WASHINGTON, D.C. — Since the moon is Earth’s closest celestial neighbor, we’ve been able to learn more about it than any other in the solar system. There are surprising details about the moon, such as how in 1958, the U.S. proposed exploding a nuclear bomb on its surface, for clout.
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After astronaut Neil Armstrong landed on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, astronaut Gene Cernan was the last man to do so in 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission. Twelve men walked on the moon between those years, and all spacecraft on the moon’s surface since have been unmanned.
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50 years on, where are the Surveyor 3 moon probe parts retrieved by Apollo 12? | collectSPACE
Fly me to the Moon, Gorilla! | Chain Store Age
Columbus millennials who missed the Golden Age of air travel and baby boomers who want to reminisce can take part in an immersive pop-up experience called "Pan Am Layover Lounge" at Gorilla Cinema at the River & Rich complex in Ohio's capital city.
Casto brought Gorilla Cinema to downtown Columbus to complement the fine arts theme of its new residential and retail center, and Gorilla won't disappoint this holiday season. Ticket holders arriving to the "immersive experience" are greeted by Pan Am stewardesses in period attire who escort them to the Lounge and ply them with pre-flight libations from the cocktail cart.
First Global Map of Saturn's Moon Titan Reveals Secrets of Earth's 'Deranged'
While the map is new, the data used to make it has been around a few years. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spent 13 years exploring Saturn and its moons before the probe plummeted past Saturn’s rings and burned up in the planet's atmosphere in 2017.
Scientists already knew how weird Titan is; it’s not called a “ deranged version of Earth ” for nothing. And the new map is showing off the moon’s oddities in detail.
About two-thirds of Titan, which is roughly the same size as the planet Mercury, is covered in flat planes, mostly near its equator. Sand dunes cover about 17 percent of the surface while about 14 percent is “hummocky,” a classification denoting hilly or mountainous terrain. Labrynthine valleys sliced into the landscape by rain and erosion cover about 1.5 percent. Lakes of liquid methane also cover about 1.5 percent of the moon, most of which are at the moon’s north pole.
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Antarctic tests will prepare this rover for a possible trip to an icy ocean moon –
Exploring a distant moon usually means trundling around its uniquely inhospitable surface, but on icy ocean moons like Saturn’s Enceladus, it might be better to come at things from the bottom up. This rover soon to be tested in Antarctica could one day roll along the underside of a miles-thick ice crust in the ocean of a strange world.
Little is known about these moons, and the missions we have planned are very much for surveying the surface, not penetrating their deepest secrets. But if we’re ever to know what’s going on under the miles of ice (water or other) we’ll need something that can survive and move around down there.
Echoes of new footsteps on the moon -- State Journal editorial from 50 years ago | Column |
They will echo down the new ages of the space era, with those of the first men who dared to stir dust that is billions of years old.
Once again men have landed on Earth's satellite after a risky journey through space — a trip that passed a point of no return just as technicians planned.
A recovery diver reseals the hatch of the Apollo 12 command module after its splashdown Nov. 24, 1969. Returning safely to Earth were astronauts Charles Conrad, top, Alan Bean, second from right, and Richard Gordon.
Dinah Molloy obituary: Scientist who looked to at the moon and beyond
A brief dalliance with clerical work convinced her that she had taken the wrong career path after school and, and after consulting with her brother, she decided to change direction. In 1966 she began working for the cosmic ray section of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (Dias), first as a lab technician and then as assistant to the director. She studied physics and chemistry in her spare time and passed exams with ease.
This talent for arts administration was noticed and she was seconded from Dias to the Arts Council in 1975 to implement recommendations from a report on provision for the arts. She spent the next four years working as the Arts Council's first music officer. Part of her work involved liaising with her counterpart in the British Arts Council, Eric Thompson. These Anglo-Irish relations went so well that Dinah married Eric Thompson in 1979 and moved to London.
NASA Plans VIPER Lunar Mission to Map Moon's Water Reserves - ExtremeTech
We’ve known about the likely presence of ice reserves on the Moon for decades, but we haven’t actually sent a dedicated ground-based probe to check our nearest neighbor. Instead, the presence of water ice in shadowed craters at the Moon’s south pole has been intuited from various space-based measurements and tests. Now, NASA will investigate the likelihood of water more directly by launching a probe specifically to look for it.
The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover ( VIPER ) will deploy four different scientific instruments and a drill capable of penetrating into one meter of rock in its investigation of Luna.
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