Buzz Aldrin is bubbling with energy

He often reminisces about historical events and talks about stepping on the moon.

Buzz Aldrin was born on January 20, 1930, so he is 93 years old today. He is the second man to walk on the moon after Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Aldrin has been married four times and has three children from his first marriage. Most recently, he married Dr. Anka Faur on his 93rd birthday in January 2023.

On Facebook, he mentioned something very interesting.

George Eastman’s patent on the roll-film camera, granted 135 years ago, is a great reminder of the origin of some of our most important devices.

Eastman’s innovation (aka “Kodak”) clearly changed the world – and without it, we may not have captured the iconic lunar imagery of Apollo 11. Not only did we use the rugged Hasselblad 500EL camera, with Kodak film, but we also carried a Kodak Stereo Close-Up camera aboard Eagle. If life has taught me anything, it’s to never forget how we got to where we are now.

This is what Aldrin wrote.

Comments poured in

I used a Hasselblad camera daily for decades in my work. I frequently thought about how it must have felt to use it with space gloves on. Well done, General.

I’m from Rochester, NY. Eastman, Kodak and Rochester were all the same for many years!

Kodak changed the world. They even invented the digital camera. I still think it is so interesting that it was only 66 years from the Wright Brothers’ flight (1903) to Apollo 11 landing on the moon (1969)! So many people were still around that saw and/or heard about the flight in Kitty Hawk that watched the Eagle land on the lunar surface. From a Hawk to an Eagle!

Eastman was a great self-made American entrepreneur and inventor who believed in his own abilities and worked hard throughout his life for his achievements and successes.

Thank you for bringing up these details Buzz!! Every one of them matters!

A great book that came out a year ago is ‘Apollo Remastered: The Ultimate Photographic Record’. The appendix has details on all the cameras, film and gear the astronauts used.

Eastman, like yourself defined greatness. It was his philosophy and treatment of the people who worked for him that truly demonstrated his greatness.

Материалът Buzz Aldrin told the truth about the moon pictures е публикуван за пръв път на Vihrogon.bg.

India’s space agency is trying to land a craft on the moon’s south pole, a mission that could boost the country’s space ambitions and expand knowledge of the moon’s water ice, which could prove to be one of Earth’s satellite’s most valuable resources .

After nearly 50 years: Russia sent its first probe to the moon

Here’s what’s known about the presence of frozen water on the moon, and why space agencies and private companies see it as a key to establishing a lunar colony, mining the moon’s resources and potential missions to Mars.

India’s long-awaited lunar mission Chandrayaan-3 was scheduled for July 14, 2023. The Soviet Union, the United States, and China are the only three countries to have successfully performed soft landings on the Moon.

The Russian spacecraft „Luna-25“ crashed into the moon

How do scientists discover water on the moon?

Back in the 1960s, before the first landing of the American Apollo space mission, scientists suggested that there might be water on the moon. Samples from the mission crews that were returned for analysis in the late 1960s and early 1970s appeared dry.

In 2008, Brown University researchers reexamined these samples with new technology and found the presence of hydrogen in small particles of volcanic glass.

In 2009, a NASA instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1 probe detected water on the surface of the Moon.

That same year, another NASA probe that reached the south pole found water beneath the lunar surface. A previous mission called Lunar Prospector in 1998 found evidence that the shadowy craters at the moon’s south pole have the greatest concentration of water ice.

We will observe a supermoon twice in August

Why is water on the moon important?

Scientists are interested in the „pockets“ of ancient water ice because they could provide clues about lunar volcanoes, the materials that comets and asteroids bring to Earth, and the origins of the oceans.

If water ice exists in sufficient quantities, it could be a source of potable water for lunar exploration and for cooling the equipment used.

It can also be broken down to produce hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for breathing to support missions to Mars and mining resources on the Moon.

The UN’s 1967 „Outer Space Treaty“ prohibits any nation from claiming ownership of the Moon. However, there is no provision in it that prohibits commercial activities.

The Artemis Accords, with the United States as the main initiator, provide for the establishment of a set of principles for the exploration of the Moon and the use of its resources, which have so far been signed by 27 countries. China and Russia are not among them.

Why is reaching the South Pole of the Moon particularly difficult?

There have also been failed attempts to land on the moon in the past. The Russian spacecraft Luna-25 was supposed to land on it this week, but it crashed on Sunday.

The South Pole, which is far from the equatorial region that has been the target of previous missions, including the manned Apollo landings, is dotted with craters and deep depressions.

ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 mission is scheduled to land on Wednesday, the Indian space agency announced.

A previous Indian mission failed in 2019 in its attempt to land near the area that Chandrayaan-3 was also targeting.

The US and China also have planned missions to the moon’s south pole.

Материалът Revealing the secret to the Moon’s South Pole: Why everyone wants to get there and what they’ll find е публикуван за пръв път на Vihrogon.bg.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) mission may go down in history as the first to land on the Moon’s south pole. If all goes well, India could be only the third country to have a soft landing on the moon.

Update: 14:09

THE FOUR PHASES OF HORROR
The last few minutes of the moon landing were called „15 minutes of terror“ by ISRO chairman during Chandrayaan-2. These 15 minutes will remain equally crucial and nerve-wracking during the Chandrayaan-3 mission and consist of four phases:

Hard Stop Phase: During this phase, the horizontal speed of the lander must decrease from about 6,000 kilometers per hour to almost zero for a soft landing.
Hold phase: At an altitude of about 7.43 kilometers above the lunar surface, the lander will tilt from a horizontal to a vertical position while traveling a distance of 3.48 kilometers.
Fine turn phase: This will last about 175 seconds, during which time the lander will travel about 28.52 kilometers horizontally to the landing site, while decreasing altitude by about 1 kilometer. Chandrayaan-2 lost control between the hold phases and fine braking.
Final Descent: This is the final stage when the fully vertical lander must land on the surface of the Moon.

After a 40-day journey starting from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, the Chandrayaan-3 mission of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is now gearing up for landing.

If all goes well, the Vikram lander should make a soft landing on the Moon at 18:04 IST (15:34 Bulgarian time) on August 23.

You can watch a live stream of the landing below. It will start at 14:57 Bulgarian time.

Before the launch, ISRO said it was ready to start the automatic landing sequence of the mission. The space agency plans to do so at 14:44 IST. From this point on, the Vikram lander will use its on-board computers to attempt a soft landing on the moon.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission is a follow-up to the 2019 Chandrayaan-2 mission, when the Vikram lander crashed into the lunar surface. The main goal of the mission is simple – to demonstrate the space agency’s ability to perform a soft landing on the Moon.

The launch of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. Credit: ISRO

If the mission succeeds, India will join a small and exclusive club of countries that have managed to soft land on the moon. So far, the club has three members – the United States, the Soviet Union and China. Russia made its first attempt to land on the moon since 1976 (when it was part of the Soviet Union) with the Luna-25 mission.

Luna-25, as the Russian space agency announced on Sunday, crashed into the lunar surface.

Interestingly, Luna-25 was intended to be the first mission to land on the Moon’s south pole—the goal of both Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3. Now only India has a chance in the race.

Update: 14:09

THE SHOW IN REAL TIME

The last few minutes of Chandrayaan-3’s landing, or the ’15 minutes of terror’, will be crucial in deciding whether the mission is successful or not. But during those 15 minutes, the Vikram lander will be controlled by the program built into its computers, instead of remotely piloted. Of course, mission controllers at ISTRAC will be watching it closely, but the entire operation will be handled in real time by the spacecraft’s systems.

That’s because it takes about two seconds to send or receive a radio signal from the moon.

This could mean a delay of as much as four seconds in responding to an emergency scenario, which would be too much. That being said, the best method would be for the spacecraft’s autonomous systems to handle the situation.

“If all the sensors fail, if everything fails, it will still land, provided the propulsion system is working well.

That’s how it’s designed. Even if two of the engines fail, this time the lander will be able to land. It is designed in such a way that it can handle multiple failures. If the algorithms work well, we should be able to do a vertical landing,“ ISRO chairman Somanath said earlier this month, referring to the mission’s landing systems.

Why ISRO wants to explore the lunar south pole
Only three countries have managed to make a soft landing on the moon so far – the United States, the former Soviet Union and China – and all of their spacecraft have landed near the moon’s equator. There’s a reason for that. The polar regions of the Moon are relatively inhospitable and lack terrain and climate conducive to long-duration space missions.

So why does ISRO want to land near the south pole?

Many previous orbital missions, including the Chandrayaan-1 mission in 2008, have hinted that the relatively unexplored polar regions of the Moon present interesting possibilities. There is a chance that evidence of frozen water ice will be found there.

Also, since these regions are extremely cold, anything caught there would be frozen in place, turning the areas into something of a „time capsule.“ Studying the Moon’s polar regions can help scientists better understand the early life of the Solar System, including the formation of our planet and the Moon.

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The Ballistic Center of the M.V. Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences has carried out a detailed simulation of the trajectory of the Luna-25 after the failed „velocity switch“ on August 19, 2023, leading to the death of the device.

As a result, it turned out that the probe should have fallen at 14:58, a minute after the loss of contact with it (the hour of loss of communication is according to Roscosmos).

The institute’s report states that the point of impact was the Pontecullan G crater with a diameter of 42 kilometers.

The crater’s coordinates are between 56.83 and 58.20 degrees south latitude and between 59.21 and 61.66 degrees east longitude. The crater itself is located next to the great ancient Pontecullan lunar cirque, up to 5.8 kilometers deep. The site „Ponteculan“ is named in honor of Philippe Gustave Ponteculan (1795-1874), a French military man who was engaged in astronomy in his spare time and calculated the orbit of Halley’s comet extremely accurately – for his era.

