Category Archives: The Moon

Chinese space, General, The Moon

Space Calendar for May 26 – June 1, 2014

The latest issue of the Space Calendar from Space Age Publishing is now available: May 26 – June 1, 2014 / Vol 33, No 21 / Hawai`i Island, USA –

The first item is about the status of the Chinese lander and rover on the Moon:

China-Lunar-Exploration-Program[1]

The only nation active on the surface of the Moon, China, maintains successful operations of its Chang’e-3 Lander and Yutu Rover now in Lunar Night 6. Although Yutu has incurred mechanical issues, it continues to respond to ground control teams well past its 3-month given lifetime. Chang’e-3 Lander with Lunar Ultraviolet Telescope and Extreme Ultraviolet Camera, is also expected to perform past its December 14, one-year / thirteen-Lunar Day lifetime.

The spacecraft hibernate / awake cycle is determined by astronomical factors (estimated here by SPC / ILOA), mechanical functions and performance, and ground control teams at the Very Long Baseline Interferometry center in Shanghai and observation stations in Xinjiang, Kunming and Beijing. Chang’e-4 (the twin of Chang’e-3) is being reconfigured due to the mission success; it may launch with different instruments to a new location or be combined with a future mission.

Preparing for Phase 3, the Chang’e-5 sample return mission test satellite is scheduled to launch this June to attempt a Lunar Orbit Transfer and return to Earth. (Image Credit: ILOA, SPC, CNSA, Chinese Academy of Sciences, D. Davis)

See the Change’3/Yutu timetable here.

Continue for more Space Calendar news…

Contests and Games, Space Arts, The Moon

“The Moon as Art” – pick the most artistic LRO image

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter project has opened the The Moon as Art poll. Visitors can choose which of five images created by the project are the most aesthetically pleasing.

To celebrate its 5th Anniversary, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission presents Moon As Art !The images in the collection were created using data gathered by LRO over the first 4.5 years of operations. These top 5 images are presented to you, the public, to decide which will be the cover of the Moon As Art collection. Voting is open from May 23 — June 6th. The winner will be announced with the release of the full collection on June 18, 2014, the 5th anniversary of LRO launch.

linne_shade_scaleb[1]

Amateur/Student Satellite, Space Science, The Moon

Detecting and mapping lunar ice with nanosats

Small satellites have been under development for decades mainly by AMSAT and student groups around the world. There has always been the criticism that the smaller the satellite, the less it can do. That attitude is changing. For example, Leonard David points to a recent study by a group of 33 scientists from 15 institutions that looked at the problem of fully characterizing the amount and distribution of water on the Moon. They found that  nano-satellites offer a tremendous opportunities to tackle this challenge and to do it in a low cost manner:

From the report:

The first major goal of this study was to identify the outstanding questions about lunar volatiles that could be addressed by new observations. In order to define the key measurements, we identified two fundamental questions driving the science and exploration of lunar volatiles:

1. What are the origins and evolution of water in the inner Solar System?
2. Where are the operationally useful deposits of water on the Moon?

Existing data have only scratched the surface with regard to the abundance and distribution of water on the Moon, let alone its origins.

[…]

The second major goal for this study was to seek ways to harness emerging small spacecraft technologies for low#cost lunar missions. Since their advent in the 1990’s, nanosatellites (and the CubeSat form factor in particular) have rapidly evolved and are now routinely built (primarily by university students) and launched to low# Earth orbit (LEO) for science, technology, and education applications. With their rapid development times and extremely low cost compared to traditional spacecraft, nanosatellites and other small satellites present an exciting new paradigm to planetary science, if their capabilities can be proven beyond low Earth orbit. The Moon is ideally situated for the first of these missions. We therefore assessed whether or not one or more small satellite missions could accomplish the desired lunar ice detection measurements.

