The past two years have seen a series of milestones in lunar exploration. In February 2024, a commercial lander built by Intuitive Machines in Houston, Texas, did what only superpowers had achieved before: touch down on the Moon and deliver NASA science payloads. Four months later, China’s Chang’e-6 returned the first samples from the far side of the Moon, a site that China plans to build a radio telescope on, in partnership with African nations.

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