Moon Fever 2.0

... mission in 2026. The mission is designed to search for and study water ice in permanently shadowed regions. The follow-on Chang’e-8 program is linked to the development of technologies for the future International Lunar Research Station, a joint Russian-Chinese project. For its part, India’s Chandrayaan-4 mission, scheduled for 2028, is supposed to deliver soil samples taken near the Moon’s South Pole. This will be followed by plans in New Delhi for a joint polar expedition with Japan. The objective is to determine how much water is present, in what form, and whether this resource can serve as a basis for future missions. The greater ...