Latest Moon Stories
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Twin NASA probes orbiting the moon have generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The new map, created by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, is allowing scientists to learn about the moon's internal structure and composition in unprecedented detail. Data from the two washing machine-sized spacecraft also will...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, has long been projected as an icy body with a vast ocean of liquid water underneath its crust. A recent analysis suggested that heat generated from within the natural satellite helps keep this ocean from freezing due to interactions it has with Saturn and the other moons. And now, a new analysis of the moon’s topography and gravity indicates that its icy outer crust is twice as dense as previously...
Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online There's something particularly “Le Voyage dans la lune” about this next story. According to Asian News International and the Associated Press (AP) , The United States of America had planned a mission to blow up the moon in the 1950s. The intention was, apparently, to spook the Soviet Union and have them believe that we could do much worse to them. According to these reports, this project was called “A Study of Lunar...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Hundreds of moon rocks that have been handed out to state governments and foreign countries through the years have gone missing, according to a NASA audit last December. Though some have been recovered, most are still missing. On a good note, another set of lunar pebbles were found this week in a government storage area in St. Paul, Minnesota. The rocks were part of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission on July 20, 1969 in which...
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Science@NASA This is a personal eye-witness account of the Nov. 14th solar eclipse by Science@NASA production editor Tony Phillips. Astrophysicist and legendary eclipse chaser Fred Espenak has a rating scheme for natural wonders. "On a scale of 1 to 10," he says, "total eclipses are a million." Apparently, this is true even when the eclipse is almost completely clouded out. Last week, I experienced such an eclipse on Four Mile Beach outside the resort...
[ Watch the Video: Moon Phase & Libration 2013 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has helped to create an animation showing hourly intervals of the moon's surface throughout next year. Topographic measurements by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter aboard LRO makes it possible to simulate shadows on the Moon's surface. "Thanks to Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we now have excellent terrain maps of the Moon that can tell us...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The prospect of finding frozen water on the moon has several companies scrambling to stake a claim in “them thar lunar hills.” "This is like the gold rush that led to the settlement of California," said Phil Metzger, a physicist who leads the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab, part of Kennedy Space Center's Surface Systems Office. "This is the water rush." Water has already been found on asteroids and its...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA has opened up registration for the 20th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race, kick-starting the contest for high school, college and university students from around the world. The two-decade old competition will take place on April 26 - 27 next year at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA originally created the event to help with classroom learning, provide young thinkers and builders with real-world...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Researchers are saying the massive dark spot seen on the moon, known as the Ocean of Storms, is a scar from a giant cosmic impact. The team of Japanese scientists says the giant cosmic impact created a magma sea more than a thousand miles wide and several hundred miles deep. The findings may be able to help explain why the moon's near and far sides are so different from one another. The side of the moon that faces Earth has many...
To commemorate the start of shoulder season and the release of two new Hawaii travel guidebooks, Moon Travel Guides is partnering with Hawaiian Airlines to give one lucky winner 60,000 HawaiianMiles, which is good for one round-trip ticket between one of Hawaiian Airlines North American airport hubs and Hawaii. Berkeley, CA (PRWEB) October 23, 2012 Moon Travel Guides is partnering with Hawaiian Airlines to help one lucky winner discover Hawaii. The two are giving away 60,000 HawaiianMiles...
Latest Moon Reference Libraries
Harrison Schmitt was a NASA astronaut, and is also an American geologist. He was born Harrison Hagan "Jack" Schmitt on July 3, 1935 in Santa Rita, New Mexico. After high school, he went to the California Institute of Technology and received a B.S. degree in science in 1957. He then went to Norway to study geology at the University of Oslo. In 1964, Schmitt earned a Ph.D. in geology from Harvard University. After receiving his doctorate, he worked at the U.S. Geological Survey's...
Edgar Mitchell was an American pilot, engineer, and astronaut. He was also the sixth person to have walked on the moon. He was born Edgar Dean Mitchell, D.Sc. on born September 17, 1930 in Hereford, Texas. During his childhood, he was active in the Boy Scouts of America where he achieved its second highest rank, Life Scout. He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial management in 1952. The following year he joined the US Navy and trained...
James Irwin was an American astronaut, an engineer, and was the eighth person to walk on the moon. He was born James Benson Irwin on March 17, 1930 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He lived a fairly normal childhood and graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1947. He went on to attend the United States Naval Academy and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1951. Following the Naval Academy, he attended the University of Michigan and earned a Master of Science in...
Robert Grant Aitken (December 31, 1864 "“ October 29, 1951) was an American inventor born in Jackson, CA. Aitken worked at the Lick Observatory in California where he systematically studied double stars, measuring their positions and calculating their orbits around one another. He methodically created a large catalog of such stars, which was published in 1932. It was entitled "˜New General Catalogue of Double Stars Within 120 degrees of the North Pole'. It contained orbit information...
Eclipse -- An eclipse occurs when an astronomical body such as a planet, or satellite gets between a source of light (e.g. the Sun) and another body. For instance, Jupiter eclipses its moons when it gets between them and the Sun. -- Lunar eclipses - are where the Earth obscures the Sun, from the Moon's point of view. The Moon moves through the shadow cast by the Earth. This can only happen at full moon. -- Solar eclipses - are where the Moon obscures the Sun, from the Earth's point of...
![Far-Side \"Halo\" blast](/media/gallery/sdo-solar-dynamics-observatory/thumbs/thumbs_farside_c3_halo.jpg "Far-Side \\"Halo\\" blast")
