New research by a team of scientists in the
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Tennessee, USA, have found
evidence of volatiles in an Apollo 14 lunar sample. As
reported in the current issue of Nature, the scientists base
their findings around signatures of indigenous hydrogen found in lunar
basalt sample No. 14053, which is a late-stage apatite. Apatite is a
widely-distributed phosphate mineral on Earth that occurs as small
crystals as an accessory mineral in igneous rocks, and as large crystals
in high-temperature hydrothermal veins where water is chemically bound
in minerals in the veins. The signatures suggests the volatiles either
formed during post-magmatic metamorphism during formation of the Moon,
or as growth from a late-stage interstitial, sulphide-saturated melt
that contained approximately 1,600 parts per million of H2O. This
further suggest that the lunar crust and mantle may be more
volatile-rich than previously thought, and if this is correct, then it
poses challenges to the diminution of volatiles early on during the
moon's formation and so residues may have survived. The existence of
water bound up in minerals may then add to the already amounts of
water-ice deposits believed to have been delivered to the lunar surface
from ice-containing comets (possibly locked deep down in subsurface soil
particularly at the pole regions). If you need to contact me about this article, then
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While any hopes of going back to the Moon within
the next few decades have been dashed due to Obama's lunar policies, at
least, in the research end of things over at
the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI)
"the times they are a changing." A new Director has been
appointed and her name is
Yvonne Pendleton. The Director holds a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, a master's degree
in Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a bachelor's degree in Aerospace
Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her duties over
the next few years will be to aid lunar research through NLSI's program
of supporting larger, more focused goals across all areas of lunar
science. She'll be keeping a keen eye in areas of investigations for current and
future space missions, development of the lunar science community, and
informing the public about the Moon through outreach and educational
programs. Pendleton will undoubtedly use her
astrophysics experience and background to promote the above
goals, however, while certain areas of lunar research will most
definitely benefit, she might as well kick back her legs in the area of
lunar exploration as NASA currently have no intentions to go back to the
Moon any time soon. Still, let's hope some changes can be made along
those lines through her contacts, so the best of luck to her. The NLSI
will hold its annual
Forum (its third todate) at the Ames Research Centre in
California for the next couple of days running from 20 - 22 July, where
some of the most cutting edge research and science will be talked about.
Nancy Atkinson over at Universe
Today has done a
Podcast
on the upcoming events, so might check that out if of interest (note,
this is an MP3 podcast, it starts to load after you click on the link
above -- takes about a minute to automatically launch). If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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Following quick on the heels of the
partial lunar eclipse that occurred on 26 June last, some lucky
observers in the extreme southern regions of the Pacific have a
total
solar eclipse to look forward to in three day's time. Looking at the
Espenak/Anderson graphic, this eclipse, occurring mostly over the ocean,
will only be seen from several of the most exotic islands in the region
that happen to lie in the path of both the umbra and penumbra. Most of
the world will miss out on this second solar eclipse of this
year, I guess, however, at least we in North America and in western Europe have
just one
final
lunar eclipse to look forward to on 21 December next. If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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The Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
has put out tenders for two different types of unmanned lunar rovers,
called, Lunar Exploration Light Rover (LELR). At an initial cost of
approximately $11 million per rover the current limit CSA is willing to put up, a prototype of
each must be completed by
December 2012 for those entering. The chosen winners will be tested in an in-field
environment on Earth, and capable of integrating payloads and carrying
out a series of tasks that would be used on the lunar surface. While the
rovers are designed around the unmanned basis, the designers must also
include upgradeable factors to carry two astronauts for short traverses
on the lunar surface. Proposals for submissions ends around August 17 -
just enough time for you lunar designers out there to sharpen your
pencils and polish up those callipers. If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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Analysis of data-research from the Spectral
Profiler instrument which flew onboard the Kaguya-Selene spacecraft,
before it was intentionally crashed onto its surface in June 2009,
suggests further evidence for the theory of a lunar magma ocean. The research
centres around the mineral, Olivine - a mantle mineral which is believed
to have formed under the crust of the Moon due to disequilibrium
(overturning) processes early on during the moon's formation. The theory
hasn't sat well amongst the scientific community for awhile now because not enough
major deposits of the mineral have been found to prove that the
disequilibrium process occurred at all. However, the data suggest that
as three major basins (SPA, Imbrium and Moscoviense) now show signatures
of Olivine in regions concentric to them, the deposits may have been
close enough underneath the crust for excavation to have occurred. The
new research is reported in the July issue of Nature Geoscience. If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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New research from a team of scientists
working at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C have
shown a 1972 lunar sample (No.72255) from the Mare Serenitatis Basin to contain
graphite and graphite whiskers. Collected during the Apollo 17 mission,
the scientists used a technique known as Raman Spectroscopy on the
sample to show that the above elements were probably formed by the high
temperatures or carbon-rich gases generated during the basin impact.
Carbon deposits on the Moon were previously thought to occur only
through solar wind processes that built up on the rocks and surface over
billions of years. However, this new research shows that if the deposits
are due to the physical impactor's (e.g. meteors) actual make-up itself, or
were created through the temperature process mentioned above, deposits
on the Moon, right now, could contain a historical record of the carbon
input by meteors of the early Earth-Moon system. While the above
scientists reported
previous research on finding graphite whiskers in CV3 meteorites,
this new
research is
published in the July 2 Science 2010 magazine. If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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This Tuesday, 6 July, NASA will launch a
new game called Moonbase Alpha on the ever-popular game network VALVE
(remember Half-Life?). Gamers will be able to access online where they
will step into the role of an astronaut (single or multiplayer) to save
the lunar base where they work. The problem all arises out of a
meteor strike on the nearby solar array that is used to keep the
astronauts alive. Would you like to see a preview of the video, well, do
have a peek HERE. If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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This site is primarily concerned with
reporting news about the Moon. However, as a wonderful image of our
Earth has just been released by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team
involved with the cameras onboard, it wasn't a very hard decision to go
against this site's philosophy (see it
HERE). Meanwhile, back to some Mooney news, most of you folks living
in the States and in regions East have a
Partial Lunar Eclipse to look forward to tomorrow -- the best of
viewing to you. Us here in the central European and African regions will
not see it -- a pity. If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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As preparation for the upcoming "Moon Day"
to be held on the 18 July at the Love Field
Frontiers of Flight Museum in
Dallas, Texas, Ken Murphy over at "Out
of the Cradle" has organised a 'lunar art show' to kick off the
event. Viewable throughout the whole of June to the opening date, the
show will contain upto 25 pieces in all - highlighting areas such as the
"Lunar Surface", "Lunar Tourism" and "Lunar Industry". The viewer can
expect to see framed images of maps, book-covers, graphics, posters and
original art-media covering all types. The art show is, therefore, a
kind of a taster on what's to come for the official Moon Day, where
visitors of all ages, especially children, will experience the 'Moon on
Earth' through several interactive programs. So if you happen to be in
the area (oh to live in Dallas), then do pop along, and if not, then you
could always check out the art show as it appears on the above
Frontier's website later. If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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New modelling research into planet-forming
collisions that produced the Earth and the Moon suggests that both may
have formed later in the Solar System than previously thought. The
research is based on how iron and silicate materials mixed during
the collision of the Mar's sized object (called Theia) that struck the
early proto-earth; ejecting a large common chunk of the two that then gave rise to
the Moon. This 'Giant Impact Hypothesis' has been around for a long time
now and it's believed that the metal cores and outer silicate shells of
each colliding body mixed equally during the collision. By examining
certain isotopic elements - hafnium decay into tungsten - within this mixture (in
this case from the earth's mantle), the formation period of the Earth
and the Moon can be determined - currently believed to have occurred
about 4.537 billion years ago. The new modelling research, however,
suggest that because the mixing of the iron and silicates may not
have been uniform overall, and that the above subsequent tungsten
amounts were not entirely removed from the mantle, it puts an uncertain
age-constraint on the actual formation time. As a
result, the research suggests that both bodies formed
later after the solar system formed by upto 150 million years rather than the current belief of 30 million years. The research,
entitled
"Turbulent mixing of metal and silicate during planet accretion And
interpretation of the HfW chronometer" can be found in the current
June issue of Earth and Planetary Science. If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project,
or LOIRP, for short have been doing trojan work on recovering images
from 40-year-old data tapes that at one time lay in a basement for a
very long time without anyone knowing about them.. Now the people
involved in retrieving back the images have produced a video of what is
involved. Do check it out
here (note, it's a bit slow in loading first, so give it time). If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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Originally planned to construct a manned lunar base by 2030, the
Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, are now announcing to have a robotic
base on the Moon ten years earlier (2020). The base will be located
at the lunar south pole region, and will be entirely occupied and
built by humanoid and rover robots. Power for the base will be
attained using solar panels as well as lithium-ion batteries, and
the robots will conduct research on terrain aspects like, for
example, seismic, sample-retrieval, and high-def images of the area.
