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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This was a magical revelation for the Greeks and the Egyptians, who were able to see from the motions of the stars and the way the Sun moved. They saw the way the Sun’s shadow worked in different places. And they figured, well, that’s only possible if the Earth is round. And they took that information and it extended into the time of the great mariners that explored our Earth by ships.
They made the first orbit of Earth by sea, and they knew the Earth was round, allowing them to go across one ocean and come back home the other way. If the Earth were flat, they would have sailed off the end. And so we knew that.
But then, at the dawn of the space age, in the late 50s and 60s, we were able to see for ourselves that our beautiful home is a gorgeous round object known as a sphere. And that was really special. It put ourselves into context of our solar system and our universe.
We have a big round Sun and a beautiful round Earth and a round Mars.
And today we use the roundness of Earth, the spherical Earth, to use methods in space geodesy to figure out where we are, where we’re going. I haven’t been lost in years. That’s pretty good.
What’s happening to the Earth, what’s happening to our oceans as we take the pulse of our planet and consider other worlds beyond as we explore those.
So as we get ready to go back to the Moon with women and men and explore other worlds, the roundness of our solar system and our universe is a special thing. And we should embrace that as we understand why our planet isn’t flat.
[END VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]
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Last Updated Mar 11, 2025 Related Terms
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By USH
On March 26, 2020, a French astronomer Mark Carlotto used a telescope to capture a video showing the moon at night. Dr. M. Carlotto is a specialist in digital video analysis of space objects. The video shows three objects rising above the Moon’s limb, flying across the lunar surface and disappearing in the Moon’s shadow.
The fact that some of these objects are so clearly visible and close enough to the moon to be able to cast noticeable shadows immediately suggests that they are quite large. Using the large Endymion crater as a benchmark, the sizes of the objects were determined.
The size of the object flying over Endymion is about 5 miles long and about 1 to 3 miles wide. The other two objects appear to be comparable in size.
By measuring the displacement of the object it appears that the object is traveling at about 31 mps. It is traveling more than 30 times faster than if it were in lunar orbit.
A paper was recently published that attempts to prove that the original video is a fake. Arxiv.org analyzed the video (not included in the analysis) but extracted and provided three images of the recorded objects for examination, as seen above, and they then conducted calculations to verify its authenticity.
Despite government and space agency denials of UFO existence, photographic evidence and subsequent analysis suggest the presence of large extraterrestrial craft near the Moon and elsewhere in space.View the full article
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
What is a NASA Spinoff?
Well, to answer that question, we’re going to have to go all the way back to 1958, back to the legislation that originally created the space agency, NASA.
So in that legislation, there’s some forward-looking language that says, “Make sure that all the cool stuff you develop for space doesn’t just get blasted off into the universe, but comes back down to the Earth in the form of practical and terrestrial benefits.”
I’m paraphrasing, of course. The legislation is actually a little bit dry like legislation should be. Since that time, NASA has worked to get the technologies it created into the hands of the public. These become products and services and they save lives, they improve lives, they generate income, they create jobs, they boost the economy, they increase crop yields, they make airplane travel safer, they make train transportation safer.
NASA’s everywhere you look. One example I like to bring up is the camera in your cell phone. That was actually developed at JPL. We were working on a lightweight, high resolution camera for a satellite application, and that became the very first camera on a chip, camera in the cell phone.
We’ve also worked on things like indoor agriculture, which is increasingly important as the world gets denser and people need access to healthy foods.
During the pandemic, some researchers developed a ventilator that had fewer than 100 parts, none of which were required in the supply chain to make other ventilators. We gave that to dozens of companies all around the world to help save lives.
If you check out spinoff.nasa.gov you can find thousands of examples of how NASA is everywhere in your life.
[END VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]
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Last Updated Mar 05, 2025 Related Terms
Space Technology Mission Directorate Spinoffs Technology Technology Transfer Technology Transfer & Spinoffs Explore More
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
That’s a great question. And it’s a question that NASA will seek to answer with the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
Europa is a moon of Jupiter. It’s about the same size as Earth’s Moon, but its surface looks very different. The surface of Europa is covered with a layer of ice, and below that ice, we think there’s a layer of liquid water with more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.
So because of this giant ocean, we think that Europa is actually one of the best places in the solar system to look for life beyond the Earth.
Life as we know it has three main requirements: liquid water — all life here on Earth uses liquid water as a basis.
The second is the right chemical elements. These are elements like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur. They’re elements that create the building blocks for life as we know it on Earth. We think that those elements exist on Europa.
The third component is an energy source. As Europa orbits around Jupiter, Jupiter’s strong gravity tugs and pulls on it. It actually stretches out the surface. And it produces a heat source called tidal heating. So it’s possible that hydrothermal systems could exist at the bottom of Europa’s ocean, and it’s possible that those could be locations for abundant life.
So could there be life on Europa? It’s possible. And Europa Clipper is going to explore Europa to help try to answer that question.
[END VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]
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Last Updated Feb 25, 2025 Related Terms
Science Mission Directorate Astrobiology Europa Europa Clipper Planetary Science Planetary Science Division The Solar System Explore More
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
During the Apollo program, when NASA sent humans to the Moon, those missions took several days to reach the Moon. The fastest of these was Apollo 8, which took just under three days to go from Earth orbit to orbit around the Moon.
Now it’s possible to save some fuel by flying different kinds of trajectories to the Moon that are shaped in such a way to save fuel. And those trajectories can take more time, potentially weeks or months, to reach the Moon, depending on how you do it.
Mars is further away, about 50 percent further away from the Sun than Earth is. And reaching Mars generally takes somewhere between seven to ten months, flying a relatively direct route.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission took about seven and a half months to reach Mars. And NASA’s MAVEN mission took about ten months to reach Mars.
Jupiter is about five times further away from the Sun than the Earth is. And so in order to make those missions practical, we have to find ways to reduce the fuel requirements. And the way we do that is by having the spacecraft do some flybys of Earth and or Venus to help shape the spacecraft’s trajectory and change the spacecraft’s speed without using fuel. And using that sort of approach, it takes between about five to six years to reach Jupiter.
So NASA’s Galileo mission, the first mission to Jupiter, took just a little over six years. And then NASA’s second mission to Jupiter, which was called Juno, took just under five years.
So to get to the Moon takes several days. To get to Mars takes seven to ten months. And getting to Jupiter takes between five and six years.
[END VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]
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Last Updated Feb 19, 2025 Related Terms
Science Mission Directorate Planetary Science Planetary Science Division The Solar System Explore More
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