Ken Murphy / 6:45 pm November 14th, 2009

Yippee! I’m on vacation. I’m finally using up the last of my rollover days from last year, so I’m going down to Houston for this year’s Lunar Exploration & Analysis Group (LEAG) meeting over the first part of next week.

Given the news yesterday, it should be a rather exciting conference. The first day is given over to updates in the morning, mainly from NASA organizations like NLSI or SMD,then a variety of interesting topics in the afternoon and a poster session in the evening. Tuesday is the big LRO/LCROSS day, including an overview of instrument results in the polar regions, in the context of both resources and characteristics. Wednesday looks at In-Situ Resource Utilisation, with a session on samples and simulants in the afternoon, and things wrap on Thursday morning.

Then I drive back to the metroplex to prep for my flight to D.C. on Friday morning for the National Space Society Fall Board of Director’s meeting over the weekend. That one I’m less excited about, as I always feel like my karma has been polluted after I’ve been in D.C.

From “Tomorrow’s Moon” by George Henry

Water always has a nice cleansing effect, so here’s a round-up of links relating to the discovery of much more water than expected at the Lunar South Pole. This has a lot of repercussions with regards to how we approach the development of our assets in space.

NASA: Water found in moon crater - Dan Vergano/USA Today
NASA finds ’significant’ water on moon - CNN
Impact reveals lunar water by the bucketful - Rachel Courtland/NewScientist
‘Significant Amount’ of Water Found on Moon - Andrea Thompson/Space.com
Water Discovery Fuels Hope to Colonize the Moon - Jeanna Bryner/Space.com
LCROSS impact plumes contained moon water, NASA says - John Matson/Scientific American
The Moon Is Wet! - Richard A. Kerr/ScienceNOW Daily News
A Rainbow on the Moon - Paul Spudis/Air & Space Magazine (Recommended)

While we’re on the Moon, lots stop by the Carnival of the Moon and see what kind of new shows are on display.

Google is celebrating the findings with a special image at their search page. Google has long been a supporter of Moon activities, and their Google Lunar X Prize has spurred a great deal of excitement. Keith over at NASAWatch tells us that Google may have even more Moon goodness in store.

The recent winner of the NASA Regolith Excavation Challenge, Moonraker, is on display at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. I’ve long said that success breeds confidence, and the more of these successes that accrue, the less rational the giggle factor becomes.

In another example of success, Amanda over at The Launch Pad brings us a summary of the Lunar Lander Challenge competition this year which went down to the wire in some terrific rocket drama.

Orion’s Quest has a new mission coming out this month - “Butterflies in Space”. Here in the metroplex we’re on a butterfly migratory path, so there comes a season when you’ll see more of them wandering through. Since the butterflies seem to like me, I like them, and it will be interesting to see them in space, and eventually on the Moon. Space.com has an update.

If you’d like to do some roving around on the Moon you can check out a Moon Rover Simulator from Frassanito & Associates, who have long contributed CGI to the space program. It’s available in both Mac and PC versions.

The folks over at the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) have managed to resurrect some more old equipment, allowing them to increase the pace of their efforts at retrieving almost lost archival data from the Lunar Orbiter program.

For those that doubt the international importance of the Moon, the Moon Society just issued a press release:

Today is the 1st Anniversary of Chandrayaan-1’s Moon Impact Probe reaching the Lunar Surface with the tricolor Flag of India painted on all four sides. – India was on the Moon! This date (of the impact) was chosen to honor former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s Birthday. In his term, India’s Space Program was launched in 1962.

On this day, we are pleased to announce the formation of The Moon Society of India as an Autonomous Affiliate of The Moon Society (International)

The founding Executive Committee has elected Jayashree Sridhar (Chennai) as President, with Pradeep Mohandas (Mumbai) as Secretary. Also involved are Srinivas Laxman (Mumbai) and Avinash Siravuru (Vellore).

Of note, Srinivas Laxman just published the book “Moonshot India” which tells the story of the Chandrayaan program. I’m supposed to receive a copy of the book for the Lunar Library from Jayashree at the LEAG meeting and provide a review for the Moon Miner’s Manifesto - India Quarterly. While the Lunar Library has books from France, China, and various Spanish-language countries, this one will be the first from India. Once I get enough titles from India they’ll get their own Chandra section. Readers can note on the visitor map in the left sidebar that Out of the Cradle welcomes readers from around India (and the world), and I can tell you they’re looking at books in the Lunar Library and doing their research.

Finally, there’s some good news from some filmmakers putting together an independent movie set on the Moon. They’ve secured a portion of the necessary funding and can proceed to the next step in production. For those unfamiliar with the movie, it has a basic premise that would make Heinlein proud, one of the scariest concepts around in the 1940s - Nazis on the Moon! Behold the chilling Iron Sky trailer: