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Life will be sweet on Newt Gingrich's moon base. We'll all wear awesome retrofuturistic jumpsuits, children will serve as janitors at their own schools, and Vice-Admiral Herman Cain will be there to greet us with a warm secret space handshake. And, of course, President Newt will rule over it all, defending truth, divorce, and the lunar way. More »
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Have you met Ebb and Flow? The twin spacecraft entered lunar orbit last month with aims of uncovering the mystery of the Moon's formation. More »
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When I picture life on Newt Gingrich's moon colony, I picture women and men long nights spent hunched over a microscope, or working in the oxygen processing center, where they'll convert moon water to breathable air. But one Madison Avenue firm had a very different view of life in space, one where women's key contribution was keeping the habitat spic-and-span. More »
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Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has promised us a permanent Moon base by 2020. Many people have been calling Newt's vow a publicity stunt, while others have chimed in by attacking the idea of a lunar base in and of itself, with assertions like "real scientists know [a Moon base] is fantasy." More »
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In the old days, Ghostbusters didn't have the luxury of carrying their equipment on their backs. Instead, ghost-hunting spiritualists had to travel with large stationary contraptions, and hope their etherial prey wasn't too nimble. More »
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On January 4, NASA shot this amazing composite image of the International Space Station crossing over the face of the Moon from Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. More »
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China continues to make headway in its efforts to become one of the world's foremost spacefaring nations. In a white paper issued last week, the Chinese government officially announced its intentions to place a manned spacecraft on the moon. More »
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NASA's on a mission to uncover the secrets of the Moon's formation, and they'll have to journey to its core to do it. But there wont be any drilling on this expedition. Instead, the agency will employ two identical, orbiting spacecraft — dubbed GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B — to take precise measurements of the Moon's gravitational field, providing NASA scientists with data that will reveal the craggy body's internal structure in unprecedented detail. More »
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Feast your eyes on this stop-motion music video by animator Kevin Parry. The short took about six months to film, and required hundreds of paper cutouts, but we think you'll agree that Parry did a pretty great job serving up a splendid depiction of Earth's past, present and (possible) future. More »
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For some people, one moon just isn't good enough. The quest to find a second Moon has roped in Jules Verne, the man who discovered Pluto, and a pair of deluded astronomers. But here's the thing: there really is a second moon... sort of. More »
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When I first saw this composite image of last week's lunar eclipse my jaw literally fell open. And then I clicked through to the hi-res version. Is this what a religious experience feels like? More »
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Many people refer to it incorrectly as its "dark" side, but the far side of our moon actually receives about as much light, on average, as the side facing Earth... you'd just never know it, because the Moon's rotation is such that the same side is perpetually facing us (the result of a phenomenon known as tidal locking). More »
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Clear skies and geographical location permitting, Saturday will be your last chance to spy a total lunar eclipse until 2014. Here's what you need to know to catch a glimpse before it's gone. More »
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Cute robots have been a fixture in the pop culture landscape, ever since C-3PO and R2D2 crashed on Tatooine in the original Star Wars — but there have been cute robots in pop culture for way longer. The history of cute robots is a proud and totally cuddly one, full of beeping, blooping noises. More »
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This photo was taken back in 2001, during a launch of the space shuttle Atlantis. On the left is the space shuttle's launch plume. On the right is the plume's shadow. So why is it pointing straight at the Moon? More »
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Thanks to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we can now see the Moon's mountains and craters in unprecedented detail. This beautiful topographic map is going to be an invaluable resource in planning the next generation of lunar missions. More »
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The earth has naturally occurring magnetized rocks appearing, in part, because of its moving internal core which gives it a massive magnetic field. The moon has no such core, but it too has magnetized rocks. Planetary scientists believe, though, that the moon has its own ways of creating magnets. More »
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Who ever said spacewalking was easy? If you've ever wanted to see a bunch of astronauts bumble around the surface of the moon like a bunch of sloppy drunks, well... here you are. More »
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In an attempt to dissuade citizens from wasting emergency operators' time with stupidity this Halloween, the Hertfordshire Constabulary in England has released an example of a very unimportant phone call. In the above audio clip, a concerned chap calls 999 after mixing up the Moon with an unidentified flying object. "It's not an emergency per se," notes the caller. The hell you say? More »
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Since 2004, NASA's Cassini orbiter has been collecting data on Saturn, its rings and its moons, capturing breathtaking images of them all as it courses through space. More »