Construction is costed at roughly 200 billion yen (~ $2 billion),
and the base will serve as a foundation for the manned base in 2030.
Once a base has been built, JAXA envisions a
few astronauts manning the facility for 6 months in turn. If you can
read Japanese, then
here you can find out more details in this Japanese-written Pdf
file ~ 300 Kb). JAXA have already launched a probe to the Moon
called Kaguya/Selene, which was a
great success, and was intentionally crashed onto the lunar surface
last year on 11 June. The impact is reported to have occurred at
3.25 (Japan Standard Time) in an area of the Moon's south-east
region (rough coordinates given are 80.4E, 65.5S), and a flash of
its impact
was seen from Earth. If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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Have you ever wanted to contribute to the study of the Moon without
actually having to go through at the tech-talk, the fuss, if not
having the actual
time in the day to do it? Well, if that is the case, then
MOON ZOO is the one for you!
The Zoo allows you to simply look at images taken by NASA
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
spacecraft that currently is orbiting the Moon, and from your
observations you simply use a set of online tools that updates the
site.
Your contributions will then join a world-set of other observations
taken by many people, like yourself, who decided they'd like to help
in the study, and the whole lot is gathered into a single database
that will help all of us understand the Moon more. Here's what's
involved. After a short registration process, you, the user, can log on
anytime of the day for any length of time, and add some small part
or your study of craters, their sizes, and a lot more other things
that are explained on the site for you to get involved with. This
observer has done some of all of the above under no
pressure, and recently made a very
unusual discovery
:)
Go on, give it a try, as you'll never know what you might see and
find on our nearest neighbour, the Moon. If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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Once again the question arises on what amounts of water currently
exist on the Moon, along with where it can be found. Recent missions
by both NASA and India have shown that there's plenty around at both
lunar poles - the exact places for future explorers who will work
and live there, that is, if and when we eventually get back to the
Moon. Senior staff scientist, Dr Paul Spudis, of the Lunar and
Planetary Institute in Texas, USA, has written a very
nice piece about the whole water debate over at
Air&Space, so
it might
be worth having a read of it
here.
PS.
As I'm not too sure how long some interesting stories (like this
one) remain online in other sites than mine own, I may in the near
future include the full text written by those other authors as a
reference [with due credit, of course, to the author(s) or site(s)
they appear on]. I'm mentioning this only as the links to the
stories I'm giving may not work after some weeks pass, as some sites
don't maintain an archive, and so the story may get lost. At least, if I put up the story here it
would be available in my archive as a resource for future reference as
mentioned above.
PPS.
I have been writing my own account of the the latest lunar research
news here for the last three years (see above archive links - top
right), so perhaps I should also include other writer's
efforts, as in the past I did let stories go because I just didn't
have the time, or wasn't in the mood (BTW I'm doing all this without any
support - yes, a pity, why doesn't someone hire me :)). If you need to contact me about this article, then
please do
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We recently read about the Apollo's 11, 14 and 15
lunar
retroreflectors left on
the Moon 40 years ago as part of the
Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment. Lunar dust, apparently, is affecting their reflectivity
- resulting in diminished operation by a factor of
ten at all lunar phases and by an additional factor of ten when the
lunar phase is near full moon. That aside, it now looks like
other reflectors that flew onboard the Russian Luna missions (Luna
17 and Luna 21 respectively) again nearly forty years ago are
getting a new lease of life thanks to recent high-resolution images
taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
Location of the Luna 21 reflectors (onboard the Lunokhod 2 rover)
have been found and used for some while, however, those onboard Luna
17 (Lunokhod 1)
weren't known until a team of scientists at USCD found them last
month. Using the high-res images, they found the reflectors to lie
within a 100-metre sway roughly of where the rover might be.
Checking to see if they were really looking at the reflectors that were considered lost, the scientists sent out
a a series of laser pulses at the lunar location found and sure
enough they got a return signal back. They then sent out another
series of laser pulses thirty minutes later for triangulation
purposes so as to pinpoint exactly the reflector's longitude and
latitude; resulting in a 10 metre-wide sway where it might lie. Over
the next month or so, the location is expected to be honed down to about 1
centimetre. The find now brings together five, in total, the amount
of retroreflectors left on the Moon after four decades - the use of
which were to help achieve distance of the Moon from Earth and its
residence from us. For more on this story see Kim McDonald's news-story
here. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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It seems like decades ago since we've heard
anything about the
SMART-1 lunar mission that ended on the 3 September
2006. As it impacted in the south-western region of the Moon in Lacus
Excellentiae, both its impact flash and ejecta-plume material were
observed from Earth by telescopes around the world. So far to-date, the impact crater
has not yet been identified, however, scientists in the
May issue of Icarus are reporting laboratory results on what
it might look like. According to the research, the crater
may be highly asymmetric; having dimensions approximately 5.526 m long,
1.99 m wide, 0.231.5 m deep and 0.716.9 m3
volume, with the amount of ejected material believed to be in the order
of 220021,800 kg. If one were able to observe the crater, it would
probably look very unusual to its neighbouring craters,
which take on more rounder shapes because of their initial impactors
having high angle directions to the lunar surface. Such low angle
impacts are known to produce elongated-like craters, and on the Moon
there are hundreds that can be seen through ordinary-sized telescopes.
These, however, are in the order of kilometre-sized diameters, and have
a way of showing off their impact dynamics by way of bright-rayed
material radiating predominantly away in the down-direction opposite to
from where the impactor
came. With the SMART-1 crater, the same characteristic display is
expected to apply, however, as its size would be extremely small and
difficult to see, will high-def images recently available from the LRO
mission turn up anything? Carrying several
scientific instruments onboard at time of crash, the mission produced
detailed maps of the moon's chemical constituent make-up, and it also
tested a solar-powered ion-propulsion system that ESA may use for
getting future suitcase-sized space-probes into space. If you want to
read more about the laboratory results, access is through subscription,
however, it is also possible to purchase ($37.95) the article online.
SMART-1 was a European Space Agency (ESA) project - designed by the
Swedish Space Corporation - that
launched on 27 September 2003. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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All serious lunar observers today depend on
the use of a Moon Atlas. Such resourceful publications help not only
the amateur and professional alike, but
also hold the potential to set in motion future career choices in
astronomy for the individual of a young age. One of those atlases that surely was applicable to all of the above was Henry
Hatfield's "Amateur Astronomer's Photographic Lunar Atlas"
published by Lutterworth (London) in 1968. Containing 104 pages, it
showed the whole of the Moon through a series of graphic-line drawings
of all the features on the lunar surface, along with
photos to match each view. The publication was reprinted again in 1999
entitled "The Hatfield Photographic Lunar Atlas" (edited by
Jeremy Cook), and contained 16 maps with 88 photographic plates of the
lunar surface under different lighting conditions and librations. This
version was mainly used by those with a reflector-type telescope with South
top, however, a SCT version was also published afterwards for those
scopes with more advanced optical systems. But no matter what type
of viewing instrument an observer uses today, the Hatfield Atlas was,
and still is today, a very useful book that one can use for finding
their way around the
Moon's surface. Henry Hatfield will thus
be remembered for the contribution he made towards lunar promotion, and
so it is with extreme sadness on the news of his passing (Henry Hadfield
- 27 August 1921 to 1 April 2010 - RIP). According to officials from the
British Astronomical
Association, of which Hatfield was a long-standing member, his funeral
will be held tomorrow, Thursday 15 April, at St. Thomas's Church, 14
Granville Road, Sevenoaks, in Kent, UK. Do go along if you happen to
live in or are close to the area, as all will be extremely welcome to pay their
respects. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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Remember that waaaay-coooool spaceprobe,
called LCROSS, that was intentionally crashed onto the moon's south pole
last October? Well, if you don't, then others do as on this coming
Monday, April 12, the people who built the probe --
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems -- will be honoured for their
expertise with the Swigert Award for Space Exploration. The award was
created by the American Space Foundation in 2004 in honour of astronaut
Jack Swigert -- command module pilot onboard the Apollo 13 mission; which
avoided near disaster in April 1970 after an oxygen tank ruptured during
mid-flight to the Moon. This isn't the only award that LCROSS has been
awarded after it showed positive proof that water-ice existed in a
crater, called Cabeus. The team have received the Space Pioneer Award, the
Aviation Week's 2009 Program Excellence Award, and the International
Lunar Exploration Working Group's Technology Award all to its deserved credit.
