This is a reprint of a post from 2013, updated for the 2016 date. Today marks the 49th anniversary of one of the worst tragedies to befall NASA and human spaceflight: the fire that broke out in the Apollo 204 (later renamed Apollo 1) command module during a test exercise at Kennedy Space Center in…
Tag: Apollo
Long-Lost Impact Site Found From Apollo 16 Rocket Stage
In April of 1972 the penultimate Apollo mission sent NASA astronauts John Young and Charles Duke to the surface of the Moon, with Ken Mattingly piloting the command module Casper in lunar orbit. After launch on April 16, the Apollo 16 craft and crew completed two orbits of Earth before burning the J-2 engine of the Saturn…
Why Do People Say the Moon is Made of Green Cheese?
So this isn’t about a scientific discovery by any means, but I did do a little bit of online research to discern the origin of the old expression that the Moon is “made of green cheese.” We’ve all heard it, and though I’m pretty sure that nobody has ever actually taken it as a fact (although when it…
Tons of Unprocessed Apollo Mission Photos Are Now Just a Click Away
This has made quite a splash across the internet over the past several weeks, and for good reason: the Project Apollo Archive is now on Flickr, giving anyone and everyone point-and-click access to some of the best scans of original Apollo mission photographs that have been made to date. Really, this is something you can get…
Infographic: Why Would We Mine the Moon?
Our Moon is more than just some pretty decoration for the night sky and a place to plant a few flags – it’s also a potential source of valuable raw materials that could someday be used for energy and engineering both on Earth and in space. If you saw the movie Moon (and if you haven’t…
Neil Armstrong Had a Man Purse and It Was Full of Awesome Stuff From His Moon Trip. True Story.
So we all know that Neil Armstrong was pretty much one of the coolest guys ever and, on July 20, 1969, achieved a level of awesomeness that will never be surpassed.* Sadly, the 82-year-old Armstrong passed away on Aug. 25, 2012 due to complications from surgery. But he left us with the memory of one…
Remembering the Tragedy of Apollo 1
This is a reprint of a post from 2013, updated for the date and now including a map of the lunar farside. Today marks the 48th anniversary of one of the worst tragedies to befall NASA and human spaceflight: the fire that broke out in the Apollo 204 (later renamed Apollo 1) command module during a…
What Made This Curious Cross Pattern on the Moon?
It’s not a trick of the light or camera sensor artifacts, there are actually geometric lines etched into the lunar surface in the image above, captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. But these aren’t the work of ancient aliens (or Richard Hoagland’s favorite Photoshop filters) — they’re tracks left by the Soviet rover Lunokhod 2 during its…
Oxygen Isotopes Support Our Moon’s Violent Origin
While it may not be a true “smoking gun” (there have been four and a half billion years of cooling off, after all!) scientists in Germany have found further support for the currently accepted scenario of the origin of our Moon, based on chemical analysis of rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts. (And yes, we really went to…
No, The Moon Landings Weren’t Faked.
Yes, we really landed 12 men on the Moon from 1969-1972. Get over it.
Experience Earthrise with Apollo 8
On December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 entered lunar orbit making astronauts Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and Jim Lovell the first humans in history to travel around the Moon and see first-hand its hidden far side. During their 10-orbit voyage they captured one of the most well-known and iconic images of the Space Age: the blue-and-white…
What Does the Moon Smell Like?
The Moon may not have any air to breathe, but it does have a very thin exosphere — a diffuse layer of molecules held by gravity above its surface that sometimes traps some of the very fine lunar dust in suspension via electrostatic activity. (In fact this very evening, at 11:27 pm EDT, Sept. 6,…
Lights in the Dark 