Recently in Moon Category

Montana Students Pick Winning Names for Moon Craft

"Twin NASA spacecraft that achieved orbit around the moon New Year's Eve and New Year's Day have new names, thanks to elementary students in Bozeman, Mont. Their winning entry, "Ebb and Flow," was selected as part of a nationwide school contest that began in October 2011. The names were submitted by fourth graders from the Emily Dickinson Elementary School. Nearly 900 classrooms with more than 11,000 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia participated in the contest. Previously named Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL-A and -B, the washing machine-sized spacecraft begin science operations in March, after a launch in September 2011."

Total Lunar Eclipse brings SkySafari to Android

"The iOS versions of SkySafari have been downloaded more than 900,000 times from the iTunes Store. SkySafari has won multiple awards, including a MacWorld 2010 Best-of-Show, Sky & Telescope Magazine's Hot Product award for 2012, and an endorsement by Astronomers Without Borders. SkySafari is the only mobile astronomy app which can correctly reproduce this December's total lunar eclipse, or any other. SkySafari's Plus and Pro versions have the largest database of any mobile astronomy app, and are the only ones which can control backyard telescopes."

NASA Opens Registration for Annual Great Moonbuggy Race

"NASA is challenging student inventors to gear up for the agency's 19th annual Great Moonbuggy Race. Registration is open for the engineering design and racing contest set to culminate in a two-day event in Huntsville, Ala., on April 13-14, 2012. The race is organized annually by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and held at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, both in Huntsville. Since 1994, NASA has challenged student teams to build and race human-powered rovers of their own design. These fast, lightweight moonbuggies address many of the same engineering challenges overcome by Apollo-era lunar rover developers at Marshall in the late 1960s."

Moon Express Designs and Engineers Lunar Mission with Autodesk Software

"Taking the main stage before more than 8,000 attendees at Autodesk University 2011, Edwin "EJ" Sabathia of the "Moon Express Robotics Lab for Innovation" (MERLIN) unveiled lunar micro-rovers designed with Autodesk software. EJ was one of eight student robotics engineers hired by Moon Express in September from a team of the nations' brightest engineering students. MERLIN is utilizing Autodesk design software for developing robotic technology supporting the company's lunar exploration missions."

Shackleton Energy Company: Humans to Return to the Moon by 2019

"The process of establishing the world's first operational lunar base and propellant depot business in space is underway as SEC launches its initial fundraising campaign. This comes in the footsteps of recent amazing new discoveries of huge deposits of propellant-feedstock ice on the Moon by NASA and other international space programs. Joining forces with RocketHub, one of the largest crowdfunding platforms, SEC seeks to raise the initial seed capital necessary to complete its top level planning in order to then secure the first major round of investment capital necessary to complete preliminary designs of all system elements."

CubeSat Documentary, Geek Mountain State

"A couple of weeks ago, we posted up a notification that Vermont Public Television would be airing a documentary on Vermont scientists working on a CubeSat project. Now, the documentary is online for your viewing pleasure" Watch video at UVM

NASA to Launch Vermont's CubeSat in 2012

"NASA's 2010 CubeSat Launch Initiative Competition has been awarded a launch slot to the Vermont CubeSat Lunar Lander Project. Faculty and students from Vermont Technical College, Norwich University, UVM and St. Michael's College are developing the satellite for this launch opportunity. It will be launched into Low Earth Orbit as part of a NASA launch payload in 2012. The single-unit CubeSat for this launch will perform critical on-orbit testing of the robotic navigation system that will autonomously guide the eventual three-unit CubeSat Lunar Lander package into a lunar orbit, followed by a landing on the Moon."

Vermont Lunar CubeSat Project

Shackleton Energy Company Propellant Depots, RocketHub

"By 2020, Shackleton Energy Company (SEC) intends to become the world's foremost space-based energy company providing rocket propellants, life support, consumables, and services in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and on the Moon to all spacefarers. The company will use a mix of industrial astronauts and advanced robotic systems to provide a strategically-assured, continuous supply of propellants to already-defined customers in space. Critical to the success of this operation is the prospecting for and mining of ice located within deep, inhospitable, ultra-cold craters at the polar regions of the Moon."

