More water on the Moon: Scientists using data from India’s Chandrayaan-1 space probe have detected new evidence of water inside one lunar crater.
What makes this detection important is that this particular water was not placed there by the solar wind or asteroids. Its chemistry suggests it seeped upward from deep within the Moon’s interior.
The Moon’s dirtiest secret: Does its dust levitate?
This is a serious mystery left over from the Apollo missions which has significant ramifications not only for future research (the dust would interfere badly with any astronomical observatories) but also for any colonies that are eventually established.
The double planet, rocky and wet with a big moon, as seen from Saturn.
The private plan to put a telescope on the Moon.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered another moon orbiting Neptune.
Data from an experiment on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has confirmed that light plastics can provide sufficient protection for humans against radiation.
This is very good news indeed. Combined with the data from Curiosity, which indicated that the radiation levels in interplanetary space were less intense that expected, it appears that radiation will not be a serious obstacle to interplanetary travel.
Now we just have to get the bone loss and vision problems solved.
Radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2, flying past the Earth today, show that it has its own moon.
When astronomers analyzed radar readings to create their first maps of 1998 QE2, the big asteroid that’s due to sail past Earth on Friday, they were surprised to find that it has a moon twice as big as an ocean liner. 1998 QE2 itself is way bigger: The latest readings from NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., are consistent with earlier estimates that the asteroid is about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers wide). But the moon is hefty as well. Astronomers estimate its diameter at 2,000 feet (600 meters).
Twenty lost vials of Apollo 11 moon dust have been found in storage at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory after forty years.
Not surprisingly, NASA is demanding them back.
The impact of a 100 pound meteorite on the Moon in March produced the brightest flash ever recorded.
Anyone looking at the Moon at the moment of impact could have seen the explosion–no telescope required. For about one second, the impact site was glowing like a 4th magnitude star.
Ron Suggs, an analyst at the Marshall Space Flight Center, was the first to notice the impact in a digital video recorded by one of the monitoring program’s 14-inch telescopes. “It jumped right out at me, it was so bright,” he recalls.
The 40 kg meteoroid measuring 0.3 to 0.4 meters wide hit the Moon traveling 56,000 mph. The resulting explosion1 packed as much punch as 5 tons of TNT.
It will be really interesting to see the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images of the impact site, which can’t be taken until the spacecraft passes over the site and can photograph it.
The words of NASA’s chief: “NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime.”
He’s right. Instead, others will do it. And the ones who do it from the United States, privately financed for profit, will do it quickly, efficiently, and often, three things NASA has not been able to do at all since the 1960s.
The competition heats up: China says it will by 2015 do a re-entry test of the spacecraft it will use to return a lunar sample from the Moon by 2020..
Using Kepler astronomers have discovered a three planet solar system with one planet slightly larger than our Moon.
Kepler-37’s host star belongs to the same class as our sun, although it is slightly cooler and smaller. All three planets orbit the star at less than the distance Mercury is to the sun, suggesting they are very hot, inhospitable worlds. [The moon-sized] Kepler-37b orbits every 13 days at less than one-third Mercury’s distance from the sun. The estimated surface temperature of this smoldering planet, at more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Kelvin), would be hot enough to melt the zinc in a penny. Kepler-37c and Kepler-37d, orbit every 21 days and 40 days, respectively.
