Here’s a bit more information on the Excalibur Almaz proposal to launch commercial tourist flights to the Moon using refurbished Soviet-era space stations and capsules.
The competition heats up: Excalibur Almaz announced plans on Sunday to use its refurbished Soviet-era space station modules and capsules for commercial flights to the lunar orbit.
Reboot: The Lunar Orbiter image of Copernicus Crater, taken forty-six years ago, has been re-released after significant refurbishing.
By adding modern computer interfaces and data handling techniques, the LOIRP was able to scan and record the data in ways that simply could not have been accomplished in the 1960s. As a result the images that were obtained had a much higher resolution and dynamic range than had been seen to date. Indeed, in many cases, these images often rival or exceed images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which is currently surveying the Moon.
You should definitely check it out, as it is a breathtaking image. Historic too, as it was the first image from the Moon that truly made the place understandable.
The new colonial movement: At a conference in Washington DC yesterday both Russia and Japan announced the Moon as their next primary space exploration goal.
If the U.S. gets a competitive private aerospace industry going — which seems increasingly likely — I’m willing to bet those companies will get to the Moon before either of these governments.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has published another spectacular oblique image of Tycho crater.
If you look closely at the slope of the mountain, you can see an avalanche trail at its center and the debris piled up at the mountain’s base.
See the first oblique image, released in June 2011, here. The two images look at the crater from opposite directions.
What might have been: “The Eagle has crashed.”
Using the Moon as a mirror.
Indian scientists, using data from their lunar probe Chandrayaan-1, have found evidence for past volcanic activity on the central peak of the crater Tycho.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recently celebrated its 1000th day of imaging in orbit around the Moon, snapping images and cataloging the Moon’s geology.
Only a week before the science team posted a spectacular oblique view of Ryder Crater. The image is visible below the fold, along with a close-up of the crater’s strange hump-backed boulder-strewn floor.
» Read more
Fly me to the other moons! A computer simulation suggests that the Earth normally has several asteroid-sized smaller moons in temporary orbit around it.
The uncertainty of science: A new chemical analysis of lunar rocks from the Apollo missions has cast doubt on the consensus theory that the Moon was formed when the Earth was hit by a Mars-sized object about 4.5 billion years ago.
Life stranger than science fiction: If there is water ice on the Moon, scientists have found that the bombardment from interstellar cosmic rays has likely caused chemical reactions that “can create complex carbon chains similar to those that help form the foundations of biological structures.”
Competition rules! Russia’s space agency has proposed a space exploration plan through 2030, including missions to the Moon and Mars, in an effort to catch up with the U.S.
Using its Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule, NASA is aiming for an unmanned test flight around the Moon in December 2017.
Two important tidbits revealed by this article: First, the first test flight of Orion will use a Delta 4 Heavy rocket. Two, NASA hopes to have its heavy lift SLS rocket ready for the 2017 mission.
Forgive me for being cynical, but I will believe the second tidbit only when it happens.
Using images taken by its lunar probe Chang’e-2, China today published a high resolution global map of the Moon.
The following stories are all the result of statements made by Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian Federal space agency, during a radio interview yesterday.
This is the same guy that only a few weeks ago was throwing accusations at the U.S. for the failure of Phobos-Grunt.
What should we make of these statements? First, everything Popovkin says is aimed at fund-raising. Whatever his background, he is a political appointee whose job is to generate interest and funding for Russia’s space program. Everything he says in public must be weighed against this reality. That he first tried to shift the blame to the U.S. for Phobos-Grunt’s loss was an effort to absolve his program from any blame and thus reduce the possibility that the Russian government might cut his funding. Now that his agency has gotten approval of its insurance payment for the failure, however, he is free to say otherwise.
Second, these announcements give us a clear indication of where the Russia space effort is heading, and that effort looks both thoughtful and intelligent.
» Read more
Space Adventures has set the date, sometime before February 2017, for its circumlunar tourist flight.
Ebb (of the Grail spacecraft) has returned its first video of the far side of the Moon.
A class of fourth-grade students have renamed NASA’s two Grail lunar probes “Ebb” and “Flow”.
