Space
NASA / GSFC / ASU |
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This image shows a cratered region near the moon's Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds)
region, as photographed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Click on
the image for a larger version from NASA's Web site.
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Today's first images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter provide a fresh perspective on the moon, just weeks before the 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing.
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Neil Armstrong / NASA |
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Electronic equipment and switches surround astronaut Buzz Aldrin in Apollo 11's
lunar module, nicknamed Eagle, before the moon landing in 1969. Over the past
40 years there have been big changes in computers — and in the amount of
information available on computers about the Apollo moonshots.
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Forty years ago, the world watched the Apollo 11 moon landing on television sets and giant screens. This year, the tale of the moonshot is being retold on computer monitors and mobile phones. Here's a Top 10 list of online destinations celebrating the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11:
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Kevin Frank / The Tonight Show / NASA |
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Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad stands near the southern rim of Surveyor Crater
during a moonwalk on Nov. 19, 1969. Conrad holds a sampling scoop, and a tool
carrier rests by his foot. Put on red-blue glasses for the 3-D effect, which was
added by graphic artist Kevin Frank. Click on the image for a larger version.
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Our latest crop of cosmic pictures puts you hundreds of miles above an erupting volcano, sends you zooming over the moon and plunks you down on Mars. But if you really want to feel as if you're in outer space, you'll have to put on your red-blue 3-D glasses. It's the next best thing to being there.
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Ron Batzdorff / Universal Pictures |
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"Apollo 13," starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton, ranks
among the best fictional movies about NASA's moon effort.
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If you're lusting to relive the glory days of NASA's early space effort, the best time for doing that is right now: Video resources about the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs are at their peak as the 40th anniversary of humanity's first moon landing approaches. Here's a Top 10 list, plus a couple of extra-credit pointers to more space video:
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NASA / JPL / SSI |
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The spiky shadow of Saturn's moon Mimas dips onto the planet's rings and
straddles the Cassini Division in this natural color image taken by the Cassini
spacecraft on April 8, 2009. Click on the image for a larger view.
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Leapin' and hoppin' on a moonshadow? The Cassini space mission turns that line from the Cat Stevens classic completely around by revealing the leapin' and hoppin' moonshadows on Saturn's rings.
Those shadows are taking on an especially eerie look as the planet nears equinox, an event that happens only twice during Saturn's 29.5-year-long orbit. In August, Saturn's rings will be facing the sun exactly edge-on. During the buildup to that event, the Cassini orbiter has been focusing on the shadows cast by moons as well as structures on the rings themselves.
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NASA's moon-crashing probe - known as the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS - is flying past its target Tuesday morning. And if the streaming-video spirits are smiling, you can follow along.
The space agency says it is planning to webcast LCROSS' lunar encounter starting at 8:20 a.m. ET Tuesday. The swingby is aimed at changing the spacecraft's trajectory, five days after launch, in order to get it into position for its eventual crash (currently set for October).
LCROSS' cameras and other scientific instruments will be switched on for about an hour for calibration purposes. The first 30 minutes of LCROSS' data feed will provide frame-per-second video views of the lunar surface from an altitude of about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers), NASA says. During the second half-hour, LCROSS will scan the lunar horizon to calibrate its sensors, and the video imagery will update only occasionally. Another Web stream will show an animation visualizing the spacecraft's position throughout the swingby.
The availability and quality of the streaming video will depend on a multitude of factors - so as usual, there are no guarantees (tip o' the Log to SpaceWeather.com).
Even earlier in the day, NASA TV will be carrying coverage of its other moon probe's entry into lunar orbit. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched right along with LCROSS, but in this case, the point of the maneuver is to position the spacecraft so it doesn't hit the moon. Video coverage of LRO's lunar orbit insertion begins at 5:30 a.m. ET, NASA says.
Here are a few other Web links to moon over:
Spaceport America |
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Virgin Galactic's White Knight Two carrier airplane flies over New Mexico's Las
Cruces International Airport on Saturday, showing off its dual-fuselage design.
