Free Republic

THE Moon landings between 1969 and 1972 never took place and were staged by the US intelligence community, a controversial filmmaker has claimed. Bart Sibrel claims he has proof the CIA orchestrated the famous Apollo 11 moon landing - and believes no one has ever stepped on the lunar surface because it is too dangerous. Speaking exclusively to Daily Star Online, Sibrel reckons mankind would have set up bases by now if it was possible to travel to the moon. And he believes the historic event took place in a film set and the crew were actors given instructions by...

MOSCOW (AFP) - Six Russian women on Wednesday clambered into a mock spaceship to begin a unique experiment testing how an all-female crew would interact on a trip to the Moon and back. For eight days, the female volunteers will live inside a wood-panelled suite of rooms at Moscow's Institute of Biomedical Problems, renowned for its wacky research into the psychological and physical effects of space travel. The institute in 2010 locked six male international volunteers in an isolation experiment lasting 520 days, to simulate a flight to Mars and back. "Such a crew is taking part for the first...

he European and Russian space agencies are to send a lander to an unexplored area at the Moon's south pole. It will be one of a series of missions that prepares for the return of humans to the surface and a possible permanent settlement. The spacecraft will assess whether there is water, and raw materials to make fuel and oxygen. BBC News has obtained exclusive details of the mission, called Luna 27, which is set for launch in five years' time. The mission is one of a series led by the Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, to go back to...

Explanation: This sharp telescopic snapshot caught late September's Harvest Moon completely immersed in Earth's dark umbral shadow, at the beginning of a total lunar eclipse. It was the final eclipse in a tetrad, a string of four consecutive total lunar eclipses. A dark apparition of the Full Moon near perigee, this total eclipse's color was a deep blood red, the lunar surface reflecting light within Earth's shadow filtered through the lower atmosphere. Seen from a lunar perspective, the reddened light comes from all the sunsets and sunrises around the edges of a silhouetted Earth. But close to the shadow's edge,...

The discovery of water on the surface of Mars, which just happened to coincide with the premiere of the hit film The Martian, starring Matt Damon as an astronaut marooned on the Red Planet, has caused some degree of excitement for space enthusiasts. NASA is particularly inspired because its central organizing project is “the journey to Mars” which is scheduled to put astronauts on the Martian surface by the 2030s. The discovery and the movie certainly would not hurt the effort to gin up support for the humans to Mars program.

Be sure you know the right date and time of the eclipse. For example, the eclipse of September 27-28, 2015 begins at 1:07 UTC. For us in North America, that is 9:07 p.m.. EDT on September 27, 2015. Be careful. Watch the times. Note that the times are often given in what is called Universal Time, or UTC. Here’s how to translate Universal Time to your local time zone. ...

... Public Star Party begins 2:00 p.m. EVENT BEGINS 6:30 p.m. Livestream broadcast begins 6:30 p.m. Moon rises at Griffith Observatory 6:45 p.m. (Moon in partial eclipse) Totality begins 7:11 p.m. (Moon is totally covered in shadow) Maximum eclipse 7:47 p.m. Totality ends 8:23 p.m. (Moon emerges from shadow) Umbral eclipse ends 9:27 p.m. EVENT ENDS 9:45 p.m. Building closes (as usual) 10:00 p.m. Penumbral eclipse ends 10:22 p.m. Livestream broadcast ends 10:30 p.m. ...

Explanation: Tonight a bright full Moon will fade to red. Tonight's moon will be particularly bright because it is reaching its fully lit phase when it is relatively close to the Earth in its elliptical orbit. In fact, by some measures of size and brightness, tonight's full Moon is designated a supermoon, although perhaps the "super" is overstated because it will be only a few percent larger and brighter than the average full Moon. However, our Moon will fade to a dim red because it will also undergo a total lunar eclipse -- an episode when the Moon becomes completely...

Zodiac constellations this month include Sagittarius (the archer), Capricorn (the goat) and Aquarius (the water-carrier), and sinking into the west is Scorpio (the scorpion) with Saturn, our only remaining evening "star," in its midst. Three of our former evening "stars," Venus, Jupiter and Mars, are now morning objects, but only Venus, rapidly climbing into the morning sky before dawn, is much visible as yet. The autumnal (or fall) equinox is on Sept. 23, marking the end of summer and beginning of autumn. For the best spectacle of the month: A full lunar eclipse (sometimes called a "blood moon") occurs on...

