China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe returns world’s first samples from far side of the moon
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The Guardian UK ^
| 25 Jun 2024 | Ian Sample
China has become the first country to gather samples from the far side of the moon and bring them back to Earth in a landmark achievement for the Beijing space programme. A
re-entry capsule containing the precious cargo parachuted into a landing zone in the rural Siziwang Banner region of Inner Mongolia on Tuesday after being released into Earth’s orbit by the uncrewed Chang’e-6 probe....The mission’s lander spent two days collecting rock and soil from one of the oldest and largest craters on the moon, the 1,600-mile-wide South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin...
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China space probe returns with rare Moon rocks
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BBC ^
| June 25, 2024 | Laura Bicker & Kelly Ng, in Beijing and Singapore
China's lunar probe has returned to Earth with the first ever samples from the Moon's unexplored far side. The
Chang'e-6 landed in the Inner Mongolia desert on Tuesday, after a nearly two-month long mission which was fraught with risks. Scientists are eagerly awaiting the Chang’e-6 as the samples could answer key questions about how planets are formed. China is the only country to have landed on the far side of the Moon, having done so before in 2019. The far side - which faces away from Earth - is technically challenging to reach due to its distance, and its difficult...
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Astronomy Picture of the Day - Sandy and the Moon Halo
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NASA ^
| 20 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Marcella Giulia Pace
Explanation: Last April's Full Moon shines through high clouds near the horizon, casting shadows in this garden-at-night skyscape. Along
with canine sentinel Sandy watching the garden gate, the wide-angle snapshot also captured the bright Moon's 22 degree ice halo. But June's bright Full Moon will cast shadows too. This month, the Moon's exact full phase occurs at 01:08 UTC June 22. That's a mere 28 hours or so after today's June solstice (at 20:51 UTC June 20), the moment when the Sun reaches its maximum northern declination. Known to some as a Strawberry Moon, June's Full Moon is at its...
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Audrey Hepburn - Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's [youtube video link]
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youtube ^
| 1961 | Audrey Hepburn
Fred (George Peppard) hears Holly (Audrey Hepburn) singing on the fire escape below his apartment and goes out to listen.
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China lands on far side of the moon
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UPI ^
| June 04, 2024 | Mark Moran
Technical personnel work at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center in Beijing, on Sunday. China's Chang'e 6 touched down on the far side of the moon and will collect samples from the surface. Photo
by Jin Liwang/EPA-EFE June 2 (UPI) -- After a month-long journey, a Chinese spacecraft has landed on the far side of the moon, the China National Space Administration said. Chinese space administration officials have said they intend to collect rock and soil from this notoriously difficult-to-reach region of the lunar surface for the first time in history, the CNSA said. "Everyone is very excited that we might...
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Stunning New Pics of Jupiter's Hellish Moon Snapped From Earth's Surface
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Science Alert ^
| June 05, 2024 | MATT WILLIAMS, UNIVERSE TODAY
The Jovian moon Io as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft. The
mission's camera caught a view of one of this moon's volcanos erupting. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), located on Mount Graham in Arizona and run by the University of Arizona, is part of the next generation of extremely large telescopes (ELTs). With two primary mirrors measuring 8.4 m (~27.5 ft), it has a collecting area slightly greater than that of a 30-meter (98.4 ft) telescope. With their resolution, adaptive optics, and sophisticated instruments, these telescopes are expected to probe deeper...
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Why China is focused on the Moon: The Belt and Road initiative has spread to outer space
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The Spectator ^
| 06/03/2024 | David Whitehouse
China’s Chang’e-6 Moon mission was launched on May 3. It
reached lunar orbit a few days later and began waiting for sunrise over its landing site on the Moon’s far side. Chang’e-6 is named after the Chinese goddess of the Moon and it will land on Sunday in a crater called Apollo — an ancient double-ringed walled plain caused by an asteroid smashing into the young Moon. Apollo has been heavily damaged by subsequent impacts and in many places covered with lava flows and sprinkled with particles from newer impacts. It is as Buzz Aldrin said, a magnificent desolation. It...
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China’s Chang’e-6 probe successfully lands on far side of the moon
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CNN ^
| CNN
China's Chang’e-6 lunar lander successfully touched down on the far side of the moon Sunday morning Beijing time, in a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country’s aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon. The
Chang’e-6 probe landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, where it will begin to collect samples from the lunar surface, the China National Space Administration announced. China’s most complex robotic lunar endeavor to date, the uncrewed mission aims to return samples to Earth from the moon’s far side for the first time. The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully...
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Astronomy Picture of the Day - Rotating Moon from LRO
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NASA ^
| 2 Jun, 2024 | Video Credit: NASA, LRO, Arizona State U.
Explanation: No one, presently, sees the Moon rotate like this. That's
because the Earth's moon is tidally locked to the Earth, showing us only one side. Given modern digital technology, however, combined with many detailed images returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a high resolution virtual Moon rotation movie has been composed. The featured time-lapse video starts with the standard Earth view of the Moon. Quickly, though, Mare Orientale, a large crater with a dark center that is difficult to see from the Earth, rotates into view just below the equator. From an entire lunar month condensed into 24...
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China says its spacecraft lands on Moon's far side
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BBC ^
| June 2, 2024 | Georgina Rannard,Laura Bicker
China says its uncrewed craft has successfully landed on the far side of the Moon - an unexplored place almost no-one tries to go. The
Chang'e 6 touched down in the South Pole-Aitken Basin at 06:23 Beijing time on Sunday morning (22:23 GMT Saturday), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said. Launched on 3 May, the mission aims to collect precious rock and soil from this region for the first time in history. The probe could extract some of the Moon's oldest rocks from a huge crater on its South Pole.
