This may seem like a pretty trivial question: save during an eclipse, or when the Moon is low on the horizon and seen through a thick layer of dirty atmosphere, 99.999% of people will answer “grey”, although some romantics will offer “silver”. When you look up at the Moon in the night sky, the predominant [...]
NASA is gearing-up in a big way to return to the Moon. As of now, and COVID-19 permitting, the first flight of the new Artemis programme that will take astronauts back to the Moon will be in November 2021, with a Moon landing planned for October 2024. AArtemis I is planned to be a long-duration [...]
The Apollo 11 Landing: staring-down disaster The multiple issues that faced the Apollo 11 Moon landing are generally well known. Alarms, fuel, … so many things happened in such a short time that could have led to disaster, or to an abort. Much has been said about the coolness of Neil Armstrong under massive [...]
One of the articles of faith of the Apollo Moon landing is that the items left on the lunar surface will last, if not for all time, at least for millions of years. We can see the tracks left by the astronauts of each of the Moon landings. The disturbed earth – more accurately, disturbed [...]
It is now almost exactly one month until the fiftieth anniversary of that “One Small Step”. It is a couple of months since I have posted anything here about it. Life has been rather busy. However, the events of fifty years ago are ever present. Over the last few months we have seen the fiftieth [...]
Earlier this week, my attention was drawn by a colleague to the poll in Twitter below, started last summer by a prominent Spanish footballer (ex-Captain of the national team, so you suppose that he must be fairly level-headed). The player in question recounted how he was arguing over dinner the previous night about whether or [...]
Left: A Saturn 1 test with a dummy payload on October 27th 1960. Right: the Apollo 4 launch on November 9th 1967. Images: NASA. In previous Blog entries I have explored some of the lesser-known aspects of the Apollo Moon landings. Some of these are explored by the excellent film “First Man”. Still more are [...]
Remembering History We are starting what is going to be an emotional period of time. We have just passed the fiftieth anniversary of the first of the manned Apollo flights – Apollo 7, although the mission badge showed it as Apollo VII – which launched on October 11th 1968 and landed, after a fraction under [...]
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