Focus on our Nearest Neighbor in Space

The Moon is in the news for good reason.  This week marks the 40th anniversary of the 1969 lunar landing, where three humans walked on the Moon for the first time. NASA is releasing new footage of that landing, plus sponsoring a number of events commemorating it.

Planetariums are having public events as well, and there’s a wealth of info online about the mission.

Over at  Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson has posted a number of links about the Apollo mission — all worth checking out!

One of the neatest online projects (among the many neat ones) about the Moon is the IYA’s Malta “Moon for all Mankind” image, comprising images (and at least one sketch) of the Moon from around the world.

The IYA has organized a number of events for the year, with a special emphasis on the Moon and our ongoing exploration of this rocky body. We’ve long been interested in the Moon, and for centuries all we had were our eyes to study it with. The invention of the telescope revealed incredible detail, and all those features confirmed in observers’ minds that this mysterious thing in the sky was another place — one that could be explored, in time.

The first spacecraft to actually land on the Moon was the Russian Luna 2 probe. It slammed into the surface on September 14, 1959. Today, 50 years and many, many spacecraft from six countries later, we’re still exploring the frozen lava seas and cratered surface of our nearest neighbor in space.

Keep an eye out over the next few days for more imagery, re-released image sets and videos from NASA, and news stories about the Moon and our ongoing exploration.

One of the most exciting image collections (just released today (Friday, July 17) comes from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, showing five of the six Apollo landing sites, including the landers.  Those landing sites were selected to give scientists a good look at various parts of the lunar surface. Astronauts set up instruments, took rock and dust samples, and many, many wonderful images of the lunar landscape. The set also shows Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 landing sites, plus evidence for all the instruments set up at the  Apollo 14 site.

These images are not just blasts from the past, according to NASA. They tell us in a most visceral way that “we were there” and that “we want to go back.” LRO’s images are giving detailed information about past  landing sites as a way to determine future places where astronauts can settle in for a long-term study of the Moon.