It’s an announcement that’s been expected for some time.

Are we talking about enough water for astronauts to actually live off? That’s what NASA is analysing now, attempting to scale the results of the small section studied by LCROSS. But “it’s water like any other water,” NASA said, though it’d need purification to drink. I guess that whole moon bombing didn’t turn out so boring after all. [CNN]

The lucky guy driving around the moon in that funky rover is Eugene “Gene” Andrew Cernan, born in March 1934. Only 38 years later, he became the last man to ever walk — and drive — on the face of Selene, as commander of Apollo 17. This was the eleventh manned Apollo mission and the first night launch of a US human spaceflight.

If they asked me, I would launch all rockets at night. [Life]

The lander as well as the flag, or rather the remaining flag pole, seen in the image above are exactly where they should be based on this shot by the Ascent Module “right after Apollo 17 lifted off the Moon”:

Going a step further, the location can be compared to more recent images of the landing site and everything still jives up. So, can we now finally quiet down with the moon landing conspiracies and focus on figuring out how to colonise the tubes up there? Pretty please? [SESE via Discover]

Scientists are hoping for clearer shots from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, but the impression so far is that such a tunnel network could provide shelter for astronauts or potential future Moon colonists. I just plain wonder if they could combine it with the recent discovery of water for one kickass underground waterpark. [New Scientist via Pop Sci]

The committee outlines eight options. Three of those involve a “flexible path” to explore someplace other than the moon, eventually heading to a Mars landing far in the future. The flexible path suggests no-landing flights around the moon and Mars.

Landing on the moon and then launching back to Earth would require a lot of fuel because of the moon’s gravity. Hauling fuel from Earth to the moon and then back costs money.

It would take less fuel to land and return from asteroids or comets that swing by Earth or even the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, Augustine said.

Eventually, Augustine said NASA could return to the moon, but as a training stepping stone, not a major destination, as the Bush plan envisioned.

Really, we’ve been to the moon. It’s old news. We’re pretty positive there are no aliens there. Any possibility of life in our solar system exists further out, possibly on liquidy moons of the gaseous giants. So why waste time and money on the moon? Let’s go to where the real action is. [USA Today via Dvice]

Indeed, Earth and space-based telescopes couldn’t see it at the time, but there was, in fact, a dusty plume that got kicked up by the kamikaze LCROSS probe. Success!

That said, there’s still no word on whether or not water or aliens or cheese were present in the plume. Perhaps it was a combination of all three, and that’s the reason for NASA’s silence thus far (more seriously, NASA says results by “mid-November”).

Next time, just to be sure, I think NASA should shoot something a bit bigger into the Moon for better results. Something like, say, Richard Heene’s ego. [New Scientist]

And they should be, because Charles Moss Duke was the lunar module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972. He landed with mission commander John W. Young at the Descartes Highlands, which is what makes this photo so special: It’s still there, untouched, unperturbed, exactly in the same position as he left it before taking a snapshot of it with his Hasselblad 70mm film camera.

I didn’t know about this fantastic photo until a couple of days ago, ignorant that I am. Following the advice of my friend Adán—who is a space exploration fanboy like I am—I bought an amazing book called Full Moon. It shows the trip to the moon through 128 brunch-bacon-crispy photographs, many of them giant four-page spreads containing fascinating panoramas. All clean, pitch black background, no text. Like the silence of space.

Full Moon is not a new book: It was curated and published in 1999 by Michael Light. It contains the first and only digital scans of the Apollo missions’ original camera film. See, when these images returned from space, NASA copied them then stored the original film right away for future scanning. The vaults were opened for Light, who went through all of them, selected what he thought was the best, scanned them using the best digital equipment available, created the panoramas when needed, and printed this book. The quality is so perfect, and the selection so good, that I can’t recommend it highly enough.

So there I was, sitting in amazement, slowly flipping through the amazing views, and I found this. It instantly caught my attention. The idea of leaving such a happy photo in the surface of such a inhospitable place filled me with a mix of happiness, sadness and much nostalgia. I instantly remembered another image like that. Surely this must have been inspired by Duke’s original shot:

You can buy Full Moon here. Actually, you must.

The Harvest Moon is the full moon after the fall equinox, which this year was the 22nd of September. The Harvest Moon usually happens in September, but this year is a little late. You will be able to see it this weekend. But why is is so special about it?

Nothing happens to the Moon itself, except that during these days it travels really close to the horizon. That triggers something called the Moon illusion. This optical phenomenon makes our home satellite look huge when it’s close to the horizon and smaller when it’s up in the sky, even while it’s always at the same distance from Earth. So, during these days, the full moon will look huge for a long time thanks to its path in the sky, and its position in relation with the Sun.

You probably have seen this Moon before. If you live in a city it will appear huge and possibly coloured because of the air pollution, appearing yellow, orange, and even red. In the past, there were often fires in agricultural and forest areas, so the moon would be wildly coloured too. This appearance, together with the fascination and influence the Moon has over humans and animals, made the Harvest Moon the inspiration for all kinds of legends, poems, and songs.

Maybe not Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, but it goes nicely with it. So while for some it may not be as cool and flashy as the Perseids, it’s still one of my favourite events to watch.

Now, go grab a bottle of wine and champagne, get a date or your lover, and enjoy. Or drink the bottle, get naked, and howl at it. Like I do. [Wikipedia]

The whole image — composed of two weighs 268 megabytes, but Zoomify makes it hot butterish smooth to pan and zoom. I’m glad the LRO can transmit at 100 megabytes per second. Now, could they please take a similar horizontal photo of one of the Apollo sites? [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]