The drop zone of the Russian automatic interplanetary probe. Credit: IPM International Network of Optical Telescopes. M.V. Keldysha RAS

Here you can see the crater in an interactive map of the Moon created from its images. Pontecullan G is located on the visible side of the Earth satellite and is relatively easily accessible for observation. This means that the mathematicians’ calculations can be fully verified with the help of images from future missions to the Moon, the resolution of which will allow to see traces of the fall of the Russian apparatus, despite its modest size. Unfortunately, the Pontecullan G crater itself is not large enough to be seen from Earth with the naked eye.

ROSCOSMOS’ EXPLANATION OF THE DEATH OF MOON-25

According to the head of the state-owned corporation, the accident occurred because the engine was running too long. This usually happens with software bugs, although other versions cannot be ruled out either. His version does not differ much from the earlier assumptions already mentioned.

On August 19, 2023, at 15:00 Moscow time, Roscosmos lost contact with Luna-25 shortly after performing its second deceleration into lunar orbit. Now the head of the state corporation, Yuri Borisov, names more specific reasons for the demise of the automatic interplanetary probe.

„Unfortunately, the shutdown of the engine did not happen as planned, in accordance with the sequential scheme, and instead of the planned 84 seconds, it worked for 127 seconds. This was the main reason for the accident of the apparatus … But what led to this – it must be understand in detail. I am sure that we will receive all the necessary data during the work of the extraordinary commission. It has already been appointed and has started work. I think that in the very near future we will get the necessary results and we will certainly take this into account in the implementation on the next missions,“ said Borisov.

It should be noted that, taking into account the orbit of Luna-25, such a speed switch meant a rapid loss of speed of the vehicle dangerously close to the surface of the Earth’s satellite.

The entire experiment, Borisov continues, took place in an area of stable radio communication, Roscosmos specialists knew „everything about the ship’s position“.

„However, at 2:57 p.m., communication with the spacecraft was lost. Attempts to reestablish contact were unsuccessful. Preliminary ballistic calculations indicated that due to abnormal operation of the corrective propulsion system, the spacecraft entered an open lunar orbit and actually crashed into the surface of the moon,“ adds the head of the state corporation.

The specific reasons for the longer engine run are unclear. This often happens due to software errors, although some physical malfunctions still cannot be ruled out. Finally, the situation will have to be clarified by the commission investigating the incident.

„Under no circumstances should the lunar program be interrupted. That would be the worst decision. I think the negative experience of interrupting the lunar program for almost 50 years is the main reason for the failures. We actually have to master all the technologies in a new way . Of course, at a new technological level, but no one ever gives a 100% guarantee for such [new] missions. I can give examples that in the last four years the Israeli, Emirati, Indian missions suffered similar failures in landing on the moon,“ he stated Borisov.

At the same time, Borisov noted that the flight gave Russia invaluable experience. He also states that the country should definitely participate in the moon race. Given the fate of „Luna-25“ – a visual demonstration of the problems that non-participation in the lunar program brings. You can see Yuri Borisov’s full interview on this issue here.

Материалът Here is the exact location of the fall of the Russian space probe „Luna 25“ on the moon е публикуван за пръв път на Vihrogon.bg.

While Roscosmos previously gave a detailed account of the Luna-25 mission, it has now said nothing about the status of the Russian lunar probe.

Yesterday, Roscosmos reported an anomaly aboard Luna-25, and since then there has been no news of the station. And at night there was information that the station crashed on the surface of the moon.

As reported on Saturday evening in the Closed Space Telegram channel, last night Alexander Ivanov, First Deputy General Director of Roscosmos for the Development of Orbital Complexes and Advanced Projects, came to NIP Lavochkin to hold a meeting regarding the situation with “ Luna-25″.

At that time, it was not possible to establish a connection with the device, the status of the station was unknown, writes kaldata.com.

„If the reports that the probe gave an incorrect braking pulse are true, then the probe is now resting in the Sea of Tranquility on the surface of the Moon. So to speak, a premature hard landing was made,“ reported Closed Space.

A representative of the Russian space industry commented on the situation as follows:

„The braking pulse was given to the station to slightly reduce the pericelium – the lunar perigee – to bring the moment of the successful landing closer. However, the propulsion system delivered one and a half times more thrust than predicted. If this is indeed the case, the station may have entered an unclosed descending orbit…”.

That means the station crashed on the moon.

„It is still unclear what caused this, it does not appear to have been a calculation error. Perhaps there was a problem with the communication system or with the control. And the human factor can never be excluded. „Now the denouement is coming,“ added the representative.

Материалът Russian media: Luna 25 crashed е публикуван за пръв път на Vihrogon.bg.