Was The Moon Created By A Nuclear Explosion On Earth?

Similarities: Lunar samples from moon landings have shown that the material
of the moon is nearly identical to Earth's

From The Daily Mail:

How the Moon was created and came to orbit the Earth has long puzzled scientists.

The most commonly held theory is that when the solar system was first formed, an object collided with Earth, knocking off a chunk of rock that fell into orbit around it.

But now two scientists have come up with a new explanation. They believe the Moon did not break away from the Earth because of an impact or an explosion in space, but because of a nuclear explosion on Earth itself.

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Obama Aims To Ax Moon Mission

From Orlando Sentinel:

NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way.

When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.

There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all.

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Once In A Blue Moon ... Stargazers Savour Spectacular Lunar Eclips On New Year's Eve

I see a blue moon rising. The moon above the University of Kansas, in the U.S.

From The Daily Mail:

Stargazers seeing out 2009 were treated to a spectacular 'blue moon' last night.

Blue moons occur about once every two and a half years, which is the origin of the saying 'once in a blue moon'. Furthermore a blue moon falling precisely on December 31st is extremely unusual.

The last time it happened was in 1990, and the next time won't be until 2028.

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Blue Moon To Occur New Year's Eve

From Space.com:

New Year's Eve brings us the second of two full moons for North Americans this month. Some almanacs and calendars assert that when two full moons occur within a calendar month, that the second full moon is called the "blue moon."

The term has a very interesting history, riddled with misconceptions and errors. More on that lower down. First, what will (and won't) happen:

The full moon that night will likely look no different than any other full moon (other than the fact that a partial eclipse will occur across most of Europe, Africa, and Asia).

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Once In A Blue Moon To Happen Thursday

From Mercury News:

Once in a blue moon is about to happen.

On Thursday, a second full moon in a calendar month will appear in the night sky, an occurrence known as a blue moon.

There has not been a month with two full moons since 2007, when sky gazers enjoyed one on June 1 and again on June 30 of that year. The first full moon this month occurred on Dec. 2.

The phrase "blue moon" has nothing to do with the color of the sphere, explained Conrad Jung, a staff astronomer at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland. "It's just a colloquial term, which means very, very rare," he said.

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There Is More Water On The Moon Than What We Thought

Lunar Impactor Finds Clear Evidence Of Water Ice On Moon -- Wired Science

There is water on the moon, NASA confirmed today, and lots of it.

In the first look at results from the LCROSS mission, which sent a probe crashing into the Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole, NASA’s main investigator said their instruments clearly detected water, despite the underwhelming plume.

Within the field of view of their instruments, the team measured approximately 220 pounds or about 26 gallons of water. Next, the team will try to understand how the compounds they saw in the plume relate to what’s actually embedded in the lunar regolith at the bottom of the permanently shadowed crater.

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More News On The Discovery Of Water On the Moon

NASA discovers 'significant' amount of water on moon -- Washington Post
NASA sees "significant quantities" of water on the moon -- Ars technica
Splash! NASA moon strikes found significant water -- AP
Water Found on Moon, Scientists Say -- New York Times
NASA Moon Crash Found 'Significant Amount' of Water -- FOX News
Water found on Moon after Nasa 'bombing' mission -- The Telegraph

Best View Yet Of Apollo Landing Site

The new LRO image. Click it to enlarge

From Scientific American:

A NASA spaceprobe has sent back the clearest photo yet of an Apollo landing site - including even the US flag. It clearly shows the descent stage of Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger, nearly 37 years after it touched down in December 1972 in the Taurus Littrow valley. The new LRO image. Click it to enlarge For the first time even its legs are visible, thanks to the detail possible with the orbiting digital camera.

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Controversial Moon Origin Theory Rewrites History

Origin Story. A new study challenges the giant impact hypothesis, which suggested the moon formed from a cosmic collision. NASA

From Discovery:

Oct. 22, 2009 -- The moon may have been adopted by our planet instead of descended from it.

If a new twist on a decades-old theory is right, conditions in the early solar system suggest the moon formed inside Mercury's orbit and migrated out until it was roped into orbit around Earth.

