Moon Exploration and Science News

January 14, 2013

Cassini Suggests Icing On A Lake
Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 11, 2013
It's not exactly icing on a cake, but it could be icing on a lake. A new paper by scientists on NASA's Cassini mission finds that blocks of hydrocarbon ice might decorate the surface of existing lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbon on Saturn's moon Titan. The presence of ice floes might explain some of the mixed readings Cassini has seen in the reflectivity of the surfaces of lakes on Titan. "One of the most intriguing questions about these lakes and seas is whether they might host an exotic form ... read more

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The syzygy season of 2012 The end of the world - mis-predicted from the Mayan calendar for December 2012 - failed to live up to expectations, but the year was still a memorable one for celestial alignments. In this one ... more		Mission would drag asteroid to the moon NASA is considering a mission to capture an asteroid and drag it into the moon's orbit for study, researchers in California have confirmed. ... more		Stanford researchers develop acrobatic space rovers to explore moons and asteroids Stanford researchers, in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have designed a robotic platform that could take space exploration to new ... more
				Russia designs manned lunar spacecraft Russian space company Energia has completed the technical design of a manned spacecraft whose flight tests would be initiated in 2017, company officials say. ... more		Cassini Instrument Learns New Tricks For seven years, a mini-fridge-sized instrument aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft reliably investigated weather patterns swirling around Saturn; the hydrocarbon composition of the surface of Saturn's ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Quadrantids Create Year's First Meteor Shower A little-known meteor shower named after an extinct constellation, the Quadrantids will present an excellent chance for hardy souls to start the year off with some late-night meteor watching. ... more		Health Concerns Could Ground Citizen Astronauts A group of former NASA executives plans to offer excursions to the moon to anyone who can afford the $1.4-million-dollar-per-couple ticket price. Golden Spike Co. is the latest private company ... more		Space Force stands up SPACEFOR-NORTH for homeland mission Lockheed ramps up THAAD interceptor output with new framework deal and Camden facility Trump says 'very dangerous' for UK to deal with China		NASA probes crash into the moon Two NASA probes crashed into the moon on Monday after spending months gathering data by orbiting miles above the lunar surface, the US space agency said. ... more
				GRAIL Lunar Impact Site Named for Astronaut Sally Ride NASA has named the site where twin agency spacecraft impacted the moon Monday in honor of the late astronaut Sally K. Ride, who was America's first woman in space and a member of the probes' mission ... more		Rocket Burn Sets Stage for Dynamic Moon Duos' Lunar Impact The lunar twins of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission have each completed a rocket burn that has sealed their fate. The burns modified the orbit of the formation-flying ... more

Solar systems for home and business installations

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

No plans of sending an Indian on moon India has no plans to put an astronaut on the moon, as of now. Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office V Narayanasamy in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday said this. The minister also said ... more		Asteroid Toutatis Slowly Tumbles by Earth Scientists working with NASA's 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., have generated a series of radar data images of a three-mile-long (4.8-kilometer) asteroid th ... more		Juvenile sauropods fed a hungry Late Jurassic predator guild NISAR radar view maps surface changes in Mississippi Delta NASA Libera payload completes testing for future Earth energy tracking mission		NASA Gravity Probes Prepare to Hit the Moon A pair of NASA spacecraft that have been studying the Moon's gravitational field are being prepared for a controlled descent into a mountain near the Moon's north pole. Impact is expected at about 2 ... more
				Cassini Spots Mini Nile River on Saturn Moon Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted what appears to be a miniature, extraterrestrial likeness of Earth's Nile River: a river valley on Saturn's moon Titan that stretches more than 20 ... more		Apollo's Lunar Dust Data Being Restored Forty years after the last Apollo spacecraft launched, the science from those missions continues to shape our view of the moon. In one of the latest developments, readings from the Apollo 14 and 15 ... more

Mars One announces requirements for Red Planet colonists

Opportunity Heading Toward Light-Toned Veins

Bacteria In Rio Tinto Could Be Like Those On Mars

Cassini Suggests Icing On A Lake

Frozen hydrocarbon ice on Titan's oceans?

Cassini Instrument Learns New Tricks

Halfway Between Uranus and Neptune, New Horizons Cruises On

Dwarf planet Makemake lacks atmosphere

Keck Observations Bring Weather Of Uranus Into Sharp Focus

Mission would drag asteroid to the moon

Russia designs manned lunar spacecraft

GRAIL Lunar Impact Site Named for Astronaut Sally Ride

	To the moon and back for less than 2 billion dollars Two former top NASA officials unveiled plans Thursday to sell manned flights to the moon by the end of the decade, in an announcement 40 years after the last human set foot there. ... more		What trends will take upper hand in space exploration? Space exploration in the future is linked to the creation of habitable bases on the moon. This opinion was expressed by head of Russia's leading research institute of the country's space agency Genn ... more		NASA's GRAIL Creates Most Accurate Moon Gravity Map Twin NASA probes orbiting Earth's moon have generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. The new map, created by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mis ... more		Chinese astronauts may grow veg on Moon Chinese astronauts may get fresh vegetables and oxygen supplies by gardening in extraterrestrial bases in the future, an official said after a just-concluded lab experiment in Beijing. Deng Yi ... more

Desert sand mix points to new path for greener concrete

Neem seed biochar turns waste into thermal energy storage medium

Single molecule devices push past silicon limits

NASA's Cassini Sees Abrupt Turn in Titan's Atmosphere		WSU researchers use 3-D printer to make parts from moon rock		Cassini Finds a Video Gamers' Paradise at Saturn		Fly me to the universe		Meteorite samples provide definitive evidence of water and rock types on Mars

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