On Feb. 3, 1966 the Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft made the first successful robotic soft landing on the Moon. Seven hours later it transmitted its first images of the lunar surface back to Earth. The image above is Luna 9 lander’s first view—the first time humans had ever seen a picture from the surface of another world.
Category: The Moon
50 Years Later: What Happened to Apollo 1?
Today marks the 50th anniversary of one of the worst tragedies to befall NASA: the fire that ignited inside the Apollo 1 (Apollo 204) command module during a test at Kennedy Space Center, claiming the lives of primary crew astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. The event is solemnly remembered every January 27. “We didn’t…
Apollo 14 Samples Reveal the True Age of Our Moon
Turns out the Moon is even older than we thought—if just by a few dozen million years. Using samples of lunar material collected by Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell in February 1971, a team of researchers from UCLA, the University of Chicago, and Princeton have determined that the Moon must have formed within the first…
Solar Storms Set Off Tiny Explosions In Shadowed Lunar Soil
Powerful solar storms can charge up the soil in frigid, permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles, and may possibly produce “sparks” that could vaporize and melt the soil—perhaps as much as meteoroid impacts, according to new NASA-funded research. Read the rest of this article from NASA here: Solar Storms Could Spark Lunar Soil
What’s So Super About a Supermoon?
You’ve probably heard the news or read the headlines: the full Moon on November 14 will be a “supermoon,” and in fact the biggest and brightest one since 1948 and until 2034. But what does that really mean and what can we expect to see in the night sky? In all honesty it won’t be…
Watch a Moonwalker Prove Galileo Right: Dave Scott’s Famous Hammer-Feather Drop
On August 2, 1971, at the end of the last EVA of the Apollo 15 mission, Commander David Scott took a few minutes to conduct a classic science experiment in front of the TV camera that had been set up just outside the LM Falcon at the Hadley Rille landing site. Scott, a former Air…
The Moon’s Dark Seas Are Scars From Ancient Strikes—Even Bigger Than We Thought
When you look up at a full or full-ish Moon you can’t help but notice the large dark spots that mark its Earth-facing side. These form the face of what many call the “Man in the Moon” (or the body of a Moon rabbit, to others) and are individually called mare (“MAR-ay”) which is the Latin word…
Neil Armstrong Was The First Person On The Moon And THIS Is Our Best Picture Of Him There?!?
Everyone knows that Apollo 11 commander Neil A. Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the Moon (and if you didn’t know, that occurred on July 20, 1969 – yes, it really happened). It was a momentous, history-making event that many (like myself) consider one of the most impressive achievements of humankind. But oddly…
Does Earth Have a New Moon? Kinda But Not Really
This week NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced news of an object traveling around the Sun in an orbit that keeps it relatively close to our own planet. The object, a near-Earth asteroid (NEO) less than 300 feet (100 m) across, is designated 2016 HO3 and has in some reports been called a “new” or “mini”…
Ride Shotgun With John Young During His Apollo 16 Grand Prix
Take a ride across the Moon with Apollo 16 commander John Young in this video, a stabilized version of NASA 16mm film footage captured during the first EVA of the mission on April 21, 1972. In what’s called the “lunar Grand Prix” Young pilots the Lunar Roving Vehicle, or LRV, across the dusty terrain of the…
New Analysis of Apollo Data Reveal the Moon is Hollow
New analysis of data acquired by seismometers placed on the Moon’s surface in the early 1970s and laser measurements taken during recent lunar meteor impact events appears to support an ongoing, if unpopular, hypothesis that our Moon is, in fact, hollow.
This is the Oldest Surviving Photo of the Moon
These days anyone with a cheap point-and-shoot camera or even a cell phone can snap a picture of the Moon (although I highly advise using at least an entry-level dSLR) but there was a time when that wasn’t the case. Go back to the late 1830s, when photography was in its infancy and methods for capturing light…
Lights in the Dark 