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MIAMI — NASA is questioning whether Apollo 13 commander James Lovell has the right to sell a 70-page checklist from the flight that includes his handwritten calculations that were crucial in guiding the damaged spacecraft back to Earth. The document was sold by Heritage Auctions in November for more than $388,000, some 15 times its initial list price. The checklist gained great fame as part of a key dramatic scene in the 1995 film "Apollo 13" in which actor Tom Hanks plays Lovell making the calculations. After the sale, NASA contacted Heritage

Explanation: If you drop a hammer and a feather together, which reaches the ground first? On the Earth, it's the hammer, but is the reason only because of air resistance? Scientists even before Galileo have pondered and tested this simple experiment and felt that without air resistance, all objects would fall the same way. Galileo tested this principle himself and noted that two heavy balls of different masses reached the ground simultaneously, although many historians are skeptical that he did this experiment from Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa as folklore suggests. A good place free of air resistance to test...

Apollo Image Atlas AS15-P-9625 Image Collection: Panoramic Mission: 15 Magazine: P Revolution: 38 Latitude / Longitude: 19° S / 117.5° E Lens Focal Length: 24 inch Camera Look: Forward Camera Altitude: 117 km Sun Elevation: 27° Stereo Pair: AS15-P-9630 Film Type: 3414 Film Width: 5 inch Image Width: 45.24 inch Image Height: 4.5 inch Film Color: black & white Index Map: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/mapcatalog/apolloindex/apollo15/as15indexmap01/ Feature(s): DELPORTE, SOUTHWEST OF IZSAK, NORTH OF

A long-lost, highly valuable Moon rock brought back from the Apollo 17 mission has turned up in the files of Bill Clinton. The rock was one of 50 presented to each state, and was given to Arkansas while the ex-president was governor. The rock, worth millions of dollars, had been missing since at least 1980 until an archivist found it in old gubernatorial papers. Bobby Roberts, director of the Central Arkansas Library System, told Reuters the archivist opened a box previously archived as "Arkansas flag plaque." The rock and a state flag were originally affixed to the plaque, but the...

A team of astronomers are planning an epic quest to track down the 42-year-old lunar module that's adrift in the solar system. It's not often I read about a new project that leaves me undecided whether it's totally crazy or a stroke of genius. I was recently sent a press release of such a project and, having read it over a few times, I think I'm leaning toward the latter. The idea is the brain child of British amateur astronomer Nick Howes who not only has a passion for hunting for asteroids, but also for the Space Race -- in...

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites. Images show the twists and turns of the paths made when the astronauts explored the lunar surface. This interactive shows two LRO images of the Apollo 17 landing site. Click and drag on the white slider bar to wipe from one to the other. The left image was released today; the right image is a zoom-in on an LRO image released in 2009. LRO was moved into a lower orbit to capture the new image. The images do...

Wounded by the CalPERS bribery scandal and other problems, a New Jersey pharmaceutical-benefits company is being sold. Medco Health Solutions Inc., one of the giants of the drug-benefit industry, on Thursday agreed to a $29.1 billion takeover by rival Express Scripts Inc. Such a deal would have been unthinkable a few months ago, when Medco was flying high. But the New Jersey company ran into a series of problems that began with its entanglement in the CalPERS bribery case. "This year has been a head-spinner for this (Medco) management team, starting out with the CalPERS issues," said investment analyst Arthur...

Several days ago, Steven Jones of Dow Jones Newswires – a News Corporation company – broke what may be the story of the Millennium, literally. According to 69 recent SEC filings that have now “vanished”, a Texan by the name of Johnny Earl Satterwhite claims to hold over $8 trillion in public companies like Microsoft, Exxon Mobil and City National Bank, among others. Jones also obtained documents that show Satterwhite falsely warranting his ownership of almost one trillion shares in Microsoft. This is 100% impossible, as Jones brilliantly notes... that's more than the 8.4 billion shares Microsoft has issued in...

