Enlarge / Artist's concept of the VIPER rover working in lunar darkness. (credit: NASA/Daniel Rutter )

The search for ice at the Moon’s poles has loomed large in the field of lunar science since an instrument on an Indian satellite discovered water molecules inside shadowed crater floors more than a decade ago. NASA is now assembling a golf cart-size rover to drive into the dark polar craters to search for ice deposits that could be used by future astronauts to make their own rocket propellant and breathable air.

“A large group of people have been working on this idea for 10-plus years,” said Anthony Colaprete, project scientist for NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission.

Earlier this year, engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston started building the rover’s chassis. In June, the space agency formally approved VIPER’s team to move into full-scale assembly and testing ahead of the rover’s scheduled launch in November 2024.

Enlarge / Astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, and Jeremy Hansen are joined by an instructor (background) on the first day of Artemis II crew training. (credit: NASA )

The four astronauts assigned to soar beyond the far side of the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission settled into their seats inside a drab classroom last month at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It was one in a series of noteworthy moments for the four-person crew since NASA revealed the names of the astronauts who will be the first people to fly around the Moon since 1972.

There was the fanfare of the crew’s unveiling to the public in April and an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert . There will, of course, be great anticipation as the astronauts close in on their launch date, currently projected for late 2024 or 2025.

But many of the crew’s days over the next 18 months will be spent in classrooms, on airplanes, or in simulators, with instructors dispensing knowledge they deem crucial for the success of the Artemis II mission. In the simulator, the training team will throw malfunctions and anomalies at the astronauts to test their ability to resolve a failure that—if it happened in space—could cut the mission short or, in a worst-case scenario, kill them.

Enlarge / Garrett Reisman, center, has plenty of experience living without gravity. (credit: NASA)

A little more than 15 years ago, astronaut Garrett Reisman was among a crew of seven who launched into orbit aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour . The shuttle remained attached to the Space Station for nearly two weeks, but when the orbiter departed, it left Reisman behind for an extended stay.

During his time at the station, Reisman would often pass through the Harmony module, which serves as a corridor connecting laboratory modules built by NASA and the European and Japanese space agencies. Sometimes, he would look up and see a small placard that said, "To CAM." The arrow, however, pointed out into space.

"When I was up there on the space station, there was still the sign that says, 'To CAM,'" Reisman said in an interview. "But there's just a closed hatch. It was tragic. It was just kind of taunting me when I saw that because I think that could have been one of the most important scientific discoveries that we made."

Enlarge / This artist's illustration of the ViaSat-3 Americas satellites shows the spacecraft as it would appear with its large reflector antenna fully deployed. (credit: Viasat )

A new Viasat communications satellite launched in April has been crippled by a problem when unfurling its huge mesh antenna. The problem jeopardizes Viasat’s much-needed refresh to its space-based Internet network that would let it better compete with newer broadband offerings from companies like SpaceX and OneWeb.

Viasat confirmed the antenna problem Wednesday after it was first reported by Space Intel Report . The satellite in question is named ViaSat-3 Americas, and it launched on April 30 as the primary payload on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The satellite is one of the most powerful commercial spacecraft ever built, with two solar array wings as wide as a Boeing 767 jetliner capable of generating more than 30 kilowatts of electricity. The solar panels deployed soon after the spacecraft arrived in orbit, and the next step was to unfurl a large reflector to bounce Internet signals between the ground and transmitters and receivers on board the main body of the satellite.

Enlarge / An LVM-3 rocket carrying the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft lifts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Friday. (credit: R.Satish BABU / AFP)

India took the first step toward its second attempt to land on the Moon on Friday with the launch of its Chandrayaan-3 mission from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in the southeastern part of the country.

The spacecraft launched on the LVM-3 rocket, the heaviest lift vehicle in India's fleet. Liftoff came nearly three years to the date of the launch of the Chandrayaan-2 mission to the Moon. That launch successfully placed a spacecraft into lunar orbit, but a landing attempt was unsuccessful. The Indian space agency, ISRO, lost communication with its Vikram lander at about 2 kilometers above the lunar surface due to a software problem. It subsequently crashed into the Moon.

So the Indian space agency decided to learn from its mistakes and try again. The Chandrayaan-3 mission has eschewed the lunar orbiter, as the Indian spacecraft remains operational after three years. So this launch consisted of a propulsion module, a new Vikram lander, and a small rover named Pragyan.