Past recipients for the Swigert Award include: 2009 - NASA's
Phoenix Mars Lander Team; 2008 - Japan Aerospace Exploration
Agency; 2007 - The California Institute of Technology; 2006 - NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory; 2005 - NASA's Mars Exploration Team from JPL; and
in 2004 - President George W. Bush. The
event will take place at the
26th National Space Symposium in Colorado
Springs. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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Two days ago, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
at CERN smashed together two beams of protons travelling at near the
speed of light. Reaching energies three-and-a-half times
higher than any other collider worldwide, the protons' seven-trillion-electronvolt
collisions produced data about the cosmos and the behaviour of sub-atomic
particles in
our early-formed Universe. Over the next few years, these data will be
analysed for such elusive particles as the Higg's particle, or 'God'
particle, which will fundamentally explain why matter has mass and why
there is structure to the Universe itself. One of the two particle
detectors at LHC -- specifically, the ATLAS facility -- is already
showing some unusual results. Apparently, during the experiment, a globule of matter
was discovered to have condensed
into a nano-sized orb inside the chamber that scientists say resembles that of our own Moon. "It's
extraordinary," says Prof April Foley, principal instigator at LHC
and discoverer of the object. "When we scanned the chamber using
magnetic-resonance microscopes, we could actually see this orb floating around
inside. We did spectral analyses of its constituent matter and these showed it more resembled the Moon's material make-up
than that of Earth's; suggesting that this may be, in fact, how our own
Moon formed in the early Solar System." The discovery was lauded as
'unique' amongst Foley and her colleagues! However, that was two days
ago, so where is this moon right now? "It's still inside the chamber,"
says Foley with excitement. "We can't actually touch it as this would
instantly annihilate it, and possibly push it into
another parallel Universe. We did manage to take a picture of it [inset], however,
there's no
saying
what will happen it eventually," says Foley. Scientists at LHC also
believe that the newly-created moon may, in fact, outgrow the chamber's environment and burst
through the LHC's metallic casing. So is it too early to start calling
it Earth's second Moon? "That's a big call at this stage," says Foley.
"However, we are monitoring it and going through several options on how
to extricate it from the chamber so as to contain it in a small magneto-box
before it grows full-size." Foley suggests that if they
are successful, a Shuttle Mission would be required to safely release it
into space afterwards, where it could then grow to a normal-sized moon
like our own.
These are exciting times ahead indeed for the LHC scientists, but moreso for the
countless amateur and professional astronomers who may one day be
observing a 'New Moon' through their telescopes. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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The European Space Agency has put on offer
acceptance of proposals from industry for a new
Moon Lander
to be built by end of the next decade. Beginning this summer, an
18-month 'Phase B-1' will look at various designs already submitted by
industry, and from there see if such a lander is feasible and
technologically capable. ESA are aiming to put the lander somewhere down
at the moon's South Pole, where it would then measure radiation and dust
properties in the region; while also look at the water-ice potentials for
future use. An information day on the proposed mission is planned at the ESTEC headquarters in the Netherlands on the 14 April, and for more
information you can contact ESA
here. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
spacecraft since launch in June last year has shown the lunar surface
like never before. Unprecedented in detail, and surpassing all previous
images taken by spacecrafts that orbited the Moon, the several hundred images released
were and are a tour-de-force in displaying the Moon in what it really is
- a beautiful but complex neighbouring planet in space. Today, more data
from LRO are about to be released in the form of maps, calibrated images
- each both in low and higher level formats that the public and
professional alike will be delighted to see and use. The data sets being
released are dated for the following: 'Mapping Phase - from 15 September
to 14 December 2009; 'Commissioning Phase' - 23 June to 14 September
2009 (see
HERE for downloads).
Note 1: it will take quite a time to familiarise yourself with getting
actual images as you first have to find the coordinates of the feature
you want to look at. Then you find its related number in the catalogue.
And from there you have to find that number in the browse or data files.
And finally, you download to your computer. Note 2: Some of these images
are huge, so caution before you start downloading (try a small file
first). Upto 130 terabytes (1 terabyte =
1,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data are expected to be generated throughout LRO's first year's lifetime observations using all seven instruments,
however, today, the first 50 terabytes are available now, with the
remaining terabytes coming out throughout the coming months. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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If you happen to be in Dublin tomorrow and
you want to see some very old maps of the Moon, then do check out an
astronomy exhibition to be held at the Worth Library in St. Steevens's
Hospital (opposite Heuston Station). As a fellow of the Royal Society,
Dr Edward Worth was a physician who worked in the 18th century, and
throughout his professional career his interest in astronomy saw
him collect numerous astronomical instruments and old historical documents
to do with the Solar System. Some of these documents included lunar maps
which will show at
the exhibition, and one includes quite an important one as it established some of
the most current nomenclature (~ 200 named features) on the Moon that are
still used today. Just 28cm in diameter, the map was
produced collaboratively between two Jesuit scholars - Giovanni Battista Riccioli (astronomer) and Francesco Maria Grimaldi
(physicist/mathematician) - from Italy back in the 17th century. Riccioli
in 1651 published two large volumes on astronomy entitled "Almagestum
Novum" and in a section on the Moon, the two maps appeared
which
originally were produced from
observations taken by Riccioli's pupil, Grimaldi. The first map didn't have any
names for features added, however, while is was inferior in some
aspects, its detail was far superior and included phases of the Moon.
The second did have the nomenclature added and took into account
librational aspects of the Moon's apparent wobble, but between the
two, their production far bettered any previous maps made by such people
as Johannes Hevelius, Michael van Langren, Gerolamo Sersale and others.
The times for the exhibition's opening are from 10:30am to12:30pm and
2:00pm to 4:00pm -- for more information about the exhibition see
here and on
the Moon section see
here. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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Amongst the many Russian Luna missions that
went to the Moon back in that heyday, two are especially remembered for
the serious research they carried out on the lunar surface. The first
was Luna 17 which deposited Lunokhod 1 - a remotely-controlled
rover that for 10 months covered nearly 11 km of the lunar surface in
the western region of Mare Imbrium. Equipped with several instruments
onboard, the 2.3-metre-long rover conducted soil measurements and took
over 190 panoramic detailed views of the surface, until its heat source
(radioactive polonium) ceased on 4
October 1971. The second was Luna 21 which also deposited a similar type
rover called Lunokhod 2 on the eastern side of Mare Serenitatis. It
too took soil measurements, along with reflective-light measurements of
the surface for astronomical observation purposes, looked for
magnetic activity, and performed laser ranging experiments towards the
Earth. Upto 86 detailed panoramic views of a 37 km-coved region were
also taken during it 5-month-long mission until on 9 May 1973, cooling
problems with its radiators (dust-covered over them) caused the rover to overheat
rendering it
inoperable.
Several copies of the rovers were made back then during the period, which, sadly
afterwards, were forgotten to Russian history and most of its people.
That is until now as one or two which previously lied in boxes in a
courtyard at the Space Research
Institute in Russia are about to be resurrected back into modern
history for display in an exhibition there. According to sources working at the academy, the exhibition will open on 12
April of this year, and more exhibits enclosed in the boxes (upto 14 in all) will be
on display - in time before the Institute celebrates its anniversary in
the coming October. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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Remember those
lunar
retroreflectors that astronauts from Apollo's 11, 14 and 15 left on
the Moon 40 years ago as part of the
Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment? Well, it looks like the lunar dust
(ground regolith material) that is everywhere on the lunar surface is
affecting the reflectivity of prisms built into the retroreflectors. New laser ranging data (see
arXiv - subscription
required) just out shows that efficiency of the devices have diminished
by a factor of ten at all lunar phases and by an additional factor of
ten when the lunar phase is near full moon. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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Today marks the
41st
annual LPSC meeting in Texas that will run for the next five days.
