Tons of Moon News - Rovers, Sample Returns, and Cell Service

Happy Tuesday, everyone! This week’s newsletter is 770 words, a 6-minute read.

Table of Contents

• 1 Big Thing: NASA’s Newest Moon Rover is Coming To …

• 2. Cool Stuff You Might Have Missed

• 3. Nokia is Putting 4G Cell Service on the Moon

• 4. A Personal Book Recommendation

• 5. Upcoming Launches & Missions

1 Big Thing: NASA’s Newest Moon Rover is Coming Together

NASA’s Viper Moon Rover just had its mast and camera assembly put on, as it gets closer to being ready for its launch to the moon this year.

What is Viper?: VIPER stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover.

The Mission: Viper will land on the moon’s South Pole and get a close-up view of ice and other resources.

Why the South Pole?: We’re pretty sure the South Pole contains lots of important resources - especially frozen water - which will be crucial for future missions where Astronauts will have to sustain themselves for longer than they could with just the resources that they bring.

Big Hopes: NASA is hoping that the Viper rover will It’ll also give us another practice run at launching and landing machinery on the lunar surface, which is always a good way to prepare for the future.

Digging Deep: Among Viper’s scientific equipment will be a 1-meter-long drill and a mass spectrometer. These will prove invaluable in accessing rock and ice samples beneath the moon’s surface and testing them to find their exact chemical makeup.

Fancy Landing: Viper will be flying on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and landing on Astrobotic’s Griffin moon landing vehicle.

Looking Ahead: There’s no definitive launch date for Viper yet, but it’ll probably happen some time in November or December of 2024.

2. Cool Stuff You Might Have Missed

1. China is launching a moon mission to retrieve samples from the moon’s far side. (SpaceNews)

2. Startup Portal Space Systems is building solar-thermal propulsion satellites for the U.S. Department of Defense. (Space)

3. Astronauts are confident that Boeing’s Starliner launch will be a success. (CBS)

3. Nokia is Putting 4G Cell Service on the Moon

Famous Cell Phone Company Nokia still exists, and it’s building a 4G wireless network on the moon.

What’s the Point?: If there’s anything that we’ll need on the moon, it’s a stable, fast communication system. In 2020, Nokia was awarded $14.1 million by NASA to build out this system, and this year it may be launching the first piece.

Communication Breakdown: NASA is imagining a future moon where multiple teams of astronauts, cosmonauts, taikonauts, etc. are working on the surface in different locations, along with the myriad rovers and crafts they’ve brought with them. With so much going on on the moon, stable communication systems are a must, which is where Nokia hopes to shine.

A Great Plan: Instead of each future moon mission setting up their own communication network, Nokia can build one network and allow governments and companies to “subscribe” to it. It’s a much more sensible approach given the volume of moon missions we’ll see over the next few decades.

Looking Ahead: Nokia is looking to launch its first piece of equipment to the moon in late 2024. As a test, it’ll connect Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander with Lunar Outpost’s MAPP rover and Intuitive Machines’ Micro-Nova hopper.

4. A Personal Book Recommendation

We’ve probably all heard the story of the race to the moon between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1960s. What we haven’t heard nearly as much about is the race to manned spaceflight itself - especially from the Soviet Union’s perspective.

In his book “Beyond”, Stephen Walker tells the story of Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and the mission that made him the first human being in space. The book has crazy high ratings and reads like a piece of well-written fiction, except it actually happened.

You can check it out here:

5. Upcoming Launches & Missions

SPECIAL EXCITING NEWS: If you refer just 3 friends (used to be 5, now it’s 3) to this newsletter, I’ll send you a free copy of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s A Brief Welcome to the Universe. Use the link below to share and get credit for your referrals!

Thanks as always,

-Michael