NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is on an unmanned robotic mission to orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the surface, and environmental influences on lunar dust. The purpose of the mission is to catalogue the composition, density, and variability of the lunar atmosphere.
7 September 2013
RIA-Novosti
On Friday, 15 February 2013, Asteroid 2012 DA14 will make its nearest approach to the Earth. Our Infographic shows the asteroids that will come closest to Earth in the next 200 years. To date, scientists have found hundreds of thousands of asteroids in the solar system. Collision of an asteroid with the Earth could cause fires, an earthquake, and/or a tsunami. According to some theories, the cause of past mass extinctions was the falling of celestial bodies on the planet.
On Friday, 15 February 2013 at 19.25 UTC (11.25 PST 14.25 EST 23.25 MSK 06.25 16 February AEST) Asteroid 2012 DA14, discovered in February 2012 by astronomers at the Observatorio Astronómico de La Sagra in Spain, will make its closest approach to the Earth, 27,700 kilometres (17,200 miles) above the earth’s surface, which is much lower than geostationary satellites (35,800 kilometres (22,500 miles)). It would be the largest celestial body that has come so close to the Earth on record. The mass of the asteroid is about 190,000 tons (210,000 US tons), and the explosion that would occur in the event of its fall to Earth would be comparable to the Tunguska event.
15 February 2013
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/infographics/20130215/179484941/Asteroids-That-Buzz-Planet-Earth.html
On 17 November 1970, the self-propelled lunar rover Lunokhod-1 landed on the moon. The unmanned Lunokhod-1 was a hybrid all-terrain vehicle. It consisted of two main parts… an eight-wheeled chassis and a sealed mission container. Each of the eight wheels of the chassis led to an independent motor. Scientific instrumentation was in the mission container… it had gear to analyse the chemical composition of the lunar soil, a device for studying the mechanical properties of the soil, radiometric equipment, an X-ray telescope, and a laser corner reflector of French manufacture for precise measurement of distances. The container was in the form of a truncated cone; the upper base of the cone, which served as a radiator to dissipate waste heat, had a larger diameter than the lower. During the lunar night, the lid acted as a cooler. The surface of the lid was covered with solar cells, which recharged the battery during the lunar day. Ground controllers remotely operated Lunokhod-1 from the Earth during its 10.5 month lifespan. During this time, Lunokhod-1 travelled 10.54 kilometres (6.5 miles), it transmitted to Earth 200 telephoto panoramas and about 20,000 pictures via its television camera. It obtained stereoscopic images of the most interesting features of the terrain, allowing a detailed study of their structure.
23 November 2012
RIA-Novosti
2012
Here’s another punning play on words from Sergei Yolkin. Polynia in English is a loanword from Russian… in Russian, it originally meant an “ice hole”… thus, the aliens jumping into the ephemeral “polynia” from the “vanna” (bathhouse).
Planetary Scientists at the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) in Madrid reported that areas with relatively thin ice sheets on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, are rare and quite short-lived phenomena, as they disappear about ten thousand years after their appearance.
25 September 2012
RIA-Novosti
Voices from Russia 
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