The Earth And The Moon Shaped Analyzed By NASA

 

The interior of the moon is covered into a hard, outer crust, a rigid outer mantle, a semi-rigid inner mantle, and a core. The interior of the moon is cooler than the center of the Earth. While the moon is so tiny it loses its heat rapidly into space. Since the Earth and the moon shaped, the moon has cooled down much extra than the Earth.

The moon's surface is so dry, dusty and rocky place. The rocky crust is about 37 miles (60 km) broad on the side of the moon that faces Earth and about 62 miles (100 km) thick on the reverse side of the Moon. Radioactive dating of moon rocks from NASA's Apollo task dates the construction of the moon from about 4.3 billion years ago (about 60 million years after the construction of the Earth). Moon rocks that have been analyzed by NASA are parallel to Earth rocks, but are richer in the basics aluminum and titanium.

NASA Honors Pioneer Astronaut Alan Shepard With Moon Rock

NASA will posthumously honor Alan B. Shepard Jr., the first American astronaut in space who later walked on the moon, with an Ambassador of Exploration Award for his contributions to the U.S. space program. Shepard's family members will accept the award on his behalf during a ceremony at 5:30 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 28, at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, located at 74 Greenbury Point Road in Annapolis, Md. His family will present the award to the museum for permanent display. NASA's Chief Historian Bill Barry will represent the agency at the event, which will include a video message from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

Shepard, a 1945 graduate of the Naval Academy, was one of NASA's original seven Mercury astronauts selected in April 1959. On May 5, 1961, he was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard the Freedom 7 spacecraft on a suborbital flight that carried him to an altitude of 116 miles. Shepard made his second spaceflight as the commander of Apollo 14 from Jan. 31 to Feb. 9, 1971. He was accompanied on the third lunar landing by astronauts Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell. Maneuvering the lunar module "Antares" to a landing in the hilly upland Fra Mauro region of the moon, Shepard and Mitchell deployed and activated a number of scientific instruments and collected almost 100 pounds of lunar samples for return to Earth.

Reporters interested in covering the award ceremony must contact the Naval Academy's public affairs office at 410-293-2292 or mediarelations@usna.edu by noon, Wednesday, April 27, for access information. NASA is giving the Ambassador of Exploration Award to the first generation of explorers in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs for realizing America's goal of going to the moon. The award is a moon rock encased in Lucite, mounted for public display. The rock is part of the 842 pounds of lunar samples collected during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972. The astronauts or family members receiving the award present it to a museum of their choice, where the moon rock is placed on public display. 

NASA and Gowalla Launch Partnership With Search for Moon Rocks

NASA and Gowalla are bringing people one small step closer to the universe. Anyone who uses Gowalla, a mobile and web service, now has the opportunity to find and collect four NASA-related virtual items a moon rock, a NASA patch, a spacesuit and a space shuttle. Gowalla's mission is to inspire discovery by connecting people with the places around them. When Gowalla users virtually "check-in" at NASA-related venues via their iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Palm or iPad, they now have a chance to find one of the four items.

Virtual moon rocks can be found when Gowalla users check in to any location where a real one is on display. The United States successfully brought lunar samples back to Earth during the Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 missions. NASA provides a number of these moon rocks for display and public viewing at museums, planetariums and scientific expositions around the world. To help people find the lunar samples, Gowalla and JESS3, a creative agency that specializes in data visualization, created a special edition NASA+Gowalla Map: Search for the Moon Rocks.

Gowalla users can find the virtual NASA patch, spacesuit and space shuttles by checking in to NASA visitor centers, agency-related locations, or one of the more than 400 museums, science centers, planetariums, observatories, parks, nature centers, zoos and aquariums that are part of NASA's Museum Alliance. The partnership also enables a NASA account on Gowalla and an account for astronaut Mike Massimino, both linked to their respective Twitter accounts, @NASA, and @Astro_Mike. NASA and Massimino also will drop virtual items for users to find and collect throughout the nation. Anyone with a Gowalla account who collects three of the four items will receive a special pin in their Gowalla Passport. In addition, the first 100 people to collect three items will receive a poster of the map in the mail.