Questions tagged [the-moon]
Questions about Earth's Moon. Also for questions about spacecraft, manned missions, potential missions, etc. related to Earth's Moon.
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How did NASA figure out when and where the Apollo capsule would touch down on the ocean?
After watching the amazing footage of the Apollo 13 capsule parachuting down on the ocean, I was intrigued by how NASA predicted when and where it would splashdown on the vast ocean's surface with ...
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What is this surface feature near Shackleton crater classified as?
I was looking at a map of the lunar South Pole and the surrounding area when I noticed the rectangular/elongated feature just to the left and below centerline of Shackleton crater in the below image:
...
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Could we convert lunar regolith into a trinitite landing pad with an atomic weapon?
My thinking here is that a modern thermonuclear weapon would not weigh very much and that by detonating one an appropriate distance above the lunar surface, the regolith could be melted into a hard ...
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Why is the proposed lunar radio-telescope parabolic, rather than spherical like Arecibo?
The Lunar Crater Radio Telescope LRTC is a proposed fixed dish radio antenna to be built in a far-side lunar crater.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope#/media/File:...
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Why did the Luna 25 lander fail to land on the moon?
On August 19, 2023, the Russian Luna 25 lander crashed into the moon whilst attempting to land at the lunar south pole. What went wrong and why did this happen?
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Does a Lunar Cycler make practical sense?
I know that a Mars Cycler has many advantages due to the distance involved, but what about a Lunar Cycler? From what I've seen, the time window seems relatively short, and docking with a cycler ...
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Does the SpaceX Crew Dragon need any modifications for circumlunar flight?
Does it need upgraded heat shields, communication gear, or anything else? Or can we just put it on a Falcon Heavy and do it now?
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Why does the proposed Lunar Crater Radio Telescope suggest an optimal latitude of 20 degrees North?
In the proposal for NASA's Lunar Crater Radio Telescope, it claims that one of the key requirements is a "location on farside near ≈ 20°N and 180° ±45°E to avoid Earth-based radio interference ...
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Why radiation hardened processors are designed to withstand so large total ionizing doses?
I took a look at the Preliminary Radiation Analysis of the Total Ionizing Dose
for the Resource Prospector Mission paper and was quite surprised to find how "low" total radiation doses ...
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Does Chang'e 6 try to avoid sampling contaminated soil?
Watching this amazing video of Chang'e 6 taking samples from the Apollo Crater on the far side of the Moon, I was struck by the proximity of the sample channels to the lander. It's understandable ...
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Moons rotation about its own axis [closed]
Since the moon is tidally locked with earth, we always see its same face. How then did we realize that the moon may also be rotating about its own axis?
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Permanent living on Maglev train on the Moon as a colony
NASA is considering a proposal to build a levitating train system on the Moon.
The Moon's surface is often flat and smooth. Maybe building a mobile train colony similar to the movie Snowpiercer on the ...
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Can Starship land on the moon horizontally?
Since the landing engines will be halfway up the body anyways, how about putting the landing legs to extend perpendicular and land with nose and main engine bay pointing towards their respective ...
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How can I plot ground tracks on the surface of the Moon?
I'm curious if there's a module or Python library capable of plotting ground tracks on the Moon's surface, similar to how Skyfield or Astropy functions. I understand that Two-Line Elements (TLEs) are ...
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What is the order of magnitude of perturbing forces in a lunar orbit in relation to the orbital altitude?
Although there are many sources that compare the magnitude of perturbing forces in an Earth orbit (see for example the answer to this question), I haven't been able to find the same information for ...
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What are the likely issues and challenges in developing LTC: Coordinated Lunar Time?
In April of 2024, the US White House directed NASA to define a workable definition and operational plan for LTC: Coordinated Lunar Time.
White House directs NASA to create time standard for the moon | ...
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Would a ice core samples taken on the Moon provide us with information about the past that we cannot easily obtain in other ways?
