NASA Selects 2 Instruments for Artemis IV Lunar Surface Science
NASA has selected two science instruments designed for astronauts to deploy on the surface of the Moon during the Artemis IV mission to the lunar south polar region. The instruments will improve our knowledge of the lunar environment to support NASA’s further exploration of the Moon and beyond to Mars.
A visualization of the Moon’s South Pole region created with data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been surveying the Moon with seven instruments since 2009.
“The Apollo Era taught us that the further humanity is from Earth, the more dependent we are on science to protect and sustain human life on other planets,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “By deploying these two science instruments on the lunar surface, our proving ground, NASA is leading the world in the creation of humanity’s interplanetary survival guide to ensure the health and safety of our spacecraft and human explorers as we begin our epic journey back to the Moon and onward to Mars.”
After his voyage to the Moon’s surface during Apollo 17, astronaut Gene Cernan acknowledged the challenge that lunar dust presents to long-term lunar exploration. Moon dust sticks to everything it touches and is very abrasive. The knowledge gained from the DUSTER (DUst and plaSma environmenT survEyoR) investigation will help mitigate hazards to human health and exploration. Consisting of a set of instruments mounted on a small autonomous rover, DUSTER will characterize dust and plasma around the landing site. These measurements will advance understanding of the Moon’s natural dust and plasma environment and how that environment responds to the human presence, including any disturbance during crew exploration activities and lander liftoff. The DUSTER instrument suite is led by Xu Wang of the University of Colorado Boulder. The contract is for $24.8 million over a period of three years.
A model of the DUSTER instrument suite consisting of the Electrostatic Dust Analyzer (EDA)—which will measure the charge, velocity, size, and flux of dust particles lofted from the lunar surface—and Relaxation SOunder and differentiaL VoltagE (RESOLVE)—which will characterize the average electron density above the lunar surface using plasma sounding. Both instruments will be housed on a Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover, which will be supplied by Lunar Outpost, a company based in Golden, Colorado, that develops and operates robotic systems for space exploration.
LASP/CU Boulder/Lunar Outpost
Data from the SPSS (South Pole Seismic Station) will enable scientists to characterize the lunar interior structure to better understand the geologic processes that affect planetary bodies. The seismometer will help determine the current rate at which the Moon is struck by meteorite impacts, monitor the real-time seismic environment and how it can affect operations for astronauts, and determine properties of the Moon’s deep interior. The crew will additionally perform an active-source experiment using a “thumper” that creates seismic energy to survey the shallow structure around the landing site. The SPSS instrument is led by Mark Panning of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The award is for $25 million over a period of three years.
An artist’s concept of SPSS (South Pole Seismic Station) to be deployed by astronauts on the lunar surface.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
“These two scientific investigations will be emplaced by human explorers on the Moon to achieve science goals that have been identified as strategically important by both NASA and the larger scientific community”, said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “We are excited to integrate these instrument teams into the Artemis IV Science Team.”
The two payloads were selected for further development to fly on Artemis IV; however, final manifesting decisions about the mission will be determined at a later date.
Through Artemis, NASA will address high priority science questions, focusing on those that are best accomplished by on-site human explorers on and around the Moon and by using the unique attributes of the lunar environment, aided by robotic surface and orbiting systems. The Artemis missions will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
How do you top a highly detailed scale model of NASA’s new moon-bound rocket and its support tower? If you’re Lego, you make it so it can actually lift off.
Lego’s NASA Artemis Space Launch System Rocket, part of its Technic line of advanced building sets, will land on store shelves for $60 on January 1, 2026, and then “blast off” from kitchen tables, office desks and living room floors. The 632-piece set climbs skyward, separating from its expendable stages along the way, until the Orion crew spacecraft and its European Service Module top out the motion on their way to the moon—or wherever your imagination carries it.
“The educational LEGO Technic set shows the moment a rocket launches, in three distinct stages,” reads the product description on Lego’s website. “Turn the crank to see the solid rocket boosters separate from the core stage, which then also detaches. Continue turning to watch the upper stage with its engine module, Orion spacecraft and launch abort system separate.”
