Moon

Nasa’s twin GRAIL (Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory) spacecraft are now in orbit around the Moon. Having achieved lunar orbit at 2 pm PST on New Year’s Eve, GRAIL-A was joined by GRAIL-B at 2:43 pm PST on New Year’s Day. The twin spacecraft are now in a near-polar, elliptical orbit with an orbital period of approximately 11.5 hours. In readiness for the science phase of the mission which is due to start in March 2012, both spacecraft will undergo a series of burns to place them in a near-polar, near-circular orbit with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 km) and orbital period of just under two hours. Read More

If all goes to plan, tomorrow at 1:21 p.m. PST, NASA's GRAIL-A spacecraft will enter orbit about the Moon. GRAIL-A is one of two unmanned orbiters launched in September, with its sibling GRAIL-B due to enter orbit the following day (New Year's Day) at 2:05 p.m. PST. Together the two craft constitute the GRAIL mission (Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory), charged with mapping the Moon's gravitation field. Read More

Imagine if every time you went for on a trip, you had to carry all the fuel required to get you to your destination and back - even if that trip was to a place far, far away, like say Mars. In space there are no refueling options available (yet), and given that propellant makes up over 90 percent of the weight of a spacecraft, this issue is fundamental to saving costs and driving future space exploration. Now the Shackleton Energy Company (SEC) is looking to establish the first operational base to mine ice on the Moon that will be used to produce liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants for distribution to spacecraft via the first gas stations in space ... and the plan is to be open for business by 2020. Read More

After its planned launch this morning was canceled due to upper wind levels, a Delta II rocket carrying NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) has been rescheduled to tomorrow morning. The GRAIL mission will incorporate two unmanned spacecraft - GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B - which will fly in formation over the Moon’s surface, measuring variations in its gravity. Using this data, scientists hope to learn more about the Moon’s thermal history, and how other rocky planets within the inner solar system developed. Read More

True story: when I was a little kid and was at an observatory looking at the Moon through a telescope, I loudly proclaimed "I think I can see one of the moon buggies!" Everyone laughed, and I felt stupid. Well, several decades later, I've been somewhat vindicated. Although it's not an earthbound telescope, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) did recently capture images of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites. The Apollo 17 lunar rover is indeed visible, as are the descent stages of the three spacecraft, and foot paths made by the astronauts. Read More

Following a request from NASA, Goodyear last year developed an airless tire designed to transport large, long-range vehicles across the surface of celestial bodies such as the moon or Mars. The tire, constructed out of 800 load bearing springs, is designed to carry much heavier vehicles (up to 10 times) over much greater distances (up to 100 times) than the wire mesh tire that Goodyear helped develop for the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). The Spring Tire has now been recognized with a so-called “Oscar of Innovation” at the 44th Annual R&D 100 Awards in Orlando, Florida. Read More

A year ago, the twin impacts of NASA’s LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) spacecraft and a companion rocket stage into the lunar surface revealed the presence of water on the moon. Now new data uncovered by LCROSS and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has revealed that the lunar soil within shadowy craters is rich in useful materials, and that the moon is chemically active and has a water cycle. Read More

The first complete microwave image of the Moon taken by Chinese lunar satellite Chang'E-1 has been revealed. Chang’E-1 is China’s first scientific mission to explore planetary bodies beyond Earth and the on-board Lunar Microwave Radiometer has made it possible for the first time to globally map the Moon in microwave frequencies. Radar observations of the Moon are unable to provide thermal information, and microwave observations taken from Earth cannot reach the far side of the moon. So Chang'E-1's (CE-1) orbit was conducted at an altitude of 200km (124 miles) and allowed it to observe every location of the moon with a nadir view and at high spatial resolution. Read More

The moon is shrinking according to a team analyzing new images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The images reveal previously unknown cliffs, called lobate scarbs. These are thrust faults that occur primarily in the lunar highlands that indicate the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today. Although they were first recognized in photographs taken near the moon's equator by the panoramic cameras flown on the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions, the fourteen previously unknown lobate scarbs revealed by the very high resolution images taken by the LRO camera indicate that the thrust faults are globally distributed and not clustered near the moon’s equator. Read More