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FLY ME TO THE MOON (Coming soon to a theater near you!)
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Sony Pictures Entertainment ^
| 4/14/2024 | Sony Pictures
Fly Me to the Moon is an upcoming American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Greg Berlanti and written by Rose Gilroy. The film stars Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Nick Dillenburg, Anna Garcia, Jim Rash, Noah Robbins, Colin Woodell, Christian Zuber, Donald Elise Watkins, Ray Romano, and Woody Harrelson. Its plot follows the
relationship between a marketing specialist and a NASA director during the 1960s Space Race.
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Earth's quasi or mini moon
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Live Science ^
| 11/11/2021 | Brandon Spector
Apparently Earth has at least one, and probably several "mini moons" that follow Earth's orbit around the sun, and most likely come from chunks of Earth's moon blasted out from collisions with meteors and asteroids. Interesting,
didn't know anything about this.
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Near-Earth asteroid was blasted from a crater on the moon, study finds
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University of Arizona ^
| April 25, 2024 | Daniel Stolte, University Communications
...Unlike most near-Earth asteroids, which are thought to hail from the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, asteroid 2016 HO3, also known as Kamo'oalewa, was likely blasted from the Giordano Bruno crater on the moon's far side and has been hurtling through space for several million years...Measuring between
150 and 190 feet in diameter, the asteroid is about half the size of the "London Eye" Ferris wheel...Previous research pointing to Kamo'oalewa likely originating from the moon included its reflectance spectrum, which is more compatible with lunar materials rather than the general population of near-Earth asteroids, and...
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Astronomy Picture of the Day - Comet, Planet, Moon
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NASA ^
| 29 Apr, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado (Starry Earth, TWAN)
Explanation: Three bright objects satisfied seasoned stargazers of the western sky just after sunset earlier this month. The
most familiar was the Moon, seen on the upper left in a crescent phase. The rest of the Moon was faintly visible by sunlight first reflected by the Earth. The bright planet Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, is seen to the upper left. Most unusual was Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, below the Moon and showing a stubby dust tail on the right but an impressive ion tail extending upwards. The featured image, a composite of several images taken consecutively at the...
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Astronomy Picture of the Day - All Sky Moon Shadow
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NASA ^
| 27 Apr, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Tunc Tezel (TWAN)
Explanation: If the Sun is up but the sky is dark and the horizon is bright all around, you might be standing in the Moon's shadow during a total eclipse of the Sun. In fact, the all-sky Moon shadow shown in this composited panoramic view was captured from a farm near Shirley,
Arkansas, planet Earth. The exposures were made under clear skies during the April 8 total solar eclipse. For that location near the center line of the Moon's shadow track, totality lasted over 4 minutes. Along with the solar corona surrounding the silhouette of the Moon planets and stars...
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NASA administrator has ‘no idea’ why China is going to far side of moon that is ‘always in dark’
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Washington Examiner ^
| April 25, 2024 | Heather Hunter
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson is being mocked for suggesting the far side of the moon is always “dark” and can’t explain why China is interested in exploring that part of the moon. “What
do you think the Chinese are trying to get at, at the back side of the moon?” Rep. David Trone (D-MD) asked Nelson at a congressional hearing last week. “They are going to have a lander on the far side of the moon, which is the side which is always in dark. Uh, we’re not planning to go there,” he said.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day - Moon and Smoke Rings from Mt. Etna
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NASA ^
| 22 Apr, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Dario Giannobile
Explanation: Yes, but can your volcano do this? To
the surprise of some, Mt. Etna emits, on occasion, smoke rings. Technically known as vortex rings, the walls of the volcano slightly slow the outside of emitted smoke puffs, causing the inside gas to move faster. A circle of low pressure develops so that the emitted puff of volcanic gas and ash loops around in a ring, a familiar geometric structure that can be surprisingly stable as it rises. Smoke rings are quite rare and need a coincidence of the right geometry of the vent, the right speed of ejected smoke,...
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Does anyone know which college this was filmed at? "If humans can only hold their breath for 10 minutes, then how was 'Loo-iss' Armstrong able to become the first man on the moon?"
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TikTok ^
| November 1, 2023
Does anyone know which college this was filmed at? "If
humans can only hold their breath for 10 minutes, then how was 'Loo-iss' Armstrong able to become the first man on the moon?"
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Rep. Jackson Lee ripped after defending her moon gaffe and blaming it on GOP: ‘Vote better people’
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Fox News ^
| April 10, 2024 | Gabriel Hays
Social media users trashed Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, after she turned her gaffe about the moon being "made of gases" into a slam of Republicans on social media Tuesday. Reacting to the backlash she received for telling school children that the moon is made of gases ahead of Monday’s eclipse, the
lawmaker said that her Republican critics are hounding her because they have a "lust for stupidity." She gave a speech at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston on the day of the eclipse, telling an assembly of students, "Sometimes, you need to take the opportunity just to...
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The Moon 'Is Made Up Mostly of Gases,' Sheila Jackson Lee Tells Students
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TOWNHALL ^
| April 09, 2024 12:45 PM | Spencer Brown
While Democrats and leftist alarmists decry conservatives for supposedly peddling "misinformation" about "the Science™" related to climate, COVID, and genders (there are two, FYI), their own Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas is out and about telling constituents some real whoppers about the solar eclipse.
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