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The China National Space Administration (CNSA) launched a second lunar exploration probe on Friday, bringing their country's emerging space program one step closer to fulfilling their goal of placing a man on the moon.According to various media reports, the Chang'e-2 orbiter launched at 1100 GMT from Xichang, a location in the southwestern province of Sichuan."China Central Television briefly showed images of the rocket blasting off into the night sky--a few seconds after...

The complete archive of data sets from ESA's 3-year SMART-1 mission to the Moon has been released to the scientific community. Contained within the archive are 3D maps of the lunar poles along with detailed spectroscopic measurements of the lunar surface. Researchers can utilize this information, and cross-reference it with the wider Planetary Science Archive, to further investigate the formation and evolution of our nearest neighbor in space. Launched in September 2003, SMART-1 became the...

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, will complete the exploration phase of its mission today, after a number of successes that transformed our understanding of Earth's nearest neighbor.LRO completed a one-year exploration mission in a polar orbit approximately 31 miles above the moon's surface. It produced a comprehensive map of the lunar surface in unprecedented detail; searched for resources and safe landing sites for potential future missions to the moon; and measured lunar...

A whole new world came to life for Alice when she followed the White Rabbit down the hole. There was a grinning cat, a Hookah-smoking caterpillar, a Mad Hatter, and much more. It makes you wonder... what's waiting down the rabbit-hole on the Moon? NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is beaming back images of caverns hundreds of feet deep -- beckoning scientists to follow."They could be entrances to a geologic wonderland," says Mark Robinson of Arizona State University,...

The Moon's geological past could be better understood by a mineral that Japanese astronomers report they have found. Using an instrument-loaded probe - Kaguya - placed in orbit around the lunar body in 2007, the team of scientists found abundant sources of the mineral in concentric rings in three distinct crater regions. Olivine, as the mineral is known, is believed to be a revealing sign of mantle -- the deep inner layer of iron- and magnesium-rich rock that lies beneath the Moon's crust....

A highly detailed photograph released recently has views of a rare hole in the lunar surface, which is a pit large enough to swallow an entire football field whole. The Japanese Kaguya spacecraft's high-resolution cameras first spotted the hole, which is located in Mare Ingenii on the moon's southern hemisphere.  NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took this new, up-close photo of the moon pit from lunar orbit. Mark Robinson, principal investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter...

The public can follow along with NASA on its journey of lunar discovery. On March 15, the publicly accessible Planetary Data System released data sets from the seven instruments on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter."The Planetary Data System is a NASA funded program to archive data from past and present planetary missions as well as astronomical observations and laboratory data," said Dr. John Keller, LRO Deputy Project Scientist from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md....

GREENBELT, Md., March 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The public can follow along with NASA on its journey of lunar discovery. On March 15, the publicly accessible Planetary Data System will release data sets from the seven instruments on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "The Planetary Data System is a NASA funded program to archive data from past and present planetary missions as well as astronomical observations and...

A huge amount of scientific data have been accumulated by the CE-1 lunar orbiter. Using laser altimeter data, Jinsong Ping and Qian Huang et al obtained improved 3D lunar topography, and based on this, they had made new discoveries (such as impact basins and volcanic deposit highlands) of some ancient topographic characteristics on the lunar surface. Chao Chen and Qing Liang et al found the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin as the biggest mascon on the moon and put forward a fault structure...

NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission (LCROSS) based on new analysis of available lunar data, has shifted the target crater from Cabeus A to Cabeus (proper).The decision was based on continued evaluation of all available data and consultation/input from members of the LCROSS Science Team and the scientific community, including impact experts, ground and space based observers, and observations from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Lunar Prospector (LP), Chandrayaan-1...