SPACE

A company from Texas is poised to attempt a feat that until now has only been accomplished by a handful of national space agencies, but could soon become commonplace for the private sector: landing on the Moon.

The year 2024 promises to be a busy one for American Moon landings, all under a new partnership between NASA and the space industry.

Japan's SLIM space probe entered the Moon's orbit on Monday in a major step towards the country's first successful lunar landing, expected next month.

Several new European and American rockets are set for blast off in 2024, at a time the aerospace industry faces a shortage of launch vehicles fueled by the rise of satellite constellations.

Chairman of India's space agency S Somanath said a crew of two to three astronauts will be part of India's maiden manned space mission.

This year, India signed the NASA-led Artemis Accords, which lays down a framework for space cooperation and lunar exploration plans among participating nations. Some experts believe this indicates New Delhi's inclination toward a Western alliance over one led by China-Russia.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi listed objectives for future Indian Space Research Organization missions and said India should send a man to the moon by 2040 and set up an Indian space station by 2035.

In an update provided Sunday about India's first space mission to study the sun, ISRO said the spacecraft successfully performed a trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) for about 16 seconds on October 6.

US aviation regulators said Wednesday that Blue Origin must complete "21 corrective actions" before it can resume launches, closing a probe into an uncrewed crash last year that set back Jeff Bezos's space company.

S Somanath, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, said India is eyeing the Earth's planetary neighbors, Venus and Mars, for further exploration and also has other projects in the works.

The Indian Space Research Organisation attempted to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover but received no signal.

The mission is called the "moon sniper" because it aims at landing within 100 meters (roughly 330 feet) of its target on the lunar surface. If successful, this could be a game-changer because it is far less than the conventional range of several kilometers.

Days after making history by being the first nation to land on the moon's south pole, India successfully launched the Aditya-L1 mission to the Sun from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Saturday.

Countries like China, India, Russia and the U.S. are strong contenders in the space race for extraterrestrial resources.

The rover also detected the presence of aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon and oxygen during its research on the lunar surface.

Japan's shot for the moon comes after India's Chandrayaan-3 mission saw a successful soft landing on the moon last week.

The Pragyan rover, weighing about 57 lbs (26kg), traveled to the moon in the belly of the Vikram lander to collect data that will be sent back to Earth for further analysis.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission aims at finding insights into lunar water exploration, which could eventually help in lunar mining and also the discovery of extraterrestrial resources beyond.

India landed its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft near the moon's south pole, becoming only the fourth nation to do so.

A successful soft landing on the lunar south pole would put India in the elite space club of nations that have managed to achieve a soft landing on the moon. The U.S., China, and the former Soviet Union are currently the only members of that club.

The plans for Aditya-L1 include placing the spacecraft in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1)--around 1.5 million km from the Earth--of the Sun-Earth system.

"There is no danger that they interfere with each other or collide. There is enough space for everyone on the moon," the Russian space agency said.

"This is the third time in succession that ISRO has successfully inserted its spacecraft into the lunar orbit, apart from doing so into the Martian orbit," the space agency noted in a statement.

"After failure of Lander on Chandrayaan 2, ISRO has been working incessantly to rectify problems in lander" and the new lander has seen "many improvements," said Sandip K. Chakrabarti, one of India's most notable scientists in the field of astronomy and astrophysics.

The twin-rocket plan includes sending a pair of launch vehicles — one with a moon surface lander and another carrying the astronauts — into lunar orbit, said Zhang Hailian, deputy chief engineer with the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

The 3D visualization makes it seem as though you're flying past the galaxies in space.

Skywatchers are getting another chance at spotting the aurora in various parts of the U.S. later in the week.

The Sun belched out a coronal mass ejection on the Fourth of July. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center says an "Earth-directed component" is expected to arrive on Friday after mid-day.

Ariane 5 blasted off from French Guiana on Wednesday for its final mission, which turned out to be a success.