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The South Pole of the Moon. (NASA GSFC Scientific Visualisation Studio) =========================================================================== A distant asteroid trailing in the gravitational wake of Mars has been observed in greater detail than ever before, and the close-up reveals a surprising resemblance – one that raises some interesting questions about the object's ancient origins. The asteroid in question, called (101429) 1998 VF31, is part of a group of trojan asteroids sharing the orbit of Mars. Trojans are celestial bodies that fall into gravitationally balanced regions of space in the vicinity of other planets, located 60 degrees in front of and behind the planet. Most...

It's official. There's water on the Moon. We've thought that there was for over a decade, based on detections described back in 2009, but there was room for interpretation in the wavelengths used. Now, using a different wavelength unique to water, scientists report the first unambiguous detection. Those 2009 conclusions were apparently on the money. The ambiguity arose because the 2009 detections were made in the 3-micrometre infrared band. At this wavelength, there were two possibilities - water, or another hydroxyl compound comprising hydrogen and oxygen. Led by astronomer Casey Honniball of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, a team...

Explanation: Observe the Moon each night and its visible sunlit portion will gradually change. In phases progressing from New Moon to Full Moon to New Moon again, a lunar cycle or synodic month is completed in about 29.5 days. They look full, but top left to bottom right these panels do show the range of lunar phases for a complete synodic month during August 2019 from Ragusa, Sicily, Italy, planet Earth. For this lunar cycle project the panels organize images of the lunar phases in pairs. Each individual image is paired with another image separated by about 15 days, or...

A peculiar "gel-like" substance the Chinese Yutu-2 rover discovered in a small impact crater on the far side of the Moon last year has now been identified. According to analysis of the images, and comparison with Apollo samples here on Earth, it's exactly what you'd expect to find on the Moon: rock. More specifically, it's rock that was melted together - likely in the heat of a meteorite impact - to form a dark green, glossy, glassy mass. "Chang'e-4 rover discovered a dark greenish and glistening impact melt breccia in a crater during its traverse on the floor of Von...

The rust may be a result of the water discovered on the moon A newly published study notes that the moon is "rusting," leaving experts perplexed by the discovery. The research, published in Science Advances, notes that the rust may be a result of water discovered on the moon, but it's still shocking, given the lack of oxygen and dearth of water on Earth's celestial satellite. "It's very puzzling," the study's lead author, Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii, said in a statement. "The moon is a terrible environment for hematite to form in." Li was looking at data...

Explanation: Does the Moon ever block out Mars? Yes, the Moon occasionally moves in front of all of the Solar System's planets. Just this past Sunday, as visible from some locations in South America, a waning gibbous Moon eclipsed Mars. The featured image from Córdoba, Argentina captured this occultation well, showing a familiar cratered Moon in the foreground with the bright planet Mars unusually adjacent. Within a few seconds, Mars then disappeared behind the Moon, only to reappear a few minutes later across the Moon. Today the Moon moves close to, but not in front of, Venus. Because alignments will...

With NASA planning its next human mission to the moon in 2024, researchers are looking for options to power settlements on the lunar surface. According to a new article in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, nuclear fission reactors have emerged as top candidates to generate electricity in space. When it comes to powering an astronauts’ settlement, there are many factors to consider, writes correspondent Tien Nguyen in collaboration with ACS Central Science. The power source must be capable of being transported safely from Earth and of withstanding the harsh conditions of other worlds....

Huntsville AL (SPX) Apr 18, 2008 Behold the full Moon. Ancient craters and frozen lava seas lie motionless under an airless sky of profound quiet. It's a slow-motion world where even a human footprint may last millions of years. Nothing ever seems to happen there. Right? Wrong. NASA-supported scientists have realized that something does happen every month when the Moon gets a lashing from Earth's magnetic tail. "Earth's magnetotail extends well beyond the orbit of the Moon and, once a month, the Moon orbits through it," says Tim Stubbs, a University of Maryland scientist working at the Goddard Space Flight...

A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in Japan has found evidence of embedded carbon emissions on the moon. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of carbon data from the KAGUYA lunar orbiter and what they learned from it. The work involved studying a year and a half of data from the KAGUYA lunar orbiter, focusing specifically on carbon emissions. They found that the moon was emitting more carbon than has been thought, and more than could be accounted for by new carbon additions, such as the solar wind or collisions...

Now, a California man has put a painstakingly amount of effort into creating the world’s clearest image of the moon’s craters. Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy is the genius behind this masterpiece, which took two weeks to create. So, how did he do it? Here’s McCarthy describing the process: “This moon might look a little funny to you, and that’s because it is an impossible scene. From two weeks of images of the waxing moon, I took the section of the picture that has the most contrast (right before the lunar terminator where shadows are the longest), aligned and blended them to...

