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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Friday his government plans to discuss with the United States the possibility of restarting joint inter-Korean economic projects to induce nuclear disarmament from North Korea. Moon's comments during a nationally televised speech came a day after a high-stakes nuclear summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un collapsed over what the Americans saw as excessive North Korean demands for sanctions relief in exchange for limited disarmament steps...(snip) ..."I vow to help usher in an era of a peace-driven economy on the Korean Peninsula," said Moon,...

SpaceX launches Israel's Beresheet lunar rover to Moon | Global News | Streamed live on Feb 21, 2019

NASA wants to jump-start development of landers to take humans to the Moon After more than a year of talk about returning humans to the Moon, NASA is asking the aerospace community to come up with designs for landers that can transport astronauts to the lunar surface. NASA’s goal is to test out these vehicles on the Moon as early as 2024 and then use them to take people to the lunar surface by 2028

A nonprofit Israeli consortium said Monday that it hopes to make history this week by launching the first private aircraft to land on the moon. SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries told a news conference that the landing craft — dubbed “Beresheet,” or Genesis — will take off from Florida, propelled by a SpaceX Falcon rocket on its weekslong voyage to the moon. The launch is scheduled late Thursday in the United States, early Friday in Israel. It had been originally slated for last December. […] The small craft, roughly the size of a washing machine, is equipped with instruments...

NASA seeking proposals for human-rated lunar lander systems Derek Richardson February 9th, 2019 An artist’s illustration of a completed lunar Gateway flying around the Moon with a commercially-developed lunar lander. Image Credit: NASAWith SLS and Orion in the latter stages of development, NASA wants to work with industry to develop a human-rated lunar lander by the mid-to-late 2020s.NASA is working to return astronauts to the Moon under Space Policy Directive-1. In order to do that sustainably, the agency announced plans on Dec. 13, 2018, to work with U.S. companies to develop systems to land on the lunar surface. A formal...

When Apollo 11‘s Eagle lunar module landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had to do something hard: Wait. They were scheduled to open the door of their lunar lander and step onto the unknown surface of a completely different world. But for now, their mission ordered them to take a pause before the big event. And so Aldrin spent his time doing something unexpected, something no man had ever attempted before. Alone and overwhelmed by anticipation, he took part in the first Christian sacrament ever performed on the moon—a rite of Christian...

If you ever find yourself at a cocktail party of astrophysicists and don't know what to say, try this: "But what about the angular momentum?" No matter what the topic of conversation, you'll be guaranteed to sound erudite. Nearly every field of astronomy, from galaxy formation to star formation, has an "angular momentum problem." Nothing in the cosmos ever seems to spin or orbit at the rate it should. The moon is no exception. It is the flywheel to end all flywheels; if its orbital angular momentum were transferred to Earth's axial rotation, our planet would come close to spinning ...

A chunk of Earth that could be 4.1 billion years old and is described as the planet's "oldest rock," may have been found and dug up on the Moon by Apollo astronauts, according to a new study. The possible relic was discovered and dug up in 1971 and scientists believe that it was sent off Earth, thanks to a powerful impact, possibly an asteroid or a comet. After colliding with the Moon (which at the time was three times closer to the Earth than it is now), it mixed with other lunar surface materials. "It is an extraordinary find that helps paint...

Several telescopes livestreamed the entire eclipse, and multiple people caught a glimpse of a small flash of light, seeming to come from around Lagrange crater. Because this event was seen by multiple observers separated by thousands of miles, the only conclusion is that something hit the moon, and its impact event was recorded on video. ...Further investigation will be necessary to determine the size of the meteoroid and obtain pictures of its impact crater, but for a basis of comparison, the LCROSS mission plowed a Centaur upper stage (2.2 tons) into the lunar surface at 2.5 km/s. This should have...

The proposed mission would be launched on an Ariane 64, a version of the Ariane 6 with four strap-on boosters. PTScientists, a German company that started as a team in the now-defunct Google Lunar X Prize competition for privately developed lunar landers, is responsible for the spacecraft. Belgian company Space Applications Services will provide ground control and communications services. The study contract has a value of several hundred thousand euros, ArianeGroup spokesman Julien Watelet said Jan. 22. The study is intended to study the feasibility of such a mission, including whether it could be done using a more commercial approach....

"As it turns out, the eclipse was even more special than most observers had noticed, as the Moon was actually struck by a meteorite while everyone was gazing in wonder at its rusty appearance. The meteorite itself wasn’t terribly large, and is estimated to have only been around 22 pounds. Still, its impact was large enough to be spotted by observers as well as the automated MIDAS system, and that’s pretty cool." I caught it as well with my own equipment. The impact flash appears at 1:23:04 in my video at about the 8 o'clock position near the edge of...

Grab your winter coat, some hot cocoa and your kid's telescope on Sunday and head outside because the next super blood wolf moon won’t be showing its face for another 18 years. While the celestial phenomenon sounds like something you’d read in a teenage werewolf novel, its actual meaning is derived from multiple sources. The term "super" refers to the placement of the moon. This month, the moon will be at its closest point to Earth’s orbit, making it appear larger than normal. The term "wolf" derives from the Native American nickname for January's full moon and the wolves who...

Russia's State Space Corporation Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin has said that NASA had asked Roscosmos to create a lunar version of the Soyuz spacecraft as a backup manned space transport system for flights to the Moon. A senior Russian space industry source told Sputnik that Moscow will develop an ugraded Soyuz version at its own expense, and no funding from NASA is expected. To ensure the capability of the Soyuz spacecraft to fly to the Moon, an accelerating unit and a new thermal protection that will allow the ship to return to the Earth’s atmosphere at the second cosmic velocity...

Earlier this month, an experiment on China’s Chang’e 4 lander got cotton plants to sprout on the moon for the first time. Well, they’re already dead.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Here comes a total lunar eclipse and supermoon, all wrapped into one. The moon, Earth and sun will line up this weekend for the only total lunar eclipse this year and next. At the same time, the moon will be ever so closer to Earth and appear slightly bigger and brighter than usual — a supermoon. "This one is particularly good," said Rice University astrophysicist Patrick Hartigan. "It not only is a supermoon and it's a total eclipse, but the total eclipse also lasts pretty long. It's about an hour." The whole eclipse starts Sunday...

The 18cm high aluminium alloy cylinder - called a moon surface micro-ecological circle - contains silkworm eggs and seeds for potatoes and cress. Chinese scientists now hope both plants will root and sprout in the container, producing the first flower ever grown on the space rock. They hope to see the results towards the end of a 100-day experimental period, according to the country's space agency. Last night, they announced their first breakthrough publishing a picture of cotton seed, bought up on Chang’e 4 actually growing. China hopes to be growing potatoes on the moon ‘within 100 days’ With all...

The China National Space Agency's Chang'e 4 lander is exploring the mysterious side of our lunar neighbor that faces away from Earth. It also had some unusual guests on board and -- in a first for the moon -- one of them sprouted. Xinhua announced the sprout Tuesday and posted a series of progress images covering the course of nine days and showing a seedling reaching up inside the habitat. The experiment didn't last long A team from Chongqing University in China developed a sealed biosphere habitat stocked with seeds, fruit fly eggs and yeast that it hoped would create...

China has declared its latest moon mission a success, hailing it as a landmark in its quest to become a strong space power by 2030. The country’s Chang’e-4 probe, named after a moon goddess of Chinese legend, was the world’s first spacecraft to land on the far side of the moon, which is not visible from the Earth. The landing on January 3 was the latest leap for Beijing as it tries to catch up with the United States in space. The Chang’e-4 mission did not stop with the historic landing. Here are five other things China’s moon probe has...

In contrast to President Trump, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has embraced a pro-labor program of higher wages and taxes. The early results have been discouraging. As President Trump leads a drive to slash taxes and pare back regulation, one major economy is taking a different approach. Under President Moon Jae-in, South Korea has raised taxes and the minimum wage in the name of economic growth. So far, it hasn’t worked out as planned. Growth has slowed, unemployment has risen and small-business owners like Moon Seung are complaining. Mr. Moon, founder of an auto parts maker called Dasung in...

It has been nearly 50 years since an American became the first human being to walk on the Moon and plant the U.S. flag. Judging from the successful landing of China's Chang'e-4 probe on the far side of the Moon and China's ambitious plans, including military ones, it may not be that long before a Chinese astronaut picks up that flag and brings it back to us. We have our own plans, to be sure, and that includes President Trump's already underway U.S. Space Force, yet we still are paying the price for the overreliance on private enterprise to do...