This article on NASA's website describes 10 things we’ve learned about Earth by studying the Moon, including the makeup of a newborn Earth and potential clues to how life began on Earth. The ...
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Are there any laws in place for a potential lunar territorial dispute?
Considering the limited number of sites of interest to both the Artemis program and the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), it would seem more than likely that both projects, and by extension ...
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Is the "light-time" correction for the Moon's position in Meeus "Astronomical Algorithms" putting the Moon in inertial position or apparent position?
I'm looking at the second edition of Meeus's "Astronomical Algorithms," chapter 47, "Position of the Moon." At the bottom of page 337, right before getting into the actual formulae ...
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Temperature of the moon 4ft off the surface
If the surface of the moon is 100°C, what temperature would it be four feet off the surface, given the vacuum on the moon?
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Intuitive machines IM-1 ("Odysseus") lunar lander: commercial sponsorship
Photographs including https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Intuitive_Machines%E2%80%99_Nova-C_lunar_lander_%28IM_00309%29_%28cropped%29.jpg appear to show this bearing a Sun ...
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How much is the estimated amount of ilmenite present on Lunar surface?
I wanted to gauge estimated amount of ilmenite that can be extracted from Lunar regolith. From that, ultimately I want to derive the amount of oxygen that can be extracted out of it. Any estimate or ...
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Is TIG or laser welding feasable for building aluminum habitats either on the Moon or in orbit?
The question was originally spurred by Andy Weir's Artemis - in the novel oxyacetylene and neon are extensively used for cutting and welding. TIG or laser welding seem like the obvious choices for ...
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When would the Soviets have landed on the moon, if NASA had not beaten them to it? [closed]
I know that after the untimely death of Korolev, the crewed moon mission was having struggles, but could they have overcome them? What would their timeline have been?
Side question/pure conjecture: ...
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Shuttle-era mission profile for a desperation moon mission
It is 1996. For reasons best left to Worldbuilding SE, it has become a matter of civilizational life and death to send humans to the moon and bring them back to earth as soon as possible. Everybody is ...
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What kept the Soviets from going to the Moon (before the US)?
I know that Saturn V's payload was 140 tons, about 20 times that of Soyuz. The Soviets did not have a functioning rocket with similar characteristics. But why? They had a head start in the space race ...
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Why do the boot prints on the moon appear bright in some photographs or film?
I've seen that in some videos or photos of the moon mission, the boot prints appear brighter relative to the untouched ground:
But in some other cases, they are the same brightness as the ground:
Is ...
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Embedding foundations from low lunar orbit?
Reading about Lunar Crater Radio Telescope and Lunar regolith thickness and composition,
(roughly 5-10m of soft soil) and anchoring in soft regolith, would it make sense, in order to anchor large ...
user19132
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Carving of rocks on the moon [closed]
Is it possible to automate carving of rocks on the moon?
Was it possible in 1969 for Armstrong and Aldrin to carve rocks on the moon?
Is it possible for the Pragyan rover as part of Chandrayaan 3 ...
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How many people would have to keep it a secret if the U.S. hadn't walked on the moon? [closed]
For another question, @user answered: "The kind of people who dismiss the hundreds of thousands who worked directly on the Apollo project, the hundreds of thousands to millions who watched the ...
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What assumptions were made about the sphericity of the Moon for the Apollo program?
I've just been reading about the Apollo program.
Apollo 8 seems to have gone into a fairly circular lunar orbit 69 miles at perigee.
Apollo 10 was pretty much similar, although they dipped down with ...
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Where can I find the video of Apollo 16 floodlight mistaken with a UFO?
So, a few years ago (2004) NASA showed that a picture of a supposed UFO captured by the Apollo 16 astronauts through the window of the Command Module was in fact the floodlight protruding from the ...
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Fastest time to Moon for Starship
What is the fastest time to the Moon possible with Starship in the near future, assuming there is orbital refueling?
Is sustained acceleration and then deceleration possible at say 0.25G, to reduce ...