In a letter dated August 9, 1971, Caltech Professor of Geology and Geophysics Dr. Gerald Wasserburg wrote to NASA administrator Robert R. Gilruth extending his congratulations for “one of the most brilliant missions in space science ever flown”. He was referring to the Apollo 15 mission, which began 40 years ago this month. The flight of Apollo 15 marked the true beginning of lunar exploration from a scientific viewpoint. Lunar science was the primary focus of this mission, whereas engineering and geopolitical considerations had dominated the preceding lunar landings. Apollo 15 would make use of uprated equipment to enhance the...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government has sued a former NASA astronaut to recover a camera used to explore the moon's surface during the 1971 Apollo 14 mission after seeing it slated for sale in a New York auction. The lawsuit, filed in Miami federal court on Wednesday, accuses Edgar Mitchell of illegally possessing the camera and attempting to sell it for profit. In March, NASA learned that the British auction house Bonhams was planning to sell the camera at an upcoming Space History Sale, according to the suit. The item was labeled "Movie Camera from the Lunar Surface"...

BOSTON – After setting a soaring vision to land a man on the moon, President John F. Kennedy struggled with how to sell the public on a costly space program he worried had "lost its glamour" and had scant political benefits, according to a newly released White House tape. Kennedy and NASA Administrator James Webb hashed out how to strengthen public backing for the mission, such as by highlighting its technological benefits and military uses. And in a scenario that echoes today, the two worried about preserving funding amid what Webb calls a "driving desire to cut the budget," according...

California woman trying to hawk moon rock for $1.7M to undercover NASA agent detained in stingBy Robert Jablon, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press 1 hour 3 minutes ago LOS ANGELES, Calif. - She promised the moon, for a sky-high price. He wasn't buying. A woman who tried to sell what she said was a rare piece of moon rock for $1.7 million was detained when her would-be buyer turned out to be an undercover NASA agent, officials said Friday. The grey rocks, which are considered national treasures and are illegal to sell, were given to each U.S. state...

There has been a long-lived bit of Apollo moon landing folklore that now appears to be a dead-end affair: microbes on the moon. The lunar mystery swirls around the Apollo 12 moon landing and the return to Earth by moonwalkers of a camera that was part of an early NASA robotic lander – the Surveyor 3 probe. On Nov. 19, 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean made a precision landing on the lunar surface in Oceanus Procellarum, Latin for the Ocean of Storms. Their touchdown point was a mere 535 feet (163 meters) from the Surveyor 3...

NASA: Instead of awarding our retired space fleet to museums, we should be awarding contracts to go to Mars and beyond. Once we triumphed over the vacuum of space. Now we face a vacuum of leadership. A nation whose world leadership was unquestioned once held its breath as an American spacecraft placed American astronauts on the surface of the moon. It was a triumph of exceptionalism that was officially laid to rest this week as a nation held its breath to see which museums our space shuttle fleet would be awarded to. In these difficult economic times and with a...

Apollo 14 -- the safely numbered one after that, um, other one -- splashed down 40 years ago today. Since there were no dancing-on-the-edge death-defying dramatic escapes on this one, the mission is largely lost to history. It did get NASA back on track, of course, and paved the way for as many additional moon landings as the budget could afford (three). But there were some oddities attached to Apollo 14. Here are six: 6. The astronauts got lost on the moon. 4. Astronaut Ed Mitchell became a raving UFO loon. 2. Shepard: Least-liked Apollo astronaut? Shepard was a Machiavellian,...

Rosemary Roosa, the daughter of Stuart Roosa, stand’s beside the moon tree planted at Stennis Space Center. It was 1971. She was 7. And he was Stuart Roosa, the astronaut who would fly the command module and orbit the moon while Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell spent 33 hours on the surface. Apollo 14 was America’s third trip to put men on the moon. It followed the ill-fated Apollo 13 and recaptured the heart of the nation as Shepard and Mitchell successfully gathered 93 pounds of moon rocks, took a four-hour hike and whacked two golf balls with a...

After the near-disaster of Apollo 13 some ten months earlier, NASA and the Apollo program badly needed a successful mission. Apollo 14 delivered this more than adequately, although at times it was a close call. The landing site for this mission was the Fra Mauro Formation at the edge of the Imbrium Basin, re-targeted from the ill-fated Apollo 13 flight. Apollo 14 is significant as the first lunar mission to make landfall in a region other than the flat mare topography of the earlier landings. It features a hilly, hummocky, ridge-like topography, and was thought likely to contain ejecta from...

