Latest Moon Stories
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online The data collection phase for NASA's pair of lunar-orbiting Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has officially commenced, the US space agency announced on Friday. The lone scientific instrument on board the GRAIL orbiters was activated Thursday at 12:28pm EDT (9:28am PDT), when the twin vehicles were located 19 miles (30 kilometers) above the Ocean of Storms, according to officials from NASA's...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Somewhere between five to ten percent of the walls of Shackleton crater could contain small patches of ice, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters. Shackleton Crater is an impact crater at the south pole of the Moon. The peaks of the crater's rim are almost continually in sunlight, while the interior is perpetually in shadow. The rotational axis of the Moon lies within Shackleton. A team of scientists,...
Video: Watch Out For The Blue Moon April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online August 31, 2012 will see a second full moon for the calendar month, commonly referred to as a Blue Moon. The first full moon for the month was seen on the night of August 1. There are three different circumstances in popular culture in which a moon can be called "blue:" when the moon actually appears blue, when there are three full moons in a season, or like tonight, when there are two full moons...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Around 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth is believed to have collided with an impactor the size of Mars known as "Theia." This collision, current theory says, is what formed the Moon. Scientists have simulated this formation process and reproduced many of the Earth-Moon system properties. However, these simulations have also given rise to a problem known as the Lunar Paradox. According to the Paradox, the Moon seems to be made up of...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The passing of Neil Armstrong on Saturday appears to be coinciding with a decline in American manned space exploration, as Asian countries develop plans to expand their footprint on the moon and in outer space. China, Japan, and India have all unveiled aggressive space initiatives in the recent months and years. New Delhi has said it plans to launch the first manned mission by 2016 and a Mars orbiter in the coming years. The Japanese...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Using the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) spectrometer aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scientists have made the first spectroscopic observations of the noble gas helium in the atmosphere surrounding the Moon. These remote-sensing observations complement the situ measurements taken in 1972 by the Lunar Atmosphere Composition Experiment (LACE) deployed by Apollo 17. LAMP was originally designed to map the lunar...
GREENBELT, Md., Aug. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Scientists using the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) spectrometer aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have made the first spectroscopic observations of the noble gas helium in the tenuous atmosphere surrounding the Moon. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) These remote-sensing observations complement in situ measurements taken in 1972 by the Lunar Atmosphere Composition Experiment...
John Neumann for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Former astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon, is recovering from heart bypass surgery, NASA said on Wednesday. The man who took both “one small step” and a “giant leap for mankind,” Neil Armstrong, underwent heart bypass surgery on Tuesday to relieve blocked coronary arteries, Reuters is reporting. NBC news quoted his wife Carol Armstrong as saying he is “doing great.” As commander of the...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Keeping their eyes on the prize, one team is attempting to win the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize to send a rover to the moon. Galactic Suite announced it has signed a launch service contract for a Chinese rocket that will carry its robot to the moon in June 2014. The Google Lunar X Prize is an incentive competition that challenges space professionals and engineers to build and launch a privately funded lunar rover that could...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online People say things will happen "once in a blue moon" when they mean it's unlikely to happen or something very rare. In fact, we've been using a "blue moon" as synonymous with "never" for about 400 years. But what is a blue moon, really? A full moon that actually appears blue is very rare. It happens because of ash or dust in the air, sometimes from volcanic eruptions or major forest fires, which act like a color filter for your eyes...
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")
