India Launches First Moon Mission

He gives rare interview ... to Australian accountants

(NEWSER) - Fans of the space program are in for a treat: The normally reticent Neil Armstrong sat down for an hourlong interview about that moon landing of his with, of all outlets, the Certified Practicing Accountants of Australia. Some highlights:

• 50-50: "I thought we had a 90% chance of getting back safely to Earth on that flight but only a 50-50 chance of making a landing on that first attempt. There were so many unknowns ..."
• Close call: When Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the moon's surface in the Eagle, the on-board computer was guiding them toward a rocky, steep area. "Not a good place to land at all," says Armstrong. "I took over manually and flew it like a helicopter out to the west direction, got into a smoother area without so many rocks and found a level area and was able to get it down there safely before we ran out of fuel." There was "something like 20 seconds of fuel left."

Kennedy Space Center is looking for tenants

(NEWSER) - Wondering where to park your space shuttle? Consider Cape Canaveral's Kennedy Space Center. "We’re putting out the word officially and unofficially that Kennedy Space Center is open for business," says a chief architect at the facility. "I have a lot of facilities that we, NASA, no longer need," adds Kennedy’s director. "I don’t have the money to maintain them, I don’t have the money to tear them down. They’re just going to sit and rot"—unless someone rents them out. The available facilities include a launchpad, two mobile launch platforms, two maintenance hangars, and a 15,000-foot runway. More»

Takes tiny creatures along for the ride

(NEWSER) - A Russian spacecraft will depart for a Martian moon as soon as tomorrow. Its mission: to land on Phobos and collect soil to bring home to Earth, Scientific American reports. Researchers aim to learn about the moon’s development and composition. And should they discover ice or hydrated rocks, the 17-mile-long moon could be ultimately take on a new role: astronaut "base camp," writes Philip Boffey in the New York Times . The craft, called Phobos-Grunt, has some other objectives, too: It’s hauling a Chinese satellite—the country’s first Mars craft—which will orbit the planet. More»

... But it's an unmanned mission to explore the lunar gravity field

(NEWSER) - NASA's not done with the moon yet. It launched two unmanned spacecraft today (Grail A and Grail B) to study the lunar gravitational field and interior, reports Space.com . The $496 million mission has an interesting twist, notes the PopSci blog: a MoonKAM that will allow students to log in, scan the moon's surface, and request particular images for study. The two probes, which lifted off aboard a Delta 2 rocket shortly after 9am EDT, aren't expected to be in place until the end of the year. (If you like your moon missions with astronauts, click here for newly released images of the Apollo era.) More»

About 30 companies vying for Google's big prize

(NEWSER) - The space shuttle is gone, but worry not. Private industry is coming to the rescue, and fast. Inspired by a $30 million prize put up by Google, 29 entrepreneur/engineer teams are out to prove they have what it takes to win the kitty and become the first private enterprise to land on the moon by December 2015. The New York Times checks in on some of the contestants, whose aspirations are fittingly extraterrestrial in the grandiosity of their scope. More»