345 posts tagged with moon.
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EPIC indeed
From now on, this is the only soundtrack I will use for NASA posts
Spacefaring, or How We Decide How We Expand into the Solar System
Moonshot mania is already blasting off (previously, previouslier), but scientists are worried our celestial neighbor will be strip-mined and built out before it's fully studied. The cosmic land rush to build moon bases and harvest space helium-3 has researchers pleading to protect lunar zones that could hold the key to alien life and the universe's deepest secrets. [more inside]
Moon Train
DARPA has asked for proposals to build an American train on the moon, to compete with proposed Chinese base proposals, and Northrop Grumman has responded with a concept study. But will this be a levitational railway, or a more standard broad-gauge one to suit the lower lunar gravity?
To the Moon (eventually) but with great food!
Victor Glover will be the first African-American to eat maple cream cookies and smoked salmon while traveling to and from the Moon on the Artemis II mission
Moon landings, a wooden satellite, Tolkien on Mars, fiery descents
The Martian helicopter completed its final flight on Valinor Hills. "yeah it really could be an ocean moon" - Let's check in on humanity's exploration of space in early 2024. [more inside]
touchdown
'U.S. lands unmanned Odysseus spacecraft on moon'.
Space.com:"Update for 6:45pm ET: Touchdown! Intuitive Machines that its IM-1 lander Odysseus has landed on the moon and is transmitting a faint, but definite, signal. The exact health of the craft is unclear, but it has landed, Intuitive Machines reports."
After some still unconfirmed problems, "The Odysseus lander is "not dead yet"
'Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander is aiming for a crater near the moon's south pole. Here's why'
That's no moon
Millennia-old mystery about insects and light at night gets a new explanation "At night in the Costa Rican cloud forest, Yash Sondhi and a small team of international scientists switched on a light and waited. Soon, insects big and small descended out of the darkness. Moths with spots like unblinking eyes on each wing. Shiny armored beetles. Flies. Once, even a praying mantis. Each did the same hypnotic, dizzying dance around the bulb as if attached to it with invisible string."
ZOOZVE
It’s not a moon, but it’s also not not a moon. A strange label on his child’s bedroom poster leads Latif Nasser on an exploration of the solar system. Via Thread Reader and Radiolab.
Asteroid bits, fast spaceships, JuMBOs, a space battle, space cat video
December 2023 solstice from space. Let's check in on humanity's solar system exploration before 2024 kicks in. [more inside]
Coming in hot!
POV footage of NASA's Artemis 1's Orion spacecraft's re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere: Real-time (25m); Time-lapsed 25x (1m)
It's not just space camp
"Inside the small world of simulating other worlds" by Sarah Scoles examines the challenges for analog astronauts of emulating space habitats as well as the difficulty of re-entering society after their artificial isolation.
Launches, landings, elements, and the fiery golden apples of the sun
NASA started work on this day in 1958. So let's mark the occasion by checking on the past month of humanity's exploration of space. [more inside]
Feeling lunar gravity
Had ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface. Let's check in on humanity's exploration of space as autumn 2023 draws nigh, starting with the Sun and working outwards from there. [more inside]
Chandrayaan-3 has landed; India has made it to the moon
The Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-3 Vikram lander has successfully touched down near the moon's south pole. This video of the ISRO control center during Vikram's descent and soft landing from earlier today is tense and joyous.
To the other side of the Sun, to resurrect the last Great Observatory
Launches, satellites, deep space missions, images, and more. Let's check in on humanity's exploration of space for July 2023. [more inside]
Back to the Moon
NASA has announced the four astronauts that will fly by the Moon on the Artemis 2 mission. It's been nearly 50 years since humans have traveled beyond low earth orbit during the Apollo 17 mission. [more inside]
Volcano on Venus
A Martian glacier, rockets, asteroid samples, moons, and more rockets. From the fiery Sun to the search for alien civilizations, here's an update on humanity's exploration of space.
Sol
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured video of an immense solar flare followed by a solar tornado. [more inside]
Sol
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured video of an immense solar flare followed by a solar tornado. [more inside]
moonlight adaptive design project
To Protect Wildlife from Artificial Light, Look to the Moon: A proposed design for a Danish church looks to automatically adjust the building’s exterior lighting to the abundance of moonlight.
What time is it on the Moon?
