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It would be fair to say that the crashy culmination of NASA's LCROSS mission on October 9th was a technical success but a public-relations fizzle. LCROSS on final approach LCROSS and its Centaur rocket prepare to crash into the Moon. NASA On the plus side, the engineering team for LCROSS (short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) delivered as promised, deftly driving a spent 2½-ton Centaur rocket into a target zone near the Moon's south pole only 2 miles (3½ km) across. Four minutes later, after flying through the debris cloud raised by the rocket's crash, an instrument-packed 600-kg...

Jim Krehbiel was up past midnight making a piece of art by layering maps and field notes onto photos he had taken of an ancient ritual site high on a cliff ledge in the desert Southwest. He looked at the image of the kiva and remembered how the ruins were nearly inaccessible. Krehbiel had to lower himself on a rope to reach them. Why, he wondered that night in the fall of 2007, would anyone build something so important in such a remote spot among the canyons and mesas? It was then that the chairman of Ohio Wesleyan University's art...

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...

Click here to view the amazing video! Sir Isaac Newton would be amazed by this awesome video, showing Saturn moons causing gravitational waves as they orbit near its F Ring. These images can only be taken every 15 years, during Saturn's equinox. Thankfully, Cassini is there now. In the video you can see Prometheus (in the inner side) and Pandora (on the outer side), disturbing and smoothing the rings one after the other, which is why they are called shepherd moons. Things get even more spectacular in the Keeler gap, inside the A ring. There, Daphnis surfs the ring creating...

There was a plume after all. Observers on Earth had their doubts after LCROSS and its Centaur booster rocket hit the Moon on Friday, Oct. 9th. The twin lunar impacts failed to produce visible plumes of debris, prompting speculation that something had gone wrong. On the contrary, members of the LCROSS science team are now calling the experiment "a smashing success." Fifteen seconds after the Centaur hit the shadowy floor of crater Cabeus, the LCROSS spacecraft flying 600 km overhead took the following picture of a plume measuring 6 to 8 km wide: "There is a clear indication of a...

Enlarge ImageBoom or bust? This near-infrared image of Cabeus crater was taken from Palomar Observatory after the LCROSS impact today. Credit: Palomar Observatory/Caltech NASA officials and scientists spent the better part of an hour in this morning's press conference patting themselves on the back. The LCROSS mission in search of lunar water was a great success, they said, all the while ignoring a very large elephant in the room: No one among the millions watching as a 2-ton hunk of metal slammed into the moon could see the much-ballyhooed spray of dust and debris that they had been told...

According to evolutionists, our moon is nearly as old as the Earth and, from the rate of unimpeded meteors hitting the moon's surface over billions of years, there should be many feet of lunar dust on the moon's surface.

WASHINGTON —  Take that, moon! NASA bulldozed two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed 4 minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash. But initial photos show that the moon didn't give the reaction to the double jabs that NASA expected. And the public definitely didn't get the live explosive views they may have anticipated from the mission called LCROSS, short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. Screens got fuzz and...

With all the Obama award frenzy, is there any Real News? I know we bombed the moon. Did they shoot back yet? (Being, as I am, a resident of Barsoom, I figure we'll be next.)

Live stream: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

NASA's Lunar Prospector first detected some hydrogen signatures in craters on the dark side of the moon in 1999. Ever since, researchers have been keen to confirm the presence of water on the moon. The Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is tasked with crashing through the mists of speculation and conjecture and discover the truth. And you can watch all the action as it happens. LCROSS was launched on June 18th and executed a fly-by of the moon five days later before entering into a wide orbit. On Friday October 9th, the craft will start to make...

An enterprising robotic explorer will smash into the lunar frontier Friday in search of water ice hidden deep inside the darkest corners of the moon, spewing hundreds of thousands of pounds of dust high above the surface in a celestial event visible from Earth. Just four minutes will decide the outcome of three years of preparations, four months of space travel, and a $79 million investment put into the bold mission. Four minutes is the time that nine science instruments on the LCROSS probe will be able to directly study a cloud of dust thrown high above the moon by...

NASA's LCROSS Mission Changes Impact Crater 09.29.09 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 and JAXA's Kaguya spacecraft. This decision was prompted by the current best understanding of hydrogen concentrations in the Cabeus region, including cross-correlation...

Get ready for a unique cosmic collision! Early this coming Friday morning (Oct. 9), NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will end its mission with a bang — literally. Currently carrying with it the upper stage of the rocket that launched it on its way to the moon on June 18, the game plan is to send that spent rocket motor on a course to smash into the lunar surface. But just not anywhere on the lunar surface, but to a thoroughly scrutinized crater called Cabeus that lies near the moon's south pole and is enveloped in perpetual...