23 August 2011: "During a recent test at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., the robotic lander prototype, known as Mighty Eagle, performed a hover test flying up to three feet and then translated, or moved itself sideways, to perform a controlled, safe landing 13 feet from the launch pad." More information.

Replicators Have Arrived, Paul Spudis, Air & Space

"Of all the wonders depicted in science fiction books and movies, one of the most intriguing is the machine that makes anything that you need or desire. Merely enter a detailed plan, or push the button for items programmed into the machine - dials twirl, the machine hums and out pops what you requested. Technology gives us Aladdin's Lamp. A handy device that will find many uses. We're not quite there yet but crude versions of such imagined machines already exist."

LPI Lunar Exploration Summer Intern Program

"To help integrate those science priorities with NASA's exploration program, the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) is hosting a special summer intern program to evaluate possible landing sites for robotic and human exploration missions. Two teams of students will work with LPI science staff and other collaborators to evaluate the best landing sites to address each of the NRC's science priorities.  This will be a unique team activity that should foster extensive discussions among students and senior science team members. This Lunar Exploration Summer Intern Program will operate parallel with LPI's regular summer intern program."

Subtly Shaded Map of the Moon Reveals Titanium Treasure Troves

"A map of the Moon combining observations in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths shows a treasure trove of areas rich in titanium ores. Not only is titanium a valuable element, it is key to helping scientists unravel the mysteries of the Moon's interior. The new map is a valuable tool for lunar exploration planning. Astronauts will want to visit places with both high scientific value and a high potential for resources that can be used to support exploration activities. Areas with high titanium provide both -- a pathway to understanding the interior of the Moon and potential mining resources," said Robinson."

NASA Invites Students to Name Moon-Bound Spacecraft

"NASA has a class assignment for U.S. students: help the agency give the twin spacecraft headed to orbit around the moon new names. The naming contest is open to students in kindergarten through 12th grade at schools in the United States. Entries must be submitted by teachers using an online entry form. Length of submissions can range from a short paragraph to a 500-word essay. The entry deadline is Nov. 11."

NASA 2012 Lunabotics Competition Open For Registration

"NASA is accepting applications from teams of U.S. and international undergraduate and graduate students for the third annual Lunabotics Mining Competition. The event will be at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida May 21-26, 2012. Participants in the competition will design and build a remote controlled or autonomous robot, which could be used for future exploration on the moon. During the competition, the teams' designs, known as lunabots, will go head-to-head to determine which one can excavate and deposit the most simulated lunar dirt within 10 minutes."

Moon Express Hires NASA-mentored FIRST Robotics Champions to Develop Lunar Robots

"Moon Express, a Google Lunar X PRIZE contender, announced today that it has established the "Moon Express Robotics Lab for Innovation" (MERLIN) and has hired a team of the nations' brightest engineering students who became international superstars through the FIRST Robotics Competition. MERLIN will develop robotic technology supporting the company's lunar exploration missions under the leadership of Marco Chacin, a graduate of the International Space University who holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and developed robotic solutions for the JAXA/ISAS "Hayabusa" asteroid sample return missions."

Note: At the end of the video you can see the immense printout of the famous "Earthrise" picture taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966 as retrieved by the LOIRP (Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project) being hung inside the Hover Test Facility where our friends at MoonExpress are testing their spacecraft.

"In this prequel to the Moon Express Lander Development webisodes, company co-founder & CEO Bob Richards narrates an overview of his Phoenix Mars Lander experience and the very different challenges of landing on the Moon. For the first time, Bob gives a public peak inside the project and the Hover Test Facility located a the NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley, California."

