The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA — the country's equivalent of NASA) announced earlier this week that it was developing plans to put a man on the moon by the year 2030. While the proposal is yet to be approved by the nation's government, if successful it will be the first time a Japanese astronaut is sent on a mission beyond the International Space Station.
While NASA has its eyes set on Mars and beyond, Google still has its crosshairs on the moon. Despite its relatively proximity, a lunar mission is still something only large and well-funded governments are able to pull off. Well, not anymore. Through Google’s Lunar XPRIZE campaign, it is showing that even private groups, with the right contracts, can go to and land on the moon. Now it is formally announcing five such groups who will be, or should, by the end of the year launch their mission, for science and profit!
All you have to do is look out your window at night and you can see the evidence in the night sky that the moon has been pummeled by asteroids and other impacts throughout its life. Since there is no wind on the surface of the moon, there is no erosion and the craters simply stay for eternity. While we can clearly see that the Moon has been struck with objects that form craters, scientists believed that this was not a very common occurrence. It now seems that the scientists were wrong.
We'd expect most new discoveries about Jupiter to be coming from the Juno spacecraft, which entered orbit around the planet early last month, but today we're hearing about a fascinating new find that Juno had nothing to do with. Scientists at the Southwest Research Institute have discovered that the atmosphere around Jupiter's moon Io is in a constant state of flux, collapsing and rebuilding once every day.
The space fever has reached the Far East. Or rather, the increased interest in space exploration and science may have helped push China to finally share to the rest of the world one of its biggest, though perhaps lesser known, achievements in this field of science. In 2013, it launched the Chang'e 3 lander and become the third country to ever make a soft-landing on the Moon. And although its accompanying Yutu rover is no longer functional, it was able to snap these clear, hi-res, true color photos of the moon.
China put its first rover on the surface of the Moon back in 2013 and the has been investigating the lunar surface the last few years since it landed. The Chinese rover was the first new rover to land on the moon in 40 years and the trip has paid off for scientists.
A new piece of legislation by the name of The U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act has just passed the U.S. House of Representatives. This legal document would "facilitate commercial exploration for and commercial recovery of space resources by United States citizens" - this means we could fly to our Moon, for example, and take home a bunch of space rocks for our very own. Believe it or not, this appears to fly well with previous laws which include the international Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
SpaceIL will be the first team of private citizens to have a lander reach our Earth's Moon if all goes according to plan - inside the year 2017. The team at SpaceIL have signed up with California's Spaceflight Industries to bring their craft to space in a SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher in the second half of the year 2017. If the SpaceIL team reach the moon first, they'll be the winners of the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition - which will give them $30 million dollars for the accomplishment. They'll also be just the fourth country to land a rover on our Moon.
SpaceIL, a private space exploration company from Israel competing in Google's Lunar XPRIZE competition, has announced it's the first team to get a launch contract to send their private rover into space and hopefully land it on the Moon. The Google Lunar XPRIZE competition is awarding $20 million to the first privately-funded moon landing. SpaceIL's contract with California's Spaceflight Industries means the team has a "ticket to the moon" that will see their aircraft launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket scheduled for the second half of 2017.
NASA has published a new photo giving us a startlingly clear look at Pluto’s biggest moon, Charon. It shows many battle wounds, pocked with impact craters and traced over with deep grooves. Those scars show a history, says NASA, one that is “surprisingly complex and violent.” Images were taken by the space agency’s New Horizons spacecraft, and they were then combined together and the color was enhanced. The final result is a high resolution photo full of distinct features.
A new Kickstarter campaign has just launched, called Project Moonspike, that is looking to raise funds to build the first crowdfunded rocket to be sent to the moon. Moonspike, a group of independent rocket engineers, are hoping to raise £600,000 (about $1 million) over the next 30 days, which will help fund their rocket with a goal of sending a 1-gram payload to the surface of the Moon. While previous Kickstarters, such as Lunar Mission One, have raised funds for their own Moon missions, Moonspike will be the first to build their own rocket, instead of relying on something pre-made.
A supermoon will be taking place on September 27th, which means a full moon will be visible when it is at the point in its orbit where it is closest to the Earth. However, as NASA explains, this is the first time in over 30 years that a lunar eclipse will be taking place at the exact same time. So in the evening on September 27th in the US, people will be able to view a total lunar eclipse of the largest moon we can see for over an hour.
