This video of NASA Johnson Space Center’s “Project M” depicts a Robonaut-based, tele-operated mission to the Moon – one that JSC claims could be accomplished in 1,000 days once the go-ahead was given.
The background music alone has me pumped for sending exploratory robots into space. 1,000 days, eh? If we can’t agree on sending more humans to the moon, why not send robots controlled by humans on Earth in motion-capture suits? Let’s do it!
“It’s simply the occurrence of two full moons in one month,” says retired high school science teacher Bob Hartley. Simple, yet so rare and beautiful. A “blue moon” appears approximately every two and a half years; and only once in every 20 years it appears on New Year’s Eve. When you’re out and about welcoming the New Year, be sure to look up at the sky and catch this month’s “extra moon” because it won’t appear again for a while. Keep in mind that while some blue moons may glimmer a bluish hue due to dense particles, most of them unfortunately do not. The name refers to the unusual pattern of its occurrence.
[Via HomerTribune; Gizmodo; Wiki]
Project Scientist Anthony Colaprete on the matter: “I’m here today to tell you that indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn’t find just a little bit; we found a significant amount.”
NASA shares: “If the water that was formed or deposited is billions of years old, these polar cold traps could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data.”
And my personal favorite: “In addition, water and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration.”
Future exploration means potential living spaces outside our own planet. Just the idea of expanding Earth’s population onto other planets (or moons) provokes massive amounts of excitement. To infinity and beyond!
[Via NASA]
On June 20th, 1969, forty years ago today, the Apollo 11 mision resulted in the first successful manned mission to land on the moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr. comprised the spacecraft that landed on the moon. Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon (Collins orbited above). Check out the all-new Google Moon site to see “a mosaic of landing site images and a tour of the Apollo landings.” Check out AOL’s We Choose the Moon interactive deployment of Apollo 11 from Earth to the moon (make sure you have Flash enabled, and give it a minute to load). Also, take a look at this YouTube video, “First Moon Landing 1969.” Celebrate by watching these videos, viewing the images, and remembering the famous sentence spoken by Neil Armstrong when he stepped off the spacecraft: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
[Via Wiki]