The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (abbreviated as LRO and LCROSS, respectively) launched yesterday from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, beginning their journey to the moon. While the LRO will spend years in orbit around the moon, mapping it with greater precision than ever before, the LCROSS will remain in space just a few months before launching itself at the moon's south pole in the hopes of excavating areas of pole that, when thawed by sunlight, could contain water necessary if man was to spend long periods of time on the moon.

Both missions are part of a process aimed at establishing potential moon settlements for humanity... or, at the very least, finding new and inventive ways of spending $580 million of taxpayer money.

Lunar probe launches on collision course with moon [New Scientist]

Google's Lunar X Prize requires teams to put a robot on the moon, have it travel at least 500 meters across the lunar surface, and send high-definition photos back to Earth. There are 17 teams competing for the $30 million jackpot.

The Lunatrex team's approach involves having a rocket build up speed while orbiting the Earth, before finally shooting off towards the Moon. The slow approach means you'd have weeks, not minutes, to make course corrections. Lunatrex is using an electric engine that shoots out a stream of charged particles to accelerate slowly, which has already worked well in probes like Deep Space 1 and the Dawn probe.

Lunatrex's lunar robot designs are also unconventional: one is an earthworm-shaped bot that would use piezoelectric "muscles" to scoot across the lunar surface. Another isocahedron-shaped robot would have 12 legs that could move in any direction — and the legs could double as transceiver antennae. Lunatrex is a consortium of aerospace companies, plus the University of Dayton, OH.

It's exciting to see somebody putting money and thought into coming up with innovative methods of traveling into space, some of which will hopefully benefit space exploration for decades to come. At the same time, it's a little worrisome to see Google's millions going into a contest to encourage entrepreneurs to litter our orbit with even more masses of space junk from the various failed attempts to snag the prize. Future space probes will have to have extra-dextrous steering mechanisms to avoid the debris of today's whiz-bang lunar vehicles. [Space.com]

Launched on April 11th, 1970, the Apollo 13 mission was the third crewed mission to the moon, heading to the Fra Mauro highlands, a cratered region of the Moon, which attracted the attention of scientists when seismomiteres left behind by Apollo 12 detected activity in the region.

Apollo 13, however, never made it to the lunar surface, as a mechanical malfunction caused an onboard explosion, crippling the command module. This wasn't the first problem on the mission, however, as one of the main engines shut off prematurely, causing the other boosters to fire longer to compensate. On April 13th, the #2 Oxygen tank exploded when a wire shorted out, losing oxygen that was needed by the crew and fuel cells. In the days after the explosion, Mission control worked to bring the spacecraft and crew around the moon, while also improvising a solution to the rising CO2 buildup in the ship.

On April 17th, the crew jettisoned the Landing Module, then Aquarius, the service module, and noted that an entire panel had been blown off the side of the craft. Shortly thereafter, the ship reentered the atmosphere, where they were recovered by USS Iwo Jimi in the Pacific Ocean.

The next Apollo mission, Apollo 14, was commanded by Alan Shepherd, the first American in space, and took over Apollo 13's expected mission to the Fra Mauro highlands.

This was the tenth manned Apollo mission, and the fifth mission to land on the moon, bringing Astronauts John Young and Charlie Duke.

The primary focus of this mission was to explore Descartes Highlands area, which is considered to be fairly representative of the moon's surface, and is composed of a series of plateaus and plains. This was the second mission to bring along a Lunar Rover, which the two astronauts used to drive a total of 16.5 miles, vastly expanding the range of the astronauts while exploring the lunar surface over the course of three EVA. The lunar landing was almost scrubbed after a malfunction, but the crew was able to land five days later on the 21st.

The mission was primarily geological in nature - scientists hoped to use the Descartes Highlands to discover more information about the formation of the moon. The three moonwalks were used to collect rock samples. The astronauts also deployed an ALSEP, or Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package, during their first excursion, which would measure seismic activities, solar wind, temperature and other measurable events on the lunar surface, which would run until 1977.

The Apollo 16 mission helped to redefine how we viewed the Lunar surface, and revised several theories as to the creation of the region around the mission site. (The area demonstrated impact created rocks, as opposed to volcanic ones, as had been previously thought.) It is now thought that meteors had a much greater impact in the formation of the modern surface of the moon.

The mission was a success, and the crew returned to Earth safely on April 27th, boasting several records - the return of the largest rock collected, and a moon-speed record of eleven miles an hour, which still stands today.

Mission Profile from NASA

Picture from NASA.

Chang'e-I was the first part of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, an orbital mission, which was designed to map the lunar surface in unprecedented detail with three-dimensional maps, providing valuable reference material for future lunar landings on the part of China's space program. The probe also gathered information about the Lunar surface, mapping elements and the composition of the lunar regolith as well as information on solar wind, all important information for upcoming missions to our nearest neighbor in space. The next part of their mission, Chang'e-2, is scheduled for launch in 2011, which has a similar mission to its sister Chang'e-I.

The ability to reach the moon is an important step for China, which recently conducted its first space walk with Shenzhou 7. Taikonauts Zhai Zhigang and Liu Boming left the spacecraft in September of 2008, before returning successfully to earth. Taken together, these two events show that China is well on its way towards the moon. Not only has China proved that they can put the proper hardware into orbit, they have the ability to put someone into space. NASA's own Gemini and early Apollo missions were designed to test each step that would be required to conduct lunar EVAs by showing that astronauts could reach orbit, but also walk outside.

In addition to lunar ambitions, China also recently announced plans to place a space station, Tiangong-1, in orbit, where orbital rendezvous and zero-gravity experiments can be undertaken. The ability to dock with another object in space is another important step towards lunar ambitions.

Getting to the moon is not an easy task - an aspiring lunar explorer must undertake a whole series of steps, each one requiring a lot of training and support. It took NASA almost a decade to go from orbit to landing on the moon, designing much of the hardware and testing it during that time, with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. China has the advantage in this regard, because many of the unknowns, such as basic medical questions have been answered already - we know that the lunar landing can be accomplished, and that humans can survive in zero-gravity for extended periods of time.

Upcoming missions for China include the Chang'e-2, which will be similar to Chang'e-1, Chang'e-3, which will attempt a 'soft' landing on the moon's surface, and will have rovers to explore the surface, with Chang'e-4 planned to land on the moon and return samples back to earth, expected in 2017.

This mission comes at a time when India and Iran have both launched satellites of their own, signaling future potential rivals in space, with North Korea also announcing that it plans to put a communications satellite into space in the near future. It would appear that there will be another space race within the next two decades, with the United States also intending to return to the moon within that time frame.

Read more from the BBC and Business Week. Photos from Xinhuanet and Cyber Space Orbit