If you need a reason to get out of the house and see a show in our own backyard, tonight’s the night. A pink supermoon will rise tonight, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. The moon will also be the closest to the Earth at about 221,772 miles away, Space.com said. Not only does it have a colorful name, but it also is a supermoon and the first full moon of spring. You will be able to see it just after sunset with it making its peak illumination at 10:35 p.m. EDT, according to the almanac. But the show you...

President Donald Trump signed an executive order today (April 6) establishing U.S. policy on the exploitation of off-Earth resources. That policy stresses that the current regulatory regime — notably, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty — allows the use of such resources. This view has long held sway in U.S. government circles. For example, the United States, like the other major spacefaring nations, has not signed the 1979 Moon Treaty, which stipulates that non-scientific use of space resources be governed by an international regulatory framework. And in 2015, Congress passed a law explicitly allowing American companies and citizens to use moon...

Early Tuesday morning, the waning crescent moon will be visible with the four planets down and to the left. As the sky begins to brighten, Mercury will rise and both Saturn and Mars will begin to fade from view. Both the Moon and Jupiter will remain visible as it gets lighter. By Wednesday morning, the moon will be closest to Jupiter and Mars. Jupiter is currently the brightest morning planet and it will be easy to pick out. Mars will be much dimmer in comparison. The moon will continue to get thinner as the week goes on. On Thursday morning,...

Their prototype system mixes simulated lunar regolith — they have yet to try it with the real thing — with molten calcium chloride salt. The scientists then heat the mixture up to 950 degrees Celsius and run a current through it, releasing oxygen — a process called molten salt electrolysis. The electrolysis process has another useful byproduct: metal alloys. The scientists are also investigating applications to make best use of these alloys on the Moon. The team is looking to design a “pilot plant” that could be operated on the Moon by the mid-2020s.

A space enthusiast from Chennai who worked independently, found a debris from the Vikram moonlander that scientists had been looking for and helped guide them to the spot where it had crashed. Shanmuga Subramanian...looked for it on the images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbital (LRO) Camera that the US space agency had released to the public. LRO Project Scientist Noah Petro... said that Subramanian "is totally indpendent of the LRO, totally independent of the Chandraayan 2 team, just someone who is very interested in the Chandraayan 2 mission (who) used our data and identified a spot where there was a...

The instrument, called the Netherlands-China Low Frequency Explorer (NCLE), is located on Queqiao, a Chinese communications satellite that was launched in support of the Chang’e 4 mission, the first soft-landing and robotic mission to the lunar far side. NCLE was developed in the Netherlands by Radboud University, ASTRON, and ISISpace, along with support from Netherland’s Space Office. Queqiao is currently located around 450,000 kilometers (280,000 miles) from Earth, and it’s positioned in a halo orbit that keeps the satellite in the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point (so the satellite stays behind the Moon from our perspective, never coming between Earth and...

Astronomers have found that the majority of meteorites that regularly fall into Earth's atmosphere today are the result of an asteroid collision that took place 466 million years ago. Using chemical analysis from rock samples around the world, the team discovered that before that colossal collision, Earth experienced impacts from many different types of meteorite, meaning that our planet's history with meteorites is far more complex than we thought. After examining the chemical makeup of these chrome-spinels, the team found that 34 percent of the pre-collision micrometeorites were primitive achondrites, a type of meteorite that only makes up 0.45 percent...

Gravity highs (red) and lows (blue) on the Moon (Lunar nearside right, farside left)Science Results from the Japanese space agency's SELENE mission to the Moon are revealing details about why the lopsided lump of rock orbiting Earth is so unbalanced.The SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer, or Kaguya) mission was launched in September 2007 to gather detailed geological information about the Moon. The results are published in Science1,2,3,4.Because the Moon has no atmosphere or weather to speak of, its geology has remained almost unchanged since it formed. So unpicking its structure could offer information about how the early Solar System —...

Things took a disastrous turn when India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft attempted to land on the Moon on September 6. As it approached the Moon’s south pole, where it had planned to land in order to confirm the presence of water ice, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lost contact with the machine. It was presumed the machine crashed into lunar surface but after more than a month of searching, there has been no evidence of Chandrayaan-2 found

As a tribute to the 50th anniversary of its fake moon landing, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has announced a reboot of the staged event that fooled billions worldwide, only this time featuring an all-female crew. NASA officials confirm they will release a shot-for-shot remake of the meticulously concocted phony moon landing, originally filmed at an undisclosed soundstage 50 years ago this week. The rejuvenated hoax will follow in the footsteps of other recent all-female reboots like Ghostbusters and Ocean’s 8. “Those were some great buddy films,” a NASA spokesperson told reporters, “but we made the ultimate buddy movie...