Ok, so I lied… they only fired a couple of small rockets into the Moon to see if has ice beneath the surface. There is actually video content of the procedure happening live, but unfortunately its not as awesome as you might think. In any case, its nice to see NASA doing some “cool shit”. Read more from the AP and check out the video below:
NASA smacked two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed four minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash.
But initial photos show that the moon didn’t give the reaction to the double jabs that NASA expected.
And the public definitely didn’t get the live explosive views they may have anticipated from the mission called LCROSS, short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.
Screens got fuzz and no immediate pictures of the crash or the six-mile plume of lunar dust that the mission was supposed to kick up for scientists to study. The public, which followed the crashes on the Internet and at observatories, seemed puzzled.
NASA officials touted loads of data from the probe and telescopes around the world and in orbit. But the crash photos and videos they offered at a morning news conference were few and showed little more than a fuzzy white flash.
Still, NASA scientists were happy.
“This is so cool,” said Jennifer Heldmann, coordinator for NASA’s observation campaign. “We’re thrilled.”
Read the rest HERE
Nearly 270 rocks were given as gifts to 130 countries by the Nixon administration from both the Apollo 11 flight in 1969 and Apollo 17 flight in 1972.
Today, the whereabouts of these souvenirs are unknown. According to the Associated Press,
Of 135 rocks from the Apollo 17 mission given away to nations or their leaders, only about 25 have been located by CollectSpace.com, a Web site for space history buffs that has long attempted to compile a list.
That should not be taken to mean the others are lost - just that the records kept at the time are far from complete.
The AP reviewed declassified correspondence between the State Department and U.S. embassies in 1973 and was able to locate ten additional Apollo 17 rocks - in Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Barbados, France, Poland, Norway, Costa Rica, Egypt and Nepal.”
In this video WatchMojo.com speaks with Louie Bernstein about Galileo’s first discoveries and how it changed our understanding of the sky.
According to FoxNews.com
“Forty years ago Thursday, Apollo 11 blasted off on its 280,000-mile journey, fulfilling President Kennedy’s 1961 call to reach the moon by the end of the decade.
To commemorate the anniversary, NASA released newly restored video footage of the Apollo 11 moon landings — but the fabled “lost” moon tapes weren’t among them.”
Apropos of nothing, but worth a read, is Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s tale of one of the most unusual things he saw during his 1969 mission to the moon. Aldrin was on a TCA panel for National Geographic Channel’s Expedition Week.
Here’s a lightly edited version of Aldrin’s story:
I guess the discovery that really baffled me started the first night en route to the moon beyond the Van Allen Belts. We closed the windows and turned out the lights and Mike Collins had the headset on to listen to Houston and Neil [Armstrong] and I were under the couch.
All of a sudden I saw a flash, and then another flash. And before I could move my eye to see what it was, it was gone. And then maybe a streak. And I kept seeing these, until I decided I wanted to go to sleep.
Astronauts Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Steve Bowen completed the first of four spacewalks scheduled for Endeavour’s mission to the International Space Station yesterday.
This spacewalk was the 115th in support of ISS construction. The majority of the six hour and 52 minute spacewalk was spent focusing on one of the station’s Solar Alpha Rotary Joints (SARJ).
Combining refurbished machinery and modern day technology, NASA was able to take a restore photographs of the Earth rising above the lunar surface in 1966. This time with better resolution.
“The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, located at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., is taking analog data from original recorders used to store on tape and 1,500 of the original tapes, converting the data into digital form, and reconstructing the images. The restored image released Thursday confirms data from the original tapes can be retrieved from the newly-restored tape drives from the 1960s when combined with software from 2008.”
San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium, the new $20 million dollar facility that’s a part of the recently reopened California Academy of Sciences, is a technological marvel.
The Morrison Planetarium allows “astronomers not only to show traditional star charts, but to guide visitors through an immersive fly-through of our universe – realistically rendered in real-time. ”
Here are some links to the stars for while you’re at home.
According to Space.com:
If you live anywhere to the north of a line that runs across North America from roughly Queen Charlotte Island in British Columbia southeast to near Jacksonville, Florida and clear skies are forecast for Friday evening, Sept. 19, then be sure to be outside during the mid-evening hours and watch for the rising of the waning gibbous moon. If you have binoculars or a telescope you will also see the moon moving in front of the famous Pleiades star cluster.
I think it’s a safe statement to say that the average person knows very little about our planet. Well, just in case, here are some facts for you about the Earth. Put your thinking caps on:
- The Earth is smoother than a billiard ball.
- The Earth is an oblate spheroid
- The Earth isn’t an oblate spheroid.
- OK, one more surfacey thing: the Earth is not exactly aligned with its geoid.
- Jumping into hole through the Earth is like orbiting it.
- The Earth’s interior is hot due to impacts, shrinkage, sinkage, and radioactive decay.
- The Earth has at least five natural moons. But not really.
- The Earth is getting more massive.
- Mt. Everest isn’t the biggest mountain.
- Destroying the Earth is hard.
Read more if you need to make sense of this (Cause I sure do…)
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