China's "Long March to the Moon" has placed a lander and a rover on the moon. The Chang'e-3 lander and her accompanying Yutu or "Jade Rabbit" rover arrived inside the right eye of the "Man in the Moon" this evening at 9:00PM Beijing time. This marks the first time in more than 40 years anyone has performed a soft lunar landing. All sources point to a successful deployment for the robot visitors.
NASA has successfully tested its Morpheus lander prototype. It launched today over a flame trench at NASA's Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility, climbed 50 feet into the air, hovered for 15 seconds, flew 23 feet and landed on the designated pad. Once put into service, the Morpheus model will be used to deliver cargo and fuel to asteroids and other extraterrestrial surfaces, as well as refuel deep-space probes. This is the same model that last year crashed and burst into flames like four Jiffy Pops going supernova.
Moon Express is one of the companies hoping to win the Google Lunar X Prize competition worth as much as $30 million. Not too long ago the company was celebrating a successful free flight test with the NASA Mighty Eagle lander. Moon Express has this week unveiled its own lunar lander called the MX-1.
The US was the first country to put humans on the surface of the moon and the lunar landing sites from those early Apollo missions are a national treasure. As more countries are working on sending missions to the moon, the US is currently grappling with how it will protect the lunar landing sites from damage by other countries.
China has successfully launched the Chang'e-3 probe slated to put a lander and rover on the moon. The pair are equipped with seven scientific instruments for observing outer space and gathering data about the lunar surface. The launch took place today at 5:30PM UTC using a Long March 3B rocket at the LC2 Launch Complex at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern China.
New research has been published that suggests the moon is massively younger than scientists previously believed. The new research suggests that the moon is between 4.4 billion and 4.45 billion years old. That finding makes it tens of millions of years younger than previously believed.
![Neil Armstrong’s passing marked by NASA in 1 year anniversary [UPDATE]](https://c.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/armstrong-820x420.png)
One year ago (and two days), the family of Neil Armstrong announced that this navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut passed away at the age of 82. Making known that Armstrong was a "reluctant American hero", his family said that he "always believed he was just doing his job." Neil Armstrong became the first human being to step foot on the moon on July 20th, 1969, followed 20 minutes afterward by his crewmate Buzz Aldrin. MAKE SURE you have a look at the update at the end of this article - Armstrong didn't die twice!
It was just a few months ago that the folks working with Jeff Bezos and Bezos Expeditions headed to the depths of the sea to bring up a new collection of NASA history. This week it's made clear - and confirmed - what they actually found: these F-1 engines belonged to none other than NASA's mission Apollo 11. If there's one tribute to the greatness of that moon exploration mission that we're guessing Neil Armstrong wouldn't have expected, this would be it.
It's been over 40 years since we last paid a visit to our moon, but thanks to a partnership between two private space companies, we could be going back in very soon. Moon Express, Inc. and the International Lunar Observatory Association have announced plans to plant a telescope on the moon in order to get never-before-seen photos of the universe.
National parks are quite abundant here on Earth. They're full of wildlife, plants, trees, mountains, lakes, and pretty much anything else you can think of that deals with nature. However, lawmakers are looking to take the national park movement to the Moon in order preserve the Apollo equipment that still remains on the surface.
We've seen a lot of neat photos from Mars thanks to NASA's latest Curiosity rover that's currently putzing its way around the surface of the red planet. The latest imagery that it has sent back is a rather simple, but neat timelapse video of one of Mars' moons rising into the Martian sky.
The past two days have been full of what's called "Supermoon" sightings due to the fact that the Earth has been as close to our moon as it's going to be all year long. While the past two days have brought on a flood of "oh my goodness that's the biggest moon I've ever seen" photographs, today we must face the facts: it wont just be another 365 days before we see this happen again.