45 Years ago today, on 23 August 1966, Lunar Orbiter 1 snapped the first photo of Earth as seen from lunar orbit. While a remarkable image at the time, the full resolution of the image was never retrieved from the data stored from the mission. In 2008, this earthrise image was restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at NASA Ames Research Center. We obtained the original data tapes from the mission (the last surviving set) and restored original FR-900 tape drives to operational condition using both 60s era parts and modern electronics. The following links provide background on the image, its restoration, and reactions to its release.

- Newly Restored Lunar Orbiter Image of Earth and Moon (Detail)
- How the Photo Was Taken
- House of Representatives Honors Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project
- Nimbus II and Lunar Orbiter 1 Imagery: A New Look at Earth in 1966
- Dumpster Diving for Science, Science Magazine
- What Lunar Orbiter 1 Was Seeing on 23 August 1966

In fall 2011, NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, mission is scheduled to launch twin spacecraft in tandem low-altitude orbits around the moon. The spacecraft will measure the moon's gravity in unprecedented detail. The mission will answer key questions about the moon's internal structure and give scientists a better understanding of how our solar system formed.

The satellites will carry special cameras, dubbed MoonKam, which stands for Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students. During the science phase of the mission, students will send in requests for the cameras to take photos of specific areas on the lunar surface. The images will be posted on the Internet, and students can refer to them as they study highlands, maria and other features of the moon's topography.

Register at the GRAIL MoonKam website to receive information and resources about this unique opportunity and stay up-to-date with GRAIL MoonKAM news and events.

The X PRIZE Foundation and the LEGO Group today announced MoonBots 2.0: A Google Lunar X PRIZE LEGO(R) MINDSTORMS(R) Challenge. This second annual contest will challenge teams of youth to design, program, and construct robots that perform simulated lunar missions similar to those required to win the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, a private race to the Moon designed to enable commercial exploration of space while engaging the global public. To further this purpose, the X PRIZE Foundation and the LEGO Group have partnered with WIRED magazine and FIRST robotics to offer a competition that will excite students and their families about the Moon, robotics,and team building.

April 1967: "Fifty Years of Data in One Week: Recently, Oran W. Nicks, NASA's Director of Lunar and Planetary Programs, remarked: "one astronomer has said that more information has been obtained in the first seven days of the Lunar Orbiter I project than in the last 50 years of study of the Moon." Truly, the matchless cooperation and inspired creativity exhibited in the design and construction of Lunar Orbiter spacecraft and, supporting equipment by NASA, the scientific community, and American industry has helped us to take those longer-strides that President Kennedy called for in 1961 when he first spoke of the Apollo landing of a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth."

More at the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project

Innovate Our World, a Maryland educational nonprofit, has partnered with a leading Google Lunar X prize competitor, Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, PA, to help student teams from two central Maryland high schools design payload concepts suitable for Astrobotic's planned 2013 Tranquility Trek mission to the Apollo 11 landing site. Using information about the lunar environment, previous missions to the Moon, basics of conceptual payload design, and local experts, students from Glenelg Country School in Ellicott City, Maryland and Oakland Mills High School in Columbia, Maryland proposed and designed two lunar payloads and will present their concepts to Astrobotic Technology on Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 1 p.m.

Moon Express Inc., a privately funded lunar transportation and data services company, and CrowdOptic, a revolutionary new technology that places text "captions" on objects in real time while they're in motion, today announced that Moon Express has deployed CrowdOptic to enhance the launch and tracking of its lunar lander technology tests carried on the Airship Eureka.

What: On April 1, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville will host a 40th anniversary celebration of the first use of the Lunar Roving Vehicle on the moon. The gala event honors the men and women who designed, tested, built and piloted the original lunar rovers -- many of whom are expected to take part in the celebration. Members of the news media are invited to attend.