The waxing gibbous moon rises above Earth’s blue atmosphere in this photograph taken from the International Space Station on Oct. 3, 2025, as it orbited 263 miles above a cloudy Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Quebec, Canada.
In our entire solar system, the only object that shines with its own light is the Sun. That light always beams onto Earth and the Moon from the direction of the Sun, illuminating half of our planet in its orbit and reflecting off the surface of the Moon to create moonlight. Sometimes the entire face of the Moon glows brightly. Other times we see only a thin crescent of light. Sometimes the Moon seems to disappear. These shifts are called Moon phases. The waxing gibbous phase comes just before the full moon.
Assuming you’re not stuck in a prison cell without windows, you could feasibly keep track of the moon and tides by walking outside and jotting things down in your notebook. Alternatively, you could save a lot of hassle by just building this moon and tide clock from [pjdines1994] instead.
The build is based on a Raspberry Pi Pico W, which is hooked up to a real-time clock module and a Waveshare 3.7-inch e-paper display. Upon this display, the clock draws an image relevant to the current phase of the moon. As the write-up notes, it was a tad fussy to store 24 images for all the different lunar phases within the Pi Pico, but it was achieved nonetheless with a touch of compression. As for tides, it covers those too by pulling in tide information from an online resource.
It’s specifically set up to report the local tides for [pjdines1994], reporting the high tide and low tide times for Whitstable in the United Kingdom. If you’re not in Whitstable, you’d probably want to reconfigure the clock before using it yourself. Unless you really want to know what’s up in Whitstable, of course. If you so wish, you can set the clock up to make its own tide predictions by running local calculations, but [pjdines1994] notes that this is rather more complicated to do. The finished result look quite good, because [pjdines1994] decided to build it inside an old carriage clock that only reveals parts of the display showing the moon and the relevant tide numbers.
We’ve featured some other great tide clocks before, like this grand 3D printed design. If you’ve built your own arcane machine to plot the dances of celestial objects, do be sure to let us know on the tipsline!
An Airbus directive that ordered the immediate software update for 6,000 A320 planes has lead to flight disruptions around the world. As Reuters notes, that’s more than half of the 11,300 A320 jets in operation. The narrow-body A320 is widely used globally, but its largest operator is American Airlines, which has 480 of the model in its fleet.
American Airlines said 340 planes out of the 480 it has need to be updated, with each plane taking two hours, during one of the busiest weekends for travel in the US. It told CNBC that it expects the “overwhelming majority” of those planes to be completed through the night, with only a handful remaining on November 29. The recall also heavily affects Asian carriers that rely on A320s for short-haul flights. Japan’s ANA had to cancel 95 domestic flights for Saturday, affecting over 13,000 passengers.
In its announcement, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency said it issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive after a problem manifested on a JetBlue flight back on October 30. Airbus said that an analysis of the event revealed “that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.” Solar flares, or bursts of electromagnetic radiation from the sun, are known to cause radio blackouts and the disruption of satellite and GPS signals,. To prevent future issues, the affected planes would have to revert to an earlier version of their software.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/passengers-face-disruption-as-airbus-updates-thousands-of-planes-065955605.html?src=rss
ModRetro, the gaming company that makes modern versions of retro consoles, has unveiled its take on the Nintendo 64. It’s called the M64, and it has launched alongside ModRetro’s spin on the classic console’s trident or three-pronged controller. The M64 is a direct competitor to the Analogue 3D, which is also an ode to the N64 and can play its games. Analogue’s version is already out for sale, though it’s currently out of stock. ModRetro didn’t say when you’ll be able to purchase the M64 and how much it will cost, but you can sign up for the waitlist and get priority when it goes on sale. The consoles will come with translucent casing in three colors when it debuts: purple, green and white.
ModRetro soft launched its first console, the Chromatic, in 2024. As you can probably guess, the Chromatic can play Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles, as well as proprietary cartridges. It came out months after its soft launch and will set you back at least $200. If you’re not familiar with ModRetro before this, it was founded by Palmer Luckey who also founded Oculus and designed the Rift headset. In 2017, he co-founded Anduril Industries, a military tech company that builds drones, sensors and other technologies with billions in government contracts.
