Two Private U.S. Moon Landers Prepare for Historic Launches

Trouble viewing? View in your browser. View all Scientific American publications.

    

December 22, 2023

This week, we're over the moon about next year's lunar prospects. Specifically, for two private missions that are set to liftoff in January 2024, each bound for touchdowns on our nearest, dearest natural satellite. First up is Astrobotic's Peregrine mission, which may launch as early as January 8 carrying a lander with the same name. Then, as soon as January 12, Intuitive Machines's IM-1 mission may launch the company's Nova-C lander. Both carry multiple instruments and experiments with a diverse set of scientific objectives, but their most exciting aspect is something more fundamental. A successful landing for either mission would be a milestone; never before has any commercial spacecraft successfully soft-landed on the moon. For both to be successful would be nothing short of revolutionary, signaling the dawn of a new era in which otherworldly exploration is no longer the sole provenance of nation-states. Elsewhere this week, we have stories on how studies of cosmic nothingness may explain everything, a guide to seeing solar halos and sun dogs, the discovery of Einstein tiles, the glowing rings around Uranus, and much more. Enjoy! We at Scientific American wish you a happy Yuletide season. And, as part of our own celebrations, we'll be skipping next week's newsletter—but our regularly-scheduled programming will resume in the new year!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Space Exploration Two Private U.S. Moon Landers Prepare for Historic Launches The first vehicles to fly under NASA's new lunar delivery initiative will aim to be the first commercial spacecraft to land softly on another celestial body By Michael Greshko

Cosmology How Analyzing Cosmic Nothing Might Explain Everything Huge empty areas of the universe called voids could help solve the greatest mysteries in the cosmos By Michael D. Lemonick

Astronomy How to See Halos, Sun Dogs and Other Delights of the Daytime Sky Ice crystals suspended in the air put on a gorgeous show if you know when and where to look By Phil Plait

Planetary Science The Rings of Uranus Glow in Epic JWST Photo The James Webb Space Telescope caught its second glimpse of the year of Uranus and its bright-shining rings By Keith Cooper,SPACE.com

Artificial Intelligence Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real Today's Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they're trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook By Charles Stross

Astronomy Sun Unleashes Most Powerful Solar Flare Since 2017 The flare may have been accompanied by a plasma eruption now headed toward Earth By Mike Wall,SPACE.com

Astrophysics JWST Spots Baby Sun Spitting Up Supersonic Flows A newly released image from the James Webb Space Telescope provides a detailed view of a star's infancy By Lori Youmshajekian

Astrophysics Alien World Denser Than Steel Confounds Our Understanding of Planet Formation A newly spotted world is just perplexingly dense By Allison Gasparini

Mathematics Inside Mathematicians' Search for the Mysterious 'Einstein Tile' The quest for the einstein tile—a shape never seen before in mathematics—turned up even more discoveries than mathematicians counted on By Craig S. Kaplan

Weather To Predict Snowfall, NASA Planes Fly into the Storm Cloud-diving expeditions reveal the hidden physics of brewing snowstorms By Susan Cosier

Arts How the Moon Shaped Human History, from Religion to Climate Lunar influences, parallel universes, taking over a dead relative's online identity, and more books out now By Amy Brady

QUOTE OF THE DAY "This is the big day, the big moment. We're thrilled that we were honored with the opportunity to do it--and now it's put up or shut up, right?" John Thornton, CEO of the private space company Astrobotic, on the looming launch of the company's Peregrine lunar mission

FROM THE ARCHIVE Astronomers Might See Dark Matter by Staring into the Void Vast reaches of mostly empty space could offer superior odds for detecting the invisible substance thought to make up more than 80 percent of the material in the universe By Anil Ananthaswamy | June 2022

LATEST ISSUES

Questions?   Comments?

Download the Scientific American App

To view this email as a web page, go here. You received this email because you opted-in to receive email from Scientific American. To ensure delivery please add newsletters@scientificamerican.com to your address book. Unsubscribe     Manage Email Preferences     Privacy Policy     Contact Us

Scientific American

1 New York Plaza, FDR Dr, Floor 46, New York, NY 10004

Unsubscribe - Unsubscribe Preferences