Tag Archives: moon

"Just as the shadows in the hollows of the Earth diminish in size as the Sun rises higher, so also these spots on the Moon lose their blackness as the illuminated part grows larger and larger."

The Tokyo-based Shimizu Corporation is one of the world's leading construction and engineering contractors. It's also a prolific producer of corporate science fiction: fanciful, high-concept design projects that offer glimpses of astonishing futures. Its "Luna Ring" envisions such a future for the moon�and for Shimizu.

It's a lunar crater�in this case, a rather striking one found in the Bay of Rainbow's in the moon's northern hemisphere. But as the blazon of Chinese characters indicates, there's something different about this image. The probe Chang'e 2�named for the Chinese goddess who lives on the moon with her companion, the herbalist Jade Rabbit�is scouting sites for a planned Chinese robotic moon landing in 2013. The budget for Chang'e 2 is reportedly a mere $134 million.

Google’s Lunar X competition is still alive and kicking. The mission? Land a robot on the moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded. The winner wins $30 million. The Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association team (ARCA) is hard at work on their ...

Lycanthropes will be thrilled to get their claws on the Moonwatch, a clock which tells the current state of the lunar cycle instead of the current time. No more fumbling around with calendars or awkward time tables. Know exactly when you’re time of transformation has come without even having to take a single look at the night sky. Proper planning ...

When a friend of mine working for Popular Mechanics invited me to a private screening of the movie Moon, I naturally hopped on the chance. It’s director Duncan Jones’ (David Bowie’s son, natch) first full-length film and it was made on a shoestring budget of $5 million. But enough about that. What did I actually think of the movie? Click ...

While World of Warcraft still reigns supreme as king of the MMOs, Blizzard has an unusual competitor entering the market: NASA. The government space agency is developing an MMO that takes place around 2035 and focuses on “being in a habitat on a planetary surface and doing things like mining Helium-3 for fuel, operating a hydroponics facility to grow plants ...

When NASA gets really bored, it starts doing pointless comparisons of the first successful landing on the moon. Only the brightest minds at NASA will be jotting down coordinates and tracing all of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s movements. It turns out that the two original mooninites only hopped around in an area smaller than a soccer field. So NASA: ...

Sometimes you stumble across a piece of gadgetry that can really help brighten up your home (both figuratively and literally). Essentially, the Smoon Ombrella is a device that acts as a light source and vaguely resembles a glowing moon in the sky when placed on your Manhattan rooftop or sun room or dungeon, etc. The product of furniture designers Beau ...

On some days, it rains and rains until a flood surrounds us and nothing is left but water. We walk through crowds of people to our jobs, staying inside a cