Redondo Beach CA (SPX) Mar 01, 2007 - The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) successfully completed critical design review, giving Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) the green-light to complete building flight hardware for the mission. As prime contractor, Northrop Grumman is building and integrating LCROSS for NASA Ames Research Center.
The German space agency is preparing for a mission to the moon, the Financial Times Deutschland reported on Thursday.
Washington DC (SPX) Feb 26, 2007 - If Earth had a mountain so incredibly high that its peak poked through the outermost layer of our atmosphere, mountain climbers smart enough and hardy enough to reach the top would have some idea what it will be like to be camped on the moon.
Huntsville AL (SPX) Feb 23, 2007 - It's no ordinary driving test and they won't have to parallel park, but future astronauts will learn what it will take to some day drive on the surface of the moon. NASA is looking for the world's best moonbuggy drivers who can also create and build their own original lunar rover.
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Feb 20, 2007 - We are probably doing it just to remind ourselves of the maxim that the new is the well-forgotten old. There is no other explanation for this year's focus on the lunar subject. Many, if not the majority, do not see it as a problem at all. Everything is perfectly clear. The Moon is the concern of the United States, Europe, India, and China.
Huntsville AL (MSFC) Feb 15, 2007 - NASA has been exploring space for nearly half a century, often with stupendous success. Yet there's one thing we really don't know: what is the best way to explore a planet? declares Paul D. Spudis, a senior planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Reston VA (SPX) Feb 15, 2007 - The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space Colonization Technical Committee (SCTC) has developed a position statement which recommends specific research, development, technology and engineering goals be implemented in order to establish a Moon base by 2015 and open new frontiers to human space exploration.
Beijing, China (XNA) Feb 08, 2007 - China plans to launch its first lunar probe, or Chang'e 1, this year to orbit the moon, says Ouyang Ziyuan, a top academician of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the first scientist of China's moon orbiting project, at a recent popular science forum of veteran scientists. A moon probing device is to launch around 2010 along with a moonbuggy, and all parts and accessories of the project are developed and made with China's own efforts.
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 08, 2007 - X PRIZE has announced registration dates and rules changes for the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, which will require a vehicle to simulate trips between the moon's surface and lunar orbit. NASA, which signed a Space Act Agreement with X PRIZE before the first year's competition for the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge in 2006, will once again fund the prizes through its Centennial Challenges program.
Moffett Field, CA (SPX) Feb 06, 2007 - NASA's drive to return astronauts to the moon and later probe deeper into space achieved a key milestone recently when agency officials approved critical elements of a moon impact mission scheduled to launch in October 2008. NASA's unmanned Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS, will strike the moon near its south pole in January 2009. It will search for water and other materials that astronauts could use at a future lunar outpost.
Huntsville AL (SPX) Feb 05, 2007 - If you woke up tomorrow morning and found yourself on the moon, what would you do? NASA has just released a list of 181 good ideas. Ever since the end of the Apollo program, folks around the world have been thinking about returning to the moon, and what they would like to do there, says Jeff Volosin, strategy development lead for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.
Paris, France (ESA) Feb 01, 2007 - A unique way to travel to the Moon, new technologies successfully tested and brand-new science: a few months after the end of the SMART-1 mission scientists and engineers gathered to recap on these and all the other achievements of the first European mission to the Moon.
Huntsville AL (SPX) Jan 29, 2007 - With binoculars, examine the rugged face of the Moon. It is pocked with thousands of impact craters from interplanetary asteroids and comets. Ever wonder why Earth, a much bigger target, apparently has so few craters? They're so rare that a pristine example, the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, is actually a tourist attraction. Did Earth just get lucky and dodge the heavy artillery?
Huntsville, AL (SPX) Jan 24, 2007 - If you stare at the Moon long enough, you start seeing things. 82 things to be exact, says Bill Cooke, leader of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Group. That's how many transient phenomena the group has video-taped since they started monitoring the night side of the Moon in Nov. 2005. In 107 hours of observing, we've tallied 20 lunar meteors + at least 50 Earth-orbiting satellites + one airplane + one terrestrial meteor = 82 in all.
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Jan 18, 2007 - The Russian Federal Space Agency said Thursday it was unpleasantly surprised by an ongoing media debate over the country's Moon exploration program, sparked by statements made a week ago by a top space industry official. Russian media have said in recent days that both Russia and the United States have new ambitious Moon exploration plans for the coming decades, including building a permanent habitable base, and allowing tourists to buy flights to the earth's satellite.
Knoxville TN (UPI) Jan 18, 2007 - A U.S. astronomer says a new moon-rock study suggests the satellite has an iron core and might be more like the Earth than thought. Larry Taylor, director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee, told National Geographic News the findings add weight to the theory the moon formed from debris thrown off when a Mars-size object collided with a young Earth.
