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A moon rising over a cityscape

State of modern space travel

So we know what might be on the Moon for us, and the potentials that await us if can manage ... is that enough in itself for a full set of missions to the Moon, and why does it have to be humans, and not robots? To ... moment, and what it’s going to take to blast us onto the Moon, Nadeem Gabbani spoke to Torsten Kriening of Spacewatch ...

Image of the Sun's halo as moon passes by

The mission to return to the moon

Ever since Apollo 11, 12 men in total have walked on the moon with return missions running until 1972. Now, both national and private agencies want to return to the moon but it’ll rely on collaborations across the world. So ... incredible and impossible things. And I think that the moon is the next place where we can do that. Where we, as a ...

Moon

Will we return to the Moon in 2025?

... released, which showed how America plans to get to the Moon. The astronauts at the moment is going to go to the moon on the Orion capsule. They're going to transfer to the ... very strange.' Now either that's the way to go to the Moon, or it's telling us something about meshing the ...

Moon

Can you blow up an asteroid?

... if we do detect an incoming threat, and also whether the Moon could play a role in studying and protecting us from ... way to do this. Chris - So, what opportunities does the Moon afford us for informing ourselves about this then, and ... monitor, which you might get a better handle on from the Moon. So, it's not impossible that at some time in the ...

The Apollo-16 astronauts on the surface of the moon

How do we get back to earth from the moon?

... this. Apollo had two engines so it could go down on the Moon. The last Apollo was in 1972. It could go down onto the Moon, it used the engine to slow itself down and get down ... was Apollo 17, so 11 to 17 and 13 didn’t land on the Moon. Was it was a single point failure of getting back. So ...

Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn and was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel.

Deepest ocean in the solar system

... for giant internal ocean, which is deep within the moon. Madhu Sudhan is a lecturer at the institute of ... more than a decade now has made several flybys across the moon Enceladus. As early as 2005 which was just the year ... found these plumes coming out of the southern pole of the moon Enceladus. So, there were theories saying that there ...

Lunar Mission One

UK mission to the Moon to be crowdfunded

... plans to send an unmanned robot to the South Pole of the Moon to drill down 100 metres into the lunar surface, ... song, to be stored for up to a billion years on the Moon! Ian Crawford, one of the members of Lunar Mission One, ... history of the space age has landed at either pole of the Moon.  So, this is a completely unexplored territory.  And ...

An astronaut standing on the Moon's surface

Lunar Gateway: the next giant leap for man

... Sue - This is a small space station that will orbit the Moon and it makes going to the moon more sustainable, so that what you will have by 2025, ... that makes it a lot cheaper than sending a mission to the Moon and back. So you shuttle your astronauts to the space ...

Moon

Can you bend a laser around the Moon?

... can be deflected or bent around a celestial body, like the moon, due to a fascinating effect called gravitational ... object. However, compared to stars and galaxies, the moon has much, much smaller mass and, as a consequence, ... a big star or a galaxy, it cannot be done around the Moon. Gravity is a no go for the Moon then, but what about ...

Lunar Origins Explained

The Moon is the result of a cosmic car crash and a furiously ... its mass.  This material eventually coalesced to form the Moon. This theory is unable to explain everything, however.  It does not illuminate why the Moon orbits at an angle of 5 degrees above the equator, why ...

How do scientists find the weight of the moon?

... basically that if you've got something that's orbiting the moon its weight is going to produce gravity. The stronger the ... you can orbit. As soon as you put a satellite orbiting the moon you can measure its mass quite accurately. By looking at how a satellite's orbit changes as it goes around the moon you can see tiny variances in mass from mountains and ...

Aerial view of Earth from space

How big is the Earth?

... - Talking of things that are not insignificant though: the Moon is a very big presence in our sky. And I watched a ... - I hadn't realised this - which is that the side of the moon that faces the Earth is completely different from the side of the Moon that faces out into space, in terms of its surface ...

Child students at a classroom

QotW: Does the moon affect student behaviour?