A typical conversation over the last year at space blogs.

The mysteries surrounding the mission of China's Chang'e 2 moon probe are gradually being solved. Prior to the launch, China was exceptionally shy about revealing many details of the mission, including the launch vehicle. This led some analysts, including the author, to wonder what was being left out of the public domain.

A rare bronze signet ring with the impression of the face of the Greek sun god, Apollo, has been discovered at Tel Dor, in northern Israel, by University of Haifa diggers. "A piece of high-quality art such as this, doubtlessly created by a top-of-the-line artist, indicates that local elites developing a taste for fine art and the ability to afford it were also living in provincial towns, and not only in the capital cities of the Hellenistic kingdoms," explains Dr. Ayelet Gilboa, Head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, who headed the excavations at Dor along...

From Lunar Pioneer

Return to the Moon, Lost and Redeemed? When will the next Moon Landing take place, and how will it be undertaken? Up until last February, the answer would have been sometime in 2019, and aboard space craft being developed by Project Constellation, started by President George W. Bush. But President Obama lobbed a hand grenade into Constellation, proposing its cancellation.

LRO Sees Apollo Landing Sites. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has returned its first imagery of the Apollo moon landing sites. The pictures show the Apollo missions' lunar module descent stages sitting on the moon's surface, as long shadows from a low sun angle make the modules' locations evident. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, was able to image five of the six Apollo sites, with the remaining Apollo 12 site expected to be photographed in the coming weeks. The satellite reached lunar orbit June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it...

20 July is the 41st anniversary of Apollo11 landing on the Moon.It was a great moment in American history.It's too bad our governments leaders decided that NASA abandon its mission to explore the unknown in favor of making the Islamic people "feel good about themselves.

I suspect that human capability reached its peak or plateau around 1965-75 – at the time of the Apollo moon landings – and has been declining ever since. This may sound bizarre or just plain false, but the argument is simple. That landing of men on the moon and bringing them back alive was the supreme achievement of human capability, the most difficult problem ever solved by humans. 40 years ago we could do it – repeatedly – but since then we have *not* been to the moon, and I suggest the real reason we have not been to the...

As the deepening crisis of the catastrophic Gulf oil disaster continues to unfold, several oil spill stories of major importance have been virtually ignored. Even the conservative media have refused by and large to cover these stories. Conservative Examiner was among the first to break these stories, yet to this day not a single major media outlet has been willing to report them, not even Fox News or conservative talk radio. These stories are explosive, conclusive, factually verified, and of utmost importance to understanding what is truly happening in the Gulf and the scenario that led to it. First, on...

The chasm between Apollo and the Gulf President Obama’s Administration and its supportive media repeatedly say our 1970 Apollo 13 experience is analogous to the effort to contain and cap the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Not hardly! The rescue of Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, after an oxygen tank explosion on their spacecraft, illustrates how complex technical accidents should be handled, in contrast to the Gulf fiasco. Nothing in the government’s response to the blowout and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and its aftermath bears any resemblance to the response to the...

Competitiveness: The president spent Tax Day reassuring Florida voters that money will keep flowing to NASA. But in space as well as on Earth, we'll be an unexceptional nation. In space, no one can hear you scheme. President Obama's speech at the Kennedy Space Center will never be confused with President Kennedy's clarion call in 1961 to send an American to the moon within a decade. Rather it was an admission that we will now boldly go where no one wants to go.

<p>WASHINGTON (AFP) – Apollo 11 hero Neil Armstrong Tuesday lashed out at President Barack Obama's decision to axe NASA plans to return to the Moon, describing the move as "devastating" to the US space program.</p> <p>Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the lunar surface, was one of three former astronauts who signed an open letter to Obama ahead of his visit to Florida on Thursday where he will deliver a space policy speech.</p>

American Minute for April 11th: "Houston, we've had a problem" were the words sent from Apollo 13, which was launched for the moon APRIL 11, 1970. Mission control identified that an oxygen tank had exploded, irreparably damaging the craft. Special prayer services were held at the Chicago Board of Trade, at St. Peter's Basilica by the Pope, at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and reported in The New York Times. Even the U.S. Senate adopted a resolution urging prayer. In sub-zero temperature, the crew pieced together an oxygen filter, jump-charged the command module batteries, and manually steered the ship to...

