NASA to Smash Moon in Hunt for Lunar Ice

Lunar Orbiter 2 crashed on dark side of the moon

(NEWSER) - NASA may have found a lost spaceship on the dark side of the moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a ship designed to map the surface of the moon, has spotted a butterfly-shaped pattern that Fox News speculates might be the probe’s predecessor, the Lunar Orbiter 2. The craft, launched in 1967, sent back a photo of the lunar surface that was then hailed as the “picture of the century” before NASA intentionally crashed the orbiter on the dark side of the moon. More»

Twin 'grails' will study moon's gravity field

(NEWSER) - Two NASA probes are poised to reach the moon over the New Year's holiday. After a journey of more than three months, the $496 million Grail probes—short for Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory—will soon be in place, reports AP . Grail A is set to arrive on New Year's Eve and Grail B the following day. More»

They also show debris left behind from Apollo missions

(NEWSER) - NASA today released a batch of high-resolution images of the moon that show close-ups of landing sites from three Apollo missions, reports Space.com . (NASA has labeled and unlabeled versions of the images, taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, here .) They show astronauts' footprints, the tracks of their lunar rovers, and, alas, the space trash left behind at the landing sites for Apollo 12, 14, and 17. More»

More than thought from last year's 'moonshot'

(AP) - When NASA blasted a hole in the moon last year in search of water, scientists figured there would be a splash. They just didn't know how big. Now new results from the Hollywood-esque moonshot reveal lots of water in a crater where the sun never shines—41 gallons of ice and vapor. That may not sound like much (it's what a typical washing machine uses for a load) but it's almost twice as much as researchers had initially measured and more than they ever expected to find. More»

(NEWSER) - America should boldly turn its space program toward colonizing Mars instead of trying to retrace the dusty footprints that he and Neil Armstrong made on the Moon 40 years ago, Buzz Aldrin writes in the Washington Post on the anniversary of Apollo 11's launch. NASA's attempt to resume lunar exploration will end up like its predecessor, "a dead end littered with broken spacecraft, broken dreams and broken policies," Aldrin writes. More»