moon landing

Wasting no time after the publication of the Augustine Report, both NASA and a competitor for the Lunar X-Prize used this week to test lunar exploration technology. For NASA, this meant a Thursday test of the Ares rocket that forms the bedrock of their Shuttle replacement efforts. For Armadillo Airspace, a test of their X-Prize-contending lunar lander prototype.

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has released a tantilizing preview of their newly-restored video footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. NASA's working with restorations specialists Lowry Digital to greatly enhance the quality of the best available broadcast source, bringing it up to never-before-seen quality.

But why must they work from a recording of the broadcast? It's heartbreaking: NASA accidentally erased the original tapes.

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To commemorate the 40th anniversary of man's landing on the moon, you can buy yourself a little piece of space history. On July 16, the auction house Bonhams is conducting an auction of lunar memorabilia. The sale includes a number of items that the Apollo 11 mission crew carried onto the moon's surface on the history-making trip. Lunar dust still covers some of the lots.

Included are the checklists that the astronauts used as they proceeded through the landing (estimated price: $125,000-$175,000), flight plans, star charts, models, specimen collection cases, and more. It includes items from the collection of spacecraft engineer Dr. Maxime Faget, and many pieces used and autographed by Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon.

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When Neil Armstrong pressed the first bootprint into the Sea of Tranquility, most of humanity watched the televised low-res blob and felt pride welling up in their chests. But a few watchers felt something entirely different—an unconfirmed, squinty-eyed skepticism that something about the whole deal smelled fishy. How could the United States, which could barely put a chimp into space in 1961, get two full-grown men on the surface of the moon eight years later? How could anyone confirm that men actually made it to the moon? And, how, exactly, had that $25 billion Apollo budget been spent?

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