Unlucky Apollo 13 was launched from KSC on April 11, 1970. Liftoff occurred at 2:13 pm EST, which, auspiciously, was 13:13 CST at MSC in Houston. For the superstitious among us, this in-your-face planning by NASA could only bode ill for the mission. The remarkable journey of Apollo 13 has been documented in print and, most famously, the motion picture starring Tom Hanks. Since most of us know the overall story, we will focus here on the notable aspects and perhaps lesser-known but still interesting details. The third manned lunar landing mission was targeted for the Fra Mauro feature, near...

On April 14th, 1970, a new crater was carved into the surface of the Moon: How do we know it’s new? Because we made it. That’s the impact scar of the third stage of the Saturn V rocket (technically designated S-IVB) that carried Apollo 13 to — but sadly, not on — the Moon. Earlier missions had placed seismic instruments on the lunar surface to measure if the Moon had any activity. They found it did, and in fact several moonquakes were big enough that had you been standing there, you would have felt them quite strongly (and probably been...

FR Exclusive American Heroes; Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Jim Lovell, Steve Ritchie Forbidden To See Troops In SWA I am just off phone with a member of the American Heroes tour group stuck in Qatar. The four, Armstrong, Cernan. Lovell and Ritchie have been planning this tour to see the real front-line troops for months, so they could give some visual support and morale boost to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But now they are stuck in a rear area in Qatar, because some Washington Weenie claims it would be too dangerous for them to move any farther forward,...

CalPERS says it has lost $475 million on an investment that yielded controversial placement agent and former CalPERS board member Alfred Villalobos his biggest single payday. The loss is based on June 30 figures and appears to have shrunk somewhat in the months since. Because the loss is still on paper, it could rebound some more before CalPERS chooses to sell it. .. The pension fund said its equity investment in New York financial giant Apollo Global Management had fallen to an estimated $124.6 million as of last June, the latest figures available. Cal-PERS paid $600 million for the investment...

Achievement: The nation that put the first man on the moon may have put its last as budget cuts slash NASA's plans to return. Men will return to the moon, but they will likely speak Chinese. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced in front of a joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American to the moon by the end of that decade. It was a clarion call to the American spirit and technology to rise up and prove that America's best days were still ahead. Forty-one years after Neil Armstrong set foot on...

Former U.S. Senator Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt (R-NM) was the twelfth and last man to set foot on the Moon, as lunar module pilot for Apollo 17 in December 1972. The Administration finally has announced its formal retreat on American Space Policy after a year of morale destroying clouds of uncertainty. The lengthy delay, the abandonment of human exploration, and the wimpy, un-American thrust of the proposed budget indicates that the Administration does not understand, or want to acknowledge, the essential role space plays in the future of the United States and liberty. This continuation of other apologies and retreats...

Two public policy groups see opportunity in Ohio for 'green-collar' jobsBy MARK DODOSH 12:25 pm, January 25, 2010 The two public policy groups — Apollo Alliance of San Francisco and Policy Matters Ohio — have released a joint report that recommends changes in Ohio's job training efforts in order to better prepare people for what they call “green-collar jobs” in the clean energy sector of the economy. The report, “Mapping Green Career Pathways: Job Training Opportunities and Infrastructure in Ohio,” said many of the elements of a green training infrastructure already exist in Ohio. However, the two groups say there...

Shedding new light on the involvement of former board members in lucrative deals, CalPERS revealed Thursday that marketing middlemen known as placement agents earned more than $125 million in fees from investments by the pension fund. The agents include four ex-CalPERS board members, among them former state Treasurer Matt Fong and former CalPERS President William Crist. Their activities as placement agents were disclosed for the first time in thousands of pages of documents released by the California Public Employees' Retirement System. Crist defended his work when reached by phone at his home in Turlock on Thursday, and Fong couldn't be...

