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European Space Agency's head Jan Woerner released the vision outline for the Moon Village, which could replace the International Space Station as early as 2030. The lunar village will be composed of structures created by 3D printers and robots using Moon dusts as raw materials. Woerner became the ESA head in July 2015 and made the Moon mission the space agency's central project. Woerner added that this lunar project is a crucial step towards the future flight to Mars. "I looked into the requirements I see for a project after ISS. As of today, I see the Moon Village as...

Explanation: On the Moon, the Earth never rises -- or sets. If you were to sit on the surface of the Moon, you would see the Earth just hang in the sky. This is because the Moon always keeps the same side toward the Earth. Curiously, the featured image does picture the Earth setting over a lunar edge. This was possible because the image was taken from a spacecraft orbiting the Moon - specifically the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). In fact, LRO orbits the Moon so fast that, from the spacecraft, the Earth appears to set anew about every two...

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/. Practically all the projects related to manned flights to the moon are absent from an updated version of the Federal Space Programme for the years 2016 through 2025 drafted by the Federal Space Agency after the downwards revision of its budget, Izvestia daily said on Tuesday referring to the document it had obtained. "As it follows from the text of the draft programme, which Roscosmos has submitted to the government for review, a decision was taken to sacrifice the lunar programme that was named a strategic goal for future development of Russian space research," the newspaper...

The last full moon of the year also happens to be the first on Christmas in 38 years. Photos of the Christmas full moon offer a festive, bright look at the night sky from around the world. Given the time of year, this special lunar occurrence is also known as the full cold moon, though the temperature of the moon is neither affected by its phases nor the weather on earth. Nonetheless, NASA's John Keller, who works at the Goddard Space Flight Center describes it as a special event that showcases the moon's unique relationship to earth. Keller said: As...

In 1993, French astronomer Jacques Laskar ran a series of calculations indicating that the gravity of the Moon is vital to stabilizing the tilt of our planet. Earth's obliquity, as this tilt is technically known as, has huge repercussions for climate. Laskar argued that should Earth's obliquity wander over hundreds of thousands of years, it would cause environmental chaos by creating a climate too variable for complex life to develop in relative peace. So his argument goes, we should feel remarkably lucky to have such a large moon on our doorstep, as no other terrestrial planet in our solar system...

A blessed Christmas to one and all The best ‘Christmas Card’ in the sky ever seen could be viewed through my windows at quarter to three this morning. Something awoke me early, and I when I made my way out to the great room, it was flooded with a strange and lovely kind of light. A look outside the windows showed a huge silver moon, and stars ever so bright, one of them the brightest of all, recalling that one special night in Bethlehem to mind. Even though the winds were high, Lake Huron to the west in my view...

Cassini is due to pass 3,106 miles from Enceladus at 12:49 p.m. EST. Scientists want to use the flyby to study how much heat is coming up through the ice from the moon's interior. The measurements will help researchers figure out what is driving Enceladus' plumes. "Understanding how much warmth Enceladus has in its heart provides insight into its remarkable geologic activity," Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. Cassini will continue to observe Enceladus during the remainder of its mission, but it will be at least four times farther...

The second race to the moon went into high gear when the Google Lunar X Prize officially certified that Moon Express has contracted with a company called Rocket Lab to launch its lunar lander on board an Electron rocket sometime in late 2017 to land on the moon. Moon Express is the second team competing for the $30 million prize to land on the moon to have acquired a certified launch contract. SpaceIL, an Israeli team, has already acquired a contract to launch their lander on board the SpaceX Falcon 9.

Explanation: A crescent Moon and brilliant Venus met in predawn skies on December 7, a beautiful conjunction of planet Earth's two brightest celestial beacons after the Sun. Harder to see but also on the scene was Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10). The fainter comet clearly sporting two tails, lunar night side, bright sunlit lunar crescent, and brilliant morning star, are all recorded here by combining short and long exposures of the same field of view. Pointing down and right, Catalina's dust tail tends to trail behind the comet's orbit. Its ion tail, angled toward the top left of the frame, is...

Russia Is Planning To Build A Permanent Manned Base On The Moon Plans are being finalised Rob WaughRob Waugh – 10 hours ago Russia’s space agency is planning to build a manned moon base - launching modules into space on six separate rockets. Russia plans to launch a lunar probe in 2024 which will scout possible locations - before landing a man on the moon in 2030. Construction of the Luna 25 lander has already begun, the official state news agency Tass has reported. Once the components are in place, assembly of the moon base will continue over ten years....

It was no accident that Nasa crashed one of its Apollo 16 rocket boosters onto the moon, but the researchers never intended to lose it. In April of 1972, the booster drifted off and was never seen again, unable to transmit tracking data and reveal its whereabouts because of a malfunction. Now, almost 44 years later, the crash site of the Saturn V stage-three booster has finally been located.

This week the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation known as the SPACE Act of 2015 (The U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act), which recognizes and promotes the rights of U.S. companies to engage in the exploration and extraction of space resources from asteroids and other celestial bodies. That’s a huge win for private space exploration companies, especially for companies with upcoming plans to tap into the economic potential of the moon. That’s because the legislation, in its definition of “space resources,” is sufficiently broad to include resources found on the lunar surface. In short, the moon could now be...

Got 20 bucks? You could own a piece of the Moon–or, at any rate, you could own a piece of paper telling you that you own a piece of the Moon. If that's too close to home, you can opt to buy property on Mars, Venus, Mercury, Io, or Pluto. The Lunar Embassy, owned and run by entrepreneur Dennis Hope, is able to sell shares in these important resources because Hope has declared himself to be the owner of several parts of outer space. So far, no one has formally challenged him. It's a surprisingly popular business plan. Although the...

Explanation: This was a sky to show the kids. All in all, three children, three planets, the Moon, a star, an airplane and a mom were all captured in one image near Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA in early September of 2005. Minus the airplane and the quadruple on the ground, this busy quadruple coincidence sky was visible last week all over the world. The easiest object to spot is the crescent Moon, which is easily the brightest sky orb in the featured image. Venus is the highest planet in the sky, with Jupiter to its right. The bright...

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. ...