China has invited Venezuela to join its lunar research station project as the country works to gain partners for the endeavor. SpaceNews reports: Venezuela would be the first country to join China and Russia in the International Lunar Research Station …

“SpaceX has its first commercial cargo contract to the lunar surface,” says Jaret Matthews, the founder of the tiny startup Astrolab which makes a moon rover the size of a Jeep Wrangler. The New York Times reports:

On Friday, Astrolab announced that i…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: The U.S., Soviet Union, and Japan have all sent robots to the moon over the past 50 years. Now, a group of college students is joining in by building a shoebox-sized rover that they plan to launch in Ma…

Lockheed Martin has created a spinoff devoted to lunar infrastructure, Crescent Space, whose first project is a Moon-to-Earth satellite network. Engadget reports: Parsec, as it’s called, uses a constellation of small lunar satellites to provide a non-s…

Slashdot reader votsalo shares a report from the Guardian: Tiny glass beads strewn across the moon’s surface contain potentially billions of tons of water that could be extracted and used by astronauts on future lunar missions, researchers say. The dis…

Long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid quotes an intriguing new article from the Economist:

Imagine a habitable colony on Mars or the Moon and the kinds of structures that come to mind are probably gleaming domes or shiny metallic tubes snaking over the s…

With more lunar missions than ever on the horizon, the European Space Agency wants to give the moon its own time zone. The Associated Press reports: This week, the agency said space organizations around the world are considering how best to keep time o…

The idea of using dirt on the Moon to manufacture solar cells, which could power a permanent human settlement, may seem outlandish, but two companies say they’ve made big progress on that front: they each say they’ve already made solar cells using fake…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Friday, in a blog post not even promoted by the company’s Twitter account or a news release, Blue Origin quietly said its “Blue Alchemist” program has been working on [using the dusty lunar surf…

In a study published Wednesday in PLOS Climate, a group of astrophysicists proposes shooting lunar dust into space to help partially shield sunlight to Earth. The Washington Post reports: The team used computer simulations to model various scenarios wh…