NASA Announces Semi-permanent base on the Moon by 2032

Missions to explore and map the Moon's south pole start landing this year

BIG news from NASA this morning about their future plans for long term presence on the Moon's surface.

They are establishing Moon Base, which will be humanity's first outpost away from Earth.  It will be situated near the Moon's south pole, a region where useful resources including water is likely to be found. 

NASA is aiming to have Artemis astronauts living and working there on a semi-permanent basis by 2032. 

 The Moon Base timeline. Image via NASA

This will happen in three stages. 

From 2026-2029; Experiment and Learn 

• A large number of Lunar missions, including 21 landings. These will include rovers and MoonFall drones as well as crewed landings
• Testing of communication systems and power supplies on the Lunar surface, including nuclear radioisotope heaters designed to work throughout the periods of darkness during long nights on the Moon
• First deliverables of Moon Base with about 4 tonnes of materials to see what does and doesn't work on the Lunar surface

From 2029-2032; Early habitation

• Extended solar power and compact fission reactors
• More advanced rovers and early astronaut habitation modules
• Beefed up communication systems
• Delivery of up to 60 tonnes of cargo using as many as 24 landings of heavy class cargo landers

From 2032 and beyond; Sustained Human Presence

• Larger crew modules 
• Advanced logistics using both crewed and autonomous rovers
• Delivery of approx. 38 tonnes of cargo annually

NASA also announced the awarding of contracts to several companies for the hardware including rovers and landing systems. 

The Pegasus Lunar Terrain Vehicle is being developed by Lunar Outpost and has been selected by NASA to be part of the initial transport system on the Lunar surface. 

We'll be covering more of these developments as NASA rolls out definitive plans for us to return to the Moon and travel beyond. 

You can find out more at the NASA Moon Base at their site here.

Update 29/5:

NASA had selected Blue Origin as a major component of the Moon Base program, tasking them with landing their rovers near the Lunar south pole. 

In what is probably the largest explosion of a rocket since the ill-fated Soviet N1 Moon rocket, Blue Origin's New Glenn vehicle blew up on the launch pad during a test firing today. 

"Exploded" is probably an understatement about the event!

SpaceX Starship makes a 12th flight

Yep, it flew! Largely successful test flight of their new "V3" version

Last weekend after some short delays, the latest test flight of the SpaceX mega rocket, Starship, took place. This is the first test of the new "V3" stack which offers major payload improvements and system upgrades. 

The flight suffered some engine malfunctions. It also deployed a number of dummy Starlink satellites. Like the other Starship tests, while reaching space, it wasn't aiming for insertion into low Earth orbit. All parts of the rocket splashed down in the ocean. 

This mission comes ahead of major test flights where they plan to transfer fuel between two Starships in orbit. The refuelling of spacecraft in orbit has never been achieved before and is a key part of the SpaceX Human Landing System (HLS) to ferry astronauts to the Moon's surface. Each of these flights could require up to 12 tankers to get them underway. 

We'll certainly be keeping an eye on those upcoming missions!

Update 28/5: 

The American FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has grounded Starship V3 until further notice. It has stated that:

"After a thorough assessment of the operation, the FAA has determined the May 22 SpaceX Starship Flight 12 launch resulted in a mishap. The mishap involved the Super Heavy booster as it flew back to the Gulf of America after stage separation. There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property"

It's likely that Starship will be back flying soon after their investigation.

Read more here at the FAA website.

ZWO Seestar S30 Pro Equatorial Head and Tripods

What do you need and why?

The little ZWO S30 Pro Smart Telescope has really made an impression in the astronomy community by allowing even complete beginners to take simply beautiful astro images. It's also got more than enough power and features to keep up with you as your skills grow. As we like to say, you don't stay a beginner for very long!

One thing we've had a few questions from our BINTEL customers about is what is the ZWO TH10 Equatorial Head and why do you need it.

Stars don't just rise in the East and set in the West

Out of the box, the ZWO S30 Pro tracks the night sky very nicely, and will follow it as it turns over your head during the evening. It works in what's called Alt-Az (Altitude-Azimuth) mode. In other words, it goes up and down and right and left. This lets it follow astro objects with no dramas. 

The issue is that things in the night sky don't simply travel directly overhead. Instead, they spin around a point in the night sky called the south celestial pole. This is directly south and at the same latitude as where you're located.  This path is especially noticeable when viewing in the far southern parts of the sky. Objects appear to rotate around this spot in the sky and will never "set".  For example, the Southern Cross never dips below the horizon in a good chunk of Australia. 

To follow stars, telescopes like the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro not only need to move left and right in Alt-Az mode but need to swivel a little bit as well. This tracks objects quite well. This tiny swivel means the view rotates ever so slightly as well. 

This is called Field Rotation.

This reduces the time for each exposure that the telescope can make. The S30 Pro will still easily stack together multiple exposures. The edges of each frame will also blur slightly as they're the parts of the image most impacted by field rotation. 

