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For those of you who believe the Moon landing was a hoax

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For those of you who believe the Moon landing was a hoax

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It's been nearly 50 years since the Apollo 11 mission landed the first human beings on the moon, and since astronaut Neil Armstrong took his famous first step onto the lunar surface, speaking the words:

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

But not everyone believes he did that. In the video above, Roger Launius, now senior curator in the National Air and Space Museum's Space History Division, discusses the belief that the moon landings never actually happened.

How many today believe that the six manned moon landings (1969-72) were faked and that 12 Apollo astronauts did not actually walk on the moon? Keep reading ...

A 1999 Gallup poll found that only 6 percent of Americans doubted the Apollo 11 moon landing happened. But - as the 21st century brought a rise in internet use and a different standard of truth in media - that number has risen, so that Wikipedia's entry on this subject ( Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories) now suggests:

Opinion polls taken in various locations have shown that between 6% and 20% of Americans, 25% of Britons, and 28% of Russians surveyed believe that the manned landings were faked.

One of the early promoters of the moon landing conspiracy theory was the Fox television network, which, in 2001, aired a documentary-style film titled Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?. It claimed that NASA faked the first landing in 1969 to win the Space Race. The film presented "evidence" of deception including photos showing no stars in the lunar sky and American flags rippling on the moon, despite the fact there's no air or wind. It showed photograph and film oddities. It presented what's become one of the most enduring claims by hoaxers: that astronauts could not have passed through the Van Allen radiation belts, in order to get to the moon.

All of these claims have been explained with the facts, of course, but - as has become increasingly apparent to all of us in recent years - human beings frequently don't base their conclusions on facts.

In recent years, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission has returned images of the moon's surface - taken from orbit - showing the shadows of the various Apollo landers. LRO also acquired images of five of the six Apollo missions' American flags on the moon; only the first flag to be planted - by the Apollo 11 crew - now lies on the lunar surface after being accidentally blown over by the takeoff rocket's exhaust.

Conspiracy theorists will say that these images - like all the Apollo mission images - are faked.

Bottom line: A few of the reasons people persist in denying humans landed on the moon, with links to more information about them.
Read more: Why Aren't The Van Allen Belts A Barrier To Spaceflight?

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Apollo and the moon-landing hoax | EarthSky.org

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It's been nearly 50 years since the Apollo 11 mission landed the first human beings on the moon, and since astronaut Neil Armstrong took his famous first step onto the lunar surface, speaking the words: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. But not everyone believes he did that.

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Wow...

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Over the past 18 months, astronomers have painstakingly tracked 10 tiny moons that they found circling the giant planet Jupiter.

After the discovery of Jupiter's four Galilean satellites in 1610, astronomers struggled to find 10 more in the 3½ centuries that followed. Today the IAU's Minor Planet Center announced that a search team led by Scott Sheppard (Carnegie Institution for Science) has identified 10 new moons of Jupiter, bringing the known total to 79 - the most of any planet in our solar system. Of those, Sheppard has led the searches that discovered 51 of them.

Dozens of Jupiter's moons circle the planet in a swarm of distant orbits and travel in a retrograde direction, that is, opposite that of the planet's spin. Their orbits cluster in three groups of 15 to 20 objects, named for members Ananke (discovered in 1951), Carme (1938), and Pasiphae (1908). Most likely each of these moonlet "families" represent fragments of larger precursors that were shattered by collisions early in Jupiter's history.

Of the 10 new finds, seven of them are among these retrograde objects. Two of them orbit Jupiter in prograde directions (in the same sense as Jupiter's rotation) and appear to be members of a smaller group anchored by Himalia (discovered in 1904).

"Our other discovery is a real oddball and has an orbit like no other known Jovian moon," Sheppard notes in a Carnegie press release. Initially designated S/2016 J2 ("S" for satellite, "J" for Jupiter), it's far enough from the planet to be in the midst of the retrograde swarm. But this new find, provisionally named Valetudo, has a prograde orbit with an inclination of 34°.

Confusingly, Carnegie's press release describes 12 (not 10) new moonlets. But this higher tally includes S/2016 J1 and S/2017 J1, both of which were announced by the Minor Planet Center last year.

Valetudo was an exceedingly dim magnitude 23.9 when first spotted by Sheppard in March 2016. If its surface is only 5% reflective - typical for small outer-planet bodies - then this moonlet is likely less than 1 km across, making it Jupiter's smallest.

