As the world observes the 40th anniversary of the historic moon landing on July 20, 1969, the U.S. agency that accomplished that feat is working on plans for a return to the moon and an even more ambitious plan to use the moon as a base for missions to Mars. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is gearing up for its biggest challenge yet at a time when funding may be harder to come by.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-07-17-voa3.cfm
I was looking at google news and there is a lot of NASA news lately, from auctioning:
A navigational chart used by Apollo 11 astronauts has become the unexpected star of an auction in New York City marking the 40th anniversary of man's first lunar landing.
Bonhams New York said that the lunar surface star chart sold Thursday for an astronomical $218,000. The tool, with a 9-inch (23-centimeter) diameter, had been expected to bring in $70,000 to $90,000.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31952662/ns ... HJJ79E7myw
Spacesuit revisions for sustainable life on the moon, the are starting to look more and more like Space Odyssey 2001/2010:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31951009/ns ... syOJGzps-w
The first man to pee on the moon, uhh don't pass up the Buzz Aldin rap it's pretty hype:
Buzz Aldrin may not have been the first man on the moon, but he's got another historic first under his belt, so to speak: first person to pee on the moon.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... n-pee.html
Erasing the first moon landing tapes ... uh:
NASA admitted in 2006 that no one could find the original video recordings of the July 20, 1969, landing.
Since then, Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, who oversaw television processing at the ground-tracking sites during the Apollo 11 mission, has been looking for them.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/ ... MK20090716
To Hollywood level restoration of moon walk tapes:
ith the help of Hollywood, those historic, grainy images of the first men on the moon never looked better. NASA unveiled refurbished video Thursday of the July 20, 1969, moonwalk restored by the same company that sharpened up the movie "Casablanca." NASA lost its original moon landing videotapes and after a three-year search, officials have concluded they were probably erased. That original live video was ghostlike and grainy.
NASA and a Hollywood film restoration company took television video copies of what Apollo 11 beamed to Earth 40 years ago and made the pictures look sharper.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... gD99FNTT00
and http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/apollo11.html (direct link to videos)
And the latest launch issues:
Video and images taken during Endeavour's 8.5-minute ride into orbit showed several pieces of foam and/or ice breaking off the shuttle's external fuel tank and striking Endeavour's heat shield. Program managers said they believe white streaks seen on some of the shuttle's heat-resistant black belly tiles are nothing more than a coating loss and likely would not be an issue for the return trip back to Earth.
The heat shield protects the shuttle during its fiery, supersonic descent through the atmosphere prior to landing, a friction-filled flight that can generate temperatures as high as about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 Centigrade) -- about one-third as hot as the surface of the sun.
Shuttle Columbia broke apart during its re-entry into the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, due to a hole in one of its wing panels caused by a debris impact during launch. All seven crewmembers aboard died.
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCr ... SN16424852
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( 3 / 259 )In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power reactor had a meltdown. Years later, a documentary has been produced to make aware the potential dangers with nuclear energy.
The half-life of the plutonium fuel that is still burning beneath the surface of the reactor has a half-life of 250,000 years. To this day Pripyat is a ghost town.
Nuclear energy comes with the serious risk of meltdown, bunkering toxic bi-product, and cancer causing power-plant emissions to local areas. To this day, we have companies still creating new nuclear powerplants and we rely heavily on nuclear power to provide electricity to our cities.
Focus on greener energy alternatives and stopping the production of new nuclear powerplants is a choice everyone has to make in their local areas.
In the short-term, nuclear provides a big bang for the buck and potentially limitless energy. Green alternatives are in their infancy and provide much lower production of energy, moving over to greener energy would also call for a serious reduction in energy consumption.
In the long-run, nuclear energy will stockpile barrels and barrels of toxic waste that can't be disposed or recycled and the probability for meltdown increases over time. Green alternatives will become cheaper to produce, more efficient and utilizing natural sustainable energy sources like geothermal, waterfalls, wind and solar.
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( 2.9 / 211 )
Just an article I found surfing the web on moon colonization.
Washington, April 22 (ANI): Eminent scientist Stephen Hawking has called for a massive investment in establishing colonies on the Moon and Mars, arguing that the world should devote about 10 times as much as 0.25% of its financial resources to space.
According to a report in New Scientist, Hawking expressed his views at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, on the occasion of NASAs 50th anniversary.
In his speech, Hawking focused on near-term possibilities, backing NASAs goals of returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020 and sending humans to Mars soon after that.
The Moon is a good place to start because it is close by and relatively easy to reach, said Hawking. The Moon could be a base for travel to the rest of the solar system, he added.
Mars would be the obvious next target, with its abundant supplies of frozen water, and the tantalising possibility that life may have been present there in the past, according to Hawking.
Source:
Moon Colonization
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