NASA is launching a rocket to the Moon today( Investigate strange glow?)9-06-13

[jagman]

Sorry I have no link yet but this morning on Fox they said Nasa was
going to launch a rocket to the Moon today. They said the the rocket
and payload which contained scientific instruments would take about
30 days to reach the moon and would orbit the moon for over a 100 days.
They said the objective of the mission was to investigate a strange glow
that the apollo 17 crew reported during their mission. They also stated
that they would be communicating with the satelite for the first time
via laser.

[sdv]

Can you give us the link to the Fox broadcast, and can you find any other links backing up this info? Thanks!

http://www.space.com/22681-nasa-moon-mission-laser-communications.html

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/06/watch-nasas-moon-launch-tonight-from-the-east-coast/

http://www.news24.com/Technology/News/Nasa-aims-for-moon-again-to-probe-atmosphere-20130905

[jagman]

Can you give us the link to the Fox broadcast, and can you find any other links backing up this info? Thanks!

http://www.space.com/22681-nasa-moon-mission-laser-communications.html

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/06/watch-nasas-moon-launch-tonight-from-the-east-coast/

http://www.news24.com/Technology/News/Nasa-aims-for-moon-again-to-probe-atmosphere-20130905

I will have to go to Fox's site and try and find it. they just ran this story
about an hour ago.

[Operator]

They also stated
that they would be communicating with the satelite for the first time
via laser.

How convenient ... no eavesdropping ;)
Laser communication between 2 fast moving objects is not easy ... they must have a strong motivation.

I think Richard Hoagland mentioned they DID use laser communication before ... if I remember
well it was with the Hubble telescope.

[jagman]

http://video.foxnews.com/v/2653992215001/new-nasa-mission-to-investigate-mysterious-lunar-glow/

[Carmody]

Sorry I have no link yet but this morning on Fox they said Nasa was
going to launch a rocket to the Moon today. They said the the rocket
and payload which contained scientific instruments would take about
30 days to reach the moon and would orbit the moon for over a 100 days.
They said the objective of the mission was to investigate a strange glow
that the apollo 17 crew reported during their mission. They also stated
that they would be communicating with the satellite for the first time
via laser.

laser = secrets

(edit: I see operator said it already)

[Harley]

This is the mission:


ScienceCasts: NASA Mission Seeks Lunar Air


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z_oi36O8tw#t=14

Published on Aug 29, 2013
Visit http://science.nasa.gov/ for breaking science news.

A NASA spacecraft slated for launch in September will fly to the Moon to investigate the tenuous lunar atmosphere. Researchers hope "LADEE" will solve a mystery that has been puzzling them since the days of Apollo.

[mgray]

They said the objective of the mission was to investigate a strange glow
that the apollo 17 crew reported during their mission.

Really investigating a report from 1972 when Apollo 17 was the last mission to the Moon. It must have been a burning question for the last 40 years. LOL

[jagman]

They said the objective of the mission was to investigate a strange glow
that the apollo 17 crew reported during their mission.

Really investigating a report from 1972 when Apollo 17 was the last mission to the Moon. It must have been a burning question for the last 40 years. LOL

My thoughts exactly mgray. I wonder what their really doing?

[Sidney]

They said the objective of the mission was to investigate a strange glow
that the apollo 17 crew reported during their mission.

Really investigating a report from 1972 when Apollo 17 was the last mission to the Moon. It must have been a burning question for the last 40 years. LOL

Mgray, You beat me to the punch on that one. That was my exact thought. They waited 40 years???? ROTFLMAO Seriously?? And we are suppose to believe that load of dung? My god. Their stories beg bigger by the day, don't they? So the real burning question is, what are they really going up there for?????????????????

[sirdipswitch]

That was as good as any excuse, while they are actually making a special supply run, to our base on the back side. Then they will show us some pictures of rocks, stating that it was just reflection from the Sun, off of those rocks.

How's that go?? Not-A-Straight-Answer = NASA! Yep, works for me. chuckle chuckle.

[ruthy]

Sounds like they want to show us something to their own advantage, that would explain the 40 something year lag...the timing is in their favor now...i heard a rumor that they may disclose alien news to us soon, to get us all united against a threat from the stars. Of course this alien threat would be a complete lie..but if they disclosed images of bases on the moon or something of that nature..just enough to get people scared, it could sway the focus of what they are trying to do on earth, so that everyone is staring at the sky in fear. I could be full of sh-t too, so who knows ;)

[jagman]

Sounds like they want to show us something to their own advantage, that would explain the 40 something year lag...the timing is in their favor now...i heard a rumor that they may disclose alien news to us soon, to get us all united against a threat from the stars. Of course this alien threat would be a complete lie..but if they disclosed images of bases on the moon or something of that nature..just enough to get people scared, it could sway the focus of what they are trying to do on earth, so that everyone is staring at the sky in fear. I could be full of sh-t too, so who knows ;)

Wernher Von Braun said Beware Fake Alien Threat from Space

[sdv]

I think Fox sensationalised this and their report is thus misleading. This mission has two main purposes: to get more data about Moon's atmosphere, and to get data on that floating dust on Moon.