ModRetro M64 controller
ModRetro
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/modretro-launches-its-take-on-the-nintendo-64-170000967.html?src=rss
One year after winning second place in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, members of the small business Starpath visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of their prize opportunity to test their upgraded lunar regolith excavation and transportation rover in the center’s 20-foot thermal vacuum chamber.
The technology startup headquartered in Hawthorne, California, won second place overall at the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024. This competition, one of NASA’s Centennial Challenges, tasked competitors to design, build, and demonstrate robotic technologies that could excavate and transport the icy, rocky dirt – otherwise known as regolith – found on the Moon.
Starpath team members (foreground: Josh Kavilaveettil, mechanical engineer; background: Aakash Ramachandran, lead rover engineer) put their upgraded lunar regolith rover to the test inside NASA Marshall’s 20-foot thermal vacuum chamber – a prize opportunity marking one year since their 2nd place win in the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge.
NASA/Joe Kuner
“NASA’s Centennial Challenges are a great way to discover new, innovative technologies, including those for future use on the Moon and even Mars,” said Naveen Vetcha, Break the Ice Lunar Challenge manager at NASA Marshall. “Working with winners after the challenge concludes is a perfect example of how we can use NASA facilities to continue advancing these technologies to generate valuable solutions for the agency and industry.”
Starpath built a four-wheeled rover capable of excavating, collecting, and hauling material under extremely harsh environmental conditions that simulate the lunar South Pole. On the rover, a dual drum barrel can extend from the body of the robot – mimicking a movement similar to a crab’s claws – and scrape into rough, hard regolith to excavate material quickly without compromising finite battery life.
Before Starpath made the 2,000-mile drive from California to Alabama this summer, NASA Marshall’s Engineering Test Facility staff prepared a concrete slab outfitted with rocky terrain to act as a testbed for the robot to interact inside the chamber. The V-20 Thermal Vacuum Chamber, located at Marshall’s Environmental Test Facility, can simulate harsh environments by manipulating the chamber’s vacuum, temperature, humidity, and pressure effects. Starpath staff spent about three days at NASA Marshall in August, testing their robot with excavation and mobility trials while collecting data on its performance.
The Starpath team is honing the development of its technology for missions located at the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar South Pole. As a future landing site for NASA’s Artemis missions, which will send astronauts to the Moon and prepare to send the first Americans to Mars, the South Pole region of the Moon is known to contain ice within its regolith. This was the leading inspiration behind the development of the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, as NASA will require robust technologies that can excavate and transport lunar ice for extraction, purification, and use as drinking water or rocket fuel.
Starpath, one of three winning teams in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, was invited by NASA Centennial Challenges to test their lunar excavation and traversal rover at the agency’s thermal vacuum chamber facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The invitation was an added perk to the team’s successful participation in Break the Ice, which took place from 2020 to 2024. A space hardware startup from Hawthorne, California, Starpath won a cumulative $838,461 across three levels of Phase 2 before winning second place overall at the challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024.
In this image, two members of the Starpath team remotely operate the rover and run data in preparation for its entrance to the V20 Thermal Vacuum Chamber.
NASA/Joe Kuner
Starpath, one of three winning teams in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, was invited by NASA Centennial Challenges to test their lunar excavation and traversal rover at the agency’s thermal vacuum chamber facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The invitation was an added perk to the team’s successful participation in Break the Ice, which took place from 2020 to 2024. A space hardware startup from Hawthorne, California, Starpath won a cumulative $838,461 across three levels of Phase 2 before winning second place overall at the challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024.
In this image, employees from NASA Marshall’s Environmental Test Facility work with the Starpath team to carefully maneuver the rover onto a platform that will slide the rover into the chamber.
