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Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts--Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders--held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth." They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.

Visit the Apollo 8 page for audio and video of the historic mission.

Image Credit: NASA

The Eagle Prepares to Land


The Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle, in a landing configuration was photographed in lunar orbit from the Command and Service Module Columbia. Inside the module were Commander Neil A. Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin. The long rod-like protrusions under the landing pods are lunar surface sensing probes. Upon contact with the lunar surface, the probes sent a signal to the crew to shut down the descent engine.

Image Credit: NASA

Aldrin Gazes at Tranquility Base


Astronaut and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin is pictured during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity on the moon. He had just deployed the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package. In the foreground is the Passive Seismic Experiment Package; beyond it is the Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector (LR-3). In the left background is the black and white lunar surface television camera and in the far right background is the Lunar Module "Eagle." Mission commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with the 70mm lunar surface camera.

The LR-3 experiment has produced many important measurements that have improved our knowledge of changes of the Earth's rotation and have been used to test Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The LR-3, which consists of a series of corner-cube reflectors composed of a special type of mirror that always reflecting an incoming light beam back in the direction from which it came, is the only Apollo experiment that is still returning data from the moon.

Apollo 11 landed on the lunar surface 38 years ago today on July 20, 1969. For more information on the Apollo Program, visit [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] For information on other historical missions, visit [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]

Image credit: NASA

Driving on the Moon
Apollo 17 mission commander Eugene A. Cernan makes a short checkout of the Lunar Roving Vehicle during the early part of the first Apollo 17 extravehicular activity at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. This view of the lunar rover prior to loadup was taken by Harrison H. Schmitt, Lunar Module pilot. The mountain in the right background is the east end of South Massif.

Image credit: NASA

March 13, 2009: NASA and U.S. Air Force test pilots have just dropped a 50,000-pound "dummy" rocket booster on the Arizona desert--and stopped it before it crashed.

It's all part of NASA's plan to return to the Moon. "NASA's new Ares moon rocket is going to have a reusable booster stage that we plan to recover after each mission," explains James Burnum of Marshall Space Flight Center. "To
'catch' the booster before it crashes back to Earth, we needa super-reliable parachute system."

This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope using two different filters.
Two filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image.
In this case, the assigned colors are: F606W V blue F606W+F814W green F814W I red Orientation: SWEEPS ACS/WFC Color Composite [ [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]