The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel

Project MOON EXPLOSION Blows More Than Water Out Of Lunar Craters

 

NASA's most awesome mission since pointing at the sky and saying "I bet we can put people there" has come to fruition, with absolute proof that there's water ice on the Moon - and lots of it.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is the most explosive euphemism since Tom Clancy discovered the thesaurus.  It 'sensed' the contents of the lunar crater Cabeus by dropping an entire Centaur rocket booster into it, and when you 'drop' something in orbit it's very much like 'fired at' by the time it hits the ground.  The booster slammed into the shadowed regolith like a two ton bullet, blowing a twenty meter hole in the moon and ejecting dust tens of kilometers into space - where the LCROSS satellite, chasing the Centaur, could get a good look at it for four minutes before its own suicide strike into the same crater.

 

NASA's most awesome mission since pointing at the sky and saying "I bet we can put people there" has come to fruition, with absolute proof that there's water ice on the Moon - and lots of it.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is the most explosive euphemism since Tom Clancy discovered the thesaurus.  It 'sensed' the contents of the lunar crater Cabeus by dropping an entire Centaur rocket booster into it, and when you 'drop' something in orbit it's very much like 'fired at' by the time it hits the ground.  The booster slammed into the shadowed regolith like a two ton bullet, blowing a twenty meter hole in the moon and ejecting dust tens of kilometers into space - where the LCROSS satellite, chasing the Centaur, could get a good look at it for four minutes before its own suicide strike into the same crater.

"The Earth Strain" -Could Future Space Missions Infect the Milky Way?

A Mars mission to be launched in October on a Russian robot spacecraft will include specimens of thale cress; tiny water creature tardigrade - or water bear - which can also survive extraordinary extremes of temperature and pressure; samples of brewer's yeast; and permafrost from the Siberian Arctic. Together with several other microscopic organisms, these representatives of Earth life will be carried in a package that will be flown to Mars and are scheduled to be returned to Earth in 2012.

Antarctica Base Camp: Search for Life in the Ice of Mars & Beyond

The ancient isolated lakes of Antarctica are living biology labs that may yield clues to microbial life existing on Mars and future exploration of Jupiter's Europa and more distant exo-planets beyond of Solar System.

The Lost World of Antarctica's Lake Vostok - NASA's Prelude to Exploring Jupiter's Europa

Armada of Robots to Explore Saturn's Titan?

Wolfgang Fink, visiting associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena says we are on the brink of a great paradigm shift in planetary exploration, and the next round of robotic explorers will be nothing like what we see today. 

Will Orbiting Space Colonies Replace Planets?

Expanding into space has been a dream of scifi since before the genre had a name.  Adventure, overcrowding, the chance of green-skinned women - the reasons are manifold but the idea is always the same, because the need to advance and prosper in new locations is fundamental to our species.  The fact it's usually because we ruined the last place (or we don't like the people who live there) is best ignored.

Will Pulsar Networks Guide Future Space Missions Through the Milky Way?

"Pulsar Power," the Next Big Thing! The European Space Agency’s Ariadna initiative is studying a totally awesome navigation system that creams the one you'll find in your new Porche: they are examining the feasibility of navigation relying on millisecond pulsars, rotating neutron stars that spin faster than 40 revolutions per second.  The pulses of these dead stars can be used as exquisitely accurate timing mechanisms.

Pulsars have huge advantages over a traditional deep space satellite network to fix a ship's position  — it doesn’t scale and costs a fortune. Autonomous navigation is clearly preferable, tying the navigation system to natural objects like pulsars. 

Stephen Hawking: Manned Space Missions Key to Future

"Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I'm arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before." 

Stephen Hawking, Cambridge University

Search for Life in the Universe: "Planet of the Apes" Theory - A Galaxy Classic

Charley Lineweaver, a cosmologist with The Australian National University, believes the science behind the movie "Planet of the Apes" is based on a flawed notion of evolution, a notion that could have serious implications for our search for intelligent life elsewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Lineweaver calls this notion the "Planet of the Apes Hypothesis" -a theory subscribed to by Carl Sagan and the astronomers involved with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), that human-like intelligence is a convergent feature of evolution  -that there is an intelligence niche, into which other species (apes in the movie) will evolve if the human species goes extinct.

"Humans Predicted to Make Contact with an ET Civilization Within Two Decades"--A Galaxy Classic

"That's 500 billion planets out there, and bear in mind there are 100 billion other galaxies. To think this [the Earth] is the only place where anything interesting is happening, you have got to be really audacious to take that point of view."

Seth Shostak, SETI senior astronomer

"That's 500 billion planets out there, and bear in mind there are 100 billion other galaxies. To think this [the Earth] is the only place where anything interesting is happening, you have got to be really audacious to take that point of view."

