NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured images of astronaut tracks, lunar landers, and left behind equipment from the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 moon missions. These are the sharpest images ever taken of the moon and should give fake moon landing conspiracy nuts a whole new bag of clues to play with. We can’t rebuild what we once understood and get ourselves back to the moon, but we can take pictures of our past glory.
Tag Archives: astronaut
Man in Space – 1955 Disney Documentary
Disney’s lavish history of rockets leading right up to a pre-Sputnik 1955!
Parts 2 – 8 after the jump
Road to the Stars – 1957 Soviet Space Vision with Stunning Special Effects
Excerpt 1 – First Men in Space:
The film is in Russian but you absolutely do not need to know Russian to enjoy it! Unfortunately, I can’t find the entire film, only these three excerpts.
Pavel Klushantsev’s 1957 film, Road to the Stars, features astoundingly realistic special effects that were an inspiration and obvious blueprint for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey ten years later. The film is an extended form of science education, building upon existing 1950s technology to predict space exploration of the future. The sequences with astronauts in zero gravity are incredibly realistic. The second excerpt from the film features the construction of and life aboard a space station in earth orbit that is not only convincing but also beautiful. There are several scenes with space station dwellers using videophones that anticipate the famous Kubrick videophone scene.
Excerpt 2 – Space Station:
Excerpt 3 – Moon Landing:
40-Year Anniversary of Apollo 11 Moon Landing
Forty years ago today, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed humans on the moon. Amazing. We should really go back… if we still know how.
Interactive Moon Mission Underway
Yesterday I posted about the JFK Presidential Library’s interactive recreation of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing mission. The mission has now reached stage 6 with the command module at a distance of 22,000 nautical miles from earth. The site is doing an absolutely marvelous job of making you feel as if you are riding along with the historic Apollo 11 mission. They have all the real-time radio communications between the astronauts and Mission Control. So you can listen to exactly what was happening through every second of the entire mission! They also have video clips that fit the current point you are watching in the mission.
This was an excellent web idea and it is extremely well executed. I can’t wait until they reach the part with the Lunar LEM trying to find its landing spot on the moon! Go see the We Choose the Moon site right away!
Amazing Pictures of Space Mission to Hubble
These are incredible, huge, and crystal clear photographs of the May 2009 shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope is the greatest astronomical instrument ever devised and this is its last repair. The mission was very dangerous because the Hubble orbits in an area with a high density of space junk. A rescue mission was actually waiting on the ground with another shuttle in case the main mission ran into trouble. These pictures are fantastic.