Hey Reader,

We skipped our regular Mooney Monday email update this week because of the holidays and are instead bringing you this special year-in-review edition!

We hope that all those who celebrate had a very happy holiday season with loved ones. It’s hard to believe that we’re right on the cusp of 2023 – and the New Year always marks a good opportunity to look back on some of the many incredible things that happened in the world of space exploration and within the MoonDAO community during 2022.

Also, be sure not to miss our MoonDAO newsletter year-end survey to share your opinions and help us improve this content in the new year!

2022 Space Exploration Year in Review

• After many delays, NASA launched the Artemis I mission, an uncrewed test flight that carried an astronaut-worthy spacecraft around the moon, using the Space Launch System rocket. The Orion capsule splashed down without a hitch its journey of just over three weeks. Humanity's return to the Moon is underway and MoonDAO plans to play a part in that. The Artemis I mission also provided some of the most spectacular space imagery we’ve seen recently with those awesome Moon and Earth shots.
• But speaking of spectacular space imagery, you just can’t beat the regular photo drops coming from the James Webb Space Telescope which began observing the universe in July. JWST has captured unseen aspects of the universe, including some the most distant galaxies ever observed, and a whole slew of imagery that make for killer desktop wallpaper for your computer! Check out this article on some of the most spectacular space images from 2022.

• The Hubble Space Telescope discovered the most distant single star ever observed, and the Event Horizon Telescope captured an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy for the first time.
• NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully demonstrated deflection technology to shift the trajectory of an asteroid by slamming into it.
• Axiom Space sent the first all-private mission to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This was the first space station mission that was fully paid for by private citizens and the crew stayed aboard the station for about two weeks.
• Speaking of Falcon 9, just a few days ago SpaceX celebrated its 60th launch of 2022, achieving the goal and pace stated by Elon Musk earlier this year and almost doubling the pace of launches compared to 2021. Those launches by a single private company represent nearly 1/3rd of the total worldwide launches in 2022.
• China finished the construction of the Tiangong space station and performed its first in-orbit crew rotation, inaugurating the operation of the second permanently inhabited outpost in low-Earth orbit after the ISS.

2022 was a record-breaking year in space in so many respects, and 2023 may be even bigger. There's certainly a lot to be excited about. We've got another major private spaceflight mission in the works with Jared Isaacman’s Polaris Dawn, more private space flights like Axiom-2, and hopefully we will finally see a full-stack orbital launch of the Starship!

What are you most looking forward to? Let us know in the Space Fanatics channel on Discord.

2022 MoonDAO Year in Review

• MoonDAO wrapped up its initial JuiceBox fundraiser, having raised over 2,600 ETH which was equivalent to more than $8 million USD.
• We created the Ticket to Space NFT to select one random winner to go to space (they faced some delays with visa travel issues, but are set to fly next year) and also voted on sending one influencer to space.
• That vote sent Coby Cotton of Dude Perfect into sub-orbital space on Blue Origin’s NS-22 in August. If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out the video of the launch! Their video has garnered nearly 21 million views since it was published in early November and brought in thousands of new members to the MoonDAO family.
• MoonDAO funded fellowships with the Open Lunar Foundation and continues expanding our reach and influence within the space industry, including sending MoonDAO representatives to multiple space industry conferences, such as the IAC in Paris, the New Space conference in Seattle, New World’s conference in Austin, and the Mars Society conference in Arizona. More big events are planned for 2023.
• We ratified the MoonDAO constitution, implemented the Stake to Vote system to better align voters with our long-term mission to the Moon, and streamlined other governance practices that will provide a solid foundation for Phase 3: funding space research and exploration.

There’s a lot to look forward to in 2023 as we get our various guilds off the ground and formalize their structure and operations. We’ve also got the upcoming launch of our second astronaut aboard a Blue Origin flight, the filming of a feature-length documentary about that experience, and so many interesting ideas and proposals going through our initial governance process!

How will you get involved in 2023 and help us bring humanity to the Moon and beyond?

If you’re still getting caught up on everything that’s been going on and what is to come next year, be sure to check out the MoonDAO meeting notes which cover all of Quarter 4 this year, and you can also take a look at the archive of previous Mooney Monday email updates.

MoonDAO Year-End Newsletter Survey

The MoonDAO newsletter was a new initiative launched at the end of 2022 to help keep people better informed about the space industry and MoonDAO, with regular updates on news, governance, ongoing votes, open bounties, and more.

We are always looking to improve the newsletter and would like to hear from our readers – that’s YOU – about what they like, don’t like, or what can be changed and improved.

Please take just a few minutes to answer the MoonDAO newsletter annual survey to help us shape this content in 2023.

​MoonDAO Newsletter Survey​

That’s it for your MoonDAO updates this week – the MoonDAO family wishes you all a very Happy New Year, see you again in 2023!