Tag: Moon

NASA has had twin spacecraft orbiting the moon for a long time called the GRAIL mission probes. GRAIL stands for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory. The twin spacecraft are called Ebb and Flow. The two spacecraft performed their missions as expected and are no longer needed.

I’m not particularly fond of sweets but I’m willing to make an exception for Häagen-Dazs’ Ice Moon Ice Cream Cakes that are coming this Christmas. Who knew ice cream could be done up artistically?

Over the years, people have tried to sell off many artifacts from the Apollo era of space travel. These objects included things like cameras and gloves and at times even little pieces of Moon rock. NASA considers every chunk of Moon rock returned by Apollo astronauts to be government property and has so far barred any sale or gifting to the public.

So you just sold your entire videogame collection and you’re swimming in money. You already bought the Space Invaders wristwatch, but you’re still Scrooge McDuck! What to do? I suggest you add the official Pac-Man watch to your shopping list.

We don’t talk about too much space stuff around here, but something is going to happen this week that is rare and is definitely worth a mention. The moon will be much closer to Earth than it normally is.

For just under $100, you can get the “first entirely new globe of the Moon’s surface in over 40 years.” Ironically, it looks a bit like the Death Star. It’s perfect for the desk of any space geek.

I’ve always found it interesting that we can all look in the night sky and see the same moon every day no matter where we live on planet. I’ve also always found it a bit intriguing that we only see one side of the moon and I have often wondered about the dark side (more recently known as the “far side” of the moon.)

Apparently, a 73-year-old woman named Joann Davis has had a tiny sliver of rock from the moon smaller than a grain of rice since 1987 when her husband died. Davis claims the tiny piece of moon rock was given to her husband by Neil Armstrong in the 70’s when her spouse was an engineer at North American Rockwell.

When I was much younger, I used to think that the sun was this huge gigantic lamp and the moon was a nightlight. I didn’t understand why the nightlight kept changing its shape and sometimes disappeared altogether during certain times in a month.

I bet that we have all heard the conspiracy theorists that claim we never actually went to the moon. These folks think that the entire Apollo program was filmed on a movie set. Perhaps to help put these theories to rest once and for all, NASA has changed the orbit recently of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or LRO to take some of the highest resolution images of the landing sites for the Apollo missions ever.

The side of the moon that we can see here on Earth looks mostly smooth even if it is covered with a bunch of craters from impacts over the millennia. Often we call the side of the moon we see the “light side,” but more correctly it would be called the “near side.”

This is awesome. A team of scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization has discovered what they claim to be a massive underground cave on the moon. The scientists think that in the future the cave might even possibly be able to be used as a moon base.

I have never really though about what the moon would smell like. I would assume that dirt smells like dirt no matter where you scoop it from. The closest I have ever come to smelling the moon is sitting around with my family after eating chili with lots of beans, and that moon doesn’t smell good.

Apollo 11 member astronaut Buzz Aldrin teamed-up with sportswear giant Nike for the Rocket Hero, a modified version of the Nike 6.0 Mavrk show. The Rocket Hero has Aldrin’s footprints on the moon adorning the insoles of the shoes.

NASA wants to put you in space–sort of–and they’re willing to build an MMO to prove it. With Astronaut: Mars, Moon and Beyond, the folks behind the American space program hope to produce a game that will be to space what America’s Army was to, uh… American’s actual Army.

Carnegie Mellon roboticist Dr. William Whittaker collaborated with Astrobiotic Technology to create a solar-powered unmanned rover that will revisit the Apollo landing site in 2011. The robotic explorer will be sent to look at the materials left behind by the astronauts to see how the lunar environment has affected them.