moon

Forty years after the first humans walked on the moon, NASA is trying again to reach the Earth's nearest celestial neighbor.

It's not just about retracing 40-year-old footsteps in the lunar dust, though. This time, NASA wants its moonshot to become an outpost and eventually a Mars shot too, if Congress and others can be persuaded to part with the necessary money.

The new attempt is well past the idea stage. Two spacecraft are freshly launched on scouting missions to map the moon and see whether permanently shaded areas in craters on its south pole really do contain … Read more

Bing's June bump won't be enough to take significant share from Google according to JP Morgan analysts. Of course, analysts will say anything anyway. And apparently so will we. It's kind of a complaining podcast today, but we do find a shining example of good at the end.

Netflix rises on speculation of Amazon.com buyout

Verizon to start it's own app store http://gigaom.com/2009/07/13/verizon-to-mobile-developers-can-you-hear-me-now/ http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/13/verizon-to-its-smartphones-thou-shalt-have-no-other-app-store-b/

RIM Launching A BlackBerry social network … Read more

At least the residents of the moon are unlikely to be annoyed by the Google Street View car.

Google announced plans Thursday to hold a press conference on July 20 in Washington, D.C., to discuss "a very special announcement about the newest addition to Google Earth," according to an invitation sent to reporters. Further details were not included, but it's not too hard to guess what Google might be up to here.

July 20 is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. One of the men who set foot on the moon that day, … Read more

MB Moon Sign gives users a peek at their characteristics based on the moon. With a simple layout and easy-to-read results, users will embrace this program and its advice.

The program's interface is its lone rough spot, thanks to the information users need to add. Actually inputting the data is not hard, but it requires you to go online and do some research (unless you know the longitude and latitude of your birthplace off the top of your head). Everything else with this program is so intuitive and simple to navigate, users will not have to utilize the Help … Read more

NASA may have found the lost moon tapes and our best hope is for some kind of remix. Also, Molly tells us all to beware the sticky death roller if we use the dead-fly-powered alarm clock. We also still don't have a sponsor. In case you were curious.

Steve Jobs returns to work as Apple CEO after medical leave (thanks, Nate Lanxon on Twitter!) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aSy0WezEGvvY

Sony considers adding phone to PSP … Read more

MB Electional Astrology provides users with answers to some of life's most interesting events. From starting a new business to having a baby, this Vedic astrological software dishes out the details of your future.

This program immediately separates itself from other Vedic software we've tested by providing many more options for users. This program allows users to choose a topic that is important in their lives by clicking on a category. From there, the program mimics other astrology programs, asking the user to fill out blank spaces and pull-down menus. The results display on a page that requires … Read more

Four-and-a-half days after launch, NASA's $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its main thrusters for 40 minutes early Tuesday, successfully braking into an initially elliptical orbit around the moon.

The critical rocket firing began around 5:47 a.m. EDT and ended as planned at 6:27 a.m., putting the spacecraft into an orbit tilted 30 degrees from the moon's poles with a low point of 136 miles and a high point of 1,926 miles.

"All stations, this is flight," said lead flight director Rick Saylor. "Congratulations on a successful LOI (lunar orbit … Read more

An Atlas 5 rocket thundered to life and streaked into space Thursday, hurling two NASA spacecraft toward the moon for a $583 million mission to scout out landing sites for future manned missions and to search for evidence of hidden ice near its frigid poles.

One spacecraft will map the cratered surface from a perilously low 31-mile-high orbit while the other will blast out 350 tons of pulverized rock and soil for chemical analysis, digging a shallow 66-foot-wide crater in a kamikaze crash visible from Earth.

"First, we want to identify safe landing sites," said project scientist Rich … Read more

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif.--If you're in the planning stages of sending people back to the moon, as NASA is, you'd better know as much as possible about it.

That's one of the reasons NASA launched, in late 2007, the Lunar Science Institute (LSI), an organization with an annual budget of $10 million for the study and research of the moon, as well as the role of supporting and inspiring new generations of lunar scientists.

According to Greg Schmidt, LSI's deputy director, it is a "virtual" institute with a staff of just eight or nine … Read more