Lunar Spacecraft
Lunar landers and rovers
Vision Impaired
The release of the new proposed budget for NASA has unleashed a blizzard of news articles and commentary. The administration proposes to terminate Constellation, the agency effort to design and build a new space transportation system to carry people to low Earth orbit and beyond. In its place, th...
February 03, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Have We Forgotten What Exploration Means?
Yet again, the U.S. space program is in the slough of despond, whereby previous assumptions are questioned, the current path is discarded, the program is re-directed, and luminous enthusiasm heralds the new direction…And then it all tapers off to nothing.As long as we are navel-gazing during this p...
January 25, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Beyond LEO - Flexible Path Revisited
In an interesting post at Vision Restoration, “Ray” tackles the desultory Flexible Path (FP) architecture of the Augustine committee, which calls for human missions to low gravity destinations and delays missions to the lunar and martian surface. The problems he finds with FP are similar to points...
January 23, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Robotic Sample Return and Interpreting Lunar History: The Importance of Getting it Right
Deciphering the cratering history of the Moon is an important scientific problem. My previous post discussed early lunar cratering history, the apparent impact “cataclysm” 3.8 billion years ago, its significance to Earth’s early history and how remaining questions might be resolved by collecting a...
January 11, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Cataclysmic Events on the Moon
NASA recently announced that it has down-selected three New Frontiers mission concepts for additional study. One of these missions, Moonrise, proposes to return rock and soil samples from the floor of the largest impact crater on the Moon, the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, centered on the souther...
January 09, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
A Meteorite From the Moon
In 1982, the idea that a chunk of rock could be hurled from the moon to Earth by a lunar impact was considered pretty far out. For one thing, wouldn't such a massive, high-energy explosion destroy the evidence by turning the excavated rocks to glass? Besides, meteorites were well known to come from...
December 16, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Arguing about Human Space Exploration
Hot rumor has it that, like Christmas, the Obama Administration’s response to the Augustine Committee Report, Seeking a Human Space Program Worthy of a Great Nation, is imminent. Much excitement is discernible in the space blogosphere that a major change is at hand.The Augustine Committee report c...
December 16, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Another Moon-forming collision?
A recent discovery from the Spitzer Space Telescope may yield new insight into the origin of our own Moon. Although this discovery was in the news some time ago, the advent of the Augustine report and the LCROSS mission results have eclipsed it.The Spitzer Telescope found evidence for a planetary ...
December 07, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Saturn, Selenokhod, and Scott Speicher
Today's offering is a post-Thanksgiving smorgasbord of stories (okay, I'll stop with the alliteration).
First, a lovely NASA video of an aurora shimmering above Saturn, with commentary by Caltech planetary scientist Andy Ingersoll, who's been exploring the outer solar system since the Pioneer 10 ...
November 30, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
A Rainbow on the Moon
Five weeks ago a crater from the LCROSS impact formed on the Moon. The pre-impact build-up had been sensational, but the actual event was largely invisible to observers on Earth. It was a different story on the Moon. The slowly growing impact ejecta curtain threw water ice particles and vapor far...
November 14, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Water on the Moon, For Real
Congratulations and apologies are due. The LCROSS team, who endured much grumbling from Internet viewers after last month's crash into the moon failed to produce a big visible plume, is reporting what they say is clear evidence of water in a lunar crater. Not just a thimbleful, either—at least 24 ...
November 13, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Caves on the Moon?
The science team of the Japanese Kaguya mission have just published a paper claiming to have found an opening to a cave on the Moon. Such a discovery is a potentially important development for future lunar habitation. Lava tubes are large caves created during the volcanic eruption of a very fluid...
October 27, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Paradigms Lost
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. – Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince.In his famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn described two t...
October 23, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
1966: The (Real) First Moon Landing
While scientists on the LCROSS mission puzzle over why none of the world's telescopes apparently saw squat during last week's much-ballyhooed lunar impact (although it now appears the spacecraft did), here's a happier story.The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recently took this lonely photo of the Sur...
October 16, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
The Coming Crash
Friendly warning: Do not be in the moon's Cabeus Crater tomorrow morning. At 7:31 eastern time, a giant, two-and-a-half ton empty rocket stage will come crashing down from the sky at 1.5 miles a second. Four minutes later, another, smaller spacecraft will hit near the same spot. What the...? Ahh, i...
October 08, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Space Exploration Sets Sail on Lunar Water
Water is an extremely useful substance in space. The recent finding of water on the Moon has generated considerable comment in the space community; a quick search on Google using the phrase “lunar water” returns over 7.66 million hits. Lunar water’s significance lies not in its role as a medium f...
October 04, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Water, water everywhere….
The extreme dryness of the Moon is established scientific dogma. The study of Apollo rock and soil samples pretty much had convinced scientists that the Moon has no water. Because its surface is in a vacuum and experiences extreme temperature swings at the equator (from -150° to 100° C), the Moon ...
September 25, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
I Aim at the Stars…but sometimes I only make viewgraphs
Over the long holiday weekend, Turner Classic Movies regaled us with a really obscure one – the 1960 biopic, I Aim at the Stars, starring Curd Jürgens. This movie is a biography of Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who built the V-2 for Hitler and the Saturn V for America. Although n...
September 09, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Scientists vs. The Icy Commander
In 1961, Alan B. Shepard’s successful 15-minute sub-orbital hop gave President Kennedy the high cover needed to announce a reach for the Moon, “by the end of this decade.” America’s spirit was lifted and Alan Shepard became a national hero, getting ticker tape parades and White House receptions. T...
August 21, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Two Views of The Vision
Last week, the Augustine Commission held another public meeting in Washington DC and Dr. John Marburger testified. For those just joining our story in progress, Marburger was President Bush’s Science Advisor and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House between...
August 11, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
