In a recent program, NASA officials revealed that humans could well be living and working on the surface of the Moon within the next decade.

This revelation followed the long-awaited launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 spacecraft on Wednesday. The launch was postponed twice in September following Hurricane Ian and a liquid hydrogen leak.

Onboard Artemis was the Orion spacecraft, a key component in the mission to get astronauts back on the Moon. Orion is designed to take humans farther than ever before, serving as the exploration vehicle for deep space. The spacecraft provides emergency abort capabilities, can sustain the crew during space travel, and even provides safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.

On Monday, Orian flew 81 miles above the Moon’s surface at 5,102 mph. Experts are verifying whether the spacecraft will work as planned, allowing them to make adjustments before the Artemis II mission, scheduled to launch circa 2024. If all goes smoothly, Orion, along with a SpaceX vehicle, will land astronauts on the Moon’s surface.

“The mission continues to proceed as we had planned, and the ground systems, our operations teams, and the Orion spacecraft continue to exceed expectations, and we continue to learn along the way about this new, deep-space spacecraft,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager, in a briefing on Monday at Johnson Space Center.

Howard Hu, head of the Orion programme, told the BBC, “It’s the first step we’re taking to long-term deep-space exploration, for not just the United States but for the world. I think this is a historic day for NASA, but it’s also a historic day for all the people who love human space flight and deep-space exploration.”

“Certainly in this decade, we’re going to have people living [on the Moon],” Hu commented. “The durations, you know, depending on how long we’ll be on the surface. They’ll be living, they’ll have habitats and they’ll have rovers on the ground. … So, not only are we able to work in delivering people to the Moon, getting people down to the surface of the Moon, they still have to have the infrastructure.”

Hu later commented that a big reason for NASA trying to get back on the Moon is to determine whether there is water at its south pole. If present, water could be converted into fuel for spacecraft travelling to Mars.

This exciting insight into humanity’s future in space marks a huge milestone for not only the space sector, but for the entire world.

The last manned mission to the Moon was Apollo 17 in December 1972. Five decades on, we’re actually seeing the implementation of systems that will allow us to stay up there long-term. With the industry advancing so rapidly and making such huge strides, we can’t wait to see where the next decade takes us.  

Nearly 40 years after NASA launched Voyager 2 to explore interstellar space, astronomers have made a startling discovery hidden in decades-old data.

When Voyager 2 launched on August 20^th 1977, it made history as the first – and currently only – spacecraft to visit Uranus. On this historic mission, the spacecraft discovered 10 orbiting moons and two rings around the ice giant. One of the rings, dubbed Zeta, has been shrouded in mystery ever since – until now.

After its initial sighting, experts were unable to locate Zeta for almost 20 years. Experts even thought they’d “missed” Zeta because it was not visible in a single image.

Amateur image processor Ian Regan has shed new light on this illusive ring through rediscovered Voyager 2 data.

“He took hundreds of images, stacked them together, to produce this image of the Uranian system,” commented planetary scientist Matthew Hedman. “This is the most comprehensive view of the zeta ring that exists and we didn’t know it was in the Voyager data for decades.”

Thanks to this new information, researchers have been able to calculate Zeta’s distance from Uranus – around 37,000km – and to estimate its brightness.

“For a long time we thought we only had two images of this ring. This shows that there is a lot of information still encoded in the Voyager data that deserves a second look,” said Hedman.

This latest image of the Uranian system has raised some questions within the scientific community.

In 2007, Hawaii’s Keck Observatory gathered the first observations of Uranus’ rings since Voyager. Their findings showed Zeta 40,000km above Uranus, 20,000km further than Voyager 2 had imaged.

 “The trick is that the location of this ring didn’t match the Voyager images. Something has changed about this ring over the course of 20 years. We’re still not sure what it is,” Hedman explained.

Alongside this, experts in the Keck observatory detected that Zeta had become much brighter since its last sighting, meaning dust had been introduced into the system. One potential explanation could be a space rock colliding with Uranus, creating dust and debris that then settled in the zeta ring. Another theory holds changing seasons in space responsible, however these ideas are both unconfirmed.

“It got significantly brighter, which means dust got introduced to the system sometime in those 20 years,” Hedman said. “Now, what did that? We have no idea.”

As further questions are raised around the icy planet and its rings, experts are making plans to find answers. There’s even talk of a large-scale NASA mission on the horizon to explore the Uranus system.

For now, the James Webb Space Telescope is keeping an eye on Uranus, collecting further data and images of the planet’s rings. In September 2022, the clever space telescope captured some of the clearest images of Uranus’s rings we’ve ever seen – this is the first time we’ve seen the rings in infrared.

Sparked by Voyager’s historic mission into interstellar space, it seems we still have a lot to learn about the other planets in our solar system. As experts learn from this exciting discovery and plan future missions, we can’t wait to see what they’ll find next.

China has launched a new Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite for environmental monitoring.

Huanjing-2E took flight earlier this month on a Long March 2C rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China.

The SAR satellite’s 5-meter resolution S-band radar image data will support “disaster prevention, reduction, relief, and environmental protection,” as well as “serve natural resources, water conservancy, agriculture, forestry, earthquakes, and other fields,” according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

Huanjing-2E’s launch follows that of Huanjing-2A and 2B in 2020. This is the latest addition to a fast-growing series of environmental monitoring systems, all deployed and operated by China.

China is making huge advances in space-based Earth monitoring, using commercial constellations to gather data about environmental change more efficiently than ever.

Because they collect data at different wavelengths, SAR satellites can obtain many types of information such as water and moisture content, surface makeup, the impact of natural or man-made disasters and changes in habitat. They have day, night and all-weather capabilities, which means they don’t require sunlight to function and are not affected by atmospheric conditions. They can also “see” through things like vegetation, snow, sand and smoke. The ability to repeatedly scan the same area regardless of weather conditions makes SAR a great tool for measuring changes in Earth’s landscapes and environment.

These capabilities provide enormous value for industries like geospatial intelligence that rely on environmental data and imaging to document and assess human activity on Earth. This kind of cutting-edge space technology also plays a huge role in agriculture, reforestation, flood management, snow and ice monitoring, wildfires, and so much more.

On their mission to help Earth from space, China also recently added to their Haiyang (meaning “ocean” in Chinese) satellite constellation. These satellites use microwave sensors to monitor the marine environment, measuring sea surface height, temperature and wind field. Since the first launch in 2002, China has added eight satellites to the constellation, with 10 more on the way.

It’s safe to say that China has solidified itself as a big player in space. Following their first satellite launch in 1970, the country’s launch capabilities boomed in the 2010s and are continuing to grow today. Today, China has full-cycle capability, meaning their satellites can be manufactured locally, then launched on Chinese rockets from Chinese launch sites. While most reports assign 499 of the 4,852 active satellites orbiting Earth to China, more recent reports estimate the number to be around 562. This makes them the world’s second largest commercial satellite owner, beaten only by the US with a monopoly of 61%.

With the climate crisis raging on and natural disasters increasing in frequency, it’s great to see more focus directed towards using space for good. If the sector continues to drive innovation through these next-generation space technologies, we can monitor and assess all kinds of damage to our planet, working together to minimise harm as far as possible.