The idea flies in the face of scientific consensus, known as the giant impact hypothesis, which holds that the moon formed from red-hot debris left over after a Mars-sized object collided with Earth around 4.5 billion years ago.

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Panel Calls For Big Detour In NASA’s Moon Plans

NASA artwork traces each phase of a future mission to the moon and back.

From MSNBC:

Asteroids, Martian moons suggested as alternate destinations.

WASHINGTON - NASA needs to make a major detour in its effort to return astronauts to the moon, a special independent panel told the White House Thursday.

Under current plans, NASA has picked the wrong destination with the wrong rocket, the panel's chairman said. A test-flight version of the rocket, the new Ares I, is on a launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, awaiting liftoff next week for its first experimental flight.

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How The Moon Produces Its Own Water

Chandrayaan-1 SARA measurements of hydrogen flux recorded on the Moon on 6 February 2009. (Credit: Elsevier 2009 (Wieser et al.), ESA-ISRO SARA data)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 19, 2009) — The Moon is a big sponge that absorbs electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. These particles interact with the oxygen present in some dust grains on the lunar surface, producing water. This discovery, made by the ESA-ISRO instrument SARA onboard the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, confirms how water is likely being created on the lunar surface.

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NASA Moon Crash Did Kick Up Debris Plume As Hoped

A satellite camera picks up a plume of debris, circled above, seconds after a rocket smashed into the Cabeus crater. NASA estimates the dust went up about a mile. (NASA)

From The L.A. Times:

Images are released showing that the lunar mission may be more successful than it first appeared. Scientists are 'are blown away by the data returned.'

NASA's recent lunar-punch mission apparently was not the high-profile flop it first appeared.

Officials at Ames Research Center in Northern California, which managed the mission, released images Friday that clearly show a plume of debris from the Cabeus crater shortly after the space agency's rocket plowed into it.

The plume reached an estimated mile above the lunar surface.

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The Moon Belongs To No One – Yet

Making the moon mine (Image: View China Photo/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

LAST week, NASA bombed the moon. Or rather, it crashed its Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite into the moon's south pole in a bid to discover reserves of water and other resources.

This was the latest in a veritable flurry of moon missions: between 2007 and 2011 there will have been eight: one from Japan, two from China, one from India, one from Russia and three from the US.

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Nasa Team Scours Moon Crash Data

The "shepherding spacecraft" will analyse the impact debris

From The BBC:

Nasa scientists have been outlining their preliminary results after crashing two unmanned spacecraft into the Moon in a bid to detect water-ice.

A rocket stage slammed into the Moon's south pole at 1231 BST (0731 EDT).

Another craft followed just behind, looking for signs of water in debris kicked up by the first collision.

Instruments on the second spacecraft identified a flash from the initial impact as well as a crater, but the expected debris cloud was not evident.

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NASA Craft Hits Moon South Pole Looking For Water

This artist's rendering released by NASA on Friday shows the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite as it crashes into the moon to test for the presence of water. NASA, via Reuters

In Test of Water on Moon, Craft Hits Bull’s-Eye -- New York Times

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — More than 230,000 miles from Earth, a NASA spacecraft hit a bull’s-eye on the Moon on Friday morning. Actually, two bull’s-eyes.

At 4:31 a.m. Pacific time (7:31 a.m. Eastern time), one piece of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — LCROSS, for short — slammed into the bottom of a crater at 5,600 miles per hour, excavating about 350 metric tons of the moon and leaving behind a hole about 65 feet wide, 13 feet deep.

Trailing four minutes behind, instruments aboard the second piece analyzed the rising plume and sent its observations back to Earth before it also slammed into the same crater.

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More News On NASA

NASA makes as-yet unseen hit on moon with probes -- AP
NASA craft smacks the moon in quest for water -- L.A. Times
Searching for lunar water -- USA Today
NASA probes give moon a double smack -- AP
Nasa Moon bombing: analysis -- The Telegraph

Nasa 'Needs Another £30bn To Fulfil Moon Mission'

Photo: Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in 1969. He believes a new lunar mission would be pointless - even if it were affordable. (Nasa/EPA)

From Times Online:

Nasa will not be able to meet its target of sending humans back to the Moon by 2020, or even dream of landing on Mars, because it is suffering from chronic underfunding, a presidential review panel has warned.

