The Eagle Has Landed!

Today is the 40th Anniversary of one of the greatest achievements in all of human history. On this day 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon. Caption: Picture of Buzz Aldrin standing next to the US flag planted on the moon.

To celebrate this outstanding scientific achievement, here is some link goodness celebrating it:

1. Apollo 11 Fast Facts (FoxNews)

2. Phil Plait writes what Apollo 11 meant to him (Bad Astronomy Blog)

3. A 10 year old played a role in getting Apollo 11 home (CNN)

4. Remembering Apollo 11 - The Big Picture (Boston Globe)

5. NASA's 30th Anniversary Page for Apollo 11 (NASA)

6. NASA's 40th Anniversary Page for Apollo 11 (NASA)

7. Wired Science Article on next 40 years for NASA (Wired Science)

8. A list of the Apollo 11 Science Experiments (LPI)

9. A PDF to the Apollo 11 Preliminary Science Report (NASA)

And no linkage list is complete without a link to a Top Ten List:
10. Ten Things You Didn't Know About Apollo 11 (Popular Science)

Enjoy!

Hello Mercury ...

NASA's MESSENGER makes another pass by Mercury. Click here for MESSENGER's Mission page.

Combining observations of Martian crust recorded by MESSENGER and those recorded by Mariner 10 in the 1970s reveals that at least 15 percent of the planet’s surface is covered by a relatively blue, dim compound. Most of it is concentrated in craters and adjacent regions splattered with material excavated from craters. Solomon says the most likely candidate is a titanium-rich oxide that originated one to 10 kilometers below the surface and was exposed when space debris bombarded the planet.

The presence of titanium oxide would suggest that during Mercury’s first 100 million years or so, while the planet was still forming, it was hot enough to generate a magma ocean, with much of the surface and the interior liquid, comments Linda Elkins-Tanton of MIT. Titanium oxide would have been one of the last compounds to solidify, and it might have remained just beneath the surface.

MESSENGER is slated to make another pass of Mercury in September.

Open Letter to NASA

Dear NASA,

If you're looking for astronauts send me an email.

Sincerely interested,
Tom

Break out the ARP 2500 ...

NASA Astronaut claims aliens exist.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'

You will go to the moon ...

You will go to the moon
You'll probably be heading there soon
Someday flowers will grow there
But first you've got to go there
Oh, You will go to the moon - Moxy Fruvous

Send Your Name To The Moon.

h/t: Sheril @ The Intersection.

Seven Minutes of Terror ...

... no, not the seven, uncomfortable minutes you spend sitting with your parents-in-law when your spouse is getting something out of storage from their house. Rather, I'm talking about the landing of the Phoenix project on Mars this Sunday. A little over half (55%) of Mars missions have ended in disaster, so obviously the people at NASA are a bit on edge.

Well, here is to wishing them the best of luck and a successful mission (which includes the landing).

The Phoenix landing site is targeted for the far Northern plains of the Mars, near the northern polar ice cap. Data from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft indicate large quantities of ice in the area, likely in the form of permafrost, either on the surface or just barely underground.

Phoenix is equipped with a robotic arm that can dig down and scoop up some of that ice and dirt, to look for organic chemical evidence that life once existed there, or even still exists now.

"We are not going to be able to answer the final question of 'is there life on Mars,' " said Smith. "We will take the next important step. We'll find out if there's organic material associated with this ice in the polar regions. Ice is a preserver and if there ever were organics on Mars and they got into that ice they will still be there today."

NASA in HD

Article here.

More than 100 hours of classic footage from NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space missions have been restored for high-definition television — and will be made available to the world through the space agency's archives.

Can't wait to see them.