They say no one remembers No. 2, but the second manned lunar landing was memorable for a number of reasons. First, almost anyone familiar with the Apollo program remembers the launch. Apollo 12 was successfully launched in a rainstorm from Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 14th, 1969. As the Saturn V lifted from the launch pad, the familiar voice of Mission Commander Pete Conrad was heard on the air-to-ground loop playfully exclaiming, “That’s a LOVELY liftoff, that’s not bad at all!”, and indeed for a time it wasn’t. While normal at first, all hell broke loose about 30 seconds into...

It's blurrier than old MySpace snapshots, but it's there as expected. The Apollo Lunar Modules and the US flag left behind at the Apollo 17 landing site has been caught in a close-up image by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The lander as well as the flag, or rather the remaining flag pole, seen in the image above are exactly where they should be based on this shot by the Ascent Module "right after Apollo 17 lifted off the Moon": Going a step further, the location can be compared to more recent images of the landing site and everything still...

The Man Behind the Curtain and his Drones. ...."In a November 2008 in and interview with Spiegel, Soros made some comments that accurately outlined precisely the course that President Obama's administration would eventually pursue in 2009: "I think we need a large stimulus package which will provide funds for state and local government to maintain their budgets -- because they are not allowed by the constitution to run a deficit. For such a program to be successful, the federal government would need to provide hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition, another infrastructure program is necessary. In total, the cost...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently credited Apollo with helping write the stimulus bill and getting it passed. Yet the stimulus' "green jobs" provisions funnel federal tax dollars to unions, green groups and community organizers -- that is, the organizations that make up Apollo. Jones was a fugitive from justice for 11 years. His own account at his Web site says: "As a leader of the Weather Underground, Jeff evaded an intense FBI manhunt for more than a decade. In 1981, they finally got him. Twenty special agents battered down the door of the Bronx apartment where he was living...

VAN Jones resigned as White House green-jobs czar after the public got a look at his history of radical activism, including his time building the so-called Apollo Alliance -- a coalition of left-wing interest groups unified around the green-jobs concept. But another, even more radical Jones (not related) is leading Apollo's New York state activities.

As a reader asks, how did Van Jones make it through vetting to become Obama's green jobs czar? Though very well regarded by officials of both parties, and a major figure in the new environmental movement, he's the type of figure who typically stays outside government. The only reason his various outrageous statements and affiliations haven't become a major issue yet is, paradoxically, because they're being driven by Glenn Beck.

Don’t you know Obama and his ilk wish to God (or whoever the heck they wish to) that Glenn Beck would fall into adultery with an Argentinean newswoman, or cut his jugular vein while shaving, or show up drunk, high and naked to his FOX show and forever be publically vilified, marginalized and thus muzzled? Beck has formally joined Rush as an Official Pain in Barack Obama’s Backside (OPIBOB). (Are you an OPIBOB yet?) Yep, not only has Obama’s administration called Rush out, but the White House has now phoned Beck during his TV show in an attempt to get...

I came across a book written by David Horowitz and Richard Poe about George Soros. The Shadow Pary. It was written three years ago. With what is happening in our country and the involvemnt of Acorn, Unions, activist groups and media blackouts this is worth reading.

Note these names in particular: George Soros–Multi-billionaire funder of leftwing causes and groups, Tides Foundation’s Wade Rathke (ACORN founder), and Anna Burger–Secretary Treasurer of SEIU, with massive influence over Obama. The Alliance has boasted of writing both the stimulus bill AND Cap and Trade. And it is driving the Obama Reich’s agenda with unbelievable force.

UPDATE! 8/4/09 The Apollo Alliance has now ADMITTED that they wrote the Stimulus Bill AND the Cap and Trade Bill. It will only be a matter of time before America learns THEY wrote the Healthcare Bill too!

President Obama's Shadow Government has begun to attract attention as more is known about the people he has appointed to positions that need no Congressional approval.

FOX News' Glenn Beck is doing an extraordinary job this week walking America behind the scenes of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and outlining who is actually running the White House. Monday night he asked us to invite one friend to watch; tonight I invite all my friends to watch (Rush will be on tonight). -Sarah Palin