Poster presented at the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by N. G. Moss, T. M. Harper, M. B. Motta, A. D. Epps

"While some candidate craters were observed that appeared in LROC data but not in Lunar Orbiter data, these were all very near the edge of discernable feature size and are almost certainly explained by various differences between the images (e.g. sun angle or viewing geometry). While our initial search did not find any discernable new cratering, we have shown that data from the original analog Lunar Orbiter tapes, as recovered by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery project, possesses the characteristics necessary to discern new craters at reasonably small sizes. If the entire Lunar Orbiter data set was recovered in this manner it may be possible for future researchers to apply automated methods to detect changes with much better chances of success." More

Poster presented at the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by A. Epps, M. Sandler

"The goal of the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is to digitize and archive the magnetic tape records generated by the five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft in the mid-1960s. The readout scanners utilized onboard the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft employed a phosphor-covered anode bombarded by an electron beam to focus a spot of light on 70mm film developed onboard the spacecraft. This light was modulated by the density of the image and read by a photomultiplier tube. Each individual pass of this scanning procedure across the 70mm film produced a thin strip of a larger image, referred to as a "framelet". The product of the spacecraft's readout system was a video waveform that was modulated and transmitted to three DSIF stations and recorded onto 2-inch magnetic tape via Ampex FR-900 data recorders. This document discusses the process by which these video signals were converted into digital images." More

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, mission is sponsoring a series of workshops for educators of students in grades 6-12. These workshops will focus on lunar science, exploration and how our understanding of the moon is evolving with the new data from current and recent lunar missions.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has allowed scientists to measure the coldest known place in the solar system, map the surface of the moon in unprecedented detail and accuracy, find evidence of recent lunar geologic activity, characterize the radiation environment around the moon and its potential effects on future lunar explorers and much, much more!

Keith's note: Does any one at NASA Langley Research Center (or elsewhere in/around NASA) know where this large reproduction of the Lunar Orbiter 1 "Earthrise" image (or others like it) are currently located? Please drop an email to lunarorbiter-at-spaceref.com - thanks! More information.

N. G. Moss¹ and T. M. Harper², M. B. Motta³, A. Epps^4
1LOIRP Project P.O. Box 375 Moffett Field, CA 94035, Neulynm-at-yahoo.com, ² LOIRP Project P.O. Box 375 Moffett Field, CA 94035, travis.martin.harper-at-gmail.com. ³ LOIRP Project P.O. Box 375 Moffett Field, CA 94035. Mbmotta-at-yahoo.com., ⁴Skycorp, Building 596, NASA Ames Research Park, Moffett Field, CA 94035, Austin.epps-at-gmail.com

Submitted to 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference:

Introduction: In 1966 and 1967 NASA sent five Lunar Orbiters to photograph nearly the full surface of the moon. Each orbiter launched took images of different areas of the moons surface, or very high resolution images corresponding to lower resolution images previously taken. Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is one of the several projects using these images for research. We are in possession of 1,478 2" original analog tapes from 3 Deep Space Network ground stations. We have taken hundreds of those analog tapes and converted them to digital form; with the majority of them being from Lunar Orbiter II which took images with .8 to 1 meter resolution.

With them in digital form we are able to assemble the framelets in high quality and overlay them with Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Narrow Angle Camera (LROC_NAC), which has a similar resolution of .5 to 1 meter. The overlays enable us to compare the two images looking for change, specifically new craters. The finding of new craters will help us determine the age of older craters by looking at the baseline color of the regolith from known dates between the Lunar Orbiter and LROC images. The craters found per unit area will also provide a boundary on the current small body population of the inner solar system.

Full paper

NASA and Gowalla, a mobile and web service, have partnered to bring users one small step closer to the universe. The partnership populates Gowalla with NASA-related information and four virtual items -- moon rocks, a NASA patch, a spacesuit and a space shuttle -- that can be found at agency-related venues.

"NASA's partnership with Gowalla is a creative way for us to reach out and share information about what the nation's space agency is doing," said Bob Jacobs, NASA's deputy associate administrator for communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Gowalla users who virtually "check-in" at NASA-related venues and places of discovery via their smart phone have a chance to find the four agency virtual items which can be swapped for other items, dropped in locations or kept in their vault. Anyone with a Gowalla account who collects three of the four items will receive a special pin in their Gowalla Passport. In addition, the first 100 people to collect three items will win the special edition NASA+Gowalla Map: Search for the Moon Rocks by JESS3, a creative agency that specializes in data visualization.