Always a crowd-puller, some of the best research and results will be
revealed from scientist (index)
from around the world. Plenty to look forward to, and already one can
see some extraordinary new announcements, for example,
"water discovered in more than 40 small craters at
the North Pole region of the Moon"...WOW! If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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In an exclusive
interview with physicsworld.com, Sir
Martin Rees --
president of the Royal Society UK and an astrophysicist at Cambridge
University -- believes robotics over humans right now is the way to go
in space exploration. Commenting on the recent changes by President
Obama (see two previous reports below) on not returning to the Moon,
Rees in the interview says: "Given the financial constraints, if I were
an American taxpayer I would entirely support it. I think it is very
important we pursue science in space [but] the case for sending people
into space is getting weaker all the time with every advance in robotics
and miniaturization. I still believe in the long run that there is a
role for people in space, but that's just for an adventure not for any
practical purpose." Rees who is author of several books and
author/co-author of more than 500 research papers, believes the American
space program is now on a good direction, and sees Europe as playing a
more involved role in emphasising unmanned spacecraft missions. Rees
isn't entirely against the human exploration of planets in our Solar
System: "When the costs come down, I hope people will one day go to
Mars, walk on Mars." But some workers in the
US on Obama's approach are worried about the Obama approach:
Thomas Buffenbarger -- international president of the
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. At a
time when the U.S. economy is mired in the worst recession in 70 years
and is in desperate need of a jobs creation program, your
Administrations proposal to have NASA rely on the private sector to
develop and operate manned space craft will contribute to the loss of
several thousand well-paid domestics jobs (Orlando
Sentinel)." Whatever the way to go, or whomever is correct,
exploration of the Moon has set a serious setback in the short run, if
not in the long run, as well. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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Well, the NASA budget is out -- said to
increase by $6 billion over five years. Sounds good...doesn't it? NOT
for us who were hoping that the Moon would see some happenings there
with human return ...again. But it is not to be so, as Obama has been
persuaded by his peoples that the Moon is just something "small in the
way of big". Undoubtedly, the decisions were made in an awkward time of
recession, problems with rockets, and committee recommendations that
demanded too much from an organisation that was, at least, been run with
no heart to it. It is pointless to look at this decision from an Apollo
perspective as that situation is entirely different to the current set
of affairs mentioned above. However, while we may think of the Apollo
era as a time in which America and Americans could walk proud having
done the right thing in terms of looking forward, the present setup and
arrangements above will simply be something that the country will regret
in the long run. Some like what Obama has come up with, as jobs, solid
foundations for a weak infrastructure, and vision, are long term goals
that can't be run overnight. However, while others totally disagree with
his decision to not go back to the Moon for some time yet, those long
term goals above will undoubtedly suffer the stagnation of
promised words as time moves on. America and Americans may have lost there
way on this one, as fiscal over invigoration has won out. See the 2011 Budget...constraints or
otherwise...HERE. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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The 'buzz' comments are flying around right
now as on Monday, 1 February, the NASA budgets for the Constellation
program will be announced. Some rumours: "America not going back to the
Moon"; "Ares rocket not to be built"; "Recommended $3 billion
requirements cut"; "Commercial the way to go"; "Asteroid over Moon"; "No
Moon Base". And the ultimate rumour that most Americans will hone in on
is "Jobs to be cut". Plenty are talking about it, for instance, give a
look to these --
NASA Watch;
Orlando Sentinel; and the
Houston Chronicle. Only a few really know what will be
announced on Monday, so all we can do is wait until then. If you need to contact me about this
article, then please do
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14 November 2009: Ever since upto 1500 old,
analog Lunar Orbiter tapes containing pictures of the lunar surface were
handed over to the Lunar Orbiter
Image Recovery Project based at NASA Ames Research Centre two years ago,
the people working there have been
tolling out the best in forgotten history and imagery. Their
latest concerns the crater Copernicus (click on the inset image).
LOIRP recently
did a live run of exactly what they need to do to retrieve and image
from just one of these tapes, so if you are at all
interested in how they take the tapes and then 'extract' the images from
within, then do have a look at their
webcast (it's about 1 hour long, patience required, but well worth
the view). I won't go through the whole background behind the setting up
of LOIRP as this can be found on the website,
Moon Views, however, for a
brief synopsis, there are two news reports
here
(10 June 2009) and
here
(14 November 2008). If you need to
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9 November 2009: ESMO stands for 'European
Student Moon Orbiter', and will be a small mission built and designed by
students chosen from at least 10 universities in the European Union. The
mission involves delivery of a small spacecraft - loaded with several
scientific instruments onboard - into lunar orbit where for six months
it will begin observing and mapping of the moon's surface. Initial
feasibility studies and preliminarily stages of spacecraft payload and
design involved over 200 university students led by ESA's Education
Office, and the final contract was awarded to SSTL (Surrey Satellite
Technology Ltd.,) just a week ago. SSTL is a world leader in satellite
design for earth observation, science and communication, and is already
involved with another UK lunar mission called
MoonLITE - to be
launched sometime in 2014. System Requirements Review of ESMO will begin
in early 2010 when the final phase of the project will be announced, and
the students and universities chosen will begin their each and own
construction of instruments onboard for the mission. The mission is hoped to be
in orbit around the Moon by 2013. If you
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30 October 2009: Hopefully, by now, you've
read all the literature, including the latest independent Augustine
Commission Report (see 23 Oct 2009 News item below) on where we
may/might go and explore next. If so, and you have
an opinion that you've expressed already, then why not go further and
take part in this online poll as to
what path of three we should take in the future -- Path 1: Mars First;
Path 2: Moon First; Path 3: Flexible Path. At time of writing (30 Oct
2009, 20:31 GMT), the results show out of 2511 votes so far -- Mars
First (259 votes, 10%); Moon First (1137 votes, 45%); Flexible Path
(1116 votes, 44%). Wow...that's close! Hmmm...guess which one this
author will be going for? If you
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23 October 2009: The final report by the
independent Augustine Commission which looked into the current and
future state of US future human spaceflight was released today.
Upto 157 pages long, the contents are well worth the read and will serve
as an invaluable resource and reference for all you interested in the
future of human spaceflight - not only in the US but the world, too (download
it ~ 7.74 Mb PDF file). If you
need to contact me about this article, then please do
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22 October 2009: Starting today and running
for the next two days, the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) will
initiate their main cornerstone project of 2009 called
Galilean Nights. What is it?
Well, it involves you - amateur and professional astronomy enthusiast
alike - organising some event in your area across the globe to point a
telescope at the Moon (and other planets that Galileo looked at some 400
years ago), and inform those attending about these wonderful objects in
the sky. If you haven't organised an event yourself already but want to find out
if there is something happening in your country, then
go here and
click on the relevant letter. For my own country of Ireland, we
have
several events organised, so hope to see you at
one. If you
need to contact me about this article, then please do
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19 October 2009: Just another amazing
image-release from the team of scientists in charge of the LRO camera.
This image shows just
one
of the main boulder-trails in the LROC image, however, there are many
more to find. If you
need to contact me about this article, then please do
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17 October 2009: Data recorded by the SARA
instrument that flew on the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft launched last year
(now in dead orbit around the Moon), suggests hydrogen is being
reflected off the lunar surface all the time. Signatures detected by
SARA, which stands for 'Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer', show that
one in five solar protons that hit the lunar surface combines with an
electron on
rebound,
and the two together produces an atom of hydrogen. The atoms travel at
speeds of approximately 200 km/s off the lunar surface and return back
into space without ever being affected by magnetic fields both from the
Moon or in space because they are electrically neutral. In effect, they
travel in straight lines outwards, which allows their origin to be
traced back down onto the surface where a virtual hydrogen image of the
surface can be made. The team of scientists involved with the instrument
will eventually put together a hydrogen map of the surface tens-of-times
better than that produced from the Clementine (1994) and Lunar
Prospector (1998) missions; whose results has always been a
controversial area. Perhaps, these new data from SARA will throw some
'light' on the subject. If you
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9 October 2009: By all accounts, the recent
LCROSS set of impactors onto the Moon on 9 October was both a success
and a disappointment - the former because the impacts were spot on at the
predicted target points, the latter because too much was highlighted on
a possible flash and plume that didn't visually appear. We all know now,
at this stage, that both weren't observed by either telescopes (amateur
and professional alike) on Earth or from space, however, as the data has
yet to be analysed (deep breath),
hold on to your shorts as something will come out during the next few weeks
or so
- it's a long process. On the other hand, however, the
DIVINER
instrument onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that observed the
impacts did see some activity
in
and around the region through several thermals channels. The instrument
is a nine channel infrared radiometer - two of which are for
broad-band solar reflectance, three for mineralogy mapping, and the
remaining four are for
observing thermal changes on the lunar surface over a wide range of
temperatures present in, for example, slopes, shadows and rocks. These
latter channel filters worked perfectly during the impacts of LCROSS and
the SSC, so the team, as well as the public, should remain very
optimistic about more and better images due out in the near future from
them. DIVINER is expected to
operate continuously as it takes 189 separate radiometric measurements
every 0.128 seconds; obtaining diurnal and daytime coverage of (not quite)
the entire surface of the Moon after a year's mapping. Mineralogy
measurements of about 70 percent of the surface above 300K will also be
carried out, and in all, the data gathered will be of extreme use to
understanding the lunar surface like never before. DIVINER is based on
the design of the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) onboard the
Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter. If you
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7 October 2009: Having been asked by
several readers about if the upcoming LCROSS duo set of impacts
on the Moon occurring this Friday, 9 October, can be seen from Ireland,
the UK, or in other European countries, the answer is simply, NO!. The
reason as to why is also simple; it's because most of the
European countries will not be in view of the Moon during impact times,
and if they are, they will be in daylight. As a picture speaks a
thousand words, do have a look at this link
HERE which explains it all
really. The images there will give you an overall account of the world
locations that will be able to observe the event, while there's also
some additional information on the target sites on the Moon. Not one to ignore those countries in the USA, there is a very useful piece
HERE (PDF file ~ 3 Mb) on "Targeting
Coordinates, Timing, and Finder Chart for the LCROSS Centaur and SSC
Impacts" prepared by Tony Colaprete.
