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On November 17, 1970, the Soviet spacecraft Luna 17 delivered the lunar rover Lunokhod 1 onto the surface of the moon. For 11 months after, controlled in real-time by a human team in Moscow, it explored seven miles of the lunar surface. Sending back reams of data, it was considered to be one of the biggest successes of the little-known Soviet lunar exploration program. And then, it disappeared. It wasn’t abducted or anything, it just ceased transmitting, as space probes have a tendency to do. This spring, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spied it on the moon’s surface. The really neat thing: it can still reflect laser beams back to Earth as if it were brand new. Read More
Barcelona Moon, a new Spanish team led by entrepreneur Xavier Claramunt, has officially announced its entry into the ongoing $US30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE. To win the Grand Prize, a team must soft land a privately-funded spacecraft on the moon, send a rover at least 500 meters out onto the moon’s surface, and transmit a specific set of video, images and data back to Earth. The as-yet-unnamed Spanish rover, appropriately enough, looks rather like a sombrero. Read More
Anyone with a serious fondness for the moon landings and the craft that got us there, or even just those with a penchant for big toys, will be sure to sit up and take notice at Space Toys built to order full scale lunar modules. Offering “amazing details and fantastic authenticity”, the fully customizable replicas can be matched to specific landing missions and crafted with or without an interior. Just make sure you have the US$89,000 and a 20 X 30ft spare room ready. Read More
Scientists have long speculated about the source of significant quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the moon's lunar poles, and just a few months ago NASA announced that water molecules were indeed present, but in relatively small amounts. Now the Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) that was employed to shed some more light on the presence of water on the moon, looks like it has done just that with preliminary data indicating the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently-shadowed crater. Read More
The X-Prize foundation, who teamed up with Google in 2007 to create the USD$30 million Google Lunar X Prize competition, has recorded plenty of interest. Since Odyssey Moon’s registration, a further ten parties moved swiftly to take up the gauntlet last year. Read More
NASA and Goodyear develop puncture proof tire for the 21st Century
By Paul Ridden
02:31 August 16, 2009
It looks like seventies science fiction television is (finally) going to meet reality with NASA planning to set up a real Moonbase Alpha by 2020. In order to meet the heavy load/long range transport requirements of life on the moon, NASA recently teamed up with Goodyear to review and redesign some 40-year-old technology in the shape of the airless tires first seen on the Lunar Rover Vehicles of Apollo missions. Read More
Special sensing technology developed by Raytheon for the US Navy's miniaturized radio frequency system is aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), one of two spacecraft hoping to find photographic evidence that the polar regions of the moon contain ice. Until now, man hasn’t been able to confirm if there is ice on the moon because it is thought to exist only in permanently dark patches, or poles, on the lunar landscape – which means we haven’t been able to take detailed photos yet. NASA in particular is interested in determining the extent to which lunar ice exists, if at all, as the agency prepares for future manned exploration and possible habitation on the moon. Read More
