Mysteries of Moon

It has been almost 40 years since humans stepped foot on the Moon - isn"t it time we went back ?During the Apollo Moon landings the eyes of the world were fixed on a space-faring future with lunar bases and trips to large rotating space stations like in 2001: A Space Odyssey. As successive Apollo missions were scrapped however this dream slowly faded, and over 40 years on we have still yet to return to the lunar surfaceaside from with a few unmanned robots.While plans to return humans to the Moon have been announced at various points, the actuality of this promise has yet to come to pass.

With the economic downturn making space exploration an ever-more expensive endeavor and with the promise of nuclear fusion and other technologies capable of making such flights cheaper and easier in the not-too-distant future, is there really any reason to reach for the Moon at the present time ? Humans haven’t set foot on the Moon -- or any other world outside of our own, for that matter -- since Cernan and Schmitt departed the lunar surface on December 14, 1972.  

View: Full article |  Source: Phys.org  

Google"s Lunar X Prize is to recognise guidelines from NASA aimed at protecting historic lunar sites.The X Prize is a Google sponsored competition in which private companies will attempt to land a robotic rover on the moon. NASA"s new guidelines have been put forward in a bid to avoid any potential disturbance of the historic Apollo landing sites on the lunar surface. 26 teams are currently working towards the goal of landing arover on the moon, an achievement that would see private companies enter in to the field of robotic space exploration for the first time.

Over $30m worth of prizes are to be awarded to the teams who succeed. NASA and the X Prize Foundation of Playa Vista, Calif. , announced Thursday the Google Lunar X Prize is recognizing guidelines established by NASA to protect lunar historic sites and preserve ongoing and future science on the moon. The foundation will take the guidelinesinto account as it judges mobility plans submitted by 26 teams vying to be the first privately-funded entity to visit the moon.  

View: Full article |  Source: NASA  

A spacecraft launched in the 1960s is thought to have been found on the dark side of the moon.Lunar Orbiter 2 was launched by NASA in 1967 for the purpose of documenting possible landing sites for the upcoming Apollo missions, it took over 800 photographs before it wentdown somewhere on the far side of the moon and its location had never been found, that is until now.

Picked up in images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the location of the crash site has now been determined for the first time. NASA scientists have found the crash site, pictured above, of a spacecraft set into orbit during the early 60s. This one–thankfully–is not crawling with Decepticons. They believe it is the missing Lunar Orbiter 2 which disappeared back in 1967during a passage over the far side of the moon, when the craft went out of telescope and radio range.  

View: Full article |  Source: Discovery Channel  

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has discovered the five F-1 engines that launched Apollo 11 in to space.It"s the NASA mission that launched the United States into space history, Apollo 11, and like most other space missions the Apollo astronauts were thrust in to space using conventional rocket enginesthat would, at a certain altitude, fall away from the main capsule and drop back down to earth, usually landing in the ocean.Now a private expedition funded by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has uncovered the location of the rocket engines that launched Apollo 11 with the intention of hauling them up from the depths and putting them on display.

When NASA"s mighty Saturn V rocket launched the historic Apollo 11 mission to land the first men on the moon in 1969, the fivepowerful engines that powered the booster"s first stage dropped into the Atlantic Ocean and were lost forever. Lost, that is, until now.  

View: Full article |  Source: Space.com