China’s Long March to the Moon

Looks like China just did what they said they were going to do. They just launched a autonomous rover, the Jade Rabbit, to the moon. You can go to NBC news here for more information. The Chinese are moving quickly. Video of their preparations about five hours prior to launch. Related articles China to […]

Interesting stories about the teams that are pursuing XPRIZE

Fresh from Twitter, and the Google Lunar XPRIZE website, here are a few interesting posts. The posts contain stories and videos of five different teams and their activities as they pursue the Google Lunar XPRIZE. For those who don’t know what this particular prize is–here’s the explanation straight from their “Prize Details” page: The Google […]

Start the day with “Good Morning Moon”

Phil Plait (The Bad Astronomer) is a writer whose work I enjoy reading and he just twittered his posting of Ms. Marian Call singing “Good Morning Moon.” It’s space-related in that they filmed this at Noordwijk’s Space Expo, the visitors center for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC) in the […]

Old footage of Soviet rocket launch attempts

Here’s at least one video, on Jalopnik’s page, of a failed launch. Note, Jalopnik’s accompanying post of why the Soviets failed to get to the moon before the United States seems to be supposition, but likely true. The Soviets made their equipment more complicated (see the article), giving Murphy (or perhaps the Imp of the […]

That’s no moon…

…at least according to this article it isn’t, but it is a “quasi-satellite.” They do say in about 5,000 years or so it might become one of Earth’s moons for a while. The interesting thing about this particular satellite (it’s natural) is the orbital configuration, which scientists label co-orbital. Such a weird one coinciding with […]