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Five years after the private-sector space age began, rocketeers are taking circuitous routes to turn their spaceship dreams into reality. And the pioneers of the age say that's just as it should be.
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An independent panel was mostly in listening mode during today's first hearing on the future of America's spacefaring effort, but the fact that so many perspectives were heard suggests that the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee is really going to review a wide spectrum of options.
Those options include NASA's current Constellation Program, which calls for developing new types of rockets known as the Ares 1 and 5 to send humans back to the moon by the year 2020. But they also include adapting existing rockets such as the Delta 4 or Atlas 5, or some sort of "Frankenrocket" that marks the next stage of evolution for expendable launch vehicles. Or maybe the rockets that SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are building to send cargo up to the international space station. Or maybe a novel kind of shuttle-derived launch vehicle like the one envisioned by the mavericks behind the DIRECT spaceflight plan.
The panel's chairman, former aerospace executive Norman Augustine, told reporters after the hearing that he and his colleagues had a lot of homework to do between now and August, when they're due to file their report on what NASA should do after the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010 or so.
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- This month, Virginia-based Space Adventures announced that Cirque du Soleil's billionaire founder, Guy Laliberte, is planning to take a multimillion-dollar trip to the international space station in September. But if Laliberte can't go, who is his backup? Today, the company said business and aviation attorney Barbara Barrett was training alongside Laliberte as the backup crew member for the Russian Soyuz flight. Barrett is an instrument-rated pilot, a former U.S. ambassador to Finland, and the wife of former Intel Chairman Craig Barrett. "Training as a backup for the September space launch is an adventure - and education - of a lifetime," Barrett said in today's announcement. The previously quoted price for the backup cosmonaut package (including training and certification at Russia's Star City cosmonaut complex) is $3 million, compared with an estimated $35 million to $40 million for the actual space trip.
- Virgin Galactic's White Knight Two carrier airplane zoomed through test flight No. 8 last week at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, and observers continue to expect that the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane will have its rollout and begin flight tests later this year. Groundbreaking ceremonies for SpaceShipTwo's future home, Spaceport America in New Mexico, are scheduled on Friday. The festivities should include a White Knight Two flyover, assuming that the weather and the flight test schedules are cooperative. If you can't be there in person, you can watch the webcast on the Spaceport America site. In honor of the event, the spaceport has released a fresh batch of design concepts for its suborbital flight terminal, due for completion in 2010 or 2011.
- The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is celebrating its new name, its new Web site ... and its new chairman, Mark Sirangelo of Sierra Nevada Corp. The New Space industry group used to be known as the Personal Spaceflight Federation, but at a recent board meeting, members decided that their ventures were about much more than just personal tourism. "There are so many uses for commercial access to space, and we want to emphasize the broad cross-section of potential markets for our members' products and services," the federation's president, Bretton Alexander, said in today's news release. The group's new officers include representatives from companies that are targeting NASA space station resupply contracts and research opportunities as well as the tourist/explorer clientele.
- Should NASA modify its multibillion-dollar plan to retire the shuttles, build a new fleet of spaceships and return to the moon by 2020? That question is sure to be addressed on Wednesday during the first public hearing conducted by a independent review panel under the chairmanship of aerospace executive Norman Augustine. The panel, known formally as the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (and informally as the Augustine 2.0 Commission), is due to meet from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, and NASA will be doing an all-day webcast on its Media Channel.
Kelley Knight Heins |
Click for video: John Callas, project manager for the Mars rover mission,
explains how a duplicate rover is being used at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, Calif., to figure out how best to free up a rover stuck in Martian sand.
Click on the image to watch an msnbc.com video.
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Take two parts diatomaceous earth, add one part clay ... and voila! You've got a blend of simulated Martian sand fine enough to get a rover stuck in.
"It's not a secret formula," John Callas, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rovers, said as he showed us around the place at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where a stand-in for the Spirit rover is mired in buckets of the stuff.
The semi-impromptu tour, arranged for me and a few other folks who attended last week's American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, Calif., provided an inside look at the clean room where NASA's future Mars rover is taking shape, as well as the not-so-clean room where rovers are put to the test.
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