Australia Ready To Explore The Moon In 2026, Traveling NASA's Artemis Mission

JAKARTA - The Australian Space Agency (ASA) plans to launch a rover robot to the Moon in collaboration with the American Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA).

The rover will go to the Moon as part of future Artemis missions in early 2026. By leveraging Australia's remote operations expertise, the rover will collect lunar soil, known as regolith.

Meanwhile, NASA will try to extract oxygen from the sample, which is the first step towards a sustainable human presence on the Moon.

Even so, the rover does not yet have a name. Australia is holding a competition where its citizens can enter the name to be nominated for choice.

Individuals and schools across Australia can enter the name of the rover, along with a brief explanation to select it until October 20.

The ASA stated that the competition is expected to attract, especially students in Australia and engage. The winner will be announced in early December.

Launching Space, Wednesday, September 6, NASA is known to be working to create a permanent and sustainable human presence in and around the moon in the late 2020s through the Artemis program.

Late last year, NASA also launched a unmanned Orion spacecraft on the Artemis 1 mission into lunar orbit and returned to Earth.

Now, they are preparing to send four astronauts around the Moon with Artemis 2, which is expected to take off by the end of 2024.