Moon Blog

We are going
back.

After fifty years of nothing, the Moon is busy again. This links to the agencies and instruments doing the work, not to the aggregators rewriting their press releases.

Almost all lunar coverage is a rewrite of an agency press release with a rendering attached. The primary sources are free, well written and considerably more interesting: mission pages that say what the spacecraft is actually doing, an orbital camera that has been photographing the surface at half a metre per pixel since 2009, and phase data you can check yourself.

The reading list

Link-out only. Agencies and instruments, not space-news aggregators.

Going back

The current programme, from the agency running it.

  1. Artemis

    NASA · Primary

    The programme itself, in NASA's own words. Worth reading rather than the coverage of it, because the schedule and the objectives change and the agency page changes with them.

  2. The Moon

    NASA · Primary

    NASA's standing overview: formation, structure, exploration history and what is currently in orbit.

  3. European Space Agency

    ESA · Institution

    The European side, including the service module that Artemis depends on. A useful corrective to coverage that treats lunar return as a purely American project.

Actually looking at it

You can see the surface at higher resolution than any Apollo astronaut did, for free.

  1. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera

    Arizona State University · Instrument

    LROC has been imaging the Moon at up to half a metre per pixel since 2009, including the Apollo landing sites with the hardware still visible. The archive is public and browsable.

  2. Moon phases

    NASA · Reference

    Phase data from the source, rather than from an app with an advertising SDK in it.

  3. The Planetary Society

    Nonprofit · Advocacy

    Member-funded, advocates for planetary exploration, and explains missions better than most newsrooms. A position, openly held.

Background

  1. Moon

    Wikipedia · Reference

    Formation, orbital mechanics, and the full record of every mission that has reached it.