impactful collaborations globally. In this month’s Indian Space Progress, I highlight two such cases of Chandrayaan aiding JAXA and NASA Artemis. 🌗🛰️


Welcome back to an action-packed edition of the world’s only newsletter dedicated to all things lunar, globally. This week’s Moon Monday has a whole host of NASA Artemis and CLPS updates, and then some more: https://jatan.space/moon-monday-issue-173/ 🚀

Image: NASA / Josh Valcarcel

The VIPER lunar rover in a clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center with its mast installed. The rover is not fully assembled yet. It lacks its wheels and exterior in particular.

Glad to share that my Moon Monday blog+newsletter crossed 7,000 subscribers last week. 🚀

There’s so much happening in lunar exploration globally. If understanding the context of it all intrigues you, join my readers by subscribing for free. I try my best every week to make it worth your time. 🌗


Today’s Moon Monday is absolutely packed with updates and esoteric details on the latest lunar exploration developments: jatan.space/moon-mond… 🤓


⏳… ⌛️ … 🌙

Had the opportunity to help explain a wider audience why the US White House recently asked NASA to create an independent time standard for the Moon. Got quoted on the Indian Express: indianexpress.com/article/e…


You can now browse my ongoing exhaustive coverage of NASA’s Artemis and CLPS programs to return to the Moon with humans and robots via dedicated pages on my blog:


Wrote about how NASA’s upcoming Lunar Terrain Vehicle for Artemis Moon missions will be a giant leap for rover-kind. 🚀🌗

Seriously, it’ll be far more capable than the rover driven by Apollo astronauts, and more sophisticated than even the modern Mars rovers.

Image: NASA


There’s no good way to follow official space news from the China National Space Administration. And so I’ve created an RSS feed so you can easily follow such updates via a feed reader.


Want to read: Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle 📚


Space stuff I published last month


Always love it when there’s a science update from Artemis instead of just tech. NASA selects science instruments to be deployed on the Moon by Artemis III astronauts! jatan.space/moon-mond…


China signs the Artemis Accords: jatan.space/moon-mond…


How ISRO is building a reusable spaceplane: jatan.space/indian-sp…


My review of India’s Gaganyaan mission to send astronauts to space has been republished on Jeff Foust’s revered community blog The Space Review! www.thespacereview.com/article/4… ^_^


China doubled down on lunar infrastructure with the launch and orbital insertion of Queqiao 2: jatan.space/moon-mond…


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