Defining lunar time is not simple. Although the definition of the second is the same everywhere, the special theory of relativity dictates that clocks tick slower in stronger gravitational fields. The Moon’s gravitational pull is weaker than Earth’s, meaning that, to an observer on Earth, a lunar clock would run faster than an Earth one. [...] “This is a paradise for experts in relativity, because you have to take into account so many things.” 1300 words from Elizabeth Gibney for Nature.
From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon
Helga, Zohar and Commander Moonikin Campos take a trip. It's time for another look at humanity's exploration of space, starting with the Sun.
The European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter glimpsed a "solar snake" racing across the face of the Sun. [more inside]
The European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter glimpsed a "solar snake" racing across the face of the Sun. [more inside]
The face of the sun, a dying robot, meteor strikes, lovely moons
October 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. Let's start from the sun. The European Space Agency (ESA) Solar Orbiter zoomed very close to our star and captured great images of its corona. [more inside]
Moon to Mars activities and asteroid crashing
NASA published its new strategic objectives. And a lot more is going on. Just past the fall equinox, we catch up with humanity's exploration of space. [more inside]
She's got a life in the sky and another here on Earth
Matter of fact it's all shark
From the Earth to the Moon, to Venus, Mars, and more
A roundup of July and August 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. Humans and robots explored, rockets ascended and descended, various preparations are under way, and many plans were aired. [more inside]
Looking into the universe in June 2022
Today NASA published the first image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. That makes this a fine day to catch up on all of the other ways people and our machines are exploring space. [more inside]
From Ukraine to deep space
April-June 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. Stand by for rocky passengers, glitches, amazing images, a very French rocket name, Earthly politics, and lots of asteroids.
On the Earth In the Himalayas, a liquid mirror telescope came online. France joined the Artemis accords for sustainable space exploration. BRICS nations announced a new space agreement: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. [more inside]
On the Earth In the Himalayas, a liquid mirror telescope came online. France joined the Artemis accords for sustainable space exploration. BRICS nations announced a new space agreement: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. [more inside]
The Whole Earth Photolog, revisited
From grainy stills to gorgeous high-resolution portraits, from intimate pairings to stark contrasts, and from iconic standbys to little-known surprises, The Planetary Society's Earth gallery offers a rich collection of stunning photography and video footage of our world as seen from both planetary spacecraft and geostationary satellites. It is a vista that has inspired many a deep thought in the lucky few that have seen it firsthand [previously]. And it's just one of a number of annotated collections from the Bruce Murray Space Image Library.
Who says there aren’t any old, bold pilots?
From L2 to the Moon and points elsewhere
The last two weeks of 2021 in space. Starting with the Earth area: Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu, two taikonauts of the Shenzhou-13 mission on board the Tianhe space station, completed a second EVA lasting six hours. [more inside]
Asteroid Close Calls
Under the right circumstances, asteroids just 20 meters wide can destroy a city. So far, humans have discovered 266 asteroids with possible diameters of this size that have passed or will pass closer to Earth than the Moon. This chart shows each flyby at its relative distance from Earth.
New space walks
A space exploration update for November 2021. In Earth orbit news, one crew returned from the International Space Station, while a new crew rode a SpaceX flight to board the ISS. The ISS altered its orbit by a mile to avoid incoming debris from an old Chinese launch. Members of the Shenzhou 13 team aboard China's Tiangong space station conducted a spacewalk to build out the station; colonel Wang Yaping became China's first female spacewalker. [more inside]
USA vs USSR moon probe intrigue
Previously: how the USSR repurposed high resolution film salvaged from American spy balloons to use on their Lunik 3 moon probe. But then: One day in late 1959 or 1960 ... a crack team of four CIA agents worked through the night in stocking feet taking apart a kidnapped Soviet Lunik spacecraft without removing it from its crate. They photographed every part and documented every construction element, then perfectly reassembled the whole thing without leaving a trace. [more inside]
The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.
This week in humanity's exploration of the solar system. Let's start at the center. The Parker Solar Probe set two new records as the fastest object ever made by humanity (330,000 miles per hour, 532,000 km/h) and the closest any spacecraft has gotten to the sun (6.5 million miles, 10.4 million km). Back on Earth, scholars published research into Venusian data Parker caught when it last hurtled past that planet (previously). [more inside]
Practical Astronomy
The weather and the phase of the moon, in ascii, as services
Visit wttr.in (or
Visit wttr.in/somewhere to get the weather somewhere
Visit wttr.in/moon to get the phase of the moon.
This website turns wego and pyphoon into services.
