To The Moon

It is relatively common knowledge that the Space Shuttle Endeavor is scheduled to launch tomorrow morning for a trip to the International Space Station. (A worrisome part of that story, however, is the remark that "NASA is pushing to launch Endeavour now because of the tight lineup of shuttle flights over the next 1 1/2 years. The space agency is under presidential direction to retire its three remaining shuttles and complete the station by the end of 2010 if possible." Let's not forget that NASA's disasters, particularly Challenger, occurred when it attempted to rush what it was doing.)

What is probably less widely known is that the United States is also scheduled to go back to the moon next week. As early as June 17th, JPL will launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a probe that will perform preliminary sensory investigations as a precursor to the potential resumption of manned lunar exploration.

It will be interesting to see what's become of the old neighborhood. Since the United States and its Apollo 15 crew left the moon in December 1972, the Soviet Union made several unmanned trips to the lunar surface (five successful trips out of 14 attempts), the last in 1976. More recently, India landed a probe on the moon on November 14, 2008.

"Landed" is perhaps a misnomer. The Indian probe impacted the lunar surface, as planned, at 3100 mph. Be careful opening those overhead bins; items probably shifted in-flight.