Europeans, however, should still read it anyway as it
gives some nice close-ups of the target crater involved. But, not all is
lost for us poor unfortunate souls that won't be able to observe the
events from our own countries as
NASA TV
have in preparation a setup whereby one can view the events happening
live....COOL. The only problem you might have with NASA TV is that you
end up with a blank screen where the TV image should be. If you do
experience such problems, then try using the other live-viewing options
available also on the site (click on "Other Viewing Options") on right side
of blank screen. For this user, the 'Real' viewing option in the 'Public
Channel' works, however, you may have to choose the other options -
Windows Media, Quicktime - that best suits your own computer
video software. If all else fails, and you can't receive it live, then
you can always see the recorded video of the events afterwards that will
more than likely be available from NASA, or on YouTube. Below is the
schedule of times on the momentous day - be sure
to log on some time before the event happens.
October 9:
3:30 to 7:00 am. - LCROSS Live Impact Coverage, followed by a
Post-Impact News Conference (note, these times are for US only - you will have to adjust for
your own time zones, however, if it is of any use, the impacts' time for UTC will
be around 11:30 am).
LCROSS
Centaur impact is scheduled for 4:31 a.m. PDT or 7:31 a.m. EDT (11:31
UTC) on October 9, 2009. The SSC will impact at 4:35 a.m. PDT or 7:35
a.m. EDT (11:35 UTC).
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2 October 2009: Recently, the LCROSS team
of scientists changed the target for the first impactor of two, Centaur,
to crash into Cabeus crater proper rather than its closer, smaller
companion, Cabeus A (see below). As LCROSS (Centaur and the SSC)
continues to get closer and closer to impact time, the scientists now
guiding the probe are able to refine the target location down to more
precise coordinates. The latest coordinates and times respectively for
both impactors is now as follows: Centaur coord = (-84.770, 310.950 E), SSC coord = (-84.770,
310.450 E), Centaur time = (11:31:30 UTC), SSC time
= (11:35:45 UTC). These are being stipulated as nominal locations and
times, so they may change as the 9 October date approaches. See image
here. If you
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28 September 2009: In a turnaround of
events for the upcoming dual impact of NASA's LCROSS spacecraft onto the
lunar South Pole on 9 October 2009, scientists guiding the craft have
changed the target from Cabeus A crater (~ 48 km diam.,) to Cabeus
crater (~ 98 km diam.,) itself. The change was made from the amount of
additional data gathered about the region from several
lunar spacecrafts; showing that hydrogen concentrations - in part, a
signature of water-ice deposits - were higher in Cabeus than in Cabeus
A. According to
this image released on the 11 September last, the initial Cabeus A
target was chosen because of the higher concentration of water
equivalent hydrogen in a smaller crater (Cabeus A1) connected to Cabeus
A. From the image, that sounds and looks okay, doesn't it - hit the
target with the most concentration? However, that particular area
(purple rectangle) looks comparatively small to the much larger areas in Cabeus B (just below it to the left) and in Cabeus itself also that show
a wider area of lower concentration of water equivalent hydrogen (orange
areas). The success of hitting such a small area in Cabeus A as opposed
to hitting the much larger areas of lower concentrations in Cabeus B or
Cabeus would allow for
a more successful outcome. If you
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21 September 2009: Executive director of
the Center for Educational Technologies
in the US and NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future,
Dr Charles A.
'Chuck' Wood, will give a talk about the Moon in Ireland this coming
Saturday. The talk will be held amidst the beautiful surrounding countryside of the
Burren in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare, as part of the Shannonside Astronomy
Club's annual
StarParty. Dr Wood is author of the
The Modern Moon: A Personal View, has a monthly column in
Sky & Telescope, and
for the last five years has run the ever-popular
Lunar Photo of the Day
website; which highlights geological features on the Moon through both
amateur and professional contributions. His down-to-earth approach is
what will make this talk a unique experience not to be missed, as he has
been involved with NASA, the Shuttle program, and lunar
research for over a decade. With over 50
peer-reviewed papers and 300 published todate, along with an impressive
academic background, this one is a
must-see-and-hear experience for anyone not
familiar with the Moon. If you are planning to attend the Star Party
event, do check out the website link above as more details, like directions and a map to get you there,
can be found (contact is
Frank Ryan). If you
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18 September 2009: "It's a time capsule,
its' a window into the past of the entire inner solar system, of Earth,
I see LCROSS and LRO combined as a gateway, a pathfinder to truly
understanding even the origins of volatiles, of water, in the inner
solar system. The moon is right there, it's right next to us, we can go
there much more easily than a lot of other places and make these
studies." So says LCROSS Project Manager, Dan Andrews, as his lunar
probe prepares for double impact into a crater at the lunar South Pole on 9 October 2009.
And that's not all that's happening. Its counterpart and fellow probe,
LRO, which was launched along with LCROSS on 18 June
last, has also gone into its determined 50 km circular orbit around the
Moon where its seven instruments onboard are already returning the most
detailed information about the surface. These instruments over the
coming weeks and months of LRO's first year in this orbit manoeuvre will
explore areas, such as, the potential landing sites for future
robotic and human missions to the Moon, measure the solar and cosmic
radiation effects on the surface, map out the surface topology in
resolutions as low as 100 m per pixel at low-rez imaging to 0.5 m per pixel
at high-rez, and look at the mineral and chemical composition of rocks
on and under the lunar surface like never before. The two probes are
NASA's latest attempt in preparation for the nation's plans on going
back to the Moon (Augustine Committee report aside
as well as Congress's change of mind), and currently are
the only set of probes at the Moon in full working condition
China's Change'e-1, Japan's
Kaguya, and India's
Chandrayaan-1 probes are gone
or no longer in use, so all eyes are now on America for any new news
about our only nearest natural world, the Moon. Let the fun times begin. If you
need to contact me about this article, then please do
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11 September 2009: NASA has selected the
crater Cabeus A for the latest crash-impact of the duel probes that make
up the LCROSS spacecraft. Cabeus A is a nearside crater located at the
extreme South Pole region of the Moon with a diameter of 48 km and has
Lat/Long of 82.2S, 39.1W respectively. The LCROSS spacecraft currently consist of two main parts -
an upper stage rocket, called Centaur, that is sometimes referred to
as EDUS (Earth Departure Upper Stage) and a Shepherding Spacecraft,
called the S-S/C. Centaur is about 2000 kg in weight and should produce a cloud of
ejecta some 60 km high up into the moon's atmosphere (roughly, with
200 times greater impact than Lunar Prospector). The anticipated
impact velocity is roughly going to be 2 km/s at an angle
of 70 degrees to the plane of the lunar surface. After this initial,
first impact, the S-S/C will
fly through the plume of disturbed material and analyse it for
any signs of water and other compounds. Such water resources will
prove extremely important if development of a lunar base is ever to
be established. Colonists will need water to grow food, produce
rocket fuel (from the hydrogen in H2O), and build up oxygen reserves
for breathing. Two previous missions,
Clementine and
Lunar Prospector,
detected water ice signatures back in the 1990s but analyses of the
data have been a controversial issue since then. Approximately four minutes later,
the 700kg S-S/C itself (sometimes referred to in the media as LCROSS
itself, but see above) will then line up to impact a different part of
the crater, releasing a second plume of material 2 million tonnes in
quantity, and producing a crater approximately 5 metres in depth and 30
metres wide.
The whole event will be monitored by telescopes on Earth and by the
LRO
orbiting overhead, but other space telescopes will
analyse the disturbed material. Some amateur telescopes with
diameters from 10 inches upwards should also be able to see the
impact, however, these won't be able to obtain spectra of the water
vapour unless they are situated at a high altitude and observing in
the infrared. The LCROSS concept was chosen out of 19 possible
missions and 40 proposals that NASA asked for in April 2006, because
it featured the second impact concept. If you
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9 September 2009: The executive
summary report (PDF file) conducted by the independent
Augustine
Committee on the state of future human spaeflight was released
last Tuesday. Read it now, and decide what you think is the correct
decision that President Obama and his Government officials will have
to make over the coming months. If you need to be updated on the
current state of affairs, then do have a read at these related,
internal
stories and the links therein: 16 Aug
2009 , 5 Aug 2009 ,
29 June 2009 , or, a NATURE article
here. If you
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8 September 2009: This coming Friday, 11
September, NASA will announce the lunar South Pole crater that their
LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and
Sensing Satellite) mission will crash into to see if there is any
water-ice signatures there. Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS principal
investigator, will give the announcement from NASA's Ames Research
Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and the event can be seen live at 10 am
PDT through NASA TV. If you
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3 September 2009: On the
20 August last, ISRO (India) and NASA
both teamed up to conduct a bi-static radar experiment to see if
there was any signatures of water-ice inside a crater at the moon's
North Pole. The two agencies put each of their own craft - India's
Chandrayaan-1 and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)-- into a
close-pass, orbital manoeuvre over the crater where radar pulses
sent down by Chandrayaan-1 would be collected by LRO after bouncing
back afterwards. The manoeuvre, at outset, was a difficult one, and
each craft had the same type of radar instrument (called the
Mini-RF on
LRO, while on the Chandrayaan-1 it's the
Mini-SAR) onboard. The only problem, however,
as it now turns out, is that the Chandrayaan-1 radar instrument
experienced programming problems -- according to Jason Crusan of
NASA headquarters in Washington, DC -- preventing radar pulses from
being sent. Chandrayaan-1 in July had
previously encountered orbital and orientation problems, and it now
looks like this carried on over into the planned bi-static radar
experiment in August. In effect, even if the radar pulse had been sent by
Chandrayaan-1 as both crafts passed over the crater, the signal
would not have reached its target as Chandrayaan-1's drift was
larger than anticipated. Analyses is now ongoing to see if
anything did result from the experiment, however, at this stage of
procedures, it doesn't look good (it will take at least several
weeks before a final report is submitted). If you
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29 August 2009: Latest news from
India's space agency (ISRO) responsible for launching the country's
first planetary space-probe, Chandrayaan-1, to the Moon is that "the mission
is definitely over." Last radio contact was made on Friday night at
01:30 IST after the final bit of data from a previous orbit was
received through the Deep Space Network at Byalalu. Officials at
ISRO are now analysing the the telemetry to see what
happened. Last April, a sensor onboard the craft malfunctioned as it
was exposed to excessive radiation from the Sun - causing it to
become unstabilised. However, after using redundant gyroscopes and
an antenna to try and rectify the problem the craft still wasn't
operating as it should have been. This also led to a focusing
problem of the surface, so in May ISRO raised the orbit of the
craft so as to finish off the remaining 5% of observations that it
needed to do. After a brief encounter just nine days ago with the
American Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (now successfully returning
excellent images of the moon's surface) to look for water signatures
inside a North Pole crater, no news of any data or success has been
reported. The probe was to have spent upto two years orbiting the
Moon, however, while officials say that they have so far todate
carried out 95 % of observations, this news must still be a shock to
those involved, if not for the country itself.
If all else fails, and no further work can be done to rectify the
above problem, Chandrayaaan-1 is expected to de-orbit slowly down
onto the surface as an impact - sometime in 2012. If you
need to contact me about this article, then please do
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25 August 2009: According to the
operations team responsible for LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and
Sensing Satellite) - a probe expected to impact the moon this
October - an onboard sensor used by the attitude control system (ACS)
experienced an anomaly three days ago. Called the Internal Reference
Unit (IRU), the fault was discovered during an early morning
communications check, and immediately caused the ACS to switch to the the Star
Tracker Assembly (STA). For the STA to 'kick' in, thrusters had to
be fired; which meant fuel was used - a substantial amount -
according to reports. The team immediately declared a 'spacecraft
emergency', and to save any further waste of fuel they restarted the IRU and everything now appears to be working fine again. However,
this was an unexpected event in operations of the LCROSS mission, so
continued assessment as to initial cause of the
problem is being investigated. Mission headquarters says the mission is still a
go.
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20 August 2009: NASA's Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and ISRO's Chandrayaan-1 moon
probes will today try and carry out an extremely difficult
experiment to look for water-ice signatures inside a North Pole lunar crater. Both probes each have a similar-type
instrument onboard which uses transmitted and bounced radar pulses to
obtain data about details of the lunar surface. On the LRO probe the
radar instrument is known as
Mini-RF, while
on the Chandrayaan-1 probe it's
Mini-SAR. Sounds simple, doesn't it - just line up the two
probes over the crater at the same time, and then do the experiment.
NOT! The difficult part is that both probes are travelling at
approximately 1.6 km/sec in different orbits, both involve precise
pointing, communication and tracking, and both are looking at a
crater just ~ 10 km (Erlanger Lat: 86.94°N, Long: 28.62°E) in
diameter. The manoeuvre goes like this: As Chandrayaan-1 passes over
the crater, it will send out a series of radar pulses that first
travel down to the surface and then bounce back up again. LRO
then passes over the crater some time after and try to pick up on the same bounced
radar signal
that Chandrayaan-1 initially sent out, however, because it's orbit
is different to Chandrayaan-1's orbit, the received signal will come
in from a different angle. The difference between both signals
received is the key to the whole experiment, as it will be the most
definitive remote technique for discriminating between ice and rock
units on the surface of the Moon. This collaborative experiment
between LRO and Chandrayaan-1 won't be the only one that will occur
in the near future as both agencies from the outset planned to work
together to share data during the lifetime of each mission. For more
on LRO/Chandrayaan-1 radar experiment see
here (PDF File).
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16 August 2009: The Augustine
Committee, established by the US Government to independently look at
how current Human Spaceflight budgetary plans for NASA would fair
out over the coming years, has presented unfavourable findings for
return to the Moon. One of the main points which stands out concerns
the Constellation moon program
running $50 billion over the current $100 billion budget through
2020. The Committee suggests that with even an extra $20 billion to $30 billion
added to the program, it still wouldn't make that much of a
difference to the Spaceflight plans overall. Current
problems with the Ares 1 rocket design, the retirement of the Shuttle, and
the closure of the International Space Station (ISS) are just some of the areas the Committee had to factor in
in their findings. Several options that may see some progress in the
future of the plans include:
Option (1):
Continue on with the current Constellation
program in using the Ares I and V to ferry
astronauts to the Moon, retire the Shuttle by
2011, close the ISS by 2015, and with a total
budget of $99 billion through 2020 ($205 billion
through 2030), the first orbit of the Moon would
occur sometime after 2028.
Option (2): Retire the Shuttle by 2011, however, keep the ISS going until 2020, but this time lose the
Ares series of rockets and instead develop the
Ares V-lite along with commercially available
rockets to get man back to the Moon by 2028 or
so. The costs are slightly higher, coming in at
$101 billion through 2020 ($204 billion through
2030).
Option (3):
Extend both the Shuttle and ISS to 2015 and 2020
respectively, develop the Ares V-lite or a new
heavy-lift rocket from shuttle parts which
would get man to the Moon sometime after 2020,
however, with this option several additional
'sub-options' are open depending on if retiring
the Shuttle in 2011 were to go ahead.
Sub-option
(a): Build a
shuttle-derived rocket and use orbiting fuel
depots to orbit the Moon as soon as 2023 and land on
it by
2030. This sub-option also takes into account
orbiting an asteroid by 2027 along with orbiting
Mars by 2029 - total cost coming in at $123 billion through 2020
($266
billion through 2030).
Sub-option
(b): Build a commercial heavy-lift rocket and
use orbiting fuel depots to orbit the Moon by 2024
and land on it by 2029. Asteroid and Mars
orbiting are included also to occur by 2026 and
2029 respectively, bringing the total cost to
$123 billion through 2020 ($256 billion through
2030).
Sub-option
(c): Build commercial rockets for delivering
astronauts to the ISS, while using the
newly-built Ares V "lite" to
orbit the Moon by 2025 and land on it by 2029.
Throw in the odd orbit around an asteroid by 2030
and around Mars by
2034, and the total cost comes to $126 billion through
2020 ($272 billion through 2030).
