Hasta La Gadget!

An extremely rare and out of this world treasure was discovered recently. One that has many asking questions about why and how it went missing in the first place. Multiple priceless vials of Moon dust collected by the one and only Apollo 11, the late Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin have been found after missing nearly 40 years.

These vials of Moon dust have been missing for nearly 40 years, and apparently have just been sitting safely in storage all this time out in California. A local archivist by the name Karen Nelson, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, made the discovery earlier this month according to Fox News.

These rare and important vials of Moon dust were from the Apollo 11 and were brought back to Earth by the first men to step foot on the moon. So instantly many are wondering just how they managed to get “lost” in storage all this time. It’s being reported that Nelson was going over random tucked away in storage artifacts and was shocked when she stumbled upon the vials.

This isn’t just one or two that could of easily gone missing. She came across almost 20 vials complete with handwritten labels dated “24 July 1970,” which were safely packed in vacuum-sealed glass jars. Along with the discovery was an academic paper discussing the Proceedings of the Second Lunar Science Conference in 1971. Apparently that paper was titled “Study of carbon compounds in Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 returned lunar samples.”

“We don’t know how or when they ended up in storage…They were surprised we had the samples”

The above statement was all the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had to say. The questions remains as to how and why something of this nature was lost to begin with, but Space agency officials assume that the unaccounted for vials were destroyed in testing. In reality they should have been returned to NASA instead of ending up in a storage container for 40 years. One day these could be used again in lab testing, but for now are safely in NASA’s sample vault.

Apollo 11 Moon dust found after missing for 40 years is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Scientists and researchers have discovered that droplets of water found in lunar rocks brought back from the Moon are identical on a chemical level from that of samples of ancient Earth. The rocks used in the study came from samples brought back by Apollo 15 in 1971 and Apollo 17 in 1972, the latter being NASA‘s last mission to the moon.

The droplets in the rocks were found trapped in crystals on the inside, which protected the water droplets from volcanic eruptions, allowing them to be preserved through all these years and giving scientists the opportunity to look back at what the Moon’s ancient history as far back as 4.5 billion years ago.

According to past research, much of Earth’s water is believed to have been supplied by meteorites that crashed into our planet billions of years ago. The debris from the collision is said to have formed the moon, and since the intense heat from the explosion failed to vaporize all the water, it remained stagnant, which is what researchers are finding in the rock samples.

Scientists can tell where these water droplets originated from in the solar system based on ratio of the two chemicals deuterium and hydrogen. The water droplets in the rocks were found have small amounts of deuterium, which suggests that the water came from an area close to the sun, as opposed to further out in the solar system. The chemical structure essentially matched the levels of these aforementioned meteorites, which has scientists concluding that water found on the Moon very likely came from the Earth.

[via The Guardian]

[Source: Science Magazine]

Study suggests water on the Moon came from Earth is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield has been busy taking photos of the Earth from the ISS for a few months now, mostly showing us what cities look like from 250 miles up, but a particular photo that he posted just recently is a bit different, and it shows a beautiful horizon with the moon rising over a darkened Earth.

We’re not exactly sure what cities we’re looking at in the photo, but Hadfield points out that its the southeastern United States, with the bigger city toward the right side being Atlanta or Charlotte possibly. In any case, the horizon looks absolutely amazing, and the moon creeping in makes the photo that much more spectacular.

Hadfield not only takes a ton of photos of Earth from the ISS (which you can browse through all of them with this neat interactive map), but he also provides short videos on what it’s like to live on the ISS, and in one of his latest videos, he describes how he takes photos of Earth from the ISS. The secret? A huge lens.

Hadfield primarily uses a Nikon DSLR with a 400mm lens. This is one heavy setup, but thanks to the lack of gravity in space, Hadfield doesn’t need to strain his shoulders or arms lifting and holding the camera. Instead, the camera merely just floats in front of him. Hadfield even says that they take the cameras out on spacewalks into the cold vacuum of space. We’ll be keeping up with Hadfield and the ISS over the next months for any more photos that he posts in the future. Stay tuned!

New photo from ISS shows moon rising over a darkened Earth is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re in the mood for a lunar eclipse, NASA says that there will be one later today, but it probably won’t be anything too spectacular according to their description. The partial lunar eclipse will be taking place during the day in the US, but there will be a live stream from Dubai that will start at 3 pm ET.

This will mark the first lunar eclipse of 2013, but it won’t be a full one. According to NASA, less than 1.5% of the moon will be darkened by Earth’s shadow, and it will only last 27 minutes, which will make it one of the shortest lunar eclipses that we’ve seen in the past 100 years or so.

The partial lunar eclipse will start at 10 pm GST, and the folks at Slooh Space Camera will be live streaming a video feed from a telescope in Dubai, where the partial lunar eclipse should be completely visible as long as the weather cooperates. Commentary will also be provided by Dr. Lucie Green, who is a researcher at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in England, so it should be quite the learning experience.

If you miss today’s lunar eclipse, don’t worry, as there will be two more throughout 2013, with the next one occurring on May 25. That one should be visible by folks in the US, although it won’t be a completely full lunar eclipse, however. The third lunar eclipse will take place on October 18.

[via S]” target=”_blank”>via LA Times]

Partial lunar eclipse live-streaming later today is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve already seen the Obama administration announce its latest budget for NASA this week, and now President Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia will be spending more than $50 billion on its space-related efforts by 2020. The most immediate result of that will be the completion of the Vostochny Cosmodrome near Russia’s border with China, which Putin says is still on track to see its first rocket launch as soon as 2015 and its first manned launch in 2018. With NASA decommissioning its shuttle program, all manned space launches currently take place at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (as pictured above), and Putin says the new launch base will also be open for other countries to use.

Beyond that, Putin says that Russia will also have what’s being described as a space weapon deterrent system by the year 2030, although specifics on it unsurprisingly remain a bit light for the time being. Russia says it also remains committed to sending cosmonauts beyond Earth’s orbit in the future, including to a permanent base on the moon that it says could be used as a future launching pad for flights to Mars. Unmanned missions will precede that, though — indeed, a new Moon probe is set to be the first launch from the aforementioned Vostochny Cosmodrome.

[Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls]

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Source: Bloomberg, AFP, Reuters