NASA plans to send four people around the Moon in 2026

Showing all posts about space exploration

NASA plans to send four people around the Moon in 2026

8 October 2025

The astronauts, who may depart as soon as February 2026, will not land on the Moon though.

Their flight sounds like it will be similar to Apollo 8 in 1968, which yielded this incredible photo, taken by William Anders. The Artemis program will potentially pave the way for a longer term human presence on the Moon, which is a worthwhile goal.

Shoot for the stars: Tim Teege wants to run a marathon on the Moon

20 December 2024

Hamburg, Germany, based web developer and long distance triathlete, Tim Teege is super keen to run a marathon the Moon. So much so, he wants you to ask any space agency worker type acquaintances you may have, to help him achieve his goal. Ask, and you shall receive, and the like.

Not to put a dampener on Teege’s aspirations, I wonder if he’s read Rhett Allain’s Wired article on the subject:

You can’t go out and jog around the Sea of Tranquility—you’d just start bouncing and floating.

But, as they say, where there’s a will, maybe there’s a way. The laws of physics notwithstanding. Yet here, at the quarter way point of the twenty-first century, the act of somehow being able to run on the Moon, should really be Teege’s only significant challenge.

Getting to the Moon — in this post 2001: A Space Odyssey world — should be as easy as boarding what ought to be regular commercial flights to Earth’s satellite.

The journey might cost a pretty penny, but that’s what crowdfunding is for. Instead, however, in what’s almost 2025, about all we have in terms of reaching the Moon, is NASA’s troubled Artemis program, which seems like a re-run of Apollo, yet appears not to be going anywhere fast.

With 2025 essentially only days away now, I shouldn’t be so indifferent. Big shoot for the stars ambitions and goals are what we need right now. Especially for this particular new year.

Build bases on the Moon, instead of going for a week

24 May 2024

NASA is dead set keen to return to the Moon. But their current plan, called Artemis, is dead set crazy, writes Polish-American entrepreneur and writer, Maciej Cegłowski:

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to wonder what’s going on here. If we can put a man on the moon, then why can’t we just go do it again? The moon hasn’t changed since the 1960’s, while every technology we used to get there has seen staggering advances. It took NASA eight years to go from nothing to a moon landing at the dawn of the Space Age. But today, twenty years and $93 billion after the space agency announced our return to the moon, the goal seems as far out of reach as ever.

I only know what I know about NASA’s proposed Artemis crewed flights to the Moon, from the occasional glance at headlines on the subject. Needless to say, that knowledge isn’t much to write home about. That’s because the prospect doesn’t really excite me. Artemis seems like little more than a re-run of the Apollo flights of over fifty years ago.

If we’re to return to the Moon again, I’ve always thought it should be more permanently, and on a grander scale. As in bases on (or under) the lunar surface. Sending a couple of flights back there for a week’s stay, seems pointless. On top of that, the cost of doing so today has ballooned. But why? Is no one stopping to think about this?

If humanity is ever to progress, yeah, hmm, we need to set ourselves some pretty ambitious goals. But we need to think a bit bigger. Re-hashing the Apollo missions isn’t thinking big. Combatting climate, disease, and poverty, for instance, make for better goals. After that, what about reaching for stars, literally. Not just the nearest celestial body to Earth.