... who become feral and change their behaviour during a full moon. Bus is there any grounds of science for it? Otis ... Centre in Lisbon to find any connections between the moon and the behaviour of school students... Teresa - Hello ... there's a bit more to it. Teresa - The sweet light of the moon enabled nocturnal light to our ancestors. However, it ...

Full moon over a forest

Why doesn’t the moon have a magnetic field?

... That's a very good question. It's all to do with where the moon comes from. If you look at the composition of the moon - and we know what the moon's made of because one of the people we just heard ...

The moon taken by Appolo 12

Lunar X-Prize Heats Up

... contract for a Chinese rocket to carry their lander to the moon. The Barcelona Moon Team is taking part in the Lunar X-Prize, a ... create revolutions" by encouraging private missions to the moon, with the ultimate aim of creating frequent, inexpensive ...

Earth's moon

What would Earth look like with no Moon?

... the giant impact hypothesis, our best guess as to how our moon formed. It's the idea that the earth collided with ... Dana Mackenzie is the author of 'The Big Splat, Or How our Moon came to be'. I asked him what Earth would've been like ... stable. And so that disc rapidly coalesced and formed our Moon. And this was about four and a half billion years ago. ...

Moon

Supermoon

Last weekend, many people will have noticed the moon looking especially big and bright. This is because of a ... known as the supermoon... A supermoon occurs when a full moon coincides with the closest point to the earth that the moon travels to. They happen about once a year.  The moon's ...

Earth-like planet

Can two planets share the same orbit?

... first of all it's actually worth noting that when the Moon orbits the Earth, it's not just the Moon moving. The mass of the Moon has enough gravitational pull to also influence the ...

"The Blue Marble" is a famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometres (18,000 mi). It shows Africa, Antarctica, and the Arabian Peninsula.

Why Earth is turning faster on some days this month

... David - This is happening because of the orbit of the Moon. Generally, the orbit of the Moon slows the rotation of the Earth down over time, and this is a gravitational dance between the Earth and the Moon and the Earth's tides. The Moon pulls on the Earth's ...

An asteroid shooting towards the Earth.

Could DART save the world?

... slammed an impactor weighing half a tonne into a tiny moon orbiting an asteroid to see how practical the approach ... estimate, long term, that the collision might move the moon about 1% closer to the asteroid. Now the dust has ... earth asteroid, called Didymos, which has an even smaller moon. The moon's called Dimorphos. It's 170 metres in ...

A moon rising over a cityscape

Are more crimes committed during a full moon?

... could actually exist. Is there anything about the full moon that could actually cause someone to commit an actual ... evidence that there’s a consistent effect of the moon on criminal behaviour. However, we can still think about ... We seem to have ruled out any gravitational effects. The moon does not have a gravitation pull at individual levels, ...

Hubble Telescope image of distant stars showing diffraction artefacts.

How are stars born?

... second generation? Why is yawning contagious? Why is the moon moving away from us?  What causes lag on live ... - Thank you very much for the time. I've heard that the Moon is moving away from the Earth - the distance is ... point that you've raised there. We know that the Moon is moving away from the Earth at roughly 2 centimeters ...

Moon

Jeff Bezos' moon lander

This week Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos joined the club of Moon-sighted billionaires when he revealed his vision, Blue Moon. But is it a proper moonshot, or is it something else? ... which will lift off from the earth and will land on the moon. It won't return at the moment, it will just go over ...

Logo of Apollo 15

Did the Apollo 15 Astronauts break the rules?

... they'd been in space, particularly if they'd been to the moon, and they bring them back to earth. And this was almost ... of these things, particularly the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Whereas, you know, Apollo 15 did the same thing. They ... did a deal with a stamp dealer, took some stamps to the moon, brought them back. The problem was, and how they got ...

Gavel

Lunar laws: can anyone own the Moon?

... any nation - or commercial enterprise - lay claim to the Moon? Chris spoke with Michelle Hanlon, executive director at ... in it which says that no nation can claim territory on the Moon. So when the United States planted their flag on the moon in the Apollo missions, it wasn't staking a claim. It ...