Apollo 17 astronauts singing on the moon.
This is real.
This is why we beat zee Soviets.
(via Boing Boing)
Space Missile Slams Into Church!
Just kidding, it’s the Moon in a time-lapse with star trails.
(via Bad Astronomy)
Help fund this PopView 3D Moon Map, a Kickstarter project to develop a moon map that will pop out with 3D glasses! This sounds amazing, we may never see the moon the same way again.
Well worth a few dollars.
(via Kickstarter)
GRAIL Mission Returns First Video of Moon’s Far Side
The twin GRAIL satellites have sent back this first video of the far side of the moon, taken with the awesomely named “MoonKAM”. Quite a view of something we don’t ever get to see (unless you’re an Apollo astronaut or a space probe).
(by JPLnews)
I’m torn. Newt Gingrich keeps going on about ramping up space exploration. His lunar colony claims notwithstanding, this (if he actually were to follow through) would be an enormous step in the right direction. So, if he wins the Republican slot… I may have to vote for him! Please help. I need an opinion from an informed mind.
For my view on this (and the view of others), first see this post.
I’m but a humble biologist, and I happen to not like Newt Gingrich very much. But when we get past all that, I still think there’s ample reasons to not like this scheme.
The most cynical reaction would be to say that Newt Gingrich was just saying this to pander to space-proud Florida voters ahead of their primary. But he’s talked about a moon base during debates, so let’s let him off the hook there.
Then one really has to look at his idea standing on its own. Listen, everyone who’s amazed and curious and scientifically inclined in even one fingernail would LOVE to go the moon, and have a base there. And I think it would be a great thing to dedicate our nation’s scientific energy toward. But not how he drew it up.
You should watch Neil deGrasse Tyson talking to Martin Bashir about it on MSNBC.
By 2020? Notgonnahappen. We have the engineers to get this done by 2020. We are smart enough. But I’ll let Phil Plait tell you why there’s so many other reasons we couldn’t meet that goal if we tried.
He wants to take money from NASA to give to entrepreneurs. Great idea, but what fledgling private space company can justify the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars it would cost to get this done? How would they make their money back? Part of why NASA exists is to do risky research with money that doesn’t need to be turned into a profit. Private space flight will be part of our future, but not like this, and not yet.
If we asked NASA to do it, it would take 1/4 of their budget every year to get it done, and that’s just for four people, and doesn’t include a rocket. What happens to all those other projects that NASA is working on? Cancelled. Mars rovers, climate science, solar observation, James Webb telescope … all on the chopping block.
A moon mission would inspire our nation to lead in science for the 21st century. And we should make it part of our plans for the future. But not by depending solely on entrepreneurs, not by taking funding from NASA, and not by setting dates that can’t be met. You can’t just pretend to be John F. Kennedy.
I’ll be clear: A lunar colony is an awesome idea, and Newt shouldn’t be made fun of for it. But he’s completely wrong in terms of how and when it could happen.
Newt Skywalker Promises Moon Base by 2020
Today in Florida, where’s he’s pimping for primary votes, Newt Gingrich offered his “bold vision” for the U.S. space program. And that vision is a moon colony. An American moon colony. From New Scientist:
Gingrich said that he would like to eventually see a colony established on the moon, though he did not give a timeline for achieving it.
He added that he had once proposed legislation that would allow a moon colony of at least 13,000 Americans to petition to become a US state, and that he still supported the idea.
What for, you ask? For research, manufacturing, and tourism. Because without a viable space vehicle to take even a half-dozen people to near-Earth orbit, we can certainly build satellites and tour the cosmos by 2020, right? Of course, Kennedy made it happen. More on that in a sec.
And just when you think he’s pandering to the space industry, he goes and says that NASA is “spending too much time studying things”? …
Gingrich complained that NASA was spending too much time studying things rather than building and testing technologies. “We’d be better off to do 1 percent of the current studies and 10 times as many experiments,” he said.
I’m not sure what that means, but whatever. Of course, George W. Bush had this idea, too. But it proved too expensive considering that a moon colony has questionable real benefit. Besides, can we even afford that kind of stuff? Nope:
At the height of the Apollo programme in the 1960s, Nasa’s budget rose to 3.45% of America’s GDP – reflecting the sort of funding needed to get major human spaceflight projects going in short amounts of time.