NASA/Joe Kuner
Starpath, one of three winning teams in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, was invited by NASA Centennial Challenges to test their lunar excavation and traversal rover at the agency’s thermal vacuum chamber facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The invitation was an added perk to the team’s successful participation in Break the Ice, which took place from 2020 to 2024. A space hardware startup from Hawthorne, California, Starpath won a cumulative $838,461 across three levels of Phase 2 before winning second place overall at the challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024.
In this image, employees from NASA Marshall’s Environmental Test Facility situate the rover over the concrete slab that it will operate on before removing the suspension straps that lifted it onto the platform.
NASA/Joe Kuner
Starpath, one of three winning teams in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, was invited by NASA Centennial Challenges to test their lunar excavation and traversal rover at the agency’s thermal vacuum chamber facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The invitation was an added perk to the team’s successful participation in Break the Ice, which took place from 2020 to 2024. A space hardware startup from Hawthorne, California, Starpath won a cumulative $838,461 across three levels of Phase 2 before winning second place overall at the challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024.
In this image, the rover finally freely rests on its concrete slab at the end of the platform. The large metal structure will slide into the chamber, bringing the rover and concrete slab with it.
NASA/Joe Kuner
Starpath, one of three winning teams in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, was invited by NASA Centennial Challenges to test their lunar excavation and traversal rover at the agency’s thermal vacuum chamber facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The invitation was an added perk to the team’s successful participation in Break the Ice, which took place from 2020 to 2024. A space hardware startup from Hawthorne, California, Starpath won a cumulative $838,461 across three levels of Phase 2 before winning second place overall at the challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024.
In this image, NASA Environmental Test Facility employees work with members from the Starpath team to push the sliding platform into the thermal vacuum chamber, with the heavy rover and concrete slab in tow.
NASA/Joe Kuner
Starpath, one of three winning teams in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, was invited by NASA Centennial Challenges to test their lunar excavation and traversal rover at the agency’s thermal vacuum chamber facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The invitation was an added perk to the team’s successful participation in Break the Ice, which took place from 2020 to 2024. A space hardware startup from Hawthorne, California, Starpath won a cumulative $838,461 across three levels of Phase 2 before winning second place overall at the challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024.
In this image, the large concrete platform is fully slid into the vacuum chamber, and members from the Starpath team discuss what final preparations need to be made before the chamber is closed.
NASA/Joe Kuner
Starpath, one of three winning teams in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, was invited by NASA Centennial Challenges to test their lunar excavation and traversal rover at the agency’s thermal vacuum chamber facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The invitation was an added perk to the team’s successful participation in Break the Ice, which took place from 2020 to 2024. A space hardware startup from Hawthorne, California, Starpath won a cumulative $838,461 across three levels of Phase 2 before winning second place overall at the challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024.
In this image, the rover sits on a concrete slab that will be used to mimic the rugged lunar surface. The slab features a sandy, rocky terrain, and lamps within the chamber will turn on and off to simulate sunlight.
NASA/Joe Kuner
Starpath, one of three winning teams in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, was invited by NASA Centennial Challenges to test their lunar excavation and traversal rover at the agency’s thermal vacuum chamber facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The invitation was an added perk to the team’s successful participation in Break the Ice, which took place from 2020 to 2024. A space hardware startup from Hawthorne, California, Starpath won a cumulative $838,461 across three levels of Phase 2 before winning second place overall at the challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024.
In this image, Starpath mechanical engineer Josh Kavilaveettil monitors a component of the rover, attached to wires, in preparation for testing.
NASA/Joe Kuner
Starpath, one of three winning teams in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, was invited by NASA Centennial Challenges to test their lunar excavation and traversal rover at the agency’s thermal vacuum chamber facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The invitation was an added perk to the team’s successful participation in Break the Ice, which took place from 2020 to 2024. A space hardware startup from Hawthorne, California, Starpath won a cumulative $838,461 across three levels of Phase 2 before winning second place overall at the challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024.
In this image, the rover sits atop its concrete slab at the mouth of the thermal vacuum chamber, ready to be closed in and commence testing.
One year after winning second place in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, members of the small business Starpath visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Cent...
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