Seth Shostak, SETI senior astronomer

Project MOON EXPLOSION Blows More Than Water Out Of Lunar Craters

 

NASA's most awesome mission since pointing at the sky and saying "I bet we can put people there" has come to fruition, with absolute proof that there's water ice on the Moon - and lots of it.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is the most explosive euphemism since Tom Clancy discovered the thesaurus.  It 'sensed' the contents of the lunar crater Cabeus by dropping an entire Centaur rocket booster into it, and when you 'drop' something in orbit it's very much like 'fired at' by the time it hits the ground.  The booster slammed into the shadowed regolith like a two ton bullet, blowing a twenty meter hole in the moon and ejecting dust tens of kilometers into space - where the LCROSS satellite, chasing the Centaur, could get a good look at it for four minutes before its own suicide strike into the same crater.

 

NASA's most awesome mission since pointing at the sky and saying "I bet we can put people there" has come to fruition, with absolute proof that there's water ice on the Moon - and lots of it.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is the most explosive euphemism since Tom Clancy discovered the thesaurus.  It 'sensed' the contents of the lunar crater Cabeus by dropping an entire Centaur rocket booster into it, and when you 'drop' something in orbit it's very much like 'fired at' by the time it hits the ground.  The booster slammed into the shadowed regolith like a two ton bullet, blowing a twenty meter hole in the moon and ejecting dust tens of kilometers into space - where the LCROSS satellite, chasing the Centaur, could get a good look at it for four minutes before its own suicide strike into the same crater.

"The Earth Strain" -Could Future Space Missions Infect the Milky Way?

A Mars mission to be launched in October on a Russian robot spacecraft will include specimens of thale cress; tiny water creature tardigrade - or water bear - which can also survive extraordinary extremes of temperature and pressure; samples of brewer's yeast; and permafrost from the Siberian Arctic. Together with several other microscopic organisms, these representatives of Earth life will be carried in a package that will be flown to Mars and are scheduled to be returned to Earth in 2012.

Antarctica Base Camp: Search for Life in the Ice of Mars & Beyond

The ancient isolated lakes of Antarctica are living biology labs that may yield clues to microbial life existing on Mars and future exploration of Jupiter's Europa and more distant exo-planets beyond of Solar System.

The Lost World of Antarctica's Lake Vostok - NASA's Prelude to Exploring Jupiter's Europa

Armada of Robots to Explore Saturn's Titan?

Wolfgang Fink, visiting associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena says we are on the brink of a great paradigm shift in planetary exploration, and the next round of robotic explorers will be nothing like what we see today. 

Will Orbiting Space Colonies Replace Planets?

Expanding into space has been a dream of scifi since before the genre had a name.  Adventure, overcrowding, the chance of green-skinned women - the reasons are manifold but the idea is always the same, because the need to advance and prosper in new locations is fundamental to our species.  The fact it's usually because we ruined the last place (or we don't like the people who live there) is best ignored.

Will Pulsar Networks Guide Future Space Missions Through the Milky Way?

"Pulsar Power," the Next Big Thing! The European Space Agency’s Ariadna initiative is studying a totally awesome navigation system that creams the one you'll find in your new Porche: they are examining the feasibility of navigation relying on millisecond pulsars, rotating neutron stars that spin faster than 40 revolutions per second.  The pulses of these dead stars can be used as exquisitely accurate timing mechanisms.

Pulsars have huge advantages over a traditional deep space satellite network to fix a ship's position  — it doesn’t scale and costs a fortune. Autonomous navigation is clearly preferable, tying the navigation system to natural objects like pulsars. 

Stephen Hawking: Manned Space Missions Key to Future

"Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I'm arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before." 

Stephen Hawking, Cambridge University

Search for Life in the Universe: "Planet of the Apes" Theory - A Galaxy Classic

Charley Lineweaver, a cosmologist with The Australian National University, believes the science behind the movie "Planet of the Apes" is based on a flawed notion of evolution, a notion that could have serious implications for our search for intelligent life elsewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Lineweaver calls this notion the "Planet of the Apes Hypothesis" -a theory subscribed to by Carl Sagan and the astronomers involved with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), that human-like intelligence is a convergent feature of evolution  -that there is an intelligence niche, into which other species (apes in the movie) will evolve if the human species goes extinct.

"Humans Predicted to Make Contact with an ET Civilization Within Two Decades"--A Galaxy Classic

"That's 500 billion planets out there, and bear in mind there are 100 billion other galaxies. To think this [the Earth] is the only place where anything interesting is happening, you have got to be really audacious to take that point of view."

Seth Shostak, SETI senior astronomer

"That's 500 billion planets out there, and bear in mind there are 100 billion other galaxies. To think this [the Earth] is the only place where anything interesting is happening, you have got to be really audacious to take that point of view."

Seth Shostak, SETI senior astronomer