The New Curiosity Shop

In the small hours of tomorrow morning, NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft will crash land on the moon. The craft will be deliberately hard-landed in two sections providing data about the composition of the lunar surface. NASA TV will provide live coverage and you can find out more on the Spaceweather site.

images courtesy of NASA

[caption id="attachment_243" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

40 years ago, today, the Saturn V rocket carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins was launched. This event marked the beginning of mankind’s greatest journey and would see John F Kennedy’s pledge completed and a man landed on the Moon and returned safely to Earth.

At 9.32 (local time) on the morning of 16th July 1969, the huge Saturn V rocket lifted clear of the launch pad and Apollo 11 was safely on its way. In twelve minutes the third stage of the rocket, with the Apollo spacecraft attached, was in orbit around the Earth. After one and a half orbits, the third stage rockets fired and Apollo 11 was on its way to the Moon.

Follow The Story Of Apollo with the New Curiosity Shop.Thank you to NASA for the images.

The celebrations of forty years since the Apollo 11 moon landing are heating up and now we have a new moon mission on its way. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took off from Cape Canaveral on Thursday and will photograph the lunar surface in higher resolution than ever before. Images with a resolution of 1 m should be able to pick out equipment left behind at the old Apollo sites, including the LEM descent stages. The conspiracy theorists can work out their own version of these images we’re sure.

The LRO will also laser map the Moon and look for signs of water ice in permanently shadowed craters. A companion spacecraft, launched on the same booster, called LCROSS, will crash land in one of those craters in an attempt to kick up some of the buried ice that may be buried there.

There is more information and regular updates at the LRO website.

The Story Of Apollo

The New Curiosity Shop has just launched a new kind of course. A mix between a science course and a history course, The Story Of Apollo will take learners back to the cold war era to examine the cultural factors and the engineering that made possible the US moon missions and the eventual landing of men on the Moon in 1969.

Astronomy tutor, Mark Toner said, “It is nice to branch out into another field that is of interest to me. Now the events which inspired me as a child are the stuff of history. I hope that I can transmit some of my enthusiasm to the students who take this new course.”

The Story Of Apollo is live now, and you can investigate it on the NCS web site.

NASA has announced the names of the researchers who will start the Lunar Science Institute. The seven scientists will head research teams in a number of areas of lunar science, all directed towards making the best use of future lunar exploration. While the engineering work on a new manned spacecraft system is under review, possibly forcing NASA to fall back on existing technology such as Atlas, the creation of a Science Institute is probably a more convincing step in showing the commitment of the US to a return to the Moon.

Carle Pieters of Brown University will head a group investigating the Moon in the context of the early development of Earth, Venus, Mercury and Mars. The scientific and exploration potential of the lunar poles will be investigated by a team led by Ben Bussey of  Johns Hopkins University. David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute will be looking at how impacts were important in the formation of the Moon. The lunar environment will be investigated by William Farrell, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. William Bottke, Southwest Research Institute, will lead the team researching the history of impacts on the Moon. Jack Burns, University of Colorado, will head a group with the interesting goal of exploring the cosmos from the Moon. Finally, Mihaly Horanyi, also of University of Colorado, will take charge of the Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies.

More from the Lunar Science Institute…

We're Going To The Moon For Christmas

Progressive space folk band Arbelos is offering its Christmas single for free on the band’s website. Song writer Mark Toner explains that, while the song is a typical fun Christmas song, it also draws attention to the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 8′s historic Moon mission and asks questions about what the world did with all the promise of better things that was raised in those days. The song is entitled “We’re Going To The Moon For Christmas” and carries a hopeful message in our troubled times.

Jane Chidwick, wife of keyboard player Noel Chidwick, suggested that a Christmas song would be a good opportunity to do some good in the world and the single is offered for a free download, but with an invitation to pay whatever the listener considers it is worth to UNICEF. The band hope that UNICEF will do very well out of this arrangement and that the musicians will build up some positive Christmas spirit for themselves in the process. More from the Arbelos website….

On Friday, August 1st, the Moon will pass directly in front of the Sun producing a total solar eclipse.  The narrow path of totality stretches from arctic Canada through Greenland, Siberia, and Mongolia, and comes to an end in China, where millions of people will witness the event.  Even more people will see the partial eclipse, visible from almost all of Europe, the Middle East, India, Asia and a corner of North America.  The action begins at approximately 09:20 UT (10:20 am BST) when the Moon’s shadow first hits Earth in northern Canada and begins its rapid sweep toward China.

Visit NASA’s Spaceweather site for photos, webcasts, timetables and full coverage of the eclipse.