“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.
Image (Credit): A false-color composite picture of the Moon taken through three color filters on NASA’s Galileo solid-state imaging system. (NASA)
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.
Image (Credit): An artist’s rending of NASA efforts to create a permanent Moon Base. (NASA)
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.
Image (Credit): A close-up view of an astronaut’s bootprint in the lunar soil during the Apollo 11 mission. (NASA/Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin)
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
Image (Credit): Location of the DSN facilities as the Earth rotates (in this image, it is daytime in Asia and Australia). (NASA)
The Deep Space Network (DSN) is critical to NASA’s communications with space missions throughout the solar system, and even those that have left the solar system. It will also be critical to the upcoming Artemis mission to the Moon.
The radio telescopes that make up this system are located in three spots to ensure communications cannot disappear because of the Earth’s rotation – Madrid, Spain; Barstow, California; and Canberra, Australia. The image above shows you the spread of those locations.
One of the California DSN radio telescopes was damaged last year due to human error and is undergoing repairs until approximately 2028. Even so, the US facility is still able to perform its duties. And now the DSN facility in Spain is being threatened by wildfires. As a result, the facility has been evacuated for now.
As with the ongoing fires on this side of the Atlantic, as well as past fires threatening NASA sites, the world is a dangerous place and putting hardware anywhere has its risks. To stay in the game, we rely on the redundancy of these hardware sites, the resilience of space programs, and realistic budgeting to rebuild after such losses.
NASA has shown its ability to bounce back in the past, so whatever happens in Spain should not be a long-term blow to present and future space missions.Even so, we do not need to continually test the system with climate change, the weakening of the NASA program through continual cuts, and more budget threats on the horizon.
As C.S. Lewis said, “the doors of hell are locked on the inside.”
Note: Although C.S. Lewis is remembered primarily as a religious writer, he was also a science fiction writer with stories of space travel. Hence, I think I can creatively use his quote here.
