News About Our Moon 16-MAY-08 en-us Houston TX (SPX) May 14, 2008 - Lunar dust could be more than a housekeeping issue for astronauts who visit the moon. Their good health may depend on the amount of exposure they have to the tiny particles.]]> ]]> Houston TX (SPX) May 08, 2008 - Imagine yourself hip-to-hip, shoulder-to-shoulder, inside a room the size of a walk-in closet for eight hours with five people you just met. Does that make you sweat? Or maybe make your breathing a little more animated?]]> Washington DC (SPX) May 04, 2008 - NASA invites people of all ages to join the lunar exploration journey with an opportunity to send their names to the moon aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, spacecraft. The Send Your Name to the Moon Web site enables everyone to participate in the lunar adventure and place their names in orbit around the moon for years to come.]]> Beijing, China (XNA) Apr 28, 2008 - Shanghai has developed a lunar rover that it hopes to be chosen for China's first moon landing in 2013, the city government announced yesterday. The Shanghai Science and Technology Commission said the key technology of the rover has passed a technical appraisal by the government. The technology mainly covers the rover's maneuverability and detection sensors.]]> ]]> Beijing, China (XNA) Apr 28, 2008 - China launched the country's first data relay satellite "Tianlian I" Friday night. The satellite was launched on a Long March-3C carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province at 11:35 p.m. (Beijing Time). The satellite will not go into function though until the Shenzhou VII mission scheduled for the second half of 2008.]]> Huntsville AL (SPX) Apr 22, 2008 - At this year's Great Moonbuggy Race in Huntsville, Alabama, Prof. Paul Shiue of Christian Brothers University was overheard joking that duct tape was his team's "best engineering tool." Others felt the same way. The sound of gray tape being torn from rolls practically filled the race course as dozens of college and high school student engineers busily assembled and repaired their homemade moonbuggies.]]> Greenbelt MD (SPX) Apr 22, 2008 - Several instruments that will help NASA characterize the moon's surface have been installed on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO. The powerful equipment will bring the moon into sharper focus and reveal new insights about the celestial body nearest Earth.]]> Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Apr 23, 2008 - The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) successfully captured a movie of the "Full Earth-Rise"*1 using the onboard High Definition Television (HDTV) of the lunar explorer "KAGUYA " (SELENE) on April 6, 2008 (Japan Standard Time, JST, all the following dates and time are JST.) The KAGUYA is currently flying in a lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 km.]]> Huntsville AL (SPX) Apr 18, 2008 - Behold the full Moon. Ancient craters and frozen lava seas lie motionless under an airless sky of profound quiet. It's a slow-motion world where even a human footprint may last millions of years. Nothing ever seems to happen there. Right? Wrong. NASA-supported scientists have realized that something does happen every month when the Moon gets a lashing from Earth's magnetic tail.]]> Miami (AFP) April 18, 2008 - NASA wants astronauts who will return to the moon to take one long step for mankind.]]> ]]> Huntsville AL (SPX) Apr 14, 2008 - Moondust is dry, desiccated stuff, and may seem like a dull topic to write about. Indeed, you could search a ton of moondust without finding a single molecule of water, so it could make for a pretty "dry" story. But like the dust in your mother's attic, moondust covers something interesting - the moon - and even the dust itself has curious tales to tell.]]> Washington DC (SPX) Apr 10, 2008 - NASA is preparing to send a small spacecraft to the moon in 2011 to assess the lunar atmosphere and the nature of dust lofted above the surface. Called the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), the mission will launch before the agency's moon exploration activities accelerate during the next decade.]]> Huntsville AL (SPX) Apr 08, 2008 - Not one of the participants in NASA's 2008 Great Moonbuggy Race was old enough to have seen the 1969 movie, Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies. Nevertheless, the racers all looked like stars of that film as they careened about the simulated lunar terrain race course in a motley variety of strange vehicles.]]> ]]>