Back in January of this year, just after Obama was sworn in as President, he got into a controversy by saying the $787 billion stimulus bill would save construction equipment maker Caterpillar from having to cut 20,000 jobs. The stimulus bill has come and while going, it has not saved those jobs at Caterpillar nor at numerous other business and industries.   One way to actually stimulate Caterpillar and the economy is to spend those billions going to the moon, Mars and beyond.   John F, Kennedy said we should not go to the moon because it is easy, but...

In May, President Obama set up a panel to study and propose the how, when and if for future US space flight efforts. Considering Obama’s current shilly-shallying on his Afghan War policy, we should worry whether any American space program will be left when he finally makes up his mind. Since NASA was formed by politics instead of pure scientific need due to Sputnik's launch by the USSR in 1957, one would not be surprised at its sinister, shaky hand at the throttle and purse strings. However, John Kennedy was most eloquent and gallant when he defined why we would...

Is this week's revelation that water ice is more prevalent on the moon than scientists expected a "game-changer" for future spaceflight, as some experts think? Actually, the rules of the game for going beyond Earth orbit haven't changed - but the latest findings could bring new attention to options in the old playbooks.

Yes, the moon is a "wetter" place than the Apollo astronauts ever could have imagined, but don't break out the beach gear just yet. Although three independent groups today announced the detection of water on the lunar surface, their find is at most a part per 1000 water in the outermost millimeter or two of still very dry lunar rock. The discovery has potential, though. Future astronauts might conceivably wring enough water from not-completely-desiccated lunar "soil" to drink or even to fuel their rockets. Equally enticing, the water seems to be on its way to the poles, where it could...

Dreams of establishing a manned Moon base could become reality within two decades after India’s first lunar mission found evidence of large quantities of water on its surface. Data from Chandrayaan-1 also suggests that water is still being formed on the Moon. Scientists said the breakthrough — to be announced by Nasa at a press conference today — would change the face of lunar exploration. The discovery is a significant boost for India in its space race against China. Dr Mylswamy Annadurai, the mission’s project director at the Indian Space Research Organisation in Bangalore, said: “It’s very satisfying.”

NASA's first version of the rocket slated to replace the space shuttle and send astronauts back to the moon will make its debut test launch Oct. 27, four days early, the space agency announced Tuesday. The rocket, a demonstration booster called Ares I-X, was previously scheduled to blast off Oct. 31, but engineers preparing the booster were able to complete work in time for the earlier liftoff, NASA officials said. Launch is set for 8:00 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) on Tuesday, Oct. 27 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Earth's aged, crater-pocked, and bone dry-appearing moon may well sport a wet look. That outlook is gaining momentum via a treasure-trove of new scientific measurements gleaned by an international armada of moon-orbiting scientific scouts, including a report last week that craters near the lunar poles, always in shadow, may harbor water ice. What's more is that such a prospect could fuel those eager to return human explorers to the moon, to establish a base camp there, and to hone talent and hardware for jumping off to other destinations.

Jammed with equipment most scientists can only dream of and sporting one of the world's fastest supercomputers, King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) was to be officially unveiled late afternoon by King Abdullah with an audience of top world scientists and a handful of leaders. KAUST with its flashy three-dimensional imaging facilities and other modern hardware worth some 1.5 billion dollars, is a keystone of the 85-year-old king's effort to modernise the oil-rich kingdom, underscored by its launch on the Saudi national day.

Reliable sources report that there will be a press conference at NASA HQ at 2:00 pm this Thursday featuring lunar scientist Carle Pieters from Brown University. The topic of the press briefing will be a paper that will appear in this week's issue of Science magazine wherein results from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) aboard Chandrayaan-1 will be revealed. The take home message: there is a lot of water on the Moon. Stay tuned.

Aurignacian Lunar Calendar Photo ­- Anonymous / Don’s MapsThe Oldest Lunar Calendars and Earliest Constellations have been identified in cave art found in France and Germany. The astronomer-priests of these late Upper Cultures understood mathematical sets, and the interplay between the moon annual cycle, ecliptic, solstice and seasonal changes on earth. The First (Lunar) Calendar – The archaeological record’s earliest data that speaks to human awareness of the stars and ‘heavens’ dates to the Aurignacian Culture of Europe, c.32,000 B.C. Between 1964 and the early 1990s, Alexander Marshack published breakthrough research that documented the mathematical and astronomical knowledge in the...

Shadow icebergs of the lunar antarctic???? NASA says that its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) probe in orbit around the Moon has detected neutron signatures indicating possible frozen water deposits hidden in craters at the lunar south pole. Tough country for ice mining. One of the LRO's main missions is to find water on the Moon, which would make it far less expensive and difficult to establish manned bases there. The deep crater bottoms of the lunar antarctic are considered to be a particularly promising place to look, as they are permanently in shadow - never receiving any sunlight which could...

