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Tag: Apollo mission

  • NASA to Remember Fallen Astronauts on February 1

    NASA to Remember Fallen Astronauts on February 1

    NASA announced today that its yearly “Day of Remembrance” for fallen astronauts will be held on February 1. The date marks the 10th anniversary of the day the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Flags at NASA facilities will be flown at half-staff on that day.

    The tribute will be used to honor the astronauts who died while working with the space program. Astronauts from the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, as well Apollo 1 will be a part of the remembrance. An observance will take place at Arlington National Cemetary on February 1, with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other senior NASA officials in attendance.

    A wreath-laying ceremony will also take place that day at 10 am EST at the Space Mirror Memorial in the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. The Space Mirror Memorial was dedicated in 1991, to honor astronauts who lost their lives in the space program. It has been declared a National Memorial by the U.S. congress and is maintained by the non-profit Astronauts memorial Foundation, which is also hosting the observance on Friday.

    The Kennedy ceremony will be streaming live on NASA Television. A tribute video for fallen astronauts prepared by NASA can be seen below, and an interactive slideshow is also available.

  • NASA Brushes Off Its Apollo Dust Data

    NASA Brushes Off Its Apollo Dust Data

    It’s been 40 years since the last Apollo mission, and this week NASA announced that findings from those missions continue to provide researchers with new insights into the the moon. Scientists at the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), NASA’s archive for space science mission data, are currently restoring data from Apollo 14 and Apollo 15 dust detectors.

    “This is the first look at the fully calibrated, digital dust data from the Apollo 14 and 15 missions,” said David Williams, an NSSDC data specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

    The digital data from the two missions’ dust detectors has not been archived before, and NASA estimates that a year and a half of the data have never been studied. The new data can be used in a long-term analysis of the dust readings. The restoration of the data is part of the Lunar Data Project, a n effort to provide Apollo scientific data in modern formats.

    The data was restored in a tedious manner, with an undergrad from the Florida Institute of Technology named Marie McBride going through data sets and separating raw detector counts from temperatures and other information. An incomplete second set of data then indicated how raw counts could be converted to usable measurements. The second data set had to be converted from microfilm, then synched up to the first set.

    Though the state of the data may suggest it, scientists haven’t abandoned their studies of lunar dust completely. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which launched in 2009, has taken lunar dust measurements. Next year’s launch of NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) will begin a new phase in studying the moon’s dust.

    “Just last week, LRO did some important measurements seeking dust profiles in the lunar atmosphere,” said Rich Vondrak, the LRO deputy project scientist at Goddard.

  • NASA Releases New Photo From Apollo 17

    In December of 1972, Apollo 17 left the moons surface and to this date no human has been back to step foot on the lunar surface. Moves have been made in the last few years to solve this problem with things going as far as Newt Gingrich calling for a permanent colony on the moon by the year 2020.

    After all of this time, NASA decided to release a new color photo of Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt. He is one of the last two men to ever step foot on the moon. The gorgeous shot was taken by fellow astronaut Eugene Cernan, who was on the surface with Schmitt, while the third man on their mission, Ronald Evans, orbited the moon.

    The Apollo 17 astronauts brought home 110Kg of moon rocks which is by far the most of any Apollo mission. Schmitt and Cernan’s lunar rover is perched at the edge of Shorty Crater, near the spot where geologist Schmitt discovered orange moon soil.

    Check out this link to see a huge hi-res version of this photo from NASA.