China plans to send an unmanned lunar lander similar to previous probes but with a much heavier payload to the far side of the moon. Due to communications issues with the Moon itself blocking transmissions, China will undoubtedly launch a relay satellite in geo-synchronous lunar orbit to transmit data back, scientists say. The Chinese mission is set to determine how much of the rare element Helium -3, which exists in very small quantities on Earth, can be extracted from the purported rich deposits located on the moon's far side. H-3 is a light non-radioactive gas that has the potential to...

"You've heard of the supermoon before, and we have three of them this year. The first occurs Saturday, August 29th. A supermoon refers to a full or new moon when it's at its closet point (called the perigee) to Earth in its orbit. The moon can appear up to 30% larger than it's normal size from Earth. The full moon occurs at 11:35 a.m. MST on Saturday, so the moon technically won't be 100% full when it rises in the east at 6:54 p.m., but we won't be able to tell.

According to a Tuesday piece in Motherboard, Noam Chomsky, a philosopher and political commentator, and Lawrence Krauss, a physicist and cosmologist, had a public dialogue about space exploration. Being both men of the far left, they concluded that space travel should be best left to robots and conducted by governments. The conclusions are the exact opposite of what the prevailing trends are in space policy.

One of the surest signs that late summer is here in the northern hemisphere is the arrival of the Milky Way in the early evening sky....the star-dappled plane of our home galaxy sits almost due south and stretches far to the north. This is also why we refer to the triangular shaped asterism formed by the bright stars of Altair, Deneb and Vega as the Summer Triangle. Two of these stars are the focus of a fascinating mythos from the Far East, and a poetic celestial configuration that commemorates star-crossed lovers lost. We first heard of tales of Tanabata while...

Humans on Europa: A Plan for Colonies on the Icy Moon By Don Lipper Special to SPACE.com posted: 07:00 am ET 06 June 2001 Forewarned is forearmed in science fact and science fiction when it comes to Jupiter's icy moon Europa. Frigid and ice-covered, Europa is believed to harbor a giant liquid ocean beneath its crusty arctic surface, a primordial sea whose tidal motions are driven by Jovian gravity and warmed by intense radiation given off by the giant planet. Yet despite the planet's fearsome environment, members of the Artemis Society, a private venture dedicated establishing a permanent, self-supporting community...

Measurements from NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, aka LADEE (pronounced “laddie”) have confirmed the long-suspected presence of neon in its atmosphere ... along with isotopes of argon and helium. The relative concentrations of each of these elements also appears to depend on the time of day. “The presence of neon in the exosphere of the moon has been a subject of speculation since the Apollo missions, but no credible detections were made,” said Mehdi Benna of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, lead author of a paper describing the...

Explanation: Have you ever seen a halo around the Moon? Such 22 degree rings around the Moon -- caused by ice crystals falling in the Earth's atmosphere -- are somewhat rare. OK, but have you ever seen a blue moon? Given the modern definition of blue moon -- the second full moon occurring in a calendar month -- these are also rare. What is featured above might therefore be considered doubly rare -- a halo surrounding a blue moon. The featured image was taken late last month near Zhongshan Station in Antarctica. Visible in the foreground are a power generating...

Explanation: The Moon was new on July 16. Its familiar nearside facing the surface of planet Earth was in shadow. But on that date a million miles away, the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) captured this view of an apparently Full Moon crossing in front of a Full Earth. In fact, seen from the spacecraft's position beyond the Moon's orbit and between Earth and Sun, the fully illuminated lunar hemisphere is the less familiar farside. Only known since the dawn of the space age, the farside is mostly devoid of dark lunar maria that...

Explanation: On the Moon, it is easy to remember where you parked. In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon in the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This sharp image was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the valley floor. The image shows Schmitt on the left with the lunar rover at the edge of Shorty Crater, near the spot where geologist Schmitt discovered orange lunar soil. The Apollo 17 crew returned with 110 kilograms of rock and soil samples, more than was returned...

Explanation: Tonight's Full Moon, the second Full Moon in July, could be called a blue moon according to modern folklore. But this sharp and detailed mosaic, recorded with telescope and digital camera just before July's first Full Moon, actually does show a colorful lunar surface. The colors have been enhanced in the processed image but are real nonetheless, corresponding to real differences in the chemical makeup of the lunar surface. Also easy to see especially when the Moon is near full phase, bright rays from 85 kilometer wide Tycho crater at the upper right extend far across the lunar surface....

Has anyone noticed that the moon is brighter than normal tonight ? Saw a bright object flying in the sky brighter than airplane in eastern USA.