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Only When You Can Buy a Ticket

To the Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins Museum will this issue be laid to rest.


Despite all the evidence that anyone with an inkling of technical training can review and accept, there is still a significant section of the population that believes that Mankind's greatest technical achievement was a hoax. A hoax perpetrated by NASA's Cold War political masters in the Arizona desert solely for the sake of beating the Soviets to Moon. With this belief goes the refusal to face the fact that if the Soviets had been able to expose the secret, they would have in a heartbeat. The fact that they didn't says it all.

There are like minded groups out there - Clavius.org being the most comprehensive, along with the Mythbusters, one of the greatest programs on TV, that can and have done a much better job than I can debunking the nay-sayers conspiracy theories, but I'm still going to do my part. For a more complete list of evidence of the Apollo landings, you can see them here.

The Japanese lunar probe Kayuga imaged the Apollo 15 landing site with its Terrain Camera, a stereographic camera. Here is the original image taken from the ground:



And the reconstruction from Kayuga's Terrain camera. Note that the Terrain Camera has a resolution of 10 meters, so there will be some subtle differences.

These images come to us courtesy of the LRO, in orbit as we speak. To those of you with smaller monitors, I apologize for the size of the images, but it is necessary.

For purposes of scale, this is the Eagle:



Apollo 11:


Apollo 14:


Apollo 15:


Apollo 16:


Apollo 17:



And we thank those who gave their lives chasing a dream for all mankind -









-"It isn't that we don't trust you, Joe [Shea], but this time we've decided to go over your head."


LAUNCH COMPLEX 34, Friday, 27 January 1967, 1831 Hours. Dedicated to the living memory of the crew of the Apollo 1: USAF. Lt. Colonel Virgil I. Grissom, USAF. Lt. Colonel Edward H. White, II, U.S.N. Lt. Commander Roger B. Chaffee. They gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing exploration of humankind's final frontier. Remember them not for how they died but for those ideals for which they lived.

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The End of Kayuga (Part 2)

Japan's Lunar Probe Kayuga officially ended its mission to our Moon at 1825 GMT.


Launched 14 Sept 2007, Kayuga was a 17 month long exploration of the Moon's surface. Officially named SELENE (SELenological and ENgineering Explorer), Kayuga is the name it was given by the Japanese public. It consisted of a main orbiter flying at 100 km altitude and two small polar satellites - Rstar and Vstar.



Rstar was a small two way relay satellite used to facilitate communications between Kayuga and controllers back at JAXA
. Rstar was also used to measure Doppler shift in the expected orbits of Vstar and the main orbiter. Rstar crashed into the farside on 12 Feb 2009.

Vstar was the other mini satellite used to measure the lunar gravity field. Also known as the VRAD and VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry).

Kayuga has a plethora of instrumentation:
- X-Ray & Gamma Ray Spectrometer for determining the composition of the surface and abundance of certain elements.
- Multi band Imager & Spectral Profiler for the for determining the mineral composition and distribution of the surface.
- Terrain Camera, Lunar Radar Sounder and Laser Altimeter for surface and sub-surface imaging. The Terrain Camera was used to show that there is no surface ice in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar south pole.
- Several instruments for measuring the Moon's magnetic field and tenuous atmosphere
- The Rstar and Vstar were used to measure the gravitational field of the Moon by measuring the Doppler shift of the Main Orbiter and comparing it to its expected orbit. Vstar was used on the far side where the Doppler shift method did not work.
- The High Definition TV camera was used to take the first HD images of the surface and pretty famous HD video of the Earth rising over the limb of the Moon.



With demise of Kayuga, lunar scientists and enthusiasts turn their focus to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)

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The End of Kayuga

Japan's Lunar Probe Kayuga (Selene) is set to execute the final part of it's mission:

Crashing into the surface of the Moon. Kayuga's orbit is decaying and set to intersect the lunar surface. The crash should take place at a speed of about 6000 km/hr on today 10 June around 1830 UMT (2:30 PM EST). If the Moon is visible at that time (East Asia & Australia), keep your eyes pointed towards the southeastern limb of the Moon. If the 2600 kg probe's crash and resultant explosion are going to be visible, that's where it will be.

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The Search for the Moon's Mother

NASA launches the twin STEREO probes in search of remnants of the collision that produced the Moon.


Some scientists believe that the Moon was created when the Earth was hit by a Mars sized object. Theia was conceieved by Edward Belbruno and Richard Gott if Princeton. The Theia Hypothesis is a subset of the Great Impact Theory of lunar formation. Belbruno and Gott believe that the impactor that hit the Earth 4.5 billion years ago came from one the Earth-Sun Langrangian points. Langrangian points are the five places where the gravitational pull of two bodies cancels each other out.



Most people are familiar with Jupiter's Trojan points and the asteroids that reside there. Earth and the Moon also share Lagrangian points. NASA's STEREO probes are going to the two most stable Lagrangian points belonging the Earth-Sun system, L4 and L5. Part of STEREO's mission is to look for planetoids leftover form the formation of Theia. STEREO is primarily a solar observatory mission, similar to the NASA/ESA stalwart SOHO. SOHO has been in orbit around the Sun-Earth L1 Langrangian point since 1996. The STEREO will be passing through the Sun-Earth L4 and L5 points, which are 60 degrees ahead and behind of Earth in its orbit, and they will continue on their paths past both sides of the Sun.

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Chandrayaan-1 Takes First X-Rays of the Moon

The C1XS X-ray camera, jointly developed by the UK's STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has successfully detected its first X-ray signature from the Moon.




Credit: RAL/Brunel


The C1XS camera is a Compact Imaging X-ray Spectrometer that uses x-rays to map the composition of the lunar surface and in doing so, will offer up clues as to the origin of the Moon. The C1XS X-ray spectrometer was constructed at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, in collaboration with colleagues at ISRO, who designed and constructed the main Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe. The instrument is a technology development of the D-C1XS instrument which successfully conducted science operations at the Moon aboard ESA's SMART-1 mission between 2003 to 2006.

C1XS will provide high resolution coverage of the lunar surface in X-rays, and will provide an absolute measurement of the elemental abundances of the rock forming elements Mg, Al and Si under normal solar conditions and several other elements during solar flare events. This first measurement was three minutes of observation taken in the vicinity of the Apollo landing sites during a solar flare. The is measurement is also noteworthy because C1XS collected data from a source that was reportedly 20 times below its minimum effective detection threshold.

Geochemical data will allow for advances in several areas of lunar science, including a detailed study of the nature of the crust. In combination with information to be obtained by the other instruments on Chandrayaan-1 and the data already provided by the Smart-1, Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions, this information will provide a more detailed look at some of the fundamental questions that remain regarding the origin and evolution of the Moon.


Credit: ISRO

From: Space Daily

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Lunar rover

Though I missed it live on TV, I understand NASA's new lunar rover made an appearance during the parade. Take a look at those tweels. They were tested here.



NASA's Chariot rover was showing off its 360 degree steering ability for the President and VP. As seen here, the Chariot is in its Small Pressurized Rover configuration. The SPR allows the astronauts to explore the lunar surface without having to wear a full spacesuit.



Here is a link to a video of the Chariot in action.

The Chariot consists of the Mobility chassis and the removable SPR cabin unit. Chariot gives astronauts three options for riding. Without the SPR in suits in rotating turrets is probably the option the system got its name from - Chariot. The next option is to ride without suits inside the SPR - car mode. The final option is a combination of both - the SPR is mounted to the chassis, and astronauts ride in a turret - ideal for transporting large, unstable loads.

The suits are intergated into airlocks called suitports the allow quick ingress/egress with a minimum of air waste.



Chariot masses 1000 kg and has a top speed of 10 kph. It can carry a payload of 3000 kg, which matches the weight of the SPR. It's 4.5 m long, 1.3 m high and has a 4 m wheelbase. The SPR gives Chariot a potential range of 240 km, compared to 10 km for Apollo's rover. In addition, the suitport airlock is rated for 72 hours storm shelter protection from a solar particle event, or solar flare. The lock is lined with 2.5 cm of water ice, one of the best natural radiation shields known.

Download Small Pressurized Rover Fact Sheet (3.7 MB PDF)
http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esmd/home/black_point.html

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Kayuga (Selene)

From the Planetary Society Blog

JAXA (Japanese Space Agency) has completed the primary mission of the lunar probe Kayuga. Since the craft is still operational, JAXA plans to continue operating it, much like with any other probe.


For its primary mission, Kaguya circled the Moon in a polar orbit at 100 km above the lunar surface, the same as Chandrayaan-1. The extended mission entails reducing the altitude by half to 50 km. Then in May of next year, it will shift into an highly elliptical orbit. Apogee, or apolune when talking about the Moon will be back at 100 km. Perilune, the closest point of approach, will be an eye-popping 20 km. This will take place over the south polar feature Aitken Basin, a target for outpost locations. Normally, an orbital height of 20 km wouldn't matter for an airless body like the Moon, but because the Moon has an irregular gravity field, due mostly to Mascons, a 20 km orbit is unstable and Kayuga is expected to crash into the Moon.

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Tire/Wheel Analogue Developed for Lunar Rover

Michelin, tire manufacturer and developer of the TWEEL has modified the tweel for use on NASA's lunar rover.





Michelin also provides NASA with the tires for the Space Shuttle. The MICHELIN Lunar Wheel is reportedly 3.3 times more efficient in load capacity than the wheels on the previous lunar rovers. The tweel was specifically designed for low temperature, low rolling resistance applications. It was field tested by Carnegie Mellon University's Scarab Rover. The Scarab was a participant in the Lunar Analog Field Demonstrations of In-Situ Resource Utilization & Human Robotic Systems hosted by PISCES, the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems, a joint U.S. - Japan venture based in Hilo, Hawai'i.

The Michelin Lunar wheel is partially funded by NASA's Innovative Partnership Program.

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On Orbit X

SpaceX DragonLab, a free-flying, fully-recoverable, reusable spacecraft capable of hosting pressurized and unpressurized payloads

Chandrayaan-1 Enters Lunar Transfer Trajectory

German CESAR rover takes top prize in ESA's lunar rover challenge

KSC takes delivery of the first components of the Ares 1-X

Emergence of the Chinese space industry

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NASA Serves as Contractor for Odyssey Moon

Odyssey Moon, a NewSpace venture located on the Isle of Man, has contracted NASA to build a lunar lander for use in the Google Lunar X-prize.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded and must be registered to compete by December 31, 2010. The first team to land on the Moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million; the full first prize is available until December 31, 2012. After that date, the first prize will drop to $15 million. The second team to do so will be awarded $5 million. Another $5 million will awarded in bonus prizes. The final deadline for winning the prize is December 31, 2014.

Go fill out an application.

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Solar Power on the Moon

A new type of solar cell that doesn't use silicon in their construction has been developed. According to New Scientist, the new design is dye based and sprayed onto a substrate of titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is found on the lunar surface. It is concentrated in the maria. Aside from free samples of TiO2 in the maria, it is locked up in ilmenite - TiO3. This is significant because ilmenite is a major source of lunar oxygen. Hydrogen reduction of ilmenite is one of the simplest processes for in-situ production of oxygen for fuel and life support.

FeTiO3+H2 ---->Fe+TiO2+H2O

The reduction produces free iron, titanium dioxide and water. The water can be cracked into its constituents through electrolysis.

The dye is used to coat TiO2 grains, which sit in an electrolyte in the solar cells. The whole mixture is sandwiched between two electrodes; a transparent glass sheet doped with tin oxide to make it conducting and an opaque rear panel. This allows a current to flow when the cell is placed in sunlight

But the efficiency of dye-sensitised solar cells designed for outdoor conditions is currently about 6%. That's light years from the 42.8% efficiency reached by some silicon solar cells and well below the 15% standard for many silicon designs.

Michael Grätzel of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland – who co-invented dye sensitised solar cells in 1991 – had thought it may be possible to double the efficiency of his low-cost cells simply by designing one that collects light from both sides simultaneously.

Now Grätzel's team, working with Seigo Ito of the University of Hyogo, Japan, has done just that. Their new dye-sensitised solar cell is almost as efficient at converting light into energy when it strikes the rear side as when it strikes the front.

To achieve the trick, Grätzel's team first replaced the opaque back panel with a second sheet of glass, making the entire device transparent.

The new panel is also coated with tin oxide and acts as the second electrode, donating electrons back to the electrolyte to complete the circuit. But because it is transparent, it lets light into the system from the rear.

Robert Hertzberg, chairman and co-founder of G24 Innovations, a company based in Cardiff in the UK that manufactures dye-sensitised solar products. "This technology allows you to capture power in low light, even rainy conditions," he says. "Silicon cells only allow you to capture power during a short window [when light is intense]." That means the cells give a better performance over the whole day even if they are less efficient under ideal conditions.

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On Orbit IX

More design flaws found in Ares I rocket

ESA's Lunar Robotics Challenge: A tough task for the student teams

From The Space Review: Why the majority of the work in colonizing the space frontier will come from amateur effort

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Arizona site of Lunar Rover Tests

NASA is testing its Small Pressurized Rover in the Arizona desert (large image).  At the 11th annual Desert RATS (Research and Technology Studies), two rover configurations were tested.

One configuration leaves the crew members free to get on and off the rover whenever they like, but they must wear spacesuits at all times to protect them from the lunar environment. The second configuration -- called the Small Pressurized Rover, or SPR -- adds a module on top of the rover’s chassis that the crew can sit inside as they drive the vehicle, donning spacesuits whenever they want to get out.

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Selene Holds onto Her Secrets

Japanese lunar probe Kayuga (Selene) has tempered hope for large ice fields in the permanently shadowed crater floor of the Moon's polar regions as reported by New Scientist.

Shackelton Crater, one of NASA's targets for a future lunar outpost, was imaged by Kayuga using a camera specifically designed for low light uses.  The floor of Shackelton Crater is in permanent shadow, making it impossible to photograph using normal techniques.  Kayuga's Terrain Camera, a special stereographic imager, used scattered light to capture the floor of Shackleton Crater.  During a short time frame in the lunar summer, sunlight scatters off of the rim of the crater and allowed Kayuga to directly image the floor of Shackleton.  The results were telling in what was not found, rather than what was found.

The absence of clean water ice in the images is sure to discourage advocates of a return to the Moon.  However, all the findings indicate is that there is no frozen lake of ice at the bottom of Shakleton.  Ice may be buried under the regolith or even mixed into the hard, glassy lunar soil.  Another possibility is that the hydrogen that Lunar Prospector detected is from another source.  Frozen methane would be a boon to the outpost, giving astronauts access to both hydrogen a carbon which are both exceedingly rare on the Moon.

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DIY Lunar Concrete

An update to this article has been posted here.

Normal concrete is cement + aggregates + water = concrete.  On the moon, this present a problem.  For all intents and purposes, water is non-existent.  Portland cement is carbon intensive like water, carbon is almost non-existent (5-280 ppm in the regolith).

Dr Houssam Toutanji, a civil engineer at the University of Alabama-Huntsville has developed a new process for making concrete on the Moon.  Dr. Toutanji proposes plain regolith be used as the aggregate and sulfur baked out of the regolith be used as the binding agent.    The sulfur needs to be in a liquid or semi-liquid state, so it needs to heated to between 130 and 140 °C.  To strip the sulphur out of the regolith will require a solar oven capable of heating the regolith to very high temperatures to extract the sulfur, which is only present in regolith around levels of 400-1300 ppm.

This new lunar concrete cures in hours, versus 7 to 28 days for normal concrete.  NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center tested the new process  using a lunar simulant.  Mixing 35 grams of pure sulfur to every 100 grams of simulant into 5 cm, the blocks were cured and then subjected to thermal stresses before their compressive strength was meaured.  Plain lunar concrete withstood 17 MPa.  Silica, which is also present on the Moon, can be added for strength and that boosted the number 20 MPa.

As Milton Friedman said, there is no free lunch.  In order to get enough sulfur for the process, tons and tons of regolith will have to be processed.  Now if a full blown bootstrapping operation is going on, this is no problem, just one more step.  But if not, that is alot of expense to go through for just concrete.  It's another reason to make sure when we get up to the Moon we bootstrap to keep costs down.

Another NASA researcher, Peter Chen, came up with using epoxy as a binding agent.  However, epoxy cannot be made on the Moon and must be shipped up from Earth.  With current launch prices hovering around $10,000 per pound, it seems a long shot.

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On Orbit VII

Rosetta spacecraft has close encounter with E-class asteroid

Rescue Shuttle Atlantis getting ready to roll back

NASA's Pluto probe hits 1000 days in space

Carnegie Mellon to test robotic lunar prospector in Hawaii

British X-ray camera set to launch on India's Chandrayaan-1

Argentina joinsVenezuela in reaching out to Russia for Space Program assistance

ESA looking to develop independentcrew return vehicle

Hubble status report:

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China Sets Sights on the Moon

With the completion of China's third manned orbital flight and first spacewalk, the Middle Kingdom is not content to sit on its laurels.  China has announced plans to build a manned space station and send people to the Moon.  They plan to have the station by 2020 but were vague on the dates for the lunar visit.  NASA administrator Michael Griffin is rumored to be "convinced" that China has the technical capability to land men on the Moon by 2017, a full two years before the planned US landings.  If that doesn't motivate you, what will?

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

The guys over at Orbithub.com have a pretty good article on NASAs upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

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Get It from the Source

Now according to some research, to get to LEO, you'd need a delta v of about 10.  From there to the Moon is another 6 km/s delta v.  From LEO to the know NEOs (Near Earth Objects), the closest are just under 4 km/s delta v.  Departing delta v from the NEO is miniscule b/c of its low gravity.  This brings up an interesting option.  If you're intending to go the Moon, and you need things from the asteroids (volatiles), wouldn't it be wise to set up a concurrent base on an NEO?  They are easier to reach from Earth, have things we need on both Earth and the Moon and are very easy to ship from.  No need to launch lunar iron to construction sites in orbit if you can get it from the asteroids.  No need to haul water from earth to the Moon if you can extract it from a carbonaceous chondrite nearby.  Initial capital costs would be higher but how long would it take for that initial investment to pay off?

NASA NEO database

Cosmic link to precious metals: study

Rare, precious metals may owe their presence in Earth's upper crust to a bombardment of the infant planet by asteroids billions of years ago, according to a study unveiled on Monday.

Gerhard Schmidt from the University of Mainz, western Germany, carried out a 12-year investigation into impact sites left by meteorites, analysing the soil for traces of these precious metals, which are called highly siderophile elements (HSE).

Metals in the HSE group include gold, platinum, palladium, iridium and ruthenium.

Schmidt compared these with samples from Earth's mantle and crust; from Martian meteorites that have been found on Earth; and from analysis of HSE-rich rocks, brought back by the Apollo missions, found at impact sites on the Moon.

The startling similarities point to a "cosmochemical source" for terrestrial HSE, he said in a press release.

He calculates that around 160 large, metal-rich asteroids in the order of 20 kilometers (12 miles) in diameter would have been enough to provide the concentrations of HSE we see today.

Schmidt was scheduled to present his work at the European Planetary Science Congress, taking place this week in the German town of Muenster.

From Space Daily

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