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A Southern California woman who attempted to sell "a speck of lunar dust smaller than a grain of rice" to NASA officials found herself on the receiving end of an elaborate sting operation earlier this year. Life, it's sometimes like a Robert Heinlein story. More »
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If you're tired of skiing on Earth, there's some perfect powder waiting for you, just 800 billion miles away. It's all thanks to Enceladus's amazing water geysers, some of which rain back down on the moon's surface as snow. More »
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During total solar eclipses, the moon moves between the earth and the sun, completely blocking out the sun's light. But that's not all that happens. Recently scientist proved that when this happens, the moon sends waves rippling through the earth's atmosphere that pile up like the bow waves on a boat. More »
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Björk science-tinged new album Biophilia has inspired some delightfully cosmic music videos. Her recent video for the track "Moon" is no different. Watch as Iceland's de facto cultural ambassador prances about serenading (what looks like) a sponge. Also, is that a zither suit? I need to get myself one of those. Biophilia will be out October 11. More »
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It's a damn shame that there aren't enough official t-shirts and posters from Duncan Jones' amazing space drama Moon. And the director is hoping to rectify that, by polling the public on whether they'd buy more Moon merchandise. More »
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Here's a view of the moon you'll never see from Earth. This is a picture taken by astronaut Soichi Noguchi while on-board the International Space Station. The photo demonstrates how the crew's position relative to the Moon and Earth's atmosphere create bizarre illusions where the Moon appears to be squished like a beanbag chair. More »
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Sometimes, things just line up perfectly. Like in this amazing photo of five of Saturn's moons together. This is no composite, this is one photo with five moons in view. You can't actually see Saturn itself, just the planet's rings. More »
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This lunar soil marks the last time humans visited another world. It was here in December 1972 that the final Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon. This image is a solemn reminder of our space explorations past and (hopefully) future. More »
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The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's cameras have just captured some stunning photographs of the tracks that humans left behind at the landing sites of Apollo 12, 14, and 17. You can see everything from astronaut footprints, to the tire tracks from the lunar rovers. More »
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For now at least, the moon is like the sea: everyone can use it, but no one can own it. In 1967 the U.S. and the Soviet Union negotiated the Outer Space Treaty, which states that no nation can own a piece of the moon or an asteroid. More »
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Check out our first real glimpse of Apollo 18, the lunar "found footage" horror movie. It turns out that a weird presence in the deserted lunar landscape is just as unnerving as someone or something creeping around your house. More »
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For years, radiometric dating of lunar rock samples has suggested that the formation of the Moon occurred roughly 4.57 billion years ago — around the same time as the birth of the solar system itself. More »
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It's pretty hard not to notice the gigantic looming arrow in this picture of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The striking, chevron-shaped formation is roughly the size of Texas. And while it may look like an enormous HUMANS, LOOK HERE sign, recently published research by NASA scientists suggests that it's actually a gigantic storm making its way across the moon's equatorial region. More »
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NLTT 43806 is a white dwarf, the dying remnants of a star like our own. But there's a problem. Its composition doesn't make any sense...unless there was a cataclysm just like the one Earth experienced four billion years ago. More »
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After rocking our worlds with Moon and thrilling us with Source Code, is director Duncan Jones leaving science fiction? It certainly sounds like it, but not before one last effort. More »
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The Moon was long considered an essential stabilizing presence in the development of life on Earth. Without its satellite, the Earth would have tilted too much on its axis, making life impossible. But maybe the Moon wasn't needed after all. More »
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We've just learned that there's strong evidence that saltwater flows on the surface of Mars. It's another reminder that water is everywhere in our solar system, whether it's ice, vapor, or liquid. Here's a handy guide to where all the water can be found. More »
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The two sides of the Moon look nothing like each other: the near side is flat and low, while the far side is incredibly mountainous. We may now be able to solve this topographical mystery...and it involves a second moon. More »
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The small moon Enceladus is constantly shooting water vapor out of its geysers. But that water isn't staying on the satellite - it's actually making its way to Saturn, making Enceladus the first known moon to shape its planet's composition. More »
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Though scientists believed volcanoes on the Moon to be long dead, a recent discovery suggests they were active as recently as 800 million years ago, which is fairly recent in geological time. Even weirder, volcanoes studied on the far side of the Moon appear to have erupted with a very unusual kind of lava, made of a super-viscous liquid rock almost never seen on the satellite. More »
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