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Images of Starry night sky (maybe with milky way galaxy) from the Moon?
For the Apollo missions, it has often been said that images of other stars/milky way galaxy could not be captured since they mostly landed in sunlit areas and the reflectance of moon's surface ...
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Why can't lunar rovers survive long duration nights?
I saw that some missions end with the lunar night time, and the rovers are trashed permanently instead of trying to survive the night.
The concerns have to do with trying to keep the rover at ...
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How did sulphur come up to the surface of the moon?
We know that the Chandrayaan-3 mission found the presence of sulphur on the surface of the moon.
How did it come up to the surface of the moon if this element is supposed to be in the moon's core ...
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Why do we need to make probes land on other planets or moons?
This is a very dumb question but I am really curious to know the answer. Today I was watching the live streaming of Chandrayan 3 landing on the moon (which it successfully did) and this question came ...
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Chandrayaan landing ellipse size and rationale
From what I hear about the Chandrayaan-2 failure analysis, the spacecraft overshot its landing ellipse and, while struggling to backtrack, crashed. I have been wondering why they had specified a ...
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How do you defend the following about the Apollo 11 mission? [duplicate]
I read that when the Apollo 11 spacecraft reached the earth's orbit then the engines burnt to initiate TLI(Trans-Lunar Injection) which increased the speed of the spacecraft to 24,500 miles per hour, ...
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What is the cheapest/simplest way to deliver a camera to the moon? [closed]
The primary objective is this: to deliver a camera to the moon that live streams to Earth throughout the journey AND once it arrives on the moon.
A bonus is if it can then move around on the Moon.
An ...
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Why does this journey to the moon take so long?
I remember the Apollo missions and I'm pretty sure it took about three days to reach the moon.
India’s space agency is set to launch its homegrown Chandrayaan-3 moon mission from the southeastern ...
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Is there a labelled equivalent of the NASA 4K moon texture files?
Does anyone know whether a labelled version of the NASA 4k moon texture files exists with the same projection?
I would like to be able to overlay and switch between the photographic versions, and a ...
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Energy Needed for Lunar Lander to Ascend?
Is it possible to calculate how much energy was expended when the Apollo 11 lunar lander ascended from the Moon's surface to join the Command Module in lunar orbit?
Many relevant parameters for the ...
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Different Earth-centered ICRF positions in GMAT and Skyfield/Spiceypy with DE421
I compared the Earth-centered positions from the Moon in the ICRF (i.e., in GCRF) using three different sources:
SpiceyPy (https://pypi.org/project/spiceypy/)
Skyfield (https://rhodesmill.org/...
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EPS sizing for lunar mission
As part of a university project, I am working on EPS sizing for a mission to the lunar environment. I have sized the SA and batteries, chosen the components and the PDCU; however, having never been in ...
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Would a laser seismometer work from lunar orbit?
Lasers today have become extremely sensible, they can detect sub-millimeter movements of a surface from a distance. Could this feature be exploited to create a lunar seismometer working from a probe ...
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Would Li-Ion batteries for a lunar base energy storage system be transported to the base charged or uncharged?
I'm investigating lunar base power systems and energy storage systems (ESS). One option is photovoltaics (PV) and Li-Ion batteries. A large mass of batteries would be required to power the base during ...
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Did Apollo astronauts spend any time on the lunar surface during lunar night?
Are there any images from the surface of the moon during lunar night? Preferably taken by Apollo astronauts, but otherwise by rovers etc showing "earthshine" on the lunar surface?
I found ...
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Is the crust of the Moon different on the near side and the far side?
If you assume that the origin of the Moon is due to an object hitting the Earth. The difference between far side and the near side of the Moon can be explained, if the 'chip' knocked off the Earth to ...
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What is the Delta V from the Moon to Earth Sun L1?
There are various proposals to build infrastructure at Earth/Sun L1 point, such as discussed in this question. From LEO the Delta V cost to L1 is about 3.5 kms or about kg of propellant in LEO for ...
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