The LCROSS mission is a search for water on the moon. The LCROSS mission is going to do this by sending a rocket crashing into the moon causing a big impact and creating a crater, throwing tons of debris and potentially water ice and vapor above the lunar surface.
Pretty amazing. It seems that everywhere we look in the solar system, there are things to surprise us. The speaker in this video is a little hard to understand, but he said something very interesting – that the salt in the water, plus other discoveries they made, mean that there are the right chemicals for possibly creating life. Forget life on other planets – we should be looking for life on other moons!
It’s the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Click on the picture to visit wechoosethemoon.org, an interactive website that is tracking the mission as though it were happening right now. It features audio, photos, and videos.
After June 20th, the site will stay up and you will be able to click through the entire mission from start to finish.
During yesterday’s launch, the space shuttle suffered some damage. Some foam tiles, which protect the shuttle from burning up when it enters Earth’s atmosphere, have fallen off or were scuffed. So far, as this news report says, NASA doesn’t know how much damage there is. There are also different options for fixing the damage if it turns out to be a big problem.
Try rubbing your hands together very fast – you can feel the heat building up. This is what happens when a flying object like a spaceship lands on a planet or moon with an atmosphere. The ship rubs against the air in the atmosphere and a LOT of heat is built up. This is because of a force called friction. It’s super-important to have a heat shield so that the ship won’t burn up. A few years ago, the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed because of damage to its heat shield.
Enceladus is a moon around Saturn. We thought it was so weird that it had volcanoes that spewed ice instead of lava. Now scientists think that there might be a liquid ocean underneath that ice layer, like Europa.
Ever wondered how many Earths would add up to one Jupiter? How many Saturns would balance out one Sun? Find out with one of our favorite websites ever, the Planet Mass Comparison. Click one of the pictures below to try it yourself:
One Neptune = 9,501 Plutos!
14 Earths = 1 Uranus.
OK, OK, there’s actually no cosmic scale out in space weighing planets. This is actually measuring mass, which is a bit different than weight. Weight depends on where you’re standing. For example, you’d “weigh” a LOT more if you were on Jupiter or the Sun. (Not that you would survive long enough to get on a scale.) You even weigh a tiny bit less when you’re up in the mountains than you would at sea level. But you are the same size, with the same amount of “matter” inside your body, no matter where you are.
Click the picture to learn more about asteroids from National Geographic.
An asteroid is a piece of stranded rock in the middle of nowhere. If it hits you, that is sad. Asteroids are left over from when the Sun and planets were made. If gravity had been a little stronger, the asteroids would have been another planet. They come in many shapes and sizes. Ceres is the biggest asteroid. It is almost big enough to be a planet. Ceres is a dwarf planet, like Pluto. Gaspra looks like a fish! Pallas looks like a smiley face. Ida has a strange little moon. Eros looks like a bone. There’s no place like asteroids!
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