In this report, we propose a new program of lunar science and exploration by small, low-cost spacecraft. Initially, this program will be guided by the above measurement goals relevant to detection and mapping of lunar volatiles, but could later be expanded  to  other  investigations  of  the  Moon  and  beyond.  As  a  first  step,  we advocate  sending  a  “trailblazer”  nanosatellite  to  a  polar  lunar  orbit, which would  carry a limited yet useful payload (see Section 5). The goal of this mission would be  to prove that scientifically valuable data on lunar volatiles could be acquired using a  nanosatellite  at  a  total  cost  of  <$10M.  Some  of  the  key  technologies  needing  development are identified in this report. Following the pathfinder mission, one or  more  additional  small  satellites would  carry  instrumentation  specifically designed  for  the  measurements  outlined  above.  Ultimately,  we  envision  a  fleet  of  tiny  spacecraft,  each  with  its  own  specialized  yet  synergistic  payload  for  detecting,  mapping, and characterizing lunar ice deposits. If successful, such a program has the  potential to accomplish as much as a traditional spacecraft mission, at a fraction of  the  cost.  Finally,  this  program  could  pave  the way  for more  ambitious  spacecraft  missions  beyond  the  Moon,  thereby  opening  up  a  new  paradigm  in  planetary  exploration.

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I’m managing editor at NewSpace Watch, which is part  of  NewSpace Global. For a detailed review of the growing smallsat industy, check out the  NewSpace Global 2014 SmallSat Report.

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Contests and Games, Space Systems, The Moon

RevUp Render Lunar Iditarod – racing lunar micro-rovers

A readers points me to the debut of the RevUp Render Lunar Iditarod, a micro-rover contest involving stages of competition that ultimately will result in a race on the Moon as the final stage:

Micro Rover Race

The RevUp Render Lunar Iditarod is a micro rover race. Participants will build very small rovers to race, both for time and against one another. The Lundar Iditarod will take the top three participants to the moon for a final challenge.

Gated Challenge

The RevUp Render Lunar Iditarod is a gated challenge.  Participants must partake in the lower level before being allowed to participate in the next.  The different levels will be called “Stages.” Having different stages will provide funding for competition and also prevent individuals from jumping in at the last second and stealing the “prize” of racing on the moon.

There will be five stages:

Each stage has its own entry requirements.  Each stage will have a separate entry fee.  Each stage will have separate rewards.  Teams may participate in as many stages as they pay for and qualify for in a single event.  However, no fees are refundable.

The first and second stage competitions will be held quarterly starting on September 6th, 2014.  The third stage will be held on to-be-determined dates concurrent with the first and second stage competitions once there are 16 qualified entrants.

The fourth stage race will take place seven months prior to the launch of the payloads to the moon.

Each stage of competition among the micro rovers (called DogeSleds) is laid out. Here is, for example, stage one:

Teams must connect their DogeSled to the competition wifi network.   All teams must successfully start from a fixed position and travel nine meters in lunar regolith simulant across a finish line in under ten minutes.

The entry fee is 2,250,000 dogecoin.

A prize for the fastest time in an event will be awarded.  That prize will be 3,000,000 dogecoins.

As you can see, the fees and prizes are expressed in Dogecoin, “an open source peer-to-peer digital currency”. Find the latest value in US dollars at DogePay – DogeCoin Price.

The schedule is still being worked out:

The first two stages will be held quarterly up to seven months before the launch.  The third stage will be announced and held when 16 participants have advanced through the first two stages.  The fourth stage will feature a bracketed race-off that will take place seven months before the launch from which the top three DogeSleds will advance to the moon. DogeSleds will be placed into the stowage for the launch to the moon six months prior to the launch.

The primary sponsor is RevUp Render a cloud computing service.

Requirements and Registration are now available.

History, Multiple media, The Moon

Video: “In the Shadow of the Moon”

Here is the complete video of the award winning 2007 documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, directed by David Sington and Christopher Riley. The film

follows the manned missions to the Moon made by the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The documentary reviews both the footage and media available to the public at the time of the missions, as well as NASAfilms and materials which had not been opened in over 30 years. All of this has been sourced and remastered in HD by the stock footage company Footagevault. Augmenting the archival audio and video are contemporary interviews with some survivingApollo era astronauts, including Al Bean, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, John Young, David Scott, Charlie Duke, Eugene Cernanand Harrison Schmitt. The former astronauts have the only speaking roles in the movie, although occasional supplementary information is presented on screen with text and archival television footage presents the words of journalists such as Jules Bergman and Walter Cronkite. Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the Moon, declined to participate, the only surviving moon walker at the time to do so.

The documentary shares its name with a book by space historians Colin Burgess and Francis French, and both include many original interviews with Apollo lunar astronauts. The documentary offers a view of the Apollo program that is complementary to the book and is neither a source nor a tie-in.

http://youtu.be/f-ditEyvRbM