Latest Moon Stories
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...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online China is growing up its space industry quickly, as the country's state-run media outlets announced today that the country is setting its eyes on the Moon again by next year. China News Service said the Chang'e 3 mission would be launching in 2013, helping to carry out surveys on the surface of the moon. Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China's lunar exploration program, said that the Chang'e 3 mission includes a lander and rover...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera has relayed images back to Earth showing that five of the six American flags placed on the Moon during the Apollo missions were still standing and casting shadows on the surface. The images confirm that one flag was knocked down, a incident that Buzz Aldrin has long stated occurred from the force of exhaust during the Apollo 11 lift-off from the Moon’s surface in 1969, according to a...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online While scientists tend to accept the theory that the Moon was formed following a collision between a young Earth and a second planet, new research published online earlier this month suggests that the impactor might have been larger and traveling faster than previously believed. Current theory suggests that Earth's satellite was formed when the protoplanet was hit by a second world, believed to have been about the size of Mars,...
WAIMEA, Hawaii, July 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA), led by American businessman / educator Steve Durst, plans to place an astronomical observatory on the Moon to capture never before seen images of the Galaxy / Stars, Moon and Earth and broadcast them in support of the worldwide Galaxy Forum 21st Century Education program. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120726/SF46861) A 'Global Demonstration' of the International...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Scientists attempting to better understand the formation and the present-day layering of planet Earth have turned to ancient meteorites -- meteorites which they say could hold important clues to some of the Solar System's earliest chemical processes. Those meteorites are known as diogenites, and researchers from the Carnegie Institution, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the University of Maryland studied nine samples...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online It has been said that we speak anywhere between 7,000 to 24,000 words a day, and for the most part, those words go unremembered. It is rare that words not only stretch beyond just one person’s ear, but to a gathering, and even rarer that those words last for generations and generations to quote. On July 21, 1969, one group of words were set into stone and etched into the memories of every American since. "That's one small step...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Despite a string of failed mission launches, equipment losses, and launch setbacks over the past year, Russia is looking to restore its integrity by developing a manned spacecraft that will have humans stepping foot on the Moon again for the first time in more than 40 years. In its attempt to return to the moon, the Russian space agency Roskosmos said it will begin testing launches of manned spacecrafts in 2015. Scientists also...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online For thousands of years, man would sit up at night and look deeply at the stars for both thought provoking science, and just pure entertainment. It wasn't until the 1600s that telescopes were invented, and even then they were staring at objects that were unattainable. The moon was the closest object in man's sight, yet it still seemed untouchable. However, all that would change in 1969, when Apollo 11 set off to place man onto a new...
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")