Thanks, @schachmat and Igor Chubin!
curl it) to get the weather where you are
Visit wttr.in/somewhere to get the weather somewhere
Visit wttr.in/moon to get the phase of the moon.
This website turns wego and pyphoon into services.
Thanks, @schachmat and Igor Chubin!
Moon Rock in the Oval Office
Apollo 17 Lunar Sample 76015,143: chipped off a lunar boulder in 1972, now sitting on a table in the White House after a long, long journey.
In and around the solar system this week
Humanity and its machines have been busy finding stuff in space. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program's Chang'e 5 landed in the Oceanus Procellarum, looked around, collected samples, and fired off a sample-laded return rocket towards an orbiter. (previously) [more inside]
England may/may not enter Tier 4+/lockdown/circuit breaker/twilight zone
Meanwhile, on a small European island, as stormy weather, Halloween and a blue moon all coincide, different nations are under different systems/tier structures, while different regions of England are under different tiers of lockdown, with some local variations within tiers, and schools and universities open (though with some students quarantined). Cases of Covid19 are generally rising, and hospitals filling or full, possibly due to taxpayer-subsidised restaurant schemes last summer. (Speaking of food, subsidised meals for MPs but not for children). Leaks and speculation point to a possible England lockdown (minus schools), or perhaps Tier 4, next week. [more inside]
NASA: There's definitely water on the Moon
NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places. The detection is at Clavius crater, familiar as the location of the moonbase in 2001: A Space Odyssey. [more inside]
New Space Station Airlock could send payloads to moon
Nanoracks has created a new airlock that will allow cargo storage on the International Space Station. This would increase the number of missions that could be done on the space station as it presently only has three airlocks. Web page also contains interesting video demonstration. [more inside]
The Clangers
The Clangers, knitted into being by Joan Firmin, live on a small moon-like planet, enjoy music, eat green soup provided by a dragon, as well as glow-honey and blue string pudding, speak in a whistled language, were occasionally political (podcast), and appeared in Doctor Who in 1972. Adventures included shooting down an iron chicken, fishing for gold, an egg, marching hoots, and narrowly avoiding visiting...? First revealed on the BBC in 1969 and voiced by Oliver Postgate, rebooted shows from 2015 onwards have been narrated by Michael Palin and William Shatner. Best watched while young or knitting (pattern) or happy.
We're making a few assumptions here, but
Maybe we could go to the moon using four USB chargers instead of the original Apollo 11 computers.
Getting up close and personal with the moon
Andrew McCarthy explores the universe from a backyard in Sacramento, CA, and shares his images on Instagram. Recently, he shared a 400 Megapixel Moon photo on EasyZoom. If you want to name the features you're seeing, check out Visit The Moon's lunar atlas, or Google Moon for a different view. McCarthy also provides a short video introduction to amateur astronomy, breaking down how to better see into space. [via Mltshp]
These are the largest things on the planet
Deep inside the Earth lurk two gigantic blobs. One hunkers far below the Pacific Ocean, the other beneath Africa. Although they float way down at the boundary between the molten core and the semi-solid mantle, they may play a big role in events higher up in the crust, spawning some of our planet’s most spectacular volcanic features and triggering the occasional mass extinction. These enormous subterranean structures are called large low-shear-velocity provinces, or LLSVPs. While scientists ought to be ashamed of themselvers for tagging the monstrous anomalies with such an unremarkable moniker, they’ve more than made up for it by concocting some gripping origin stories and connecting them with more evocatively-named events such as ‘The Big Splat’ and ‘The Great Dying’. [more inside]
Recently in space
Robots, scary galaxies, new outfits, and a lack of spots. Asteroid 1998 HL1 flew pretty close by the Earth.
The sun is spotless, and has been so for a while. (Previously) [more inside]
Obviously there's no place on Lunar Base Three for a live cow
"I despise this synthetic milk. How can I get some real fresh milk? And the answer came: the only place you can get fresh milk from is a cow." "A cow? On the moon?" "Why not, I said to myself — why not build a cow?" Hi Diddle Diddle: an entertaining short story by Robert Silverberg (writing as Calvin M. Knox) in Astounding Science Fiction, 1959. Scanned images or plain text (search for "knox" to scroll down to this story).
Fly me to the Moon please. Right now.
My mother won a ticket to the Moon. In 1969 Mrs Anna Dabbs won a ticket for a flight to the Moon. She never got to go.
Her son, journalist Alastair Dabbs, conducts a hard-hitting investigation in which he names names. Reputations are ruined. History is set straight.
(SLRegister)
