Join the mission
Oxygen LEVEL
100%
Initializing mission
0%
Initializing mission
0%
The Moon’s distance from the Sun mirrors Earth’s: ~149.6 million km on average. Because Earth’s orbit is slightly elliptical, this shifts between 147.1 and 152.1 million km each year. The Moon’s own orbit adds only ±384,000 km, a rounding error at this scale.
Science
On average, 384,400 km separates Earth and the Moon. It varies each month, drifting closer (perigee) and farther (apogee). Reflectors left by Apollo show the Moon recedes ~3.8 cm each year, a slow unwinding of our shared past. Billions of years ago, the Moon was so close it filled half the sky.
Science
A high crest on the crater rim. From here we also have a good view to another crater, the Shackleton Crater: 21 km wide, with a rim lit by near-constant sunlight, floor frozen in shadow. It became both a navigation high point and a broadcast perch for early comms. From this ridge, Earth sits low on the horizon — close enough to see, far enough to feel lost.
Navigation
Iron frames, skeletal and frost-lined, still cling to the regolith. They were built to tap volatiles — water ice for life, helium-3 for power. Early trials showed yields too low to matter, but the scaffolds stayed. They remind visitors of a timeless truth: technology often runs faster than governance.
Industry
A flat pad, designed to cut down on dust plumes kicked up by descent engines. Too small for heavy landers, it mostly served mining craft and “unofficial” cargo drops. Whether history or heritage, it shows that regulation never quite caught up with ambition.
Infrastructure
A tangle of spare parts: rover axles, corroded tubing, broken tools. Once dismantled for re-use, now abandoned. Some call it junk, others say heritage. The debate continues: do we protect what was left here, or clear it away?
Artifact
Two boulders leaning together, their shapes nicknamed in the early days. Geologists trace them back to the ejecta (rock thrown up) of a younger impact inside the older basin. Early miners marked them on crude maps, proof that even natural features became part of navigation lore.
Landmark
Supports built using processed lunar regolith, smelted for its iron content. These beams were among the first “in-situ” construction attempts. (In-situ = made directly on the Moon, without imports from earth.) Their decay shows how difficult it was to scale lunar industry beyond trial runs.
Industry
Disassembled frames from the first South Pole outposts. Once scavenged for parts, they now sit idle — wheels, panels, antennas. The question remains: relics for a museum, or junk for salvage?
Artifact
An unremarkable basalt outcrop, but one that served as an optical beacon before GPS coverage was relable on the South Pole. Early nav systems used image recognition (matching shape patterns) to lock coordinates. Proof that even technology leaned on nature to find its way.
Navigation
A snapped frame, once part of an experimental “hopping drone.” (With no air, drones couldn’t fly — instead they used thrusters to leap from point to point.) Logs suggest its last test failed during a radiation surge.
Technology
A sealed shaft, plunging ~800 m. Drilling here struck scattered ice deposits — remnants of a younger impact. This ice became a lifeline: for drinking, for oxygen, for fuel. Early tests also logged helium-3 traces, small but significant. The shaft is now sealed, its warning plaque faded.
Resource
A trench in eternal darkness, colder than liquid nitrogen (below –200 °C). Stored ice here survived for billions of years. Early cores drilled in this shadow revealed frost collars — frozen proof of hidden reserves. In 2119, the site is long closed, but the cold remains absolute.
Science
A shallow depression of plain basalt. Geologically common, but historically used as a waypoint for traders moving between rim outposts. Like many landmarks here, its significance is cultural, not scientific.
Landmark
A squat vehicle body, almost swallowed by dust. Its design suggests an early robotic rover, likely from pre-colony probes. All such relics are technically protected by treaty — but whispers persist of collectors chasing fragments on the black market.
Artifact
A short mast, leaning but intact. Last diagnostics logged 44 years ago, a digital flag still marks it as “active” in metadata. Built for colony-to-colony communication before satellite relays were common, it still stands — a relic of patchwork networks.
Communications
At the South Pole, the Sun never climbs higher than a few degrees above the horizon. This leaves jagged shadows and extreme contrasts: ground in sunlight heats above 100 °C, while shadows stay hundreds below freezing. Such extremes tested every settlement, rover and suit.
Science
A skeletal rig, rusted and coated in frost. Survey paint tags it as RM-04, an early helium-3 test rig. The log shows a meagre yield: 0.04 ppm. In practice, useless — but its presence testifies to the dream of fusion power and the scramble that came with it.
Industry
Rough slopes around Shackleton, scarred and steep. The ridges gave early explorers both a vantage point and a hazard. Surveyors here mapped reflective soil patches — bright signatures of possible 0.8% ice content, confirmed by LRO data.
Geography
A stubby antenna, weathered by radiation but miraculously unscarred by micrometeorites. Early logs suggest it once connected Shackleton Rim and other polar camps.
Communications
Scattered, untraceable debris. Metal shards, cracked composites, faded paint. Too corroded to identify, too deliberate to ignore. These remnants blur the line between accident and abandonment.
Artifact
Collapsed scaffolding once linking two mining stations across a gully. Stories conflict: sabotage during disputes, or structural failure after overuse. Either way, it came to symbolize the collapse of early collaboration.
Landmark
A twin to the first, used less frequently. Designed for steady traffic, but lunar politics and resource disputes cut the flow short. Now, it rests silent — a concrete promise never fulfilled.
Infrastructure
Scroll to explore