Equatorial Or "EQ" mode

To get around this*, telescopes are tilted and pointed directly at the south celestial pole. For the S30 Pro, you could use a ZWO TH10 Tripod Head. This sits on top of the tripod and you attach the S30 Pro to it. 

Polar Alignment

You might also hear the term polar alignment. This is the procedure to correctly point the Az or Azimuth axis or swivel base directly south and at the same tilt as your latitude.  This can be a bit tricky and take a little practice especially for us folks in the southern hemisphere where we don't have a "North Star" or Polaris to help line things up. To make life easier for Seestar owners, they feature a polar alignment routine to quickly show you where to point the telescope so it's accurately lined up. 

ZWO TC20 Tripod 

While the small tabletop tripod that comes with the S30 Pro is handy for storage and travel, there's also a larger TC20 tripod that lets you raise the S30 Pro off the ground further.  It also comes as a bundle with the TH10 head. 

This is quite a handy combo and can be used with other DSLR or mirrorless cameras as well as the S30 Pro. The carbon fibre legs make it fairly light and this might be handy for travelling. 

If you already have a ZWO Seestar S50 and think the TC20 looks familiar, it's the same tripod that was supplied with that original ZWO Smart Telescope. 

I already have a good tripod with a decent tilt head. Will this let me use my ZWO Seestar S30 Pro in EQ mode?

Yes. 

All the TH10 does is tilt and swivel smoothly. If your tripod can carry 2kg or more without shaking, it will work fine with the S30 Pro. The S30 Pro uses the larger of the two common tripod screw sizes at 3/8". If you only have a 1/4" thread size you might need to grab a small adaptor. These are very inexpensive and easy to find.  

Do I actually need a TH10 Tripod Head to take photos with my new ZWO Seestar S30 Pro?

No.

Out of the box the S30 Pro is going to deliver amazing results. We're often told by our customers they are able to capture astro images on their first night out that they'd been struggling for ages to achieve with other gear. In fact, it was some time before EQ mode was even added to the original Seestar S50 via software updates.

However...

Putting the S30 Pro into EQ mode using a gizmo like the TH10 will result in even sharper and more detailed astrophotos. It's something we'd highly recommend that you either purchase with your new telescope or as an upgrade to help get the most from these very cool little gizmos. 

After 12 flights, how does Starship compare to NASA's Saturn V flight record from the 1960s and 70s?

Starship will undergo a number of further test flights before becoming fully operational

Now SpaceX's Starship has launched 12 times, it's interesting to see where NASA's Saturn V rocket was after that many launches. 

It had achieved:

• 2 x test flights (Apollo 4 and 7)
• 3 x crewed orbital missions to the Moon (Apollo 8, 10 and 13)
• 6 x crewed landings on the Moon (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17)

(There was also a 13th Saturn V uncrewed flight where it launched NASA Skylab space station into Earth orbit.)

Payload capacity

Saturn V could hoist about 140 tonnes to low Earth orbit. Starship V3 is aiming for approx. 200 tonnes to orbit. 

Once off vs reusable

A key point about the design philosophy between the two mega rockets is that Saturn V and other rockets of that era were a once off use type of vehicle. No part of the entire stack was ever planned to launch again.  NASA didn't produce a reusable human space vehicle until the Space Shuttle program which commenced launches in 1981. 

Starship will be entirely reusable and SpaceX already has other rockets that fly into space over and over again.

Costs

Each Saturn V launch was well over USD$1.2 billion in today's money. Starship on the other hand will aim for each launch to be in the order of tens of millions of dollars mainly as they don't chuck the rocket away after each launch! Think of how expensive international airline travel would be if planes couldn't land and passengers parachuted to the ground before each flight crashed. 

Destination

Saturn V was designed to get humans to the Moon, and it did this successfully multiple times. Starship is likely to deliver crews and materials to the Moon as part of a permanent human presence there. It's also slated to form a large part of humanity's efforts to venture to Mars in the next decade. 

Bottom line

Yes, the Saturn V had flown to the Moon multiple times in the time it has taken Starship to make a first test of the current version.  However, future launches will be considerably less expensive than the one-use Saturn V. 

This doesn't take away from the remarkable achievement of Saturn V which was developed some 60+ years ago. 

Second drop of US Government UFO files

There was another large "drop" of UFO related files published by the USA government last weekend. This points to there being quite a number more being released to the public, and on a regular basis too. There's still no definitive explanation for many of the videos, images and first hand testimonies. 

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman commented while there's no crashed spaceships or such, the material is a clear invitation for folks to look at what is being presented. 

"This is citizen science right now. Take a look at our files, tell us what you think." he said. 

As we said recently about this interesting topic, more soon!

You can check this second release out for yourself here.

Cheers,

Earl White

BINTEL

27th May 2026

*The other way to solve this is to rotate the camera in the telescope using a gizmo called a field rotator. This saves having to tilt the entire telescope mount. This type of technology is slowly coming to amateur telescopes but has been common in professional telescopes for some time. It reduces the overall size and costs of large telescopes by allowing them to work fully in Alt-Az rather than putting them on EQ mounts.