With the exception of Valetudo, all of the new finds were swept up in early 2017, when Sheppard was on solo observing runs in Chile using the 6.5-m Magellan-Baade reflector Las Campanas and the 4.0-m Blanco reflector on Cerro Tololo.

"Jupiter just happened to be in the sky near the search fields where we were looking for extremely distant solar system objects," he explains. Sheppard, together with David Tholen (University of Hawai'i) and Chad Trujillo (Northern Arizona University) are one of the teams searching for a putative massive planet thought to lie far beyond Pluto.

Since then, follow-up observations have tracked them well enough to establish firm orbits for each object. Valetudo, in particular, becomes eligible for naming because it has now been observed during three oppositions of Jupiter. Valetudo is the Roman goddess of health and hygiene; she's a descendant of Jupiter and known as Hygieia in Greek mythology.

Sheppard's searches also swept up S/2003 J19, an object that had not been spotted since observer Brett Gladman (University of British Columbia) and others discovered it in 2003. It's one of 11 "lost" satellites of Jupiter (and seven around Saturn) whose orbits are so poorly known that they'll likely have to be discovered all over again. Fortunately, Sheppard told Sky & Telescope, "We found most of Jupiter's lost moons as well."

Characteristics of the 10 newly found moons of Jupiter are below. See Sheppard's Jupiter moons page for more discussion of the planet's clusters of prograde and retrograde satellites.

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Jupiter's Moons: 10 More Found, 79 Known - Sky & Telescope

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Over the past 18 months, astronomers have painstakingly tracked 10 tiny moons that they found circling the giant planet Jupiter. After the discovery of Jupiter's four Galilean satellites in 1610, astronomers struggled to find 10 more in the 3½ centuries that followed.

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Biggest Dust Storm on Mars ever observed...

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Biggest Dust Storm on Mars ever observed...

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You think our storms are bad, check out Mars

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Astronomers expected dust storms to kick up on the planet Mars sometime this year. That's because such storms typically occur in years when Mars is near its perihelion, or closest point to the sun, an event that happens every 687 Earth-days as Mars orbits the sun. The next Mars perihelion will be September 16, 2018. Then Mars - whose orbit is much more elliptical than that of Earth - will be receiving 40% more sunlight than when the planet is farthest from the sun. But already a dust storm is raging on Mars. Scientists who've been tracking it since at least early June said in a statement that it's:

... one of the thickest dust storms ever observed on Mars ... The storm has caused NASA's Opportunity rover to suspend science operations.

The dust storm is raging above and around Opportunity, which is solar powered, and NASA has not heard from the rover since Tuesday. The dust won't topple the rover, but it has hidden the sun, creating what Mars Exploration Rover project manager John Callas said at a Wednesday media telecon was a "spacecraft emergency." Callas said his team was assuming the charge in Opportunity's batteries has dipped below 24 volts. If so, the rover has entered a low-power fault mode, when all subsystems except the mission clock are turned off.

So Opportunity's fate is unknown at this time, although there's some possibility the rover might be able to wait it out.

Good news! @NASA says comatose #Opportunity rover should be able to wait out Martian dust storm: https://t.co/Asej4ESj3b H/T @MarsRovers pic.twitter.com/KRJ6nTrup3

- Alan Boyle (@b0yle) June 13, 2018

Meanwhile, the dust storm is still growing. In fact, it now blankets some 14 million square miles (35 million square km) of Martian surface - about a quarter of the planet, NASA said, adding:

Dust storms are a frequent feature on Mars, occurring in all seasons. Occasionally, they can balloon into regional storms in a matter of days, and sometimes even expand until they envelop the planet. These massive, planet-scaled storms are estimated to happen about once every three to four Mars years (six to eight Earth years); the last one was in 2007. They can last weeks, or even months at the longest ...

The thin atmosphere makes these storms vastly different from anything encountered on Earth: Despite the drama of "The Martian", the most powerful surface winds encountered on Mars would not topple a spacecraft, although they can sand-blast dust particles into the atmosphere.

NASA scientists say they welcome this opportunity to study aMartian dust storm. Jim Watzin, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington, commented:

This is the ideal storm for Mars science. We have a historic number of spacecraft operating at the red planet. Each offers a unique look at how dust storms form and behave - knowledge that will be essential for future robotic and human missions.

