Hasta La Gadget!

Really? This was it? Some choppy footage and few dudes high-fiving in what we’re pretty sure to be a Kinko’s? This is what it looks like when Man bombs the moon at 5,600mph??

I mean, I’m all for science. ALL for it. Can’t get enough of it. I’d marry it if i could—really—nd I’m married now. So that means I’d need to ruin my life my getting a divorce, then woo science, then drop all the cash on some destination wedding or something while trying to forget about that story science told me regarding the high school football team, vodka and one of those bottles of green ketchup.

But this mission should have been, like, the most ridiculously awesome thing we’ve ever seen. We rammed a whole Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) straight into our closest galactic buddy. And all we got was this stinkin’ YouTube clip without the actual impact. (Even MailOnline is sobbing about it.)

NASA has a press conference later today, during which they’ll share findings from the mission. It’s possible we could get some better media then. And as an entitled taxpayer with a penchant flash and dazzle, I’m certainly hoping so. [LCROSS and YouTube]

This is the Duke family. The father, Charles Moss Duke, Jr. born October 3, 1935. The mom, Dorothy Meade Claiborne. The two sons, Charles and Thomas. They are probably in their garden, sitting on a bench. They look so happy.

And they should be, because Charles Moss Duke was the lunar module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972. He landed with mission commander John W. Young at the Descartes Highlands, which is what makes this photo so special: It’s still there, untouched, unperturbed, exactly in the same position as he left it before taking this snapshot with his Hasselblad 70mm film camera.

I didn’t know about this fantastic photo until a couple of days ago, ignorant that I am. Following the advice of my friend Adán—who is a space exploration fanboy like me—I bought an amazing book called Full Moon. It shows the trip to the moon through 128 brunch-bacon-crispy photographs, many of them giant four-page spreads containing fascinating panoramas. All clean, pitch black background, no text. Like the silence of space.

Full Moon is not a new book: It was curated and published in 1999 by Michael Light. It contains the first and only digital scans of the Apollo missions’ original camera film. See, when these images returned from space, NASA copied each of the photos, then stored the original film right away for future scanning. Every lunar photo you have seen out there are copies made from copies of the originals.

The vaults were opened for Light and this book for the first time. He went through all of the original transparencies, selected what he thought were the best, scanned them using the best digital equipment available, created the spread panoramas when needed, and printed this book. The quality is so perfect, and the selection so good, that I can’t recommend it highly enough.

So there I was, sitting in amazement, slowly flipping through the amazing views, and then I found this. It instantly caught my attention. The idea of leaving such a happy photo in the surface of such a inhospitable place filled me with a mix of happiness, sadness, and much, much nostalgia. I instantly remembered another image like that. Surely, that image must have been inspired by Duke’s original shot:

You can buy Full Moon here. Actually, you must.

It turns out 40 years of believing the moon’s surface was dry wasn’t the case. New observations from three separate spacecraft, on three different missions, have confirmed “unambiguous evidence” of water across the moon’s surface, even in sunlit regions, according to Space.com.

There’s not a *lot* of water; one ton of the top layer of the surface would hold about 32 ounces of water, the report said. But it’s there–as both H2O molecules and hydroxyl (hydrogen and oxygen chemically bonded)–and could be harnessed as a source of drinking water or fuel for a future permanent moon base. This is in addition to the polar ice found by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The back story: forty years ago, astronauts brought back lunar rock samples. Trace amounts of water were detected at the time. But scientists assumed it was due to contamination from Earth, since the containers had leaked, according to the article. But now observations from Chandrayaan-1, NASA’s Deep Impact probe, and even NASA’s Cassini spacecraft made over the last 10 years have proved the presence of water conclusively. NASA is planning a 2pm EST briefing today to discuss the findings. (Image credit: NASA)

After finding over 370 extrasolar planets over the past 15 years, scientists have confirmed the first Earth-like rocky planet outside the solar system, according to CNN.

To date, known exoplanets have been gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. That doesn’t necessarily mean the recently discovered rocky planet, called COROT-7B, can support life. While its composition may be similar to that of our own planet, COROT-7B orbits very close to its star, the report said. The planet’s daytime temperature at the surface could reach over 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, while its nighttime temperature may drop to 328 degrees below zero.

Astronomer Artie Hatzes said in the report that the star-facing side of the planet was likely molten, while the back could be icy. “We think it has no atmosphere to redistribute the heat,” he said, adding that astronomers “would never have dreamed” of finding a rocky planet orbiting so close to a star–close enough that its entire “year” is shorter than one of our own 24-hour days. (Artist credit: ESO/L Calcada)

The $150 Space Camera.

Bespoke is old hat. Off-the-shelf is in. Even Google runs the world’s biggest and scariest server farms on computers home-made from commodity parts. DIY is cheaper and often better, as Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh found out when they decided to send a camera into space.

The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.

Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.

Launch

Two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45 a.m., the balloon was launched from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to stop prevailing winds from taking the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wisconsin’s balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site.

Because of spotty cellphone coverage in central Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the center of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone’s external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.

The Photographs

The balloon and camera made it up high enough to see the black sky curling around our blue planet. The Canon was hacked with the CHDK (Canon Hacker’s Development Kit) open-source firmware, which adds many features to Canon’s cameras. The intervalometer (interval timer) was set to shoot a picture every five seconds, and the 8-GB memory card was enough to hold pictures for the five-hour duration of the flight.

The picture you see above was shot from around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took 40 minutes to come back to Earth.

What is most astonishing about this launch, named Project Icarus, is that anyone could do it. The budget is so small as to be almost nonexistent (the guys slept in their car the night before the launch to save money), so that even if everything went wrong, a second, third or fourth attempt would be easy. All it took was a grand idea and an afternoon poking around the hardware store.

The project website has few details on how the balloon was put together — but the students say they will be posting the step-by-step instructions soon. UPDATE: The instructions will be available for free, not $150, as earlier reported.

Project Icarus page [1337 Arts]

Photo credit: 1337 Arts/Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh

See Also:

• Flying Copter-Cam Swoops Over New York City
• Kids Send a Camera 20 Miles Up and Bring Back Pictures of Space
  
• World’s Cheapest Aerial Video Platform