Free Republic

Feb 23 (Reuters) - The moon lander dubbed Odysseus is "alive and well" but resting on its side a day after its white-knuckle touchdown as the first private spacecraft ever to reach the lunar surface, and the first from the U.S. since 1972, the company behind the vehicle said on Friday. The vehicle is believed to have caught one of its six landing feet on the lunar surface near the end of its final descent and tipped over, coming to rest sideways, propped up on a rock, an analysis of data by flight engineers showed, according to Houston-based Intuitive Machines...

China’s Chang’e 4 mission is currently exploring one of the lesser-known areas of the moon — the far side, which faces away from Earth. Previously it found minerals which may have come from deep beneath the lunar surface, and now it has found something even stranger: An oddly-colored “gel-like” substance of unknown origin. The mission consists of not only the Chang’e 4 lander, but also a smaller rover called Yutu-2. It was Yutu-2 which stumbled across the unexpected blobby mystery, as reported by space.com. The discovery occurred on lunar day 8, or July 25 here on Earth, and it was...

Chandrayaan 2 is India’s first lunar landing mission, and the country’s second robotic mission to the moon following the launch of the Chandrayaan 1 orbiter in October 2008. The launch Sunday will come two days before the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. If the landing is successful, India will become the fourth nation to accomplish a controlled soft landing on the moon, after the former Soviet Union, the United States and China. The Israeli non-profit SpaceIL attempted a landing on the moon in April with the Beresheet mission, but the privately-funded probe crashed on final descent. Located...