Lunar Exploration

NASA Opens the Door to Commercial Moon Landing, including Two Colorado Companies

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 18:21:37 +0000

NASA Opens the Door to Commercial Moon Landing, including Two Colorado Companies Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/22/2019 - 11:21

Nell London

From Colorado Public Radio - Colorado Matters: Two Colorado companies are getting into the delivery business. Not the two-day delivery kind, more like the 238,900-mile outer space kind. NASA is planning to tap the private aerospace industry to take their experiments to the lunar surface. Two of the nine approved bidders are Lockheed Martin and Deep Space Systems. Lockheed Martin is a well-known industry titan, while Deep Space Systems is a Littleton-based company with just 65 employees.

The "Commercial Lunar Payload Services" contracts are part of President Donald Trump's renewed focus on Moon exploration. The increased traffic to the moon will also practice technology and techniques needed to bring large vehicles and astronauts to Mars.

"Mars is very, very hard to get to," said CU Boulder Professor Jack Burns, who also served on President Trump's transition team for NASA. "The Moon, on the other hand, is nearby. It's only three days away, and the technologies are in hand to begin developing it and to learn how to live and work on an alien, hostile body." Listen now.

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New Mission To Far Side Of The Moon Explores Origins Of The Universe

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 16:53:12 +0000

New Mission To Far Side Of The Moon Explores Origins Of The Universe Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/09/2019 - 09:53

Carl Bilek

From Colorado Public Radio - Colorado Matters: Fifty years after U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon, China landed a rover on the far side of the Moon last week for the first time in history.

Jack Burns, an astrophysicist at CU Boulder, sees the landing as the dawn of a new space age. Burns talked with Colorado Matters about the accomplishment, and what could be next when it comes to exploring the far side of the Moon.

Burns is now leading a mission to develop a satellite called DAPPER, which stands for Dark Ages Polarimetry Pathfinder, with the ultimate goal of placing an array of telescopes on the far side of the Moon to study the origins of the universe. The far side of the Moon is uniquely suited for deep space research because it's dark and it blocks interference from radio transmissions from the Earth. Listen now.

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China’s Chang’e-4 Ready for Farside Moon Landing

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 18:26:52 +0000

China’s Chang’e-4 Ready for Farside Moon Landing Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/31/2018 - 11:26

Leonard David

From Inside Outer Space: The state-run China Daily reports January 1st that the country’s Chang’e 4 robotic probe is expected to land on the South Pole–Aitken basin on the Moon’s farside sometime between Wednesday and Thursday, citing information from China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, a major contractor of the country’s lunar exploration programs.

The Chang’e-4 mission totes six kinds of scientific payloads.

On the lander, it carries the Landing Camera (LCAM), the Terrain Camera (TCAM), and the Low Frequency Spectrometer (LFS). There are three kinds of payloads on the rover, the Panoramic Camera (PCAM), the Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR), and the Visible and Near-Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS). Read more...

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Apollo astronaut visits campus, shares tales from the moon

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 18:19:32 +0000

Apollo astronaut visits campus, shares tales from the moon Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/30/2018 - 12:19

Daniel Strain

From CU Boulder Today: Apollo astronaut visits campus, shares tales from the moon

This week, Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, an Apollo-era astronaut and the last person to set foot on the moon, gave a group of CU Boulder students the chance to see something rare: color on the lunar surface.

Schmitt, who flew on Apollo 17 in 1972, visited the university Monday. He spoke to an undergraduate class focusing on space science and policy and later delivered a public talk at the Fiske Planetarium. You can watch the live stream of Schmitt's talk online.

The glimpse of color came from a photograph that had been recreated from negatives that Schmitt snapped during his 3-day trek on the lunar surface. It showed a reddish-orange streak of lunar soil that Schmitt, a Harvard-trained geologist, explained was made up of tiny glass beads created during a 3.5 billion-year-old volcanic eruption. Read more...

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China’s Moon Mission to Boldly Go a Step Further

Anonymous — Sun, 31 Dec 2017 19:15:17 +0000

China’s Moon Mission to Boldly Go a Step Further Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 12/31/2017 - 12:15

Dr. Stuart Clark

From The Guardian: This time next year, there may be a new world leader in lunar exploration. If all goes according to plan, China will have done something no other space-faring superpower has been able to do: land on the far side of the moon. China is rocketing ahead with its plans for lunar exploration. In 2018, they will launch a pair of missions known collectively as Chang’e 4. It is the fourth mission in a series named after the Chinese moon goddess. Read more…

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