Glossary
The terms we use, and how we translate them. Writers and translators work from this same list, so a term never means two things on this site.
| term | kind | note |
|---|---|---|
| Artemiskept in the original | program | NASA's programme to return crews to the Moon and build a sustained presence there, including the SLS rocket, the Orion spacecraft, the Gateway station and commercial landers. |
| cislunar space | concept | The region between Earth orbit and the Moon, including the transfer trajectories, the Lagrange points and near-rectilinear halo orbits where stations and relays are planned. |
| CLPSkept in the original | program | Commercial Lunar Payload Services — the NASA programme that buys rides to the lunar surface from private companies instead of building its own landers, awarding work as individual task orders. |
| International Lunar Research Stationkept in the original | program | International Lunar Research Station — the lunar base programme led by China's CNSA with Roscosmos, planned in phases through the 2030s with a growing list of partner states. |
| in-situ resource utilization | concept | In-situ resource utilisation: making what a mission needs from material already on the Moon — oxygen from regolith, water from polar ice, propellant made on site instead of hauled from Earth. |
| lander | concept | A spacecraft built to touch down intact and operate on the surface, as opposed to an orbiter that stays above it. Landing precision and throttleable descent engines are the hard parts. |
| NETkept in the original | status | "No earlier than" — a date a launch cannot happen before, not a date it will happen on. Schedules quoted as NET usually slip, and a NET date is not a commitment. |
| payload | concept | What a mission carries as opposed to what carries it: instruments, rovers, experiments or cargo. Payload mass and volume are the numbers a launch contract is written around. |
| lunar regolith | concept | The layer of broken rock and dust covering the lunar surface. Sharp, electrostatically charged and abrasive — it drives design choices from seals and bearings to spacesuit fabric. |
| lunar south pole | location | The Moon's southern polar region, where crater floors never see sunlight and are cold enough to trap water ice — which is why nearly every current programme targets it. |