The US space agency needs at least another $50 billion (£30 billion) over the next decade if it is to come close to delivering on its vision for retiring the space shuttle, completing construction of the International Space Station and launching ambitious new voyages of discovery.

The bleak assessment comes from a ten-member committee established by President Obama to review America’s manned spaceflight programme. Made up of aerospace experts and former astronauts, it is not due to make its final report until the end of this month.

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LCROSS Impact Site Picked

From Discover Magazine:

NASA has chosen the final destination for the LCROSS lunar impacting probe: the crater Cabeus A, near the Moon’s south pole.

So why is NASA smacking a probe into the Moon at high speed, and why there?

The idea is that over millions and billions of years, a lot of comets have hit the Moon. The water from these comets hits the surface and sublimates away… but if any settles at the bottoms of deep craters near the Moon’s poles, these permanently shadowed regions can act as a refrigerator, keeping the water from disappearing. It can stay there, locked up as ice, for a long, long time. Some estimates indicate there could be billions of tons of ice near the Moon’s south pole.

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Our Changing View Of The Moon

The first drawing of the Moon through a telescope, dated July 26, 1609, by Thomas Harriot. This crude but historic sketch roughly delineates the terminator, the line that marks the boundary between day and night on the lunar surface. The original image is a little more than 15 cm across. The dark patches correspond to Mare Crisium (at the top), Mare Tranquilitatis and Mare Foecunditatis. © Lord Egremont

From MSNBC:

The moon, so bright and large in the sky compared to other celestial objects, has captured the attention of humans at least since the dawn of consciousness. Over these eras, mankind's view of the moon has evolved, from the more mystical image of it as a god, to the thought it was covered in seas and vegetation. Most recently, it's been viewed as a dry and dusty wasteland.

Recent findings of water on the lunar surface could spur yet another shift in the way we see our orbiting companion.

The moon appears in early art thousands of years ago, showing that early man was as enthralled by its eerie glow as later philosophers and scientists.

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Moon Could Become The World's 'Service Station' Thanks To Abundance Of Oxygen And Hydrogen

With hydrogen and oxygen both abundant on the moon's surface, man may be able to have all the water and rocket fuel needed for space exploration

From The Daily Mail:

The discovery of water on the moon could pave the way for us to build a rocket refueling station up there.

For man to be able to make sustainable, affordable voyages in the solar system, we need a way to re-fuel off the planet.

Now, with the discovery of hydrogen and oxygen molecules - the components of water - on our neighbouring body, we may now have a staging post to explore the other planets.

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How Astronauts Could 'Harvest' Water On The Moon

If the moon's water could be collected, lunar astronauts could use it as drinking water and split it into oxygen and hydrogen to make rocket fuel for their return journeys to Earth (Image: NASA)

From New Scientist:

Newly confirmed water on the moon could help sustain lunar astronauts and even propel missions to Mars, if harvesting it can be made practical. A microwave device being developed by NASA could do just that.

Three spacecraft – India's Chandrayaan-1 and NASA's Cassini and Deep Impact probes – have detected the absorption of infrared light at a wavelength that indicates the presence of either water or hydroxyl, a molecule made up of a hydrogen and an oxygen atom. All found the signature to be stronger at the poles than at lower latitudes.

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Moon Myths: The Truth About Lunar Effects On You

This photograph of the full Moon was taken from Apollo 11 during its trip back to Earth. The round smooth area just above the center of the disk is Mare Crisium, left of that is Mare Tranquilitatis. The Apollo 11 landing site is along the left side of Tranquilitatis. Credit: NASA

From Live Science:

The moon holds a mystical place in the history of human culture, so it's no wonder that many myths — from werewolves to induced lunacy to epileptic seizures — have built up regarding its supposed effects on us.

"It must be a full moon," is a phrase heard whenever crazy things happen and is said by researchers to be muttered commonly by late-night cops, psychiatry staff and emergency room personnel.

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