On Episode 144 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik take a look a pair of private moon missions by Firefly Aerospace and ispace that lifted off this week and so much more.
2025 is the year that introduces the Great Lunar Armada! A small fleet of private and publicly-funded orbiters, landers, and rovers are heading off to explore Luna Incognita this year, and it will only speed up after that.
We also look at the recent Starship Flight 7—which ended in the total loss of the Starship upper stage—and the inaugural flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn mega-rocket, which flew successfully but did not manage to land on the recovery ship. Plus, our usual space dad joke and an update on the LA fires’ impact on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and how you can help.