The above options aren't written in
stone quite yet, so the Government and NASA have quite a bit of a
way to go yet before anything is seen to happen over the coming
months (and years?). From the outset this may seem like a rocket, a
budgetary, or a spaceflight problem, however, there are several
thousand employees involved worried as to what the final outcome
will be. If you
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13 August 2009: Germany eyes up the Moon
13 August 2009:
A few years ago German aerospace engineers and scientists suggested
to their government that the country should seriously think of going
to the Moon. Not only would such a venture put the country on the
international lunar stage, but it would also open up a whole new
area of research and create a platform for future jobs. Now, it
looks like those plans may have a possibility of coming to fruition
within the next decade. During an interview yesterday on ZDF
T rt e.V. plans were proposed in seeing the possibility of Germany
constructing a lunar mission on a 'going it alone' affair as a national effort rather
than a combined one. However, state secretary for economy and
technology, Peter Hintze, in the interview today suggested
that working alongside other European countries and with the USA may
now be the better option to take in these economic times. Germany
has long been involved with space research - lately been involved
with projects on the International Space Station - and is well
respected internationally for their expertise in robotics. As the
mission is envisioned to include a robotic vehicle that would ply
the surface and bring back rocks and other research material, the
technical side of things wouldn't therefore be a problem. "Such a
mission is indeed technically feasible," so said Johann-Dietrich Woerner, head of DLR. Given that the country and its workers are
also
known for their preciseness in approach to every factor in life, the
comments by Hintze and Woener are ones that will seriously be
considered and looked at by space agencies from around the world.
Germany was initially proposing to launch their Lunar Explorer
Orbiter in around 2015, however, that was cancelled last year. One
to watch! If you
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6 August 2009: According to the chief
designer for the ground application system of China's
Chang'e-1 spacecraft, which
launched two years ago and subsequently struck the Moon last March,
a new 3D topographic map will be released this September. The map,
says Li Chunlai, will be the "clearest in the world"...and have a
"3-kilometre resolution per pixel." The spacecraft during
its two year-long mission initially used an optical imaging system, a CCD
stereo camera, and an
interferometer spectrometer imager onboard to turn 2-dimensional images of
the lunar surface into 3-dimensional formats. Upto 9
million pieces of valid elevation data
were taken during the time the probe orbited the Moon before
crashing, and these are said to make up the September map, says
Chunlai. Chang'e-1 was China's first successful attempt to the Moon,
and in the near future plans are that a
further series of Chang'e's will follow. Chang'e-2 is expected to be launched
sometime in 2011/12 into an orbit of 100 km above the moon's
surface, later followed in 2013/14 by Chang'e 3 that may involve
soft landings and inspection of the lunar surface. This mission will
be an exciting one as it may also include a rover whose main
objective will be to transmit video footage and analyse soil samples
in preparation for a sample return mission, Chang'e 4, in 2017
(returned to Earth orbit several months later). Chang'e 1 initially
was designed to last a year in orbit around the Moon, however, good
conditions onboard allowed it survive for an additional three
months. In all, it transmitted upto 1.4 terabytes (1 terabyte = 1000
gigabytes) of data back to stations on Earth. If you
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5 August 2009: Quote: "Mars First
advocates worry about getting stuck on the Moon. In fact, it is
their obsession for Mars that has kept us in low Earth orbit for the
last 40 years. By relentlessly pushing for a space goal that is well
out of our technical and fiscal reach, they have gotten an undesired
(but not unexpected) result: stasis. There is no choice. You use the
Moon or you get nothing. Right now, Mars is a bridge too far we
need the stepping-stone of our Moon to reach it." EndQuote. So
says, Dr Paul Spudis (in
Air&Space) - Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary
Institute in Houston, Texas, and Principal Investigator of an
imaging radar experiment currently orbiting the Moon onboard the
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. The comments arise from reviews in a
paper (PDF file)
where the
Augustine Commission - recently setup to deliberate,
independently, the future of NASAs human spaceflight program with
the background of space exploration in mind - look to see if Mars
First is ever going to be a viable option. Debate on whether to use
the Moon as the main platform for future exploration of other
planets has been on tender hooks for quite some time now, as
scientists and politicians alike have various views on the correct
path to take - especially now in these economic times. Spudis again:
"In their minds, Mars is THE destination. To hear the pitch, one
might believe Mars has it all atmosphere, water, a 24 hour day,
and possible ancient fossil life. Adventure! Thrills! What else
could a space cadet want?...To go to Mars using existing technology,
with an Apollo-style business model, is both unachievable and
unaffordable." Plenty more on the links above, so do have a
peek. If you
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30 July 2009: Returning to the Moon and
then on to Mars are the most likely first steps that Mankind will
take on the space exploration stage. A roadmap for such a venture
will be essential to know where we're going, and how, so without
further adieu -
here it is (PDF file). It's just released, however, as there is
too much in it for this small write section on the whole lunar side
of things, I'll leave it to you to check it out. This is just
Version 1 of the Roadmap we'll be using to get us to the
above-mentioned places, so expect Versions 2, 3, 4..etc., in the
near future. Lots and lots of interesting points included, so do
have a read. If you
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29 July 2009: By now, anyone with even
the slightest interest in the celestial sky will know that this year is
the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009). Space agencies around the
world, as well as universities, businesses, clubs, blogs and
websites (including this site)...etc., have all got involved in its
promotion. As the seventh month of IYA approaches an event of note,
for Americans in particular, will be the Summer
Party of 1 August to be held at NASA's Ames Research Center in
Moffett Field, California. The event titled under, "Observe the Moon
Night", will this year be special
because engineers, scientists and astronomers working with the
Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar CRater Observation and
Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)
are all getting involved. Both crafts were launched last June, and
their significance for Americans returning back to the Moon after a
hiatus of forty years since the Apollo missions is of particular
interest. The LRO/LCROSS team will make online presentations,
video files, and fact sheets available about both crafts on the
night, and there will also be live steam feeds and updates. The
public and amateur astronomy clubs can attend for free, and there
will be several telescopes available to observe old Luna. Obviously,
the event
won't be something that everyone can attend simply because of its
location in the country, however, the NASA LCROSS mission website is
asking others to get involved on the night by planning their own
"Observe the Moon Night" party for 1 August. If you happen to be one
of those who would like to contribute, then you should post the
details to Jake Burkart
at NASA, and he will include it on the LCROSS site for all in
your area to see. If you
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23 July 2009: LCROSS, or the Lunar CRater
Observation and Sensing Satellite, which launched last June is
lining itself up for eventual impact onto the lunar surface in
October of this year. The impact, which will release surface
material up into the atmosphere of the Moon for observations by
telescopes on Earth and in orbit, may tell us if water-ice exists on
the Moon. But why, if after LCROSS has already passed the Moon and
is now in a highly elliptical obit around the Earth that we still
haven't seen an impact after all this time, and won't see one for another three months to
come? The answer - orbital manoeuvres and a build up of kinetic
energy for maximum impact effect. Back in June 22, LCROSS was, in
fact, close enough to the Moon for an impact and could have carried
out its scientific objectives to discover if the water-ice were
there. The reason, however, that the engineers controlling LCROSS
decided that then wasn't the time to proceed with the event is
that craft's angle of approach would be way too low to have any
effect on the surface, and that the final
impact energy would lack any real 'oomph' or kick. Instead, what is
required for the greatest impact effect is to put the craft into a steeper,
perpendicular orbit to that of the plane of the moon's orbit so as
that it would be able to transfer all its kinetic energy into the impact
itself. This will raise a
greater amount of material into the lunar atmosphere than would have
been released through a more lower angle impact, and will allow for
better analysis of deeper down deposits that may hold the water-ice
signatures. There's plenty more explanation
here by
flight director, Paul Tompkins, about why LCROSS is taking so long
to impact the Moon, so do
check it out. If you
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21 July 2009: To commemorate the 40th
anniversary of the moon-landing which took place on the 20 July
1969, the world-renowned journal, Science, are allowing anyone free
access to their 30 January 1970 edition.
The edition - one
of the largest produced at the time (335 pages) - includes all the
research covered during the Apollo 11 mission. From lunar samples to
rock-forming processes to chemistry, the inside reports revolutionised not only our ideas about the Moon but also how we saw
ourselves on Earth and in the solar system. The only
drawback, however, is that you
have to
register - done through the usual name and address setup (in 4
quick, easy steps). This may put one off from availing of the free
access, however, the research - though old now
- may be something that would prove of use to you. If you
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20 July 2009: On this momentous day of
celebrating the 40th Anniversary of landing a man on the Moon, NASA
and Google Earth have got together to create the Moon in Google
Earth. Launched today at the Newseum in Washington, users to the
free software can explore the Moon like never before. If you want to
experience all the activities of the six moon-landings as the
astronauts walked and roamed about on the lunar surface, well, do so
in a 3D environment. If you want to see glorious, panoramic images
along the way taken by the astronauts, well, do so again, with
additional information and links all included. There's
loads more to do as you interactively move around the surface, and
even the latest Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images recently taken
of five of the landing sites has been added as view options. A YouTube
video here gives you an idea of what is involved, and on the same
page there's an opportunity to download the required Google Earth
5.0 if you haven't got it already (updater included, if you have).