Goals:The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is designed to study the Moon's thin exosphere and the lunar dust environment. An “exosphere” is an atmosphere that is so thin and tenuous that molecules don’t collide with each other. Studying the Moon’s exosphere will help scientists understand other planetary bodies with exospheres too, like Mercury and some of Jupiter’s bigger moons. The orbiter will determine the density, composition and temporal and spatial variability of the Moon's exosphere to help us understand where the species in the exosphere come from and the role of the solar wind, lunar surface and interior, and meteoric infall as sources. The mission will also examine the density and temporal and spatial variability of dust particles that may get lofted into the atmosphere.
The mission will also test several new technologies, including a modular spacecraft bus that may reduce the cost of future deep space missions and demonstrate two-way high rate laser communication for the first time from the Moon.
Accomplishments: This spacecraft is fully integrated and in final environmental testing.
10 Aug 2013 - 13 Oct 2013:Launch Window
Status:In Development

Fast Facts
LADEE will determine the global density, composition, and time variability of the fragile lunar atmosphere before it is perturbed by any future human activities.
LADEELADEE
Because the Moon's atmosphere is so thin, disturbances could quickly swamp its natural composition.
If scientists are ever to know the lunar atmosphere in a relatively natural state, now is the time to look.
Mission Type: Orbiter
Launch Vehicle: Minotaur V
Launch Site: Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, United States
NASA Center: Ames Research Center
Spacecraft Mass: 383 kg
Spacecraft Power: 295 W
Project Manager: Butler P. Hine, III, Ames Research Center
Total Cost: Total mission cost is $263 million.
The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is designed to characterize the tenuous lunar atmosphere and dust environment from orbit.
The scientific objectives of the mission are to:
Determine the composition of the lunar atmosphere and the processes that control its distribution and variability.
Characterize the lunar exospheric dust environment.
One of the motivations for this mission is to determine the global density, composition, and time variability of the fragile lunar atmosphere before it is perturbed by any future human activities. We are also trying to solve a mystery from the last time humans were on the Moon, we would like to determine if the Apollo astronaut sightings of diffuse emission at 10s of km above the surface were caused by sodium glow or dust.
The science orbit will last 100 days. The orbiter is carrying three science instruments. The neutral mass spectrometer (NMS) will directly measure the concentration of different atmospheric species. The ultraviolet/visible spectrometer (UVS) will measure both the atmosphere and dust. The Lunar Dust Experiment (LDEX) will directly measure dust particles. The total science payload mass is 50 kg.
There is also a technology demonstration, the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration, designed to demonstrate a new method of sending and receiving data from missions using lasers rather than radio signals. The lasercom from Earth to lunar orbit will have a down link data rate of 622 Mb/s, compared to our current methods, which only get about 100 Mb/s.
The mission will detect and constrain the abundances of atmospheric species expected to be prevalent at orbital altitudes between 20 and 150 km. It will help us understand the sources of these components, for example, whether they are due to the solar wind and its interactions with the lunar surface, or release from the soil, or radiogenic sources. It will also seek to determine the density, time variability and spatial distribution of possible lofted lunar dust, to help us understand the physical mechanisms by which such lofting might occur, and what role the interactions with the Sun plays in these processes.
LADEE will spend about 2.5 months reaching the Moon, getting into its science orbit, and checking out systems before its 100 day science mission starts. The nominal science orbit will be a near-circular retrograde (clockwise) equatorial orbit with a period of 113 minutes at about 50 km above the surface. The periselene (closest approach) will be over the sunrise terminator. After the science mission is complete the orbiter will impact the lunar surface.
http://science1.nasa.gov/missions/ladee/

NASA has know since the 1970s that Moon has an atmosphere, yet how many of you were taught in school that Moon has no atmosphere? (I used to edit academic and school textbooks so I know how this misinformation is spread - authors do not research properly and simply rehash information from other books and more recently from Wikipedia. When a well-informed editor such as myself challenges information as incorrect, that editor gets blacklisted as 'too difficult to work with'.) NASA was very negligent in not pointing out that what was being taught in schools was misinformation, but since the 1970s, I suspect that most NASA scientists just do not have the facts to back up their explanations of the glow (which I have seen with my own eyes through a telescope) or other oddities in Moon's atmosphere. Data gathered so far shows that Moon's atmosphere is very thin, yet phenomena in this atmosphere is not one would expect from a thin atmosphere, based on the Earth model.

For science geeks, here is a very good paper published in the late 1990s about Moon's atmosphere:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.21.9994&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Don't get your hopes up about alien bases and so on. NASA is just not in the mindset to consider anything of that kind. I reckon that even if they did find physical structures they would not know how to handle the information and would thus make it disappear.

Here is what NASA speculates is the cause of the glow and the floating dust particles. With this mission, NASA scientists are hoping to gather data against which they can test these theories:
http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/17apr_magnetotail/


In 1968, on many occasions, NASA's Surveyor 7 moon lander photographed a strange "horizon glow" after dark. Researchers now believe the glow is sunlight scattered from electrically-charged moondust floating just above the lunar surface.