The secrets of our Sun may be found much closer to home - in astronomical terms, anyway - as NASA researchers look to the Moon's crust to answer core questions about our solar system. While Earth orbits in the so-called "habitable zone" around the Sun, the reason conditions for intelligent life arose here but not on other planets have long been shrouded in mystery.
NASA's ambitious "Artemis" mission to take American astronauts back to the moon will cost as much as $30 billion over the next half decade, the space agency's chief has confirmed. Administrator Jim Bridenstine also defended the Moon 2024 project over criticism that it was wasteful and could distract NASA from other scientific work.
The biggest crater on the moon (Earth's moon) has a mysterious mass of metal under its surface, so says new evidence published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. This information was part of a Baylor University study, lead by Peter B. James, Ph.D. and assistant professor of planetary geophysics in Baylor's College of Arts and Sciences. James described the new discovery as an "unexpectedly large amount of mass hundreds of miles underneath the South Pole-Aitken basin."
NASA has announced that its Space Launch System project has reached a 'significant milestone' in the effort to return humans to the Moon. The space agency and Boeing, one of the private companies it tapped as a contractor, have assembled four-fifths of the huge core stage that is key to launching the SLS and related Orion spacecraft. The success brings NASA closer to its Artemis-1 lunar mission.
As anticipated, NASA has named the three private companies that will make cargo deliveries to the Moon. The payload missions will take place under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and involve commercial landers equipped with payloads from the space agency. Cargo will include items related to both scientific efforts and various technologies.
The NASA official meant to lead the 2024 Moon mission has unexpectedly quit the agency, after Congress slapped down plans to create a new mission directorate. Mark Sirangelo only joined the agency a month and a half ago, but was widely expected to take the helm at a new group focused on NASA's return to the Moon, the mission that will help pave the way for a manned mission to Mars.
The Moon is not only still active tectonically, but shrinking, NASA says, generating "moonquakes" as it slowly contracts. The new findings combined data from multiple Moon missions that took place nearly five decades ago with the LRO Mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which is currently mapping out the surface of Earth's satellite.
A historic anniversary for one of the greatest achievements in human history is coming this year. NASA says that July 20, 2019, will be the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. Apollo 11 is the mission that took Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts to the moon for the first time in human history.
Getting so very close to being the first successful landing of an Israeli spacecraft on our Moon meant Israel MUST try again. As such, the team at SpaceIL announced this weekend that they would indeed be making another attempt. The possibility that they'd get back up and running so soon was made possible in part by the Lunar XPRIZE Foundation.
Yesterday during the fifth meeting of the National Space Council, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the United States has a revised deadline for returning astronauts to the Moon. Rather than aiming for its previous 2028 date, NASA has been directed to get American astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024, and the agency's administrator has released a positive statement about the ambitious goal.
United States Vice President Mike Pence has announced the administration's new, highly ambitious goal of returning astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024. The new deadline is four years earlier than the previous Moon touchdown timeline, with Pence referring to the original goal as "just not good enough." The statements were made at the 5th meeting of the National Space Council.
Multiple companies are working on the technology needed to return man to the moon. Part of the tech is giving the astronauts a place to live and work while they are on the moon. Lockheed Martin is working on a moon habitat and has announced that its full-scale prototype, known as Habitat Ground Test Article (HGTA) has been finalized.