Apollo 11 - 40 years on...

[Rick]

Buzz Aldrin gets down with Snoop Dogg

Buzz Aldrin has rather agreeably, if improbably, teamed up with Snoop Dogg to flash his rapping skills on Rocket Experience - a track to commemorate next month's 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing and in support of the lunar geezer's ShareSpace foundation.

The result won't be giving Eminem any sleepless nights, but it's good clean fun. Mr Dogg (pictured below with Aldrin) was assisted in sharing the Rocket Experience with the world by producer Quincy Jones and fellow rapstas Soulja Boy and Talib Kweli.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/25/rocket_experience/

[Rick]

On Thursday 2 July 2009 Newsnight will have an interview with Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and we want your suggestions of what questions we should ask him.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8119025.stm

[Rick]

Buzz Aldrin has thrown his weight behind those who believe that the Ares component of NASA's Constellation programme is on a hike to nowhere.

The NASA veteran has insisted the US needs to reprieve the space shuttle for extended operations until 2015, pending development of viable lifting technologies which might ultimately carry mankind to Mars.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/28/aldrin_space_vision/

[Rick]

A hero to millions, Neil Armstrong has consistently shunned the limelight. To mark the 40th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing, author Andrew Smith travelled across America to discover why the man who first set foot upon the Moon remains such an enigma.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8133835.stm

[Rick]

Forty years after Neil Armstrong made his historic first steps on the moon, Apollo 11 is beginning the same trip to the lunar surface this week via the internet.

The website WeChooseTheMoon.org was launched today, sponsored by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum to recreate the lunar mission minute-by-minute as it happened back on July 20, 1969.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/13/wechoosethemoon_website_launch/

[Rick]

NASA has tantalisingly announced that it will release "greatly improved video imagery from the July 1969 live broadcast of the Apollo 11 moonwalk" on Thursday.

The agency reports: "The release will feature 15 key moments from Neil Armstrong's and Buzz Aldrin's historic moonwalk using what is believed to be the best available broadcast-format copies of the lunar excursion, some of which had been locked away for nearly 40 years."

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/14/moon_landing_footage/

[Rick]

Project Apollo might have been commissioned as a feel good project to boost the moral of a bruised Superpower, but it was conceived as a piece of pure scientific exploration. In his final essay marking the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, Dr Christopher Riley looks back at the part scientific curiosity played in inspiring the Moon landings and uniting the world during uncertain times.

One of Arthur C Clarke's "laws" states that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Some technological advancement take place over centuries, and some can occur within a single generation - leaving those who lived through it with that feeling of magic.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8152431.stm

[Rick]

Google has switched on the Moon in Google Earth to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

The newly included Moonscape for Google Earth features 3D terrain of the lunar surface for users to fly around and explore like they already can with Mars and Earth.

Users can also switch the scenery into planning charts used by NASA for Apollo missions, links to landing sites, a guide to artifacts left behind, and panoramic "street view" imagery taken by astronauts.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/20/moon_for_google_earth/

[Rick]

Forty years to the day after it was found and collected by Neil Armstrong, a moon rock is helping NASA mark the anniversary of the first lunar landing from onboard a perch that is closer than any Apollo-returned lunar sample has ever come to its original home.

More: http://www.space.com/news/cs-090720-apollo11-moon-rock.html

[Rick]

US President Barack Obama has praised the "heroism" of the men who made the first landing on the Moon.

Marking the 40th anniversary of the event, he said Americans continued to draw inspiration from Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

"I think that all of us recall the moment in which mankind finally was untethered from this planet," he added.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8160209.stm

[Ian]

I watched the news conference given yesterday in Washington DC by a handful of the Apollo astronauts. I really hope the administrators listen and think long and hard about what they were suggesting. 40 years ago, everyone was focussed on the Soviets, and the space programme (as Neil Armstrong said recently) was a great distraction. Where we are right now, with a "threat of global terrorism" being thrust in our faces, is something else to concentrate on. A big adventure. A high risk focus we can get behind. Kennedy knew it, lets hope Obama does too.

[Rick]

At his office in Washington DC, Allen Needell is staring at four large archive boxes, filled with documents and correspondence.

The contents of these boxes were accumulated during what Allen describes as the biggest project of his career - "by an order of magnitude".

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8150904.stm

Google Map

[mickw]

The Apollo 11 astronauts returned from the moon 40 years ago today, but they left behind more than footprints. An experiment they placed on the moon's surface is still running to this day.

The Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment is the only moon investigation to continuously operate since the Apollo 11 mission. The experiment studies the Earth-Moon system and beams the data to labs around the world, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090724-apollo11-experiment-still-going.html