Watch the Skies

Not even clouds could obscure the International Space Station as it passed directly over Huntsville, Ala. on the evening of June 13 at 9:15 p.m. CDT. Shining as bright as the planet Venus, the space station took nearly four minutes to traverse the sky before disappearing in the murk to the Northeast. Its passage was …

Three meteoroids were seen hitting the moon last week — all of them possible pieces of Comet Halley! The Eta Aquariid — the meteor shower caused from Comet Halley, see post below — radiant was positioned so that almost the entire visible part of the moon was exposed to it. On the evenings of May 9-11, members of …

We at the Meteoroid Environment Office are hoping that you have clear skies on May 5/6 when we have the opportunity to see pieces of Comet Halley whiz through Earth’s atmosphere!Image of an Eta Aquarid meteor, taken the night of May 3, 2011. (NASA/MSFC)Comet Halley (NASA)Depending on your age, you may remember 25 years ago …

What are the signs of spring? They are as familiar as a blooming daffodil, a songbird at dawn, a surprising shaft of warmth from the afternoon sun. And, oh yes, don’t forget the meteors. “Spring is fireball season,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Center. “For reasons we don’t fully understand, the rate of …

Stargazers are in for a big treat this weekend! On Mar. 19 the full moon will brighten the night sky as the biggest full moon seen in almost two decades.  The moon will be at perigee, its closest point to Earth — only 221,565 miles (356,575 km) away. The moon’s orbit around Earth is not circular — …

NASA’s Mercury MESSENGER spacecraft is preparing to insert itself into orbit tonight, Mar. 17. While you may not have a seat, you can still see Mercury tonight after sunset from the comfort of planet Earth. Close-up image of a portion of Mercury’s surface, captured on a MESSENGER fly-byon Oct. 6, 2008. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics …

Watching the skies is much more than a hobby with the Marshall Center’s Bill Cooke, lead of the Meteoroid Environment office — it’s an obsession. Each morning when Cooke logs on to his computer, he quickly checks email for the daily update from the fireball camera network. Groups of smart cameras in Cooke’s new Fireball network triangulate the …

Dr. Renee Weber, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, will participate in a live video webcast on Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. CST. Weber will discuss new research which definitively identified details about the moon’s core, as announced in a January issue of SCIENCE magazine.Details about the findings from Dr. Weber’s team can …

The moon is Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor. It’s the brightest object in the night sky and has profoundly influenced the course of human civilization. For early humans, the moon provided lighting for hunting and defined when crops should be planted and harvested. Markings of lunar phases appear in cave paintings in France and defined the …

Hello! Thanks for visiting our moon missions blog. We’re expanding the blog focus from two moon missions to relating information about the moon as “Our Nearest Neighbor.” New posts will focus on observations of the moon, ongoing studies of Apollo era data, flybys and investigations  from Discovery and Lunar Quest Missions — these observations and …