After 1975, Nasa’s budget dropped below 1% of American GDP and the space agency entered what many might call its wilderness years … That figure has remained under 1% ever since and, in the past decade, has hovered around 0.5% of GDP.
I mean, who wouldn’t want to go to the moon? But if we’re just gonna throw out ideas with no basis in reality, I’d like to build an exact replica of the Enterprise from a base on Mars, staff it with bikini-clad clones and a full bar, and then take a pleasure cruise to Alpha Centauri. For America.
(via Short Sharp Science and The Guardian)
Hey Newt, you mentioned you were planning a “visionary speech” on space exploration? We know you’re a fan of putting a colony on our moon …
But judging by this chart, that’s about as bad a target for a colony as we have.
Titan, the progressive moon … a moon for America.
(via Ezra Klein, The Washington Post)
ISS Caught Between the Moon and New York
(via Universe Today, image by Alan Friedman)
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Lyman Alpha Mapping Project reveals lunar surface features
The results suggest there could be as much as 1 to 2 percent water frost in some permanently shadowed soils on the Moon.
— Published: January 16, 2012
These images (insets) produced by the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal features at the Moon’s northern and southern poles in the regions that lie in perpetual darkness. They show many permanently shadowed regions, or PSRs, are darker at far-ultraviolet wavelengths (top) and redder than nearby surface areas that receive sunlight (bottom). The darker PSR regions are consistent with having large surface porosities — indicating “fluffy” soils — while the reddening is consistent with the presence of water frost on the surface.
Best quote from the release that you may have overlooked above: “Our results suggest there could be as much as 1 to 2 percent water frost in some permanently shadowed soils.”
China plans manned moon mission
Nearly 40 years after humans last set foot on the moon, China has announced formal plans to develop a return mission. The most striking part of this announcement is not that they want to go back, but that they plan to do it by developing their own technology and support systems, essentially recreating a half century of NASA’s achievements by themselves.
And all this while the U.S. still has no vessel of its own to get people to space. Will this be the sign of a shift in space power? Or a call to arms to get our manned space program back on track to lead?
(via The Guardian, above: Chinese character for “moon” along with artist’s interpretations)
NASA’s Unprecedented Science Twins are GO to Orbit our Moon on New Year’s Eve
—
In less than three days, NASA will deliver a double barreled New Year’s package to our Moon when an unprecedented pair of science satellites fire up their critical braking thrusters for insertion into lunar orbit on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
NASA’s dynamic duo of GRAIL probes are “GO” for Lunar Orbit Insertion said the mission team at a briefing for reporters today, Dec. 28. GRAIL’s goal is to exquisitely map the moons interior from the gritty outer crust to the depths of the core with unparalled precision.
“GRAIL is a Journey to the Center of the Moon”, said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge at the press briefing.
This newfound knowledge will fundamentally alter our understanding of how the moon and other rocky bodies in our solar system – including Earth – formed and evolved over 4.5 Billion years time.
After a three month voyage of more than 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers) since launching from Florida on Sept. 10, 2011, NASA’s twin GRAIL spacecraft, dubbed Grail-A and GRAIL-B, are now on final approach and are rapidly closing in on the Moon following a trajectory that will hurl them low over the south pole and into an initially near polar elliptical lunar orbit lasting 11.5 hours.
(via universetoday)
GRAIL is a really exciting project to map the interior of the moon by detecting tiny gravitational differences and relating those to interior structure. They call it a “CT scan for the Moon”.
Here’s a superb video from NASA detailing the mission, why there’s a pair of satellites instead of one, and what they hope to learn:
More of the lunar eclipse of Dec. 10, 2011, as seen from Fountain Valley, CA by skywatcher Thomas Warloe.
(via Space.com, photo © Thomas Warloe)
Watch the lunar eclipse Saturday! You know, if you happen to live in the right part of the world …
It’s the last total eclipse until 2014, so if you can swing it (and if you’ll be in the right part of the world to see it), don’t miss this one.
Above is a little NASA informative video, and here’s some helpful hints from Phil Plait on how to find out moon data for your area:
To see if you get a chance to experience this, check the time the Moon sets for you, the time the Sun rises, and compare them with the eclipse times from the NASA site (don’t forget to correct for time zone differences; Pacific time is UT – 8 hours).
And don’t worry, if you don’t happen to be on the right side of the planet to watch it, there’s live streamed space cameras here!
(via Bad Astronomy )
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