Category Archives: moon missions

apollo 11, Moon, moon missions

The Eagle Once Landed

1 Comment

Geeking Out 41 Years Ago

The mission patch for Apollo 11. Courtesy NASA.

So, I know where I was 41 years ago this week: glued to the TV watching the Apollo 11 landings and first humans walking on the Moon.  It was a special time — a time when I honestly thought that maybe by the time I got out of high school or even college, that people would be regularly traveling to the Moon for vacations, commerce, exploration, and maybe even to live.

It’s a promise that humans have been unable to fulfill for a number of good and bad reasons. But, for me, the wonder of those days is still there.  I still get a little wistful when I see the pictures and videos and think about how we all were so excited in those times.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin sets out an experiment during the Apollo 11 mission. Courtesy NASA.

They were part of America’s great leap to space, and in most ways, our country has done a LOT of exploration. We have robot probes that have explored (and some still are exploring) the planets. We’ve learned to study our OWN planet, as pictures from NASA and NOAA and other space agencies attest.   But, we’ve never returned people to the Moon, and that’s disappointing.

Still, the dream is alive and the pictures remind us of what can be. It may be that people other than Americans will be the next to step on the Moon — just as people from other countries have taken up the cause of space exploration and made it part of their national outreach and honor, too.  That’s not a bad thing — space is becoming an international endeavor. I’m happy that we were the first to go to the Moon. I just hope we’re not the last.

Moon, moon missions

Going Loony

Leave a comment

To the Moon!

Astronaut Harrison Schmidt exploring the Moon. Courtesy NASA (click to embiggen).
Astronaut Harrison Schmidt exploring the Moon. Courtesy NASA (click to embiggen).

Back in late 1960s and early 1970s, astronauts landed on the Moon, walked around, did science, and returned lunar samples that helped change our view of not just the Moon, but Earth, and the way the two formed.  It has been decades since anybody set foot on the lunar surface, although humans have been sending a few missions here and there to study this world next door.

NASA is planning to return to the Moon with a pair of satellites called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). Both missions have ambitious schedules: to map the Moon down to one-meter resolution (which will help identify landing sites for the next human missions), and to chart out the types of resources available on the Moon.

It seems natural to return to the Moon. For a long time, people have talked about the Moon as potential staging site for missions to Mars and beyond.  They’ve also talked about the possibility of colonies on the Moon — which are also a great staple of science fiction. But, there’s nothing SF about the actual guts of landing and living on the Moon. We have the technology to do it, and mobilizing such missions would be a tremendous economic boost (better, I’d say, than using taxpayer dollars to fund questionable wars or  questionable financial bailouts).

How we get to the Moon and establish bases there (and by “we” I mean all humans, not just space-faring nations), the first things we have to do is what pioneers did in previous centuries — scout out the terrain, report back on the resources, and then figure out a way to do it.  So, keep your eyes peeled on the moon missions — NASA’s new lunar missions as well as the continuing missions to the Moon by other space agencies. It’s gonna be a busy time on those distant, cratered plains.