Continue reading »]]> NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured its sharpest images of the Apollo 12, 14, and 17 landing sites which goes into so much detail that it even shows the tracks of the astronauts and the infamous “Moon Buggies”. The images point out the different scientific instruments left there by the Apollo astronauts.

Apollo 12 Site taken from LRO (Click to Enlarge)

Apollo 14 Site (Click to Enlarge)

Apollo 17 Site (Click to Enlarge)

LRO took these clearer images after its orbit was changed to be more elliptical (more oval-shaped) which lowered it’s distance from the Moon surface from 31 to 13 miles. These pictures are much better than the ones that were taken a few months ago. NASA was cautioning everyone that the newer images my not be as clear as we hope due to the rotation of the satellite. It looks like we got the best possible images.

If you go onto NASA’s website, you can get some before and after shots of the “far” orbit and the  “close” orbit. Check it out!

Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ASU

Continue reading »]]>

Image: NASA

UPDATE: NASA’s Grail mission has been pushed to Saturday at 8:29am EDT.

The launch of two Moon probes this morning from Cape Canaveral Air Station was scrubbed this morning due to upper-level winds. NASA’s Grail twin probes were scheduled to lift off aboard an unmanned Delta II rocket this morning at 8:37am EDT however NASA did not want to risk losing the vehicle. Another opportunity to launch was at 9:16am, however conditions did not improve.

The next launch attempt will be tomorrow at 8:33am EDT with a second attempt at 9:12am, but forecasts only show a 40% chance of favorable weather. If the launch does not go tomorrow, we’ll have to wait for later this weekend when weather conditions are expected to improve. NASA has a 42 day window to launch Grail, giving it till October 19th to launch.

The $496 million will study the Moon’s composition from crust to core and will also study its gravitational field so that scientists can get a better understanding of the evolution of the Moon.

Continue reading »]]>

Image via Wikipedia

According to Universe Today, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will be moving from its usual orbit to an orbit about 20km above the Moon so that it can take closer and clearer pictures of the Apollo landing sites. The spacecraft will then snap pictures between August 14th and August 19th before going back to its 50km orbit.

The LRO Twitter Feed stated “This will allow me to obtain images of the Apollo sites that are about 4 times sharper than my current best images” However later in the day, the Twitter feed claimed that due to their inability to slow the spacecraft down could cause some blurriness. The post did say that it would be interesting to compare the photos from both orbits.