Days after Armadillo Aerospace's Scorpius rocket qualified for a $1 million rocket prize, Masten Space Systems is readying its own Xombie lunar lander prototype for a slightly easier blastoff challenge. Although the potential payoff isn't as big, the drama could be just as high. The Xombie is due to begin its first trial at 7 a.m. PT Wednesday, shortly after the sun comes up over the test site in Mojave, Calif., according to organizers of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. And the team leader behind the Xombie's rise, company founder David Masten, says the flight could be a nail-biter.

Lately I have been looking at the moon and wondering if it will someday kill me. If I live another 50 years (which is entirely possible) I assume I will eventually be a robot, having shed my old skin and bones body and uploaded a scanned and digitized version of my brain to a machine. My fellow robots and I will live among the meat people for eons until the moon's orbit degrades, either gradually or because a meteor gives it a nudge, and Earth is annihilated in the collision. You might say I worry too much. But I've successfully...

Over the coming weeks, three teams will try to complete the second and final stage of the Lunar Lander ChallengeMovie Camera (LLC), sponsored by NASA and aerospace company Northrop Grumman. Last October, Armadillo Aerospace of Texas won level one of the challenge and $350,000 by building a rocket that made two 90-second flights, reaching an altitude of 50 metres, between flat concrete pads 100 metres apart. On Saturday, they will be aiming for the million-dollar prize for the more challenging level two.

WASHINGTON — A White House panel of independent space experts says NASA's return-to-the-moon plan just won't fly. The problem is money. The expert panel estimates it would cost about $3 billion a year beyond NASA's current $18 billion annual budget. "Under the budget that was proposed, exploration beyond Earth is not viable," panel member Edward Crawley, a professor of aeronautics at MIT, told The Associated Press Tuesday.

India loses Moon satellite links All communication links with the only Indian satellite orbiting the Moon have been lost, India's space agency says. Radio contact with the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was lost abruptly early on Saturday, said India's Bangalore-based Space Research Organization (Isro). The unmanned craft was launched last October in what was billed as a two-year mission of exploration. The launch was regarded as a major step for India as it seeks to keep pace with other space-faring nations in Asia. Following its launch from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, it was hoped the robotic probe would orbit the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- How far is President Barack Obama willing to go for a deal on overhauling the health care system? Try all the way to the moon. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs joked Wednesday that Obama would orbit the moon if he thought it would help get a deal on a bill Congress can vote on after it returns from summer break.

August 13, 2002: Scattered around our planet are hundreds of creatures that have been to the Moon and back again. None of them are human. They outnumber active astronauts 3:1. And most are missing. They're trees. "Moon Trees." NASA scientist Dave Williams has found 40 of them and he's looking for more. "They were just seeds when they left Earth in 1971 onboard Apollo 14," explains Williams. "Now they're fully grown. They look like ordinary trees--but they're special because they've been to the Moon." How they got there and back is a curious tale. It begins in 1953 when...

WASHINGTON -- NASA doesn't have nearly enough money to meet its goal of putting astronauts back on the moon by 2020 -- and it might be the wrong place to go, anyway. That's one of the harsh messages emerging from a sweeping review of NASA's human space flight program. The Human Space Flight Plans Committee, appointed by President Barack Obama and headed by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine, has been trying to stitch together some kind of plausible strategy for America's manned space program. The panel has struggled to find options that stay under the current budget and include missions...

Nasa will not be able to meet its target of sending humans back to the Moon by 2020, or even dream of landing on Mars, because it is suffering from chronic underfunding, a presidential review panel has warned. The US space agency needs at least another $50 billion (£30 billion) over the next decade if it is to come close to delivering on its vision for retiring the space shuttle, completing construction of the International Space Station and launching ambitious new voyages of discovery. Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in 1969. He believes a new lunar mission would be pointless...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany should try to launch an unmanned mission to the moon by around 2015, the government official in charge of aerospace matters said on Wednesday. In an interview with ZDF television, Economy Ministry State Secretary Peter Hintze said a German moon landing could be feasible "within the next decade, around 2015," and urged cooperation with other European countries and the United States.

Tonight, when the sun sets, go outside and look southeast. The full Moon is having a close encounter with Jupiter. The two are so bright, you won't even need a sky map to find them.

Ares supporters say headaches normal part of exploration Will NASA make its goal of landing on the moon by 2020? That question hung heavily over the three Augustine Commission meetings held this week across the nation. The commission, which is studying options for the space program at the behest of President Barack Obama, met in Houston, Huntsville, then Cocoa Beach, Fla.

Glorious citizens of America, this week is your time to unite and commemorate one of the greatest chapters in our nation’s superior history. This week, just days after we celebrated the birth of our nation 233 years ago, we are allowed to pat ourselves on the back for another one of our country’s accomplishments. This act wasn’t just a landmark moment in the history of the U.S., but in the history of mankind. Forty years ago this week, man first set foot on the moon. And it was the day man’s intellect reached beyond its natural bounds and achieved. And...

In 2005, NASA's Cassini probe, orbiting Saturn, made a tantalizing discovery: Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, was venting something -- possibly liquid water -- into the airless space around it.

(NOT: errors are by the creator; I cut and pasted) Flag on the Moon Written by Fraser Cain When the NASA astronauts first landed on the Moon, they left a few items on the surface to commemorate their visit. These items included a plaque, mission badges and an American flag. If you've ever seen images or video of the flag on the Moon, you might have a few questions. Why does the flag stand straight out and not just slump down? Here on Earth, flags are pushed out by the wind. Obviously, there's no wind on the Moon, so what's...

Man's first step on the moon nearly stumbled on earth. Plot: A remote Australian antenna, populated by quirky characters, plays a key role in the first Apollo moon landing.

Two Apollo 11 astronauts called for a manned Mars mission on Sunday, the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, while astronaut Neil Armstrong looked back at the steps that paved the way for the Apollo programme. NASA currently aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2020, with the eventual goal of sending astronauts to Mars, in line with a vision for the agency announced by President George W. Bush in 2004. But these plans may change, pending the outcome of a review of human spaceflight plans that is due to be completed at the end...

It has been four decades since people from Earth first landed on the moon, but it has also been nearly that long since humans stopped going. In the three years that followed NASA's historic July 20, 1969 moon landing by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, five more missions successfully touched down on the lunar surface. In all, 12 men walked on the moon during those flights, the last of them in 1972 during Apollo 17. Today, NASA is on a path to return to the moon by 2020, but some believe the goal of human spaceflight should...

Forty years ago today we celebrated a miracle, two men walked on the moon. For those of us who grew up before twitter, and facebook, the US space program was simply the coolest thing in the world. I joined all of my friends in wanting to be Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldren, no one wanted to be Michael Cooper because he stayed in space. I didn't collect baseball cards when I was growing up, it was a pile of brochures from NASA that collected in my room, which I read over and over while sipping a glass of TANG. I...

LIVE FROMTHE APOLLO 11. BY JIM STALLARD - - - - July 20, 1969, 10:20 p.m. EDT Interior of Apollo 11 lunar module Mission Control: Okay Eagle, you're go for the module EVA. We've established visual of the ladder with the external camera. You'll be going out on a live feed so watch your step and keep it clean, gentleman! Neil Armstrong: (Chuckling) Roger that, Houston. Just mom and apple pie. Mission Control: Appreciated. You can go when ready. We've all got our fingers crossed on the dust issue. Armstrong: Come again Houston. The what? Mission Control: The dust. Armstrong:...

No, folks, I just don't think it is going to happen. I fully intend to live well into the middle of this century, but I am afraid I won't see a man on Mars. We will never explore the Martian canals, or make our coffee with melted Martian ice, or fossick for life forms in the defunct volcanoes. We will never conquer the Red Planet. Homo sapiens will flunk the next great test not because we lack the technology, nor even because we lack the money. We will fail, because – 40 years after the Moonshot – it is increasingly...

One of the most stupendous days in the history of man! And a great day to be proud of what America and Americans can do! A short two minute video with the late Walter Cronkite bringing us the news: [video at site] Restored moonwalk video montage here.It was hard to believe that we were actually watching live television images from the moon: "One small step for a man. One giant leap for mankind." -- Neil Armstrong, July 20, 1969 from Tranquility Base Photo Tribute:It was only later, after the astronauts returned, that we saw these color images: The Apollo 11...

It was a magically hot summer that year in July of 1969 when we prepared for the first moon walk with great anticipation. Like fables about the man in the moon or its composition being of green cheese, we likewise treated the impending news of this momentous event... only we knew it was not a fable. That did not change the absolute magic and unbelievability of that moment for us, back in our hot prairie town that summer. We lived in a working class neighborhood and the advent of color television had just only begun to be popularized amongst our...

The Parkes Observatory, originally commissioned in 1961, is normally used as a deep space radio telescope gathering data from astronomical observations. However, because of the sensitivity of the dish, it has also been used to track and receive data from space probes including the Galileo probe to Jupiter and various missions to Mars. Located in the middle of a sheep paddock 20 km (12 miles) north of the central New South Wales town of Parkes, the Parkes Observatory, with its giant 64 metre (or 210 feet) dish, is an integral part of the Australia Telescope National Facility. This radio telescope...

Forty years ago today the world watched as Apollo 11 touched down on the surface of the moon. Science Fiction and reality had met and the result was mesmerizing. I was 9 years old as I sat on the floor in front of our old 25” console TV and watched anxiously as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon for the first time. I remember thinking, "What if he just blows up" or "evaporates"? Star Trek had been around for a couple of years by then. I know I heard Armstrong utter those words that are now carved...