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18 July 2009: India's first spacecraft
to the Moon, Chandrayaan 1,
may have its two-year-long mission cut unexpectedly due to a
previous fault with a star-sensor. Launched in October 2008, first
signs that something had gone wrong came about in April 2009 when
the probe's sensor was exposed to excessive radiation from the Sun.
The spacecraft couldn't be stabilised as a result, and focusing of
features on the lunar surface was also becoming a problem. ISRO
engineers tried to rectify the problems using redundant gyroscopes
and an antenna, however, with no
success in sight, they decided (in May 2009) to put the craft into a higher orbit
just in case it might crash onto the surface. According to the agency
the probe now seems to be working okay again, but the events may
shorten the rest of the mission's objectives. Both ESA and NASA, as
well as Bulgaria, have instruments onboard the Indian spacecraft,
but some experiments, for example, like measuring the heights of
features are expected to suffer. But it's not all a loss quite yet
as ISRO
says that they have completed upto 95% of their objectives and
finished nearly all of the mapping. The probe has, so far todate,
made over 3,000 revolutions around the Moon and sent back more than
70,000 images of the lunar surface. Its new circular orbit, roughly
at 200 km altitude, will allow the probe continue to take wider swaths
of the surface as it collects data on the moon's chemical and
mineral content. All results will be released later in the year to
the scientific community and to the public, but further analyses has
to be done first. The next season of observations are expected to
begin this October where the other 5% of research remaining will be
completed. On a similar note, designs for India's next Moon mission,
Chandrayaan-2 - a collaborative mission with Russia and other
international partners, are expected to be completed by next month.
This mission will include both a lander and a rover, and an
orbital flight vehicle constituting
an Orbital Craft (OC) and a Lunar Craft (LC) that would carry a soft
landing system up to Lunar Transfer Trajectory - see more from the
Chandrayaan-1 link above. If you
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17 July 2009: NASA has released the
first images on five of the six landing sites of the Apollo
missions. The images clearly show astronaut footprints in the Apollo
14 image, as well as the lunar module stages from which the ascent
stages took off. The images were captured by the LROC cameras from
between July 11 to the 15 July onboard the
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that
launched last June. The Apollo 12 site wasn't imaged but will be
over the coming weeks, so keep an eye our as resolution will
get better by nearly three times...WOW. If you
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13 July 2009: NASA's Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) - whose mission it is to
advance lunar science - will hold its 2nd Annual Lunar Science Forum
from July 2123 at Ames
Conference Center, California. Throughout the three-day event, oral
and poster presentations will be given about: 'Of the Moon'
- study the nature and history of the Moon
(including research on lunar samples) to
learn about this specific object and thereby
provide insights into the evolution of our
solar system;
'On the Moon' - investigate the effects of the lunar
environment on terrestrial life and the
equipment that supports lunar inhabitants,
and the effects on the lunar environment of
robotic and human presence; and
'From the Moon' - use the Moon as a platform for performing
scientific investigations, including
observations of the Earth and other
celestial phenomena that are uniquely
enabled by being on the lunar surface. The
forum will also be a showcase for the latest preliminary results
from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
launched last June, and its companion spacecraft,
LCROSS, which is expected
to impact the lunar surface sometime in October of this year. The event also includes discussions on missions, like,
GRAIL
& LADEE, Chandrayaan 1,
Odyssey Moon and the Google Lunar X prize, and several topical areas
will be covered - from dust to ejecta, mapping to
exploitation of the Moon, and the future of a lunar base.
Loads more, so do check out the
Agenda. If you
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29 June 2009: The LROC (Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera) instrument onboard NASA's latest moon
mission that launched last June has transmitted its first images of
the lunar surface. They are, in a word, SUPERB, and were taken
around an area south-east of Mare Nubium just a few kilometres from
Hell E crater. LROC consists of two NACs (Narrow Angle Cameras)
capable of providing panchromatic images 0.5 metre scale over a 5 km
swaths, and a WAC (Wide Angle Camera) capable of providing images at a
scale of 100 metres per pixel in seven colour bands over 60 km
swaths (see image of instrument locations
here). Over the course of their mission, LROC
is designed to access future landings sites on the Moon, identify
illuminated and non-illuminated regions of both poles, and conduct
meter-scale mapping of the entire lunar surface (see the LROC
Science Operation's Center) Enough of the talk. See
here for images, of for a zoomable aspect see
here. If you
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2 July 2009: Some 40 years ago to the
month one of humanities greatest achievements of landing a man on
the Moon was a giant step in the future exploration of our Solar
System. The occasion back then was celebrated all over the world as
we saw live images of Neil Armstrong make that first momentous step
onto the lunar surface -
"That's one
small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind". Fellow
astronaut, Edwin Eugene Aldrin (Buzz), followed his team-mate, and ever since then the Moon in our
skies has never
meant the same again. With exception to Apollo 13 five other
missions to the Moon followed that saw another ten men set foot on
its surface. It looked like the future of planetary exploration was
well on its way, but it wasn't. A space race that was seen to be
won and a waning interest amongst the public in the Moon both got in
the way. The years which followed weren't too kind
to Luna! It is only in the last few years that we are now beginning
to start thinking of returning to the Moon again; with countries like
China, India, and Japan joining the USA in preparations for that next
joint leap. As estimates show that man will again step on the Moon
sometime between 2020 and 2025, in the meantime all we can do for now, is wait and
celebrate those that paved the way 40 years ago. And celebrate we
shall, because upto and on the 20th of this month, countries all around the
world will be running some kind of special event to remember the
first moon-landing which took place on the 20 July 1969. Below are
just a few taking place in Ireland, the UK and the USA. I hope that you can get
to see them. Enjoy!
Ireland:
July 19 - 25, 2009 - Moon Week: What it really felt like to watch men leave for the Moon at
the National
Museum of Ireland
July 20, 2009 - Celebrating 40 years since the Moon landings at
Blackrock Castle Observatory
July 23, 2009 - Moon Landing 40th Anniversary Lecture and DVD at
Trinity College Dublin
UK:
July 4, 2009 - Interview with Buzz Aldrin at the
Royal Festival Hall
at the Southbank Centre, London
July 20 - 21, 2009 - 40th Anniversary of First Moon Landing +
Apollo Concert at the
Science Museum, London
USA:
July
16, 2009 Astronaut Space Foundation Apollo 11 40th Anniversary
activities at KSC Visitor Center
July
16, 2009 NASA History Apollo 40th Anniversary Symposium at NASA
HQ, Washington DC
July
17 - 18, 2009 National Aviation Hall of Fame event in Dayton, OH
July
18, 2009 Salute to Apollo: The Kennedy Legacy at the Kennedy
Center in Washington, DC
July
18 - 19, 2009 Dayton Air show in Dayton, OH
July
18 - 20, 2009 Exploration Day at Virginia Living Museum in Newport
News, VA
July
19 21, 2009 Special Exhibit at Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA (ESMD)
July
19, 2009 Moonfest at Ames Research Center in San Jose, CA
July
19, 2009 Glenn Lecture (Apollo 11 crew) at NASM in Washington DC
July
19, 2009 Apollo Commemoration activities (films, exhibits) at
Space Center Houston, TX
July
19, 2009 Apollo 40th activities at Neil Armstrong Museum in
Wapakoneta, OH
July
20, 2009 Education event at the Newseum in Washington, DC
July
20, 2009 Apollo 40th Anniversary event at the NASM in Washington,
DC with Apollo 11 crew and other Apollo astronauts
July
20, 2009 First Footprints Celebrations at NASA Field
Centers
July
20, 2009 NASA Night at Houston Astros game in conjunctions with
NASA exhibits at Union Station in Houston, TX
July
20, 2009 NASA Driven to Explore at Discovery Green in Houston, TX
July
20, 2009 Apollo 40th Celebration at the U.S. Space and Rocket
Center in Huntsville, AL
July
20 - 24, 2008 Apollo activities at Virginia Air and Space Museum
in Hampton, VA
July
21, 2009 Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony for Apollo 11 crew in
Washington DC (TBD)
July
24, 2009 First Footprint celebration at JSC Visitor Complex in
Houston, TX
July
25, 2009 USS Hornet Museum 40th Anniversary event in Alameda, CA
July
27- 31, 2009 Oshkosh Air Show in Oshkosh, WI
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