This video surfaced today on NASA Watch, but there's not a lot of details about Project M. According to the America Space website, Project M is a program being developed out of the Johnson Space Center Engineering Directorate to put a lander on the moon with a robot. Supposedly, the mission could be done within a 1,000 days once the project got the go-ahead.
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An almost full Moon on Jan. 27, 2010. Credit and copyright: Alan Walters
If your skies are clear on Friday night, January 29, 2010, take advantage of one of the skywatching highlights of the year. A full Moon and Mars will be putting on a show, and the pair will be prominently close to each other in the sky. Plus, this Friday night's full Moon is the biggest and brightest full Moon of the year. It's a "perigee Moon," as much as 14% wider and 30% brighter than other full Moons you'll see later in 2010, according to Spaceweather.com. And, even though you've likely not gotten an email from an excited acquaintance relaying that Mars is really close to the Earth now — that is the case. Mars is at opposition on the 29th, which means it lines up opposite the Sun and is now the closest to Earth their orbits, and so will shine brighter.
The image above of the not-quite-full Moon from January 27, 2010 is shared by Universe Today reader Alan Walters, from Florida. You can see more of his wonderful photography of the night sky, launches and shuttle landings, Florida wildlife and more at Alan Walters Photography.
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What could potentially be the biggest problem during a human mission to Mars? One NASA study says, surprisingly, that dust could be the number one risk for both humans and equipment. Human explorers could inhale the extremely fine but rough dust particles causing severe respiratory problems, and high winds on Mars could disperse the dust to coat solar panels, penetrate through seals and interfere with machinery. But scientists at the University of Vermont may have come up with a new way to combat dust: acoustic levitation. But will it work on Mars?
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Moon rock samples from Apollo 11 given to the state of Illinois. Courtesy Illinois State Museum
Wanted: Moon rocks. Whereabouts: Unknown.
Alarmingly, some of our Moon rocks are missing! After the Apollo Moon landings, then-U.S. President Richard Nixon distributed approximately 250 displays containing lunar surface materials from Apollo 11 (1969) to the 50 states and various other countries around the world, and then later gave away 135 rock samples from Apollo 17 (1972). But NASA is finding that a surprisingly low percentage of these precious rock samples — which are encased in acrylic and mounted on a plaque along with the intended recipient's flag — can actually be located.
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Caption: View of the moon at perigee and apogee
As a teacher, I'm always on the lookout for labs with simple setups appropriate for students. My current favorite is finding the speed of light with chocolate.
In a new paper recently uploaded to arXiv, Kevin Krisciunas from Texas A&M describes a method for determining the orbital eccentricity of the moon with a surprisingly low error using nothing more than a meter stick, a piece of cardboard and a program meant for fitting curves to variable stars.
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From top to bottom, pictured are the moon, Venus, and an asteroid.From top to bottom, pictured (not to scale) are the moon, Venus, and an asteroid. These three celestial bodies from our solar system are possible candidates for NASA's next space venture.
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Only one more day left until Christmas Eve, and astronomers have just discovered a unique feature on the lunar surface. Although accepted for many years to be a natural feature of selenography, modern astrophotography coupled with today’s high-powered telescopes have discovered an area near the lunar North Pole that’s apparently being used as a runway by a man in a red suit piloting an unusual spacecraft… Read more…
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Have you enjoyed our lunar studies together this year? We hope you’ve taken the time to follow the phases and to appreciate what you see. Although it would be wonderful to end our this year's time together viewing the distant cosmos, something very cool is about to happen… Read more…
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Image from the Moon Impact Probe of the lunar surface. Credit: ISRO
A website based in India has reported researchers with the Chandrayaan-1 mission may have found "signs of life in some form or the other on the Moon." DNAIndia.com quoted Surendra Pal, associate director of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Satellite Centre as saying that Chandrayaan-1 picked up signatures of organic matter on parts of the Moon's surface. "The findings are being analyzed and scrutinized for validation by ISRO scientists and peer reviewers," Pal said.
Sources in India say Chandrayaan project director M. Annadurai later commented that the story was broken very prematurely. However, he did not dismiss the idea.
At a press conference Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union fall conference, scientists from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also hinted at possible organics locked away in the lunar regolith. When asked directly about the Chandrayaan-1 claim of finding life on the Moon, NASA's chief lunar scientist, Mike Wargo, certainly did not dismiss the idea either but said, "It is an intriguing suggestion, and we are certainly very interested in learning more of their results."
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Bruno Crater. Taken by: LROC Narrow Camera. Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
Scientists explained how various instruments on LRO are returning surprising data while helping scientists map the moon in incredible detail and understand the lunar environment.
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Image of Earth's Moon centered on the Orientale Basin taken by Galileo Spacecraft.
One of the legacies of the Apollo program is the rare lunar samples it returned. These samples (along with meteorites that originated from the moon and even one from Mars) can be radiometrically dated, and together they paint a picture a cataclysmic time in the history of our solar system. Over a period of time some 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago, the moon underwent a fierce period of impacts that was the origin of most of the craters we see today. Paired with the "Nice model" (named after the French university where it was developed, not because it was pleasant in any way), which describes the migration of planets to their current orbits, it is widely held that the migration of Jupiter or one of the other gas giants migrations during this period, caused a shower of asteroids or comets to rain down upon the inner solar system in a time known as the "Late Heavy Bombardment" (LHB).
A new paper by astronomers from Harvard and the University of British Columbia disagrees with this picture. Read more…
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Image credit: JAXA/SELENE
Future lunar astronauts may want to brush up on their spelunking skills: the first lava tube has been discovered on the moon.
In a recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, Junichi Haruyama and colleagues report that they have discovered a mysterious hole in the lunar surface in high resolution images from the Kaguya spacecraft. The hole is 65 meters in diameter and is located in the volcanic Marius Hills region on the near side of the moon, right in the middle of a long sinuous rille. Sinuous rilles are thought to be formed by flowing lava, either on the surface or in enclosed lava tubes.
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The first attempt to send a rocket to the Moon via balloon hit a snag on Monday. The first test of the Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association's (ARCA) balloon-launched rocket (or "rockoon") ended in failure when the "inflation arms" used to fill the balloon became entangled in the balloon itself. The arms had to be cut, and the operation – which required the use of a large naval frigate — was curtailed. ARCA hopes to compete in the Google Lunar X PRIZE, and intends on using their unusual rocket system to send an equally unique spherical lunar lander to win a $30 million prize.
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Artist concept of the Centaur and LCROSS heading towards the Moon. Credit: NASA
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40 years ago today, Apollo 12 launched on their mission to the Moon. On board was Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon and Alan Bean. Bean is a gifted artist who has shared his experiences on the Moon like no other astronaut has through his paintings, which offer a unique look at both real and imagined events during all the different astronaut's moonwalks. (Check out his website to see a gallery of his amazing artwork.) And enjoy this great interview that Miles O'Brien did recently with Alan Bean.
NASA also has an interactive Apollo 12 feature.
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