[Monday, May 1, 2006] Following the Vision for Space Exploration, NASA is sending astronauts back to the Moon to stay longer and build bigger bases than Apollo astronauts ever did. The odds of something precious being hit will go up. Should NASA be worried?

[Friday, May 5, 2006] NASA's Deputy Administrator Shana Dale announced Friday the agency's Centennial Challenges program has signed an agreement with the X PRIZE Foundation to conduct the $2 million Lunar Lander Analog Challenge.

[Tuesday, May 9, 2006] In isolated environments, astronauts, flight crews, offshore workers and military forces must maintain vigilance and work together to ensure a safe and successful mission.

[Tuesday, May 9, 2006] NASA will have two scientific instruments on India's maiden voyage to the moon. Tuesday, NASA and ISRO signed two Memoranda of Understanding in Bangalore, India, for cooperation on India's Chandrayaan-1 mission.

[Tuesday, May 9, 2006] "How do we sustain the vision for space exploration to lead us to settlement? How do we afford it? How do we nurture it? My answer - and I think a lot of yours' - is the private sector."

[Thursday, May 11, 2006] "I am honored to be your guest today, as we forge an important partnership to advance the exploration of the moon."

[Saturday, May 13, 2006] Over sixty participants representing space agencies from Europe, North America and Asia have today concluded the 2nd ESA/ASI Workshop for International Cooperation for Sustainable Space Exploration, held in Sarteano, Italy.

[Tuesday, May 16, 2006] Chandrayaan-1, scheduled during 2007-2008, is India's first unmanned scientific mission to moon. The main objective is the investigation of the distribution of various minerals and chemical elements and mapping of the entire lunar surface.

[Tuesday, May 16, 2006] This image, taken by the advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft, shows one quarter of crater Hopmann - an impact structure about 88 kilometres in diameter.

[Thursday, May 18, 2006] "The current NASA approach is that the lunar base will be like Antarctica. But when you look at it from a commercial point of view, where you are mining the moon for energy resources, that's a very costly approach."

[Thursday, May 18, 2006] Harrison "Jack" Schmitt is the only geologist to have gone prospecting on the moon. As a crew member of Apollo 17, he was also the last person to leave footprints in the lunar soil.

[Thursday, May 18, 2006] After successful completion of its mission confirmation review on Wednesday, May 17, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter project has been given the authority to proceed to the implementation phase.

[Thursday, May 18, 2006] NASA has chosen the RS-68 engine to power the core stage of the agency's heavy lift cargo launch vehicle intended to carry large payloads to the moon.

[Friday, May 19, 2006] How the study of Earthshine continues to elucidate climate variables and how the use of Earthshine data may help to search for advanced life on distant planets, will be the foci of an upcoming panel discussion in Baltimore.

[Friday, May 19, 2006] The crawling robot, Lemur, was built to help astronauts complete small jobs in space. "Lemur could be an astronauts pet monkey," says JPL engineer Brett Kennedy who designed the 6-limbed robot. Lemur performs a variety of functions with attachable tools.

[Wednesday, May 24, 2006] Operations have been proceeding nominally with activity levels well above the originally foreseen load. The AMIE team is providing, on a weekly basis, topical image sequences for publication on the main ESA Web portal.

[Wednesday, May 24, 2006] The completion of the thermal analysis being done as part of the preparation for the SMART-1 Moon impact gave the Flight Control Team a surprise. The expected increase of temperatures during May was going to be higher than six months ago.

[Wednesday, May 24, 2006] Long before David Beaty became associate Chief Scientist for NASA's Mars Program, he was a prospector. Beaty spent 10 years surveying remote parts of Earth for precious metals and another 12 years hunting for oil.

[Thursday, May 25, 2006] During the Lunar Prospector mission in 1998, scientists estimated that as much as 6 billion metric tons of water ice could be under lunar soil in the craters. Astronauts could even break down the water into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel.

[Thursday, May 25, 2006] This RFI invites respondents to submit concepts that are derived from the same requirements, ground rules and product lists used by the NASA Field Centers to initialize their lunar landers studies

[Thursday, May 25, 2006] What are seven NASA Explorer School teachers doing in the Atacama desert in Chile? They are studying side-by-side with NASA scientists who search for life in extreme environments, closely approximating what they expect to find on other planets.

[Friday, May 26, 2006] These two images, taken by the advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft, show the difference between lunar highlands and a mare area from close by.

[Friday, May 26, 2006] Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Associate Administrator Scott Horowitz has decided to pull the RLEP (Robotic Lunar Exploration Program) program office out of NASA ARC (where it was put less than a year ago) and is moving it to MSFC.

[Friday, May 26, 2006] "I am sending this message to all ESMD employees and NASA center personnel managing the affected programs."