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Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Orbit Beyond are headed to the Moon. An artistic rendering of a robotic lander on the Moon’s surface.   Image: NASA Today, NASA announced that it has  selected three commercial companies  to send the first round of robotic landers to the Moon as part of the agency’s overall goal of returning humans to the lunar surface. The three US companies — Astrobotic, Orbit Beyond, and Intuitive Machines — are tasked with developing small spacecraft that can safely carry NASA payloads and instruments to the lunar surface and study the Moon in more detail. Their landers are expected to fly in 2020 and 2021. These companies are partners with NASA through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. CLPS is the first phase of NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s initiative to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon. But CLPS is focused on robotic vehicles and science, rather than human spaceflight. The goal is to send instrumen

The company says the test was still a success. Image: YouTube/Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman’s first big test of its future OmegA rocket seems to have ended in a small explosion. Today, the company  fired up the main engine on the rocket during a ground test in Utah . Toward the end of the test, part of the vehicle’s engine burst apart, sending pieces of hardware flying. Today’s test is what is known as a static fire, when the engine of a rocket is ignited while the vehicle is held firmly to the ground. Northrop Grumman was conducting the very first static fire test of the OmegA’s first stage — the main body of the rocket with the primary engine attached to the end. The first stage was ignited horizontally at Northrop Grumman’s test facility in Promontory, Utah, with the goal of testing out all of the rocket’s systems as one functioning unit. “WE OBSERVED THE EXIT CONE AND MAYBE A PORTION OF IT DOING SOMETHING A LITTLE STRANGE.” The ignition lasted for a full 122 se

SoftBank snubs Huawei for 5G equipment while China mulls rare earths embargo. Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images The trade tension between the United States and China looks set to intensify soon, as the latter country is taking steps to respond to the American ban on doing business with Huawei. Bloomberg reports that China has  put preparations in place to restrict exports of rare earth minerals to the US, while also  setting up its own “unreliable entities” blacklist  for unfavorable foreign companies. At the same time, Japan’s SoftBank has announced it’ll be building its 5G network with equipment from Nokia and Ericsson,  snubbing Huawei , which had been a 4G supplier for the large mobile carrier. The rare earths export restriction looks to be an act of saber rattling for now. The leadership in Beijing is signaling that it’s ready and willing to deploy this severe measure, but, according to Bloomberg, that’s only in the event that the trade war between China and the US deepens

As preorders for the Model 3 open in six more countries. Image: Tesla Tesla has started taking preorders of Model 3 cars produced at its new Gigafactory in Shanghai, China.  Bloomberg  reports  that the cars, which are available to order exclusively in China, will have a base price of 328,000 yuan ($47,510), 13 percent cheaper than the model imported from the US for a price 377,000 yuan ($54,616). The Model 3s being produced in China are the Standard Plus versions of the vehicle with a range of 460km (286 miles). Tesla says that it expects to start making deliveries from the Shanghai factory in the next six to 10 months. Tesla started making Model 3 deliveries in China  back in March . These locally produced cars will allow the company to avoid import duties, which are becoming more of a problem as the Trump administration’s trade war with China intensifies. The company has also said shifting production will allow it to make deliveries faster. CEO Elon Musk described the chal

10 percent of all cars must be zero emission by 2025. Photo by David Bush / The Verge British Columbia yesterday passed an emissions law aimed at curbing the production and sale of fuel-burning cars in the Canadian province, marking North America’s most aggressive legislation to date,  according to the  CBC .  The law mandates that 10 percent of all vehicles sold by 2025 be zero emission ones, while the sale of fuel-burning cars and trucks will be banned outright by 2040. Zero emission vehicles include battery electric, plug-in hybrids, and hydrogen fuel-cell models. The law, called the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act (ZEVA), is not without its critics. The CBC says opposition to the ZEVA mostly centers on the law’s potential ineffectiveness, with criticism aimed at the fact BC residents can simply purchase a vehicle in the neighboring Alberta province. ZEVA also has a credit system for car manufacturers that do not want to or cannot produce the necessary zero emission vehicles, all

NASA wants this region of space to be dominated by commercial space. An artistic rendering of Blue Origin’s proposed low Earth orbit habitat   Image: Blue Origin/NASA The private space industry is giving NASA some ideas on how to turn low Earth orbit — where the International Space Station circulates above our planet — into  an area filled with commercial habitats and platforms for future space travelers . Potentially, these “destinations” could be used as locations for in-space research and manufacturing to turn a profit. But such a commercial utopia in orbit won’t be easy until the cost of launching to space comes down, says NASA. Today, NASA released short proposals from 12 commercial companies — such as Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and more — on how to create a viable commercial economy in low Earth orbit, or LEO. NASA wanted these ideas from the private space industry in order to figure out the best way to eventually transition the operation of the United States’