The Soviet Luna program, designed for lunar research and mission planning, ran from 1959 to 1976. On Aug. 9, 1976, Luna 24, the final mission of the program, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in present-day Kazakhstan. The probe landed on the Moon’s surface nine days later, in the Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises), a previouslyContinue reading "Aug. 9, 1976: Luna 24 blasts off"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  August 8: Sagittarius’ Little Gem The Moon passes 4° north of Mars at 2 A.M. EDT; the pair is visible together in the early-morning sky, some 30° high in the east an hour before sunrise. They straddle the border of Gemini andContinue reading "The Sky Today on Sunday, August 9: The Moon and Mars"

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A pioneer mission in astrometry – the measurement of the position, distance, motion, brightness, and color of stars – the European Space Agency’s (ESA) High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite, or Hipparcos, launched on Aug. 8, 1989. There were immediately problems when a rocket-engine failure kept Hipparcos from reaching its planned orbit. However, the satellite wasContinue reading "Aug. 8, 1989: The Hipparcos satellite launches"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  August 7: A lunar occultation of the Pleiades Let’s spend tonight with the Little Gem, a planetary nebula also cataloged as NGC 6818. It is highest in the sky around 11 P.M., when it is some 35° above the southern horizon. It’sContinue reading "The Sky Today on Saturday, August 8: Sagittarius’ Little Gem"

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On August 12, the New Moon’s shadow will fall over a portion of Earth’s surface. When that happens, the Sun will temporarily disappear from the sky in a total solar eclipse. These breathtaking events are spectacular and ethereal, as the sky falls dark during the day, leaving only the soft glow of our star’s outerContinue reading "How to see the August 12 total solar eclipse"

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Meterorite ALH 84001 fell to Earth from Mars about 13,000 years ago, landing in the Allan Hills region of Antarctica. It was discovered in 1984 and taken to the Johnson Space Center, where in 1994 researchers saw possible signs of life: carbonate minerals and microscopic structures that resembled nanobacteria. Further research commenced, and on Aug.Continue reading "Aug. 7, 1996: NASA announces martian life"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  August 6: Mercury moves south of Pollux The Moon passes 5° north of Uranus in Taurus at 1 P.M. EDT. The pair is visible earlier in the morning, with the Moon rising shortly before midnight on the 6th along with the PleiadesContinue reading "The Sky Today on Friday, August 7: A lunar occultation of the Pleiades"

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Friday, August 7The Moon passes 5° north of Uranus at 1 P.M. EDT. The pair is visible in the early-morning sky, along with a lunar occultation of the Pleiades just after moonrise. Check out the August 7 entry in last week’s Sky This Week column for more details.  Late tonight, there’s a good hour ofContinue reading "The Sky This Week from August 7 to 14: A solar eclipse and shooting stars"

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NASA launched its Mars rover Curiosity inside the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) on Nov. 26, 2011. Complete with 10 science instruments and 17 cameras, the robot can analyze mineral types, search for signs of microbial life, and take color panoramas of the Red Planet’s surface. Curiosity’s landing on Mars was a new process, nicknamed theContinue reading "Aug. 6, 2012: Curiosity lands on Mars"

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