Tag: Moon

Protest filed against NASA contract awards for unmanned lunar landers

1:54 pm

Deep Space Systems, one of the private companies that bid for a NASA contract to build a private lunar lander to carry NASA instruments to the moon, and did not get the contract, has filed a protest against that decision.

I found out about this through my industry sources. I have no further information about the protest itself.

The timeline however is intriguing. The contracts were awarded to three different companies on May 31, 2019. Deep Space Systems’ protest was filed on June 24, 2019.

On July 30, 2019 one of contract winners, Orbit Beyond, backed out of the deal. Whether the protest or Orbit Beyond’s exit are related is at present unknown, though I wonder if they might be connected.

Either way, the question now arises: Who will replace Orbit Beyond? I also wonder if this protest gives Deep Space Systems an advantage for getting that replacement contract. This last thought is pure speculation and very unlikely. There are several other companies that are more well known and might be better qualified, and it would be inappropriate for NASA to allow its decision-making process to be pressured because of this protest.

Regardless, stay tuned for more information. This story is going to get more interesting.

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Chandrayaan-2 successfully puts itself in route to the Moon

8:46 am

Chandrayaan-2 today successfully completed its last Earth perigee burn, raising its orbital apogee so that it will enter the Moon’s gravitational sphere of influence on August 20th.

Chandrayaan-2 will approach Moon on August 20, 2019 and the spacecraft’s liquid engine will be fired again to insert the spacecraft into a lunar orbit. Following this, there will be further four orbit maneuvers to make the spacecraft enter into its final orbit passing over the lunar poles at a distance of about 100 km from the Moon’s surface.

…Subsequently, Vikram lander will separate from the orbiter on September 02, 2019. Two orbit maneuvers will be performed on the lander before the initiation of powered descent to make a soft landing on the lunar surface on September 07, 2019.

Vikram will be doing the hardest part, the landing.

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Yutu-2 and Chang’e-4 go to sleep again

8:42 am

Yutu-2's travels

Both Yutu-2 and Chang’e-4 have been put in dormant mode after completing their eighth lunar day on the far side of the Moon.

The article at the link provides a lot of new details about what both spacecraft have learned and done since they landed, including a nice detailed map showing Yutu-2’s exact path during those eight lunar days. The image to the right, reduced to post here, was taken by Yutu-2, and shows the rover’s tracks during what appears to be its seventh lunar day. It appears that the rover periodically stopped and did a pirouette, probably to obtain a 360 degree mosaic of the surrounding terrain.

Yutu-2’s travels have tended west from Chang’e-4, and on its eighth lunar day it continues that route, traveling 271 meters. After a period of short traveling days, they have now upped the distance traversed by a considerable amount. Since the planned nominal mission for both spacecraft had been three lunar days, both are demonstrating that the Chinese have figured out how to do this, and are now pushing Yutu-2 hard as a result.

The article vaguely describes some of the science obtained so far, but in general the Chinese remain tight-lipped about most of their discoveries.

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Water bears on the Moon!

6:05 am

A digital library carried by the Israeli lunar lander, Beresheet, that crashed on the Moon in April also carried with it dehydrated tardigrades, also called water bears.

Spivack had planned to send DNA samples to the moon in future versions of the lunar library, not on this mission. But a few weeks before Spivack had to deliver the lunar library to the Israelis, however, he decided to include some DNA in the payload anyway. Ha and an engineer on Spivack’s team added a thin layer of epoxy resin between each layer of nickel, a synthetic equivalent of the fossilized tree resin that preserves ancient insects. Into the resin they tucked hair follicles and blood samples from Spivack and 24 others that he says represent a diverse genetic cross-section of human ancestry, in addition to some dehydrated tardigrades and samples from major holy sites, like the Bodhi tree in India. A few thousand extra dehydrated tardigrades were sprinkled onto the tape used to secure the lunar library to the Beresheet lander.

The promising thing about the tardigrades, says Spivack, is that they could hypothetically be revived in the future. Tardigrades are known to enter dormant states in which all metabolic processes stop and the water in their cells is replaced by a protein that effectively turns the cells into glass. Scientists have revived tardigrades that have spent up to 10 years in this dehydrated state, although in some cases they may be able to survive much longer without water. Although the lunar library is designed to last for millions of years, scientists are just beginning to understand how tardigrades manage to survive in so many unforgiving environments. It’s conceivable that as we learn more about tardigrades, we’ll discover ways to rehydrate them after much longer periods of dormancy.

They suspect that the digital library probably survived the crash, which means the dehydrated water bears did also.

Don’t expect the Moon to be overrun by tardigrades. However, it will be a very interesting discovery if we find, years hence when explorers finally can recover that digital library, that the tardigrades can be re-hydrated and come back to life.

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First images from Chandrayaan-2

8:29 am

Earth from Chandrayaan-2

India yesterday released the first images taken by its lunar orbiter/lander/rover Chandrayaan-2, taken from Earth orbit of the Earth.

The image on the right is one example, and was taken mostly for engineering purposes. All the images (available here) demonstrates that the spacecraft’s camera is working properly, and it can orient itself accurately.

They now hope to put the spacecraft into lunar orbit on August 20th, with the landing attempt set for September 7th, after they have lowered that lunar orbit sufficiently.

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Chinese test microsat deorbits and crashes into Moon

10:05 am

The new colonial movement: A Chinese tiny smallsat, sent to lunar orbit to test the technology of such microsats, has been deorbited and allowed to crash into the far side of the Moon.

The micro satellite crashed into a predetermined area on the far side of the Moon at 10:20 p.m. on July 31 (Beijing Time), the center said Friday.

Weighing 47 kg, Longjiang-2 was sent into space on May 21, 2018, together with the Chang’e-4 lunar probe’s relay satellite “Queqiao,” and entered the lunar orbit four days later. It operated in orbit for 437 days, exceeding its one-year designed lifespan.

The development of the micro lunar orbiter explores a new low-cost mode of deep space exploration, said the center. The micro satellite carried an ultra-long-wave detector, developed by the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, aiming to conduct radio astronomical observation and study solar radiation.

China might be stealing a lot of the space technology it is using to make it a major space power, but it is also doing a fine job of refining and improving that technology. Its capability to do practically anything in space as well if not better than anyone else continues to grow.

And with their government using its space effort as a management test for determining the best individuals to promote into the government’s power structure, do not expect their space effort to wane anytime in the near future.

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Chandrayaan-2 successfully completes 4th orbit burn

9:23 am

The new colonial movement: India’s lunar orbiter/lander/rover Chandrayaan-2 today successfully completed its fourth engine burn, this time raising its orbital apogee to 89,472 kilometers (55,595 miles).

The next burn is scheduled for August 6, when the spacecraft’s orbit brings it back down to its perigee.

By September they expect to raise that apogee high enough so that it is within the Moon’s gravitational sphere of influence, when they will be able to put it the spacecraft into lunar orbit.

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Private lunar landing company backs out of NASA contract

9:23 am

Capitalism in space: The commercial lunar landing company, OrbitBeyond, has told NASA that it cannot fulfill its $97 million contract, only two months after that contract was announced.

NASA announced July 29 that OrbitBeyond informed the agency that “internal corporate challenges” will prevent it from carrying out a task order that NASA awarded the company May 31 as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The company asked to be released from that contract, and NASA agreed.

NASA didn’t elaborate on what specific issues caused OrbitBeyond to scrap its contract with NASA, and the company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. At the May 31 event where NASA announced the contracts, Siba Padhi, chief executive of OrbitBeyond, said the company was still in the process of closing a round of funding. The company has not subsequently announced a funding round.

Considering its receipt of a $97 million NASA contract, it would be very puzzlingly for the company to be unable to obtain further investment capital. If anything, that contract should have encouraged funding. If the lack of funding is the cause of this termination then it also suggests the company had other problems.

This leaves NASA with two private lunar lander companies. I expect NASA will look to award the contract to a third company. The company Firefly and its team of Israeli Beresheet engineers comes immediately to mind.

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Chandrayaan-2 completes third orbit maneuver

9:14 am

Chandrayaan-2 has completed its third engine burn to raise the apogee of its orbit to 71K.

The next burn is set for August 2, when the spacecraft returns to its orbital low point, the perigee. As it raises its orbit each time the time between burns gets extended because the orbit gets longer. By September however the apogee will put the spacecraft in the Moon’s gravitational field of influence, and when Chandrayaan-2 reaches that apogee engineers will then fire its engines again to slow it down and enter lunar orbit.

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Golfing with boulders on the Moon

12:20 pm

Boulder tracks on the Moon
Click for full resolution image.

Cool image time! The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team this week released a beautiful image of boulder tracks rolling down the inside slope of 85-mile-wided Antoniadi crater on the far side of the Moon. The image above, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, shows these tracks.

The most obvious track is cool because the boulder almost made, as the scientists note, “a hole-in-one.”

Running from the outcrops to the rim of the partially buried crater is a track etched by a rolling boulder bigger than a bus. Perhaps a moonquake shook it loose. The boulder bounced and rolled toward the partially buried crater, plowing a path that is still visible through the loose material of the slope. When it reached the rim of the partially erased crater, its path curved and it slowed to a stop.

…Had it rolled just 75 meters more, the boulder might have plopped neatly into a 30-meter-diameter young impact crater on the floor of the partially erased crater.

The arrows I have added indicate two more less obvious boulder tracks. If you click on the full resolution image and zoom in you can also see another series of impressions in the middle of the photograph that look like a dotted line, suggesting they were left by a boulder bouncing down the slope.

The scattered of boulders in the floor of the small crater all likely came from the top of the big crater’s rim, which I show in the wider image below.

Wider image showing entire crater slope

The box indicates the location of the image above.

While many things over the eons could caused these boulders to roll (moonquakes, erosion from the solar wind, other nearby impacts), a close look at the ground surrounding them does not show tracks emanating from most, suggesting they have been there a very long time, long enough for the surface reworking caused by the solar wind to have smoothed those tracks out.

The Moon is airless and mostly dead. The solar wind is incredibly weak. Any changes caused by it will take a lot of time. Consider the time required to smooth out those tracks. The mind boggles.

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The state of water on the Moon

8:31 am

Link here. The article describes new research that suggests the ice thought to exist in the Moon’s permanently shadowed polar craters is constantly being reworked, with some being leached away as other processes (comets, solar wind) replenish the losses.

They also theorize that this process might be making it easier to reach that water.

For forthcoming science and exploration, the scattering of water particles could be great news. It means astronauts may need not to subject themselves and their instruments to the harsh environment of shadowed crater floors in order to find water-rich soil — they could just find it in sunny regions nearby. “This research is telling us that meteoroids are doing some of the work for us and transporting material from the coldest places to some of the boundary regions where astronauts can access it with a solar-powered rover,” Hurley said.

To put it mildly, there is a lot of uncertainty about this last conclusion.

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Chandayaan-2 completes first orbit burn

8:18 am

India’s lunar orbiter/lander/rover Chandrayaan-2 yesterday completed its first orbital engine burn, raising its apogee, the high point in its orbit, 6,000 kilometers to about 51,000.

This boost meant that Isro scientists have to perform one less manoeuvre in the Earth orbit than what was planned earlier. According to the path chalked out for Chandrayaan-2 before the launch, the on-board propulsion systems were to be fired six times in Earth orbit – five times to raise the apogee and once to raise the perigee. Now, only four more “burns”, or firing of the propulsion system, will be needed on July 26 and 29, and August 2 and 6, to reach the final orbit of 233.2 x 143,953km.

…With a final boost on On August 14, Chandrayaan-2 will escape Earth’s orbit and begin its seven-day journey towards the moon. The spacecraft is scheduled to reach the moon orbit on August 20.

Once in lunar orbit they plan four more burns to lower the spacecraft to a 100 kilometer circular orbit, where the lander/rover will release and begin their own lowering process aimed for a September 7 landing.

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Northrop Grumman to build Gateway habitation module

9:41 pm

The boondoggle never dies! NASA has decided it will give a sole source contract to Northrop Grumman to build the minimal habitation module of its Gateway lunar space station, based on that company’s Cygnus unmanned freighter.

NASA is also bypassing a traditional procurement process for the Minimal Habitation Module. Rather than requesting bids from industry, and then evaluating the responses, NASA plans to fast-track a contract with Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, an operating unit of Northrop Grumman formerly known as Orbital ATK.

The pressurized habitation compartment will be docked with the Gateway’s Power and Propulsion Element in a stable near-rectilinear halo orbit around the moon. NASA announced in May that Maxar Technologies won a contract worth up to $375 million to build the Power and Propulsion Element, which will provide electricity and maneuvering capability for the Gateway station using high-power plasma thrusters, but does not include any pressurized section.

The Gateway is a mini-space station NASA plans to build in an orbit that swings as close as 2,000 miles from the moon about once per week. The Gateway will act as a stopover and safe haven for astronauts heading for the moon’s surface, NASA is designing the mini-station to accommodate myriad scientific experiments and engineering demonstrations required for more ambitious ventures deeper into the solar system, and eventually Mars.

The Trump administration wants to focus on a lunar landing by 2024, and so it forced NASA to reduce its Gateway boondoggle to the minimum necessary to make that lunar landing possible. This module, with the service module that Maxar is building, is that minimum Gateway.

And why do we even need this? Well, it appears that SLS and Orion and the not-yet-built or even designed lunar lander, by themselves, are not capable of getting astronauts to the Moon. A way station is somehow required.

Note also that the contract amount remains a secret, redacted from the NASA paperwork. Note also that NASA “still plans to add more elements to the Gateway, including contributions from international partners, after accomplishing the human landing on the moon.”

In other words, this is a typical Washington swamp buy-in, connived by the big space contractors and NASA to weasel this boondoggle into existence, even though the Trump administration is not interested. By keeping the cost secret at this point, they avoid some bad press and the possibility of political opposition. Their plan is to get the minimal Gateway funded and launched into space, and then demand more money to pay for the whole thing once the project exists.

This is what NASA does routinely, for all its projects. It lies about the initial cost, low balling it, so as to get the politicians to buy in. The result for the past two decades however is that NASA fails to build much of anything, while wasting gobs of taxpayer dollars on non-productive jobs here on Earth.

Do not be surprised if we see the same with Gateway. In fact, I would bet on it.

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Christopher Columbus Kraft, 1924-2019

9:29 pm

R.I.P. Christopher Columbus Kraft, the flight director for all the Mercury missions and later head of the Johnson Space Center during the 1960s march to the Moon, passed away today at the age of 95.

The techniques pioneered by Kraft and young flight directors who followed in his footsteps, men like Gene “failure is not an option” Kranz, the urbane Glynn Lunney and more, saved the Apollo 13 crew from the brink of disaster in the aftermath of an explosion on the way to the moon that severely damaged the spacecraft.

Once comparing his complex work as a flight director to a conductor’s, Kraft said, ‘The conductor can’t play all the instruments, he may not even be able to play any one of them,’” Bridenstine said. “‘But, he knows when the first violin should be playing, and he knows when the trumpets should be loud or soft, and when the drummer should be drumming. He mixes all this up and out comes music. That’s what we do here.’”

Kraft was part of the post-World War II can-do generation, a far cry from today’s NASA of schedule delays, bad management, engineering errors, and gigantic budget overruns. Kraft and his generation had “intergrity,” as astronaut Frank Borman once said. They had been given a difficult job and short deadline (the end of the decade). Rather than manipulate Congress and the public to give them more time and money so their jobs would be endlessly safe, they rolled up their sleeves and made it happen as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

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Jackson Crater on the Moon’s far side

11:01 am

Jackson Crater

Central peaks of Jackson Crater

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, let’s look at another cool Moon photograph. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team on July 19 released a new breath-taking oblique image of Jackson crater, located on the Moon’s far side. The image above, reduced significantly to post here, shows that photograph and the crater’s cluster of near-center peaks. From the caption:

East-to-west view of Jackson crater (44 miles diameter). Image was acquired when LRO was at an altitude of [69 miles] and the Sun was to the west of the crater (LROC was facing somewhat towards the Sun; phase angle 114 degrees). The central peak rises about [5900 feet] above the crater floor and the top of the crater rim in the background has more than [13,000 feet] relief relative to the floor. Image width is about [40 miles] and north is to the right

The white box indicates the area covered by the close-up to the right. From the article:

What is the composition of the crust from top to bottom? It is relatively easy to measure the surface, but what lies beneath the surface? On the Earth geologists can dig and drill deep into the crust. We do not have that luxury on the Moon, at least not yet! However, we can take advantage of natural drill holes in the crust – impact craters! When impacts occur they dig into the crust and the central peaks expose the deepest material. Jackson crater formed on what was rather uneven terrain: to the east of the crater the elevation is about +6000 meters and to the west about +3000 meters. The bottom of the crater sits at +1000 meters, and the material exposed in the central peak comes from more than 1000 meters deeper still. By studying the rocks exposed in the central peak we can get a glimpse of materials that have come up from five or more kilometers below the surface (>3 miles).

The black pile of giant boulders near the top of the close-up suggests molten material dredged up from deep below the surface. So do the many black boulders on the nearer mountain slopes.

Why this dark material does not cover the entire surface is not clear. The lighter and darker material indicates different materials and ages, but the specifics are not known, as yet.

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India successfully launches Chandrayaan-2

8:24 am

The new colonial movement: India yesterday successfully launched its lunar orbiter/lander/rover Chandrayaan-2 into orbit.

India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle GSLV MkIII-M1, successfully launched the 3840 kg Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft into an earth orbit today (July 22, 2019). The spacecraft is now revolving round the earth with a perigee (nearest point to Earth) of 169.7 km and an apogee (farthest point to Earth) of 45,475 km. Today’s flight marks the first operational flight of the GSLV Mk III.

They will slowly raise the spacecraft’s apogee over the next two months to bring it into the Moon’s gravitational sphere of influence, when they will begin lowering the orbit leading to a separation of the lander/rover for a September 7 landing near the Moon’s south pole.

This was the third launch of the upgraded GSLV Mark III. With this launch India now has an operational rocket it can use to launch its astronauts into space in 2022.

The leaders in the 2019 launch race:

9 China
9 Russia
8 SpaceX
5 Europe (Arianespace)
4 India

The U.S. continues to lead in the national rankings, 14 to 9.

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July 20, 1969: “We came in peace for all mankind.”

6:01 pm

An evening pause: In honor of the fiftieth anniversary.

The astronauts plant the American flag, after they had unveiled a plaque on the lunar module with the words, “We came in peace for all mankind.”

This was an American achievement, accomplished because our free and competitive society gave us the resources and trained talent to make it happen. We did it for all mankind, in good will, but we did it, no one else.

It is time that we as well as everyone else do it again.

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The Untouched Moon

6:01 pm

Montes Carpatus
Click for full image.

In celebration of Apollo 11: Continuing the theme of yesterday’s cool image, where I noted how little of the Moon we have really seen, today’s cool image gives us a breath-taking glimpse of one such untouched region, the Montes Carpatus region.

The photograph to the right, reduced to post here, was released by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team in March 2018. From the release:

Volcanic rocks are our best window to the deep interior of the Moon, and the Montes Carpatus has no shortage of volcanic landforms: lava flows, pyroclatic deposits, rilles, and more! Lavas are formed as the mantle begins to melt, so by sampling volcanic rocks of various ages from regions across the Moon scientists can reconstruct the range of compositions and processes over time. The Montes Carpatus formed as a result of the giant impact that formed the mighty Imbrium basin, the mountains are actually the raised rim of the basin.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. If you had told anyone involved in that mission that fifty years later no significant further manned exploration of the Moon had yet occurred, they would have scoffed.

It is a terrible condemnation of my generation, the generation that followed Apollo 11, that we did nothing grand like this. I challenge the generations today to reach higher, and do better.

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July 20, 1969: “One small step…”

6:01 pm

An evening pause: In honor of the fiftieth anniversary.

Neil Armstrong takes the first steps on the Moon. Note his focus is almost entirely on describing what he sees and experiences. He is doing this for two reasons, first to provide knowledge of the Moon to the world, and second to provide engineers as much information as possible for future missions.

This focus explains why the first thing he does is to get a contingency rock sample, just in case they need to leave the Moon quickly.

Note also that when Buzz Aldrin joins Armstrong on the surface, he is as professional and calm, proving that the way he has been portrayed by some recent movies as as undisciplined jerk is simply a slander. He would not have been picked for this mission if he really behaved that way.

He wanted to be the first, and lobbied to get that chance. After the decision was made he got down to work to make the mission a success.

For a different view of these same events, watch this video.

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July 20, 1969: “The Eagle has landed”

7:01 pm

An evening pause: In honor of the fiftieth anniversary.

Note the calm tone in all the voices, even when something is not quite right. To do really great things, one must not let one’s emotions run the show. You need to be cool-headed and focused on the task at at hand. If only today’s adult generation, especially in the world of politics, would do the same.

Just before Armstrong brings Eagle down, you will hear a voice say “60 seconds,” then “30 seconds.” That is mission control telling him how much time they estimate he has before he runs out of fuel.

Below the fold is the same last few minutes of the landing, produced by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team using its high resolution images to recreate a simulation of what Armstrong saw in his window. Remember, the view in the original 16mm film was out Aldrin’s window.

» Read more

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The Taurus-Littrow valley

6:01 pm

Taurus-Littrow Valley
Click for full image.

It might not be Apollo 11, but during this 50th anniversary week of that mission, why not look at where the last Apollo 17 crew landed, in the middle of the Taurus-Littrow valley, as shown on the right in a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LR) image released by the LRO science team in 2018.

The image illustrates how ambitious NASA had become by this last Apollo mission. The Apollo 11 site was chosen because it was flat with as few risks as possible. By Apollo 17, the Apollo engineers and astronauts were quite willing to drop the LM down into this valley between gigantic mountains. Granted, the valley was more than 400 miles wide, but considering the risks of every Apollo flight, the choice was daring to say the least.

Taurus-Littrow also has a cluster of craters believed to have been formed by material flung out from the formation of 86-kilometer-wide Tycho crater about 100 million years ago. Tycho is 2250 kilometers from Taurus-Littrow, but the impact that formed it was violent enough that it cast material far across the Moon.

Nor is this location the most spectacular on the Moon. In fact, considering that all the manned and unmanned missions in total have probably covered less ground than a New York cab driver does in a single day, we have seen almost nothing there.

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Eagle undocks, Apollo 11, July 20, 1969

6:01 pm

An evening pause: In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11, today’s evening pause shows the moment when the lunar module Eagle undocked from the command module Columbia. Though this video includes communications with mission control at the start, the actual undocking occurred on the back side of the moon, when the astronauts were out of touch with the Earth.

Near the end of the video, after they have reacquired communications with the ground, you can hear a recitation of a long string of numbers. This is mission control providing the astronauts the numbers that had to be uploaded into their onboard computer so that it could correctly fire the spacecraft engines at the right time and for the right duration.

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A wave on the Moon

3:01 pm

A lunar ejector blanket

Continuing this week’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission means we get to look at another cool image from the Moon. The photograph on the right, reduced to post here, was released by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team in 2016.

What are we looking at? At first glance it looks like a black & white photograph of The Wave in northern Arizona. What it is instead is the pattern of ejecta laid down across the surrounding terrain immediately after the impact that created relatively fresh Chaplygin Crater. From the website:

The delicate patterns of flow across, over, and down local topography clearly show that ejecta traveled as a ground hugging flow for great distances, rather than simply being tossed out on a ballistic trajectory. Very near the rim lies a dark, lacy, discontinuous crust of now frozen impact melt. Clearly this dark material is on top of the bright material so it was the very last material ejected from the crater.

Below the fold is a wider shot of the entire crater and its surrounding terrain, with the rectangle indicating the region covered by the close-up above The dark crust near the rim mentioned in the quote can clearly be seen.
» Read more

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India reschedules Chandrayaan-2 launch

8:36 am

The new colonial movement: India’s space agency ISRO have rescheduled the launch of Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter/lander/rover now for July 22, 2019.

The new launch date apparently requires a very short launch window.

July 15 had offered the most comfortable launch window of 10 minutes for the Mission. But Isro has managed to successfully launch several satellites within one-minute windows in the past. However, delaying beyond July 31 could have potentially reduced the Orbiter’s life around the Moon.

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Weird lunar crater

2:58 pm

Concentric crater in Apollo Basin on the Moon

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, it is time for another cool image from the Moon. The photograph on the right, reduced to post here, was taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in 2013. It shows a weird crater with concentric features that is found within Apollo Basin, a large 334-mile-wide double-ringed impact feature in the southern hemisphere of the Moon’s far side.

Concentric craters have an inner rim whose formation mechanism is not yet entirely understood, but the concentric mounds may indicate that there is a discontinuity, such as layers with different strengths, in the subsurface excavated by the impact.

Or to put it more bluntly, they really have no idea why this crater ended up looking as it does.

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