Rocket Lab Solar Panels to be Integrated on Artemis Lunar Gateway PPE by Maxar as Thales Alenia Welds HALO Module
Panels of 30% efficienct Z4J multi-junction solar cells made by Rocket Lab subsidiary SolAero Technologies (Albuquerque NM) under contract for Maxar Technologies, builder of Lunar Gateway Power and Propulsion Element; Redwire subsidiary Deployable Space Systems (Goleta CA) to integrate panels into PPE Roll Out Solar Array, providing ~70 kW to power 6 kW Hall-effect ion thrusters made by Busek (Natick MA); PPE to launch with Cygnus-based Habitation and Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) NET Nov 2024, forming core of cislunar space station; HALO being fabricated by Thales Alenia in Turin, Italy for Northrop Grumman
AIAA Small Spacecraft Technical Committee honors Capstone at 36th SmallSat Conference in Utah; Partners on the <US$30M mission include Advanced Space / PI Bradley Cheetham, providing overall project management, Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System (set to interface with LRO) and Ballistic Lunar Transfer / Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit trajectories; Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems (founded by Jordi Puig-Suari of Cal Poly, co-inventor of the CubeSat standard) and parent company Terran Orbital, who designed, built and operate 25kg, 12U Capstone; Stellar Exploration, manufacturer of hydrazine propulsion system; Launch provider Rocket Lab
Artemis 1 launching to Moon orbit NET 29 Aug with 10 rideshare cubesats, NASA test dummy Commander Moonikin Campos, DLR / ISA torso radiation ‘phantoms’ Helga & Zohar, mascots Snoopy & Shaun the Sheep; Race to landings led by ispace, aiming for Nov launch, Astrobotic working to launch NET Dec, seeking to acquire Masten assets with US$4.5M bid; Intuitive Machines striving for Jan 2023 followed by ISRO Chandrayaan-3 NET Q1, JAXA SLIM NET March and Roscosmos Luna-25 NET September; Xplore of Redmond WA and Turkish Space Agency have also declared for uncrewed lunar orbit in 2023, SpaceX plans crewed dearMoon
Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter is headed to 100-km polar orbit around Moon, powered by four 30-N Orbit Maneuver Thrusters on ~ 19-week journey; 6 science instruments include Gamma Ray Spectrometer to monitor y-ray emissions during trip / from lunar orbit within 10 keV to 10 MeV range; NASA ShadowCam based on LRO LROC with 800x sensitivity to map PSRs; Ministry of Science official Kwon Hyun-joon tells 
International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA) to speak on the resumption of astrophysical investigation from the surface of Moon during Division A (Fundamental Astronomy) talk at 14:40 KST, just hours after Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter Danuri set to launch at 8:08 KST; IM-1 carrying ILO-X to Moon NET Jan 2023 along with co-payload Radio Wave Observations at the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath (ROLSES); Future AFTM includes ILO-1 (NET 2024), LuSEE (2025), DAPPER, FARSIDE, Lunar Crater Radio Telescope
NASA Capstone performing nominally on voyage to Moon with trajectory correction maneuver 3 expected to be performed by 
TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD), aboard PDT-3 cubesat (built / operated by Terran Orbital) aims to deliver information files from LEO at 200Gbps (USA D/L speeds average ~120Mbps); Italian Space Agency / NASA partnering on LuGRE (2023) to interface with GNSS signals from Moon via Firefly lander under CLPS; both projects utilize laser terminals and are overseen by NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN); Sony Space Communications also working on miniaturized laser comms derived from Small Optical Link for International Space Station installed on Kibo module
12-g Moon samples collected during Apollo 11, 12, 17 utilized by 3 researchers at UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences demonstrate viability of lunar regolith as growing medium; Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) seeds germinated at “rates close to 100%” within 48-60 hours, similar to control group with volcanic ash substrate; Regolith-grown plants were affected by higher differentially expressed gene rate which study authors attribute to solar wind, cosmic radiation effects, abundance of iron oxides; Outcomes varied by sample location with Apollo 17 most robust