Latest Lunar science Stories
The U.S. space agency says it has selected four teams to observe the impact of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. The satellite is part of a small companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., this spring. Instruments aboard the satellite are designed to search for evidence of water ice on the moon as the spacecraft collides with a permanently shadowed crater near one of the moon's poles. The resulting debris plumes...
GREENBELT, Md., Jan. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Lunar Science Institute selected a proposal to investigate the sun's influence on the moon submitted by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The basic science research supports NASA's human exploration of the moon. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "Many people think of the moon as dead, but if you look with a different pair of glasses - at the atomic level - it is very active," said...
A small, 4.2 billion-year-old moon rock collected by an astronaut during Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the Moon, provides evidence that the Moon once had a molten core that generated a magnetic field.Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17's only trained geologist, gathered the rock, known as troctolite 76535, in 1972. Troctolite is a type of rock consisting of the minerals olivine and plagioclase.Considering that lava plains on the Moon's surface suggest a volcanic past that may have lasted two...
Ancient rock's magnetic field shows that moon once had a dynamo in its coreThe collection of rocks that the Apollo astronauts brought back from the moon carried with it a riddle that has puzzled scientists since the early 1970s: What produced the magnetization found in many of those rocks?The longstanding puzzle has now been solved by researchers at MIT, who carried out the most detailed analysis ever of the oldest pristine rock from the Apollo collection. Magnetic traces recorded in the rock...
...I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mineI loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal ....You load sixteen tons, what do you get .... If you listen closely, you might hear a NASA project manager singing this song. Lately, Marshall Space Flight Center's Carol McClemore has been working at the end of a sledge hammer opposite a big pile of rocks, so she has good reason to sing the song Tennessee Ernie Ford made famous."I call it 'choppin' rocks,' " says McClemore, who manages...
Dull science classes will be transformed into earth-moving lessons for schoolchildren across Devon and Cornwall thanks to a new initiative launched by Westcountry university. Fourteen schools are to be provided with earthquake-monitoring seismometers as part of Plymouth University's regional involvement in the British Geological Survey project. They will be able to use the instruments to record and analyse ground movement data, place the information on the British Geographical Survey...
The Apollo Moon missions of 1969-1972 all share a dirty secret. "The major issue the Apollo astronauts pointed out was dust, dust, dust," says Professor Larry Taylor, Director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee. Fine as flour and rough as sandpaper, Moon dust caused "˜lunar hay fever,' problems with space suits, and dust storms in the crew cabin upon returning to space.Taylor and other scientists will present their research on lunar dust at the "Living on a...
Two more people have died in Thursday's earthquakes in southwest China, bringing the toll to three with 106 reported injured, officials said Friday. The second quake in Yunnan Province, measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale, also toppled numerous homes, forcing the evacuation of 120,000 people, Xinhua, the official Chinee news service, said. Earlier Thursday, a quake near the Sino-Myanmar border measured 4.9 on the Richter scale.
A gigantic telescope on the Moon has been a dream of astronomers since the dawn of the space age. A lunar telescope the same size as Hubble (2.4 meters across) would be a major astronomical research tool. One as big as the largest telescope on Earth "” 10.4 meters across "” would see far more than any Earth-based telescope because the Moon has no atmosphere. But why stop there? In the Moon's weak gravity, it might be possible to build a telescope with a mirror as large as 50 meters...
U.S. researchers said they've discovered water in tiny beads of volcanic glass collected from two Apollo missions to the moon. Jim Van Orman, a professor in the geological sciences department at Case Western Reserve University, said the findings suggest the water came from the moon's interior and was delivered to the surface through volcanic eruptions. The research team, which included scientists from Brown University, Carnegie Institution for Science and Case Western Reserve, said finding...
Latest Lunar science Reference Libraries
The Hadean is the unofficial geological period of time that lies just before the Archean time period. The Hadean began with the formation of the Earth roughly 4.5 billion years ago (Ga) and ended about 3.8 Ga; the latter date varies according to different sources. Hadean is derived from Hades, Greek for “underworld,” referring to the hellish conditions on the planet at the time. The term was coined in 1972 by geologist Preston Cloud. The period was later classified as the “Priscoan...
Crater -- A crater is a circular depression on the surface of a planet, moon, asteroid, or other celestial body. Craters are typically caused by meteorite impacts, although some are caused by volcanic activity. In the center of craters on Earth a crater lake often accumulates, and in craters formed by meteorites a central island (caused by rebounding crustal rock after the impact) is usually a prominent feature in the lake. Ancient craters whose relief has disappeared leaving only a...
The Moon -- The Moon is the largest satellite of the Earth, and is occasionally called Luna (Latin for moon) to distinguish it from the general use of the word "moon". The Moon is distinguished from the satellites of other planets by its initial capital letter; the other moons are described in the natural satellite article. The words moon and month come from the same Old English root word. The Moon makes a complete orbit of the celestial sphere about every four weeks. Each hour the...
The Moon -- natural satellite of a planet, in particular, the single natural satellite of the earth. The Earth-Moon System The moon is the earth's nearest neighbor in space. In addition to its proximity, the moon is also exceptional in that it is quite massive compared to the earth itself, the ratio of their masses being far larger than the similar ratios of other natural satellites to the planets they orbit (with the exception of Charon and Pluto). For this reason, the...