NASA has three orbiters circling the red planet, each equipped with special cameras and other atmospheric instruments. And it has two operating rovers on Mars' surface, if you count Opportunity. The other rover, Curiosity, has a nuclear-powered battery. That means it doesn't face the same risk as the solar-powered Opportunity.

Other nations have spacecraft at Mars as well. I'm counting eight total current missions at Mars at Wikipedia's list of missions to Mars page, with a ninth mission, Insight Mars, launched as recently as May 5 and heading for a November 2018 landing on Mars.

NASA said:

Since 2007, Mars scientists have been patiently waiting for a planet-encircling dust event - less precisely called a "global" dust storm, though the storms never truly cover the entire globe of Mars. In 1971, one of these storms came close, leaving just the peaks of Mars' Tharsis volcanoes poking out above the dust.

The most recent dust storm is the earliest ever observed in the northern hemisphere of Mars, said Bruce Cantor of Malin Space Science Systems, deputy principal investigator for the Mars Color Imager. But it could take several more days before anyone can tell whether the storm is encircling the planet.

If it does "go global," the storm will offer a brand new look at Martian weather. Four [NASA] spacecraft stand ready to collect the science that shakes out.

Read more from NASA about science during Mars dust storms Click here for updates about the Martian dust storm
Bottom line: A giant dust storm has been building on Mars throughout June 2018, and now covers a quarter of the planet. The Opportunity rover has suspended science operations.
Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

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mars giant dust storm 2018 opportunity rover

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A giant dust storm is raging on Mars | EarthSky.org

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Astronomers expected dust storms to kick up on the planet Mars sometime this year. That's because such storms typically occur in years when Mars is near its perihelion, or closest point to the sun, an event that happens every 687 Earth-days as Mars orbits the sun.

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LAZE: When Lava hits ocean water

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Kīlauea Volcano — Fissure 8 Flow: From Vent to Sea

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HubbleSite: Video - Lagoon Nebula (Zoom and 3D Pans)

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This video zooms into the core of a rich star-birth region called the Lagoon Nebula, located in the constellation Sagittarius in the direction of our Milky Way galaxy's central bulge. The sequence then dissolves to a series of imagined three-dimensional flights past striking structures of this gaseous landscape.

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In the next column, please type in your name (optional), grade level and subject that you teach...

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Google Forms - create and analyze surveys, for free.

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Create a new survey on your own or with others at the same time. Choose from a variety of survey types and analyze results in Google Forms. Free from Google.

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One step closer to finding life on Mars...

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One step closer to finding life on Mars...

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In a much-hyped press conference held on Thursday, NASA announced its Curiosity rover had uncovered new evidence of methane - a potential sign of life - as well as signs of organic compounds buried in ancient mudstone.

The space agency did not say it had found evidence of alien life. However, these new results are still tantalizing.

Curiosity landed on Mars back in 2012 and it's been slowly climbing up Mount Sharp, a large hill formed when an asteroid impact created Gale Crater, simultaneously exposing multi-billion year old sedimentary rocks laid down in an ancient lakebed. The rover came equipped with a suite of instruments known as Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM. And its main goal was to find organic molecules. These commonly form in non-biological processes, but they're also the building blocks of life.

And mysteriously, the VW Beetle-sized rover succeeded in finding organics even though past Mars missions, like 1976's Viking landers, did not.

This latest announcement was tied to two scientific papers published simultaneously in the prestigious journal Science. One study focused on the methane and the other looked at the organics.

In the first paper, a team analyzed three Mars years worth (55 Earth months) of atmospheric data from Curiosity. In that time, the rover caught methane levels spiking as the seasons changed, growing several times stronger at the height of summer in the northern hemisphere.

Based on the chemical make-up, the scientists suspect this methane was heated up and released from sub-surface reservoirs where it was likely trapped in permafrost. They suspect large amount of the gas may be frozen in such underground reservoirs. But its exact origin remains a mystery.

The other study, led by NASA biogeochemist Jennifer Eigenbrode, examined drill samples of three-billion year old mudstones that Curiosity collected from two different sites in Gale Crater. The rover dropped these samples into an onboard laboratory and cooked them in order to analyze the gasses they threw out.

According to Eigenbrode's team, the rocks released organic molecules much like those found in organic-rich rocks on Earth.

This is far from the first time Mars researchers have claimed to find methane. Curiosity itself made headlines in recent years after seeing faint methane signals. But scientists have been chasing this gas for decades.

In 1966, a pair of astronomers made a startling announcement during a conference at San Francisco's Jack Tar Hotel. They'd used a special kind of ground-based telescope to study the atmosphere of Mars, and in the process, they'd deduced the presence of methane. Headlines heralded the significance: Life could exist on Mars.

In the half-century since then, many teams of scientists have published potential signs of methane in Mars' atmosphere. And each of those sparked hope for finding life, only to fade away without further proof.

"Every chapter in the story of methane on Mars has been a surprise," says JPL's Chris Webster, who led the methane study. But each of those signals was sporadic, and "none of them were repeatable."

This time, they were able to watch the signal come and go. So the find looks destined to stick. What's far less certain is exactly what it means.
Meaning Of Methane
To understand why methane matters so much, you first have to understand what it is.

Methane is a simple molecule - a so-called hydrocarbon - composed of four hydrogen atoms stuck to one carbon atom. It has no natural smell or color. And it's also common because hydrogen is the most abundant element in the cosmos, and carbon is the third most abundant.

However, it's also fragile. It can't handle things too hot. And the oxygen and carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere can break its bonds. So, on Earth, methane doesn't last long in our atmosphere.

And most of the methane that we do have is produced by biology. Things die and their hydrocarbons get trapped in stores deep underground or in permafrost, where it's known as a clathrate.

Living things also churn out methane, too. Cows and other livestock produce enormous amounts of the greenhouse gas. And simple lifeforms, known as methanogens, also produce methane.

All this means that, on Earth, methane is a sign of life. That's given astronomers good reason to see methane as a potential signal of microbes on Mars.

Like Earth, it also has methane-destroying conditions. The Red Planet's atmosphere is almost completely made of carbon dioxide. And even the ultraviolet light that penetrates Mars' weak atmosphere could destroy it.

So, any methane we do see must have been released into the atmosphere very recently.

But life isn't the only process that makes methane. We know that because it's abundant on Uranus and Neptune. And there's enough of the stuff to create bizarre landscapes on the surfaces of Pluto and Titan. And even on Earth, a small amount of methane is made in specific sorts of volcanic reactions, even if it doesn't stick around long.

But Mars has no active volcanoes. And it doesn't have ways of replenishing methane like those outer solar system worlds.

To truly find out what's causing these seasonal surges of methane, we'll need new Mars missions capable of better searching for definitive signs of life. And, thankfully, those spacecraft are already in the works. NASA's Mars 2020 rover, which will launch in a couple years, is custom-built for this purpose. And the European Space Agency's ExoMars rover should soon follow with similar aims.

Whatever the final cause - whether microbes or natural chemistry - we're now closer to finding the source of Mars' methane than ever before.
This article originally appeared on discovermagazine.com.

Want to learn more about the Red Planet? We've got you covered with a couple of free downloadable eBooks with content from Astronomy and Discover magazines:

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Curiosity Rover Finds Organics Hidden In Mars' Mudstones And Methane

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In a much-hyped press conference held on Thursday, NASA announced its Curiosity rover had uncovered new evidence of methane - a potential sign of life - as well as signs of organic compounds buried in ancient mudstone. The space agency did not say it had found evidence of alien life.

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Curiosity at Martian Scenic Overlook.mp4

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Weird Worlds...  access to posters for your room!

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Weird Worlds...  access to posters for your room!

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Exoplanet Exploration: Planets Beyond our Solar System

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This set of travel posters envision a day when the creativity of scientists and engineers will allow us to do things we can only dream of now.

Explore an interactive gallery of some of the most intriguing and exotic planets discovered so far.

A planetary tour through time. The ancients debated the existence of planets beyond our own; now we know of thousands.

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national aeronautics and space administration

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Explore - Exoplanet Exploration: Planets Beyond our Solar System

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This set of travel posters envision a day when the creativity of scientists and engineers will allow us to do things we can only dream of now. Explore an interactive gallery of some of the most intriguing and exotic planets discovered so far. A planetary tour through time.

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A Gorilla Was Just Spotted On International Space Station.mov