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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Data from Kaguya's prime mission to the Moon has been released
Yesterday, the Japanese space agency announced the public release of the data from the primary mission of the Kaguya (a.k.a. SELENE) lunar orbiter.
Gorgeous high-res image of the Apollo 17 landing site
The LROC team posted today a new image of the Apollo 17 landing site, captured after Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter had gotten in to its 50-kilometer mapping orbit, so this is much more detailed than the previous view.
Window onto an abyss: Cave skylight on the Moon
This just in: researchers on JAXA's Kaguya lunar orbiter have discovered an open pit on the Moon that is likely a window onto a sublunar world -- a skylight into a subsurface cavern.
That psychedelic M-cubed Moon movie explained
Advance warning: this entry may be a little technical for some.
Video from Palomar Observatory on LCROSS impact night
The Palomar Observatory adaptive optics image of the crater Cabeus remains the best I've seen from ground-based telescopes of the LCROSS impact site.
LCROSS visible spectrometer data showing impact flash
This plot just shows the aggregate radiance in ultraviolet and visible wavelengths -- all wavelengths -- seen by one of LCROSS' spectrometers after the Centaur hit the Moon.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Diviner detection of LCROSS impact
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Diviner team just released some preliminary views of their data taken during the LCROSS impact, which clearly shows the thermal signature from the crash into the Moon.
Graphics from the LCROSS press briefing
It's been a little difficult to get a hold of the graphics that they used at this morning's press briefing.
MMT image of the plume and its shadow?
I am pretty sure this image shows the LCROSS impact plume and its shadow as seen from the MMT observatory in Arizona, but as Alan Boyle just pointed out, the time stamps indicate the photos were all taken before the nominal impact time.
Palomar image of crater Cabeus after LCROSS impact
Here's the sharpest optical image shown today of the Moon, from Palomar Observatory.
LCROSS impact recap, with animations
Quite a night! I set my alarm for 3:15 am in order to get up and watch LCROSS crash into the Moon.
Screen caps of NASA TV LCROSS camera images
I am having issues with TwitPic this morning, so will occasionally post new images from the LCROSS camera to this blog entry.
Gorgeous Kaguya image of Cabeus crater; where to watch impact
I'm back online and ready to watch LCROSS smash into the Moon this morning!
LCROSS impact preview
Way early tomorrow morning, LCROSS and its Centaur upper stage will crash into the lunar south pole.
A couple of helpful visualizations of LCROSS impact
The visualization studio at Goddard Space Flight Center has just posted some handy simulations of what we can expect the LCROSS impact to look like.
LROC nabs image of the Apollo 14 S-IVB impact site
As a reminder that we've been crashing stuff into the Moon for decades, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team released today a photo of the crater made by the spent upper stage of the Saturn rocket that lofted the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon.
The "Water on the Moon" Hoopla, Part 1: There's water on the Moon!
For a couple of weeks now, I've been hearing rumors about an upcoming announcement concerning Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper (
The "Water on the Moon" Hoopla, Part 2: The murkier part of the story
How much water is there on the Moon, and is it in a form that human explorers could use? This part of the story has many more questions and many fewer definite conclusions.
Interpreting a crater on the Moon
The images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera or LROC are absolutely stunning.
The Power of Lighting Conditions
For over four decades, the lunar science community has absorbed the information from the Apollo missions. Although many important questions were answered, many important new questions are waiting to be tackled -- which is the very essence of science and exploration.