The X PRIZE Foundation, the world leader in incentive prizes to drive innovation, and LEGO Group, one of the world's leading manufacturers of play materials for children, has announced the twenty finalists for MoonBots, a global educational contest. Using LEGO bricks and MINDSTORMS components, the challenge requires teams of students to create simulated lunar rovers similar to those competing for Google Lunar X PRIZE, a competition that will award $30 million to privately funded teams that explore the surface of the Moon with innovative robots. More than two hundred teams from sixteen nations registered for MoonBots and completed the requirements of the first phase of the competition, which required both in-depth research about lunar exploration as well as the use of Computer Assisted Design (CAD) software to mock up a lunar robot.

More than 37 years after humans last walked on the moon, planetary scientists are inviting members of the public to return to the lunar surface as "virtual astronauts" to help answer important scientific questions. No spacesuit or rocket ship is required - all visitors need to do is go to www.moonzoo.org and be among the first to see the lunar surface in unprecedented detail. New high-resolution images, taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), offer exciting clues to unveil or reveal the history of the moon and our solar system.

Keith Cowing's note: On Thursday, 10 December 2009, we conducted a live webcast from the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) at "McMoon's" i.e. Building 596 at the NASA Ames Research Park.

Dennis Wingo and I give you a tour of our project including a walk through of the abandoned McDonald's that has been our base of operations since 2008. We show you how we rack tapes, play them back, capture the data on a computer, and then stitch the image framelets together. You can look over our shoulders and see the imagery as it appears on one of our old TV monitors. We've picked an especially interesting tape to show you. Eventually this image will be posted online at LPI and submitted to the NSSDC.

This project has been funded and supported by a bunch of imaginative folks at ESMD, IPP, NLSI, ARC, SkyCorp, SpaceRef Interactive, and Odyssey Moon with assistance from a range of people ranging from retired Lunar Orbiter project personnel and Lockheed Martin employees to local high school and college students. Soon, we expect to have two tape drives fully operational and to be able to produce images on a daily basis.

Oh yes, in case you are wondering, I donate my time (and money) to this project. What fun. Its like bringing a time machine back to life in a high tech junkyard. We are looking to begin some pervasive EPO in coordination with NLSI and the Challenger Center for Space Science Education in the very near future.

Moon Work Design Contest Offers NASA Internships to Winners

"The 2010 NASA Moon Work engineering design challenge seeks to motivate college students by giving them first-hand experience with the process of developing new technologies. To participate in the contest, students will submit their original design for tools or instruments that can help astronauts live and work on the moon. Top-ranked students will be offered a chance to intern with a team from NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program."

ESA's Education Office has awarded a contract to Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd of the UK to manage the development and testing of the first European student mission to the Moon. Launch is expected in 2013-2014.

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has been selected as the prime contractor for the European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) project. The final signature of the contract took place on 4 November 2009. The mission involves delivering a spacecraft to lunar orbit, followed by 6 months of operations that include mapping of the lunar surface and studying our nearest neighbour.

Reporters are invited to attend the 2009 Regolith Excavation Challenge Oct. 17-18 at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. The $750,000 prize challenge is a nationwide competition that focuses on developing improved handling technologies for moon dirt, known as lunar regolith. Part of NASA's Centennial Challenges Program, the competition will see 23 teams use robots they designed and built to excavate simulated lunar soil. Teams will test their robots in a box approximately 13 feet square and one-and-a-half feet deep that contains eight tons of simulated moon soil.

To qualify for a prize, a robot must dig up at least 330 pounds of regolith and deposit it into a container in 30 minutes. Trophies will be presented to the top three teams. The two-day event also will feature exhibits and speakers highlighting hands-on education projects, robotics and space exploration.