Multiple Choice: If you weight 150 pounds on Earth, how much would you weigh on the Moon’s surface?
A. About 200 pounds
B. About 85 pounds
C. About 40 pounds
D. About 25 pounds
Take a guess and then check your answer by going to the “Astronomy Question Answer Sheet” page.
“The 9th meeting of the India-U.S. Civil Space Joint Working Group (CSJWG) was hosted by India on 5-6 August 2026 at the headquarters of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bengaluru…NASA invited ISRO to join its Moon Base program, building on the two countries’ partnership under the Artemis Accords. The two sides also agreed to advance discussions for cooperation on open scientific data sharing under the Accords.“
-Statement issued by the US Embassy in India on August 11, 2026 pertaining to NASA’s ongoing Moon Base program. India was the fourth nation to successfully land on the Moon back in 2023 with its Chandrayaan-3 mission. With that landing, it was also the first country to successfully land at the Moon’s South Pole.
While everyone was staring up at the dark Moon covering the bright sun during today’s eclipse, NASA was busy chatting about new ways to view the Moon. The image above is one of many that can be created using NASA data to assist commercial companies trying to understand the lunar terrain while looking for useful minerals.
The accompanying NASA story includes comments from multiple commercial companies eyeing the Moon’s resources.
Blair DeWitt, CEO of Lunar Station, stated:
We can find sites for landing pads, for cultivating the best paths for roving, and inform our clients about communications. If you can’t see Earth at a given location like in the polar regions or the far side of the Moon, you have to come up with a relay strategy…We can do this in part thanks to NASA data.
We can assume the Chinese are doing the same for their own commercial sector, though NASA has more data going back decades. Even so, China already has rocks from the far side of the Moon, which is a feat that not even NASA achieved. And not to be outdone, just last week China released its own comprehensive geological map of the Moon.
As with everything else pertaining to the Moon, the race is on.
NASA is quickly learning that it needs to get out front with its own PR to promote efforts to build a Moon base near the lunar South Pole. With budget cuts always looming in the background, public support will be essential to ensure the US has a long-term presence on the Moon.
This latest video from NASA does a good job explaining the status of the various vendors creating landers and rovers for phase 1 of the Moon base, which extends to 2029. This phase will be limited to robotics preparing the lunar surface for later astronauts. The video covers the efforts of Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Voyager Lunar Systems, and Northrop Grumman.
The video is a helpful way to keep the public informed, but the best publicity will be success. The lunar landings to date by commercial partners have been mostly disappointing. The success of these upcoming missions is what will convince the public that we can really settle on the Moon.
Multiple Choice: For how long will signs of the the earlier Apollo missions (e.g., footprints, equipment, flag, etc.) be visible on the Moon’s surface?
A. 1-10 million years
B. 10-100 million years
C. 100-500 million years
D. More than 500 million years
Take a guess and then check your answer by going to the “Astronomy Question Answer Sheet” page.
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