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Moon TOP STORY

Ice On The Lunar South Pole May Have More Than One Source

Mars Imaged by Hubble

The discovery of ice deposits in craters scattered across the Moon's south pole has helped to renew interest in exploring the lunar surface, but no one is sure exactly when or how that ice got there.

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Chandrayaan-2 lander, Vikram: Obscured In The Lunar Highlands?

Copernicus Detail

The Chandrayaan-2 lander, Vikram, attempted a landing Sept. 7 (Sept. 6 in the United States), on a small patch of lunar highland smooth plains between Simpelius N and Manzinus C craters.

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Study Suggests Moon Rocks Sent There From Earth By An Ancient Asteroid Impact

In findings published in science journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, a sample collected during the 1971 Apollo 14 lunar mission was found to contain traces of minerals with a chemical composition common to Earth and very unusual for the moon.

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Reconstructing The First Successful Lunar Farside Landing

In January of this year, China's Chang'E-4 - the fourth version of a lunar spacecraft named for the Chinese goddess of the Moon - landed on the far side of the Moon. Due to the location of the landing, Chang'E-4 had to navigate autonomously, without the guidance of scientists on Earth.

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ESA Is Seeking Innovative Ideas For Exploring Lunar Caves

How would you design a system to detect, map and explore caves on the Moon? Our latest hunt for ideas is seeking novel initiatives that address this question.

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Moon Glows Brighter Than Sun In Images From NASA's Fermi

If our eyes could see high-energy radiation called gamma rays, the Moon would appear brighter than the Sun! That's how NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has seen our neighbor in space for the past decade.

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The Moon and Mercury May Have Thick Ice Deposits

Earth's Moon and Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, may contain significantly more water ice than previously thought, according to a new analysis of data from NASA's LRO and MESSENGER spacecraft.

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Inside Dark, Polar Lunar Craters Water Is Not As Invincible As Expected

The Moon's south pole region is home to some of the most extreme environments in the solar system: it's unimaginably cold, massively cratered, and has areas that are either constantly bathed in sunlight or in darkness.

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What Lies Beneath The Lunar Surface?

What is the composition of the crust from top to bottom? It is relatively easy to measure the surface, but what lies beneath the surface?

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India Launches Chandrayaan-2 To The Moon

India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle GSLV MkIII-M1, successfully launched the 3,840 kg Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft into an Earth orbit today (July 22, 2019).

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Working On The Moon

Panorama view of Apollo 12 lunar surface photos with lunar module pilot Alan L. Bean and the TV taken from just inside the rim of Surveyor Crater on the first moonwalk of the mission.

Moon

Powering The Future With Lunar Soil

Building a lunar base would be one of the next logical steps in our exploration of the Solar System, but the survival of a future crew depends on access to a reliable source of energy.

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Building a Toolkit for the Moon

As the world celebrates 50 years since the first lunar landing, the team at ESA's astronaut centre is looking to the future of lunar exploration. This includes developing prototypes for rock and soil sampling equipment to be used on the Moon.

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What Neil Armstrong Saw As He Landed

The only visual record of the historic Apollo 11 landing is from a 16mm time-lapse (6 frames per second) movie camera mounted in Buzz Aldrin's window (right side of Lunar Module Eagle or LM).

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Modern Analysis Of Apollo Moon Rocks

On July 20, 1969, as Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder from the "Eagle" lunar landing module, he found himself surrounded by a sea of grey -- an expanse of powdery dust no human had ever seen in person.

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Mass Anomaly Detected Under The Moon's Largest Crater

A mysterious large mass of material has been discovered beneath the largest crater in our solar system -- the Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin -- and may contain metal from the asteroid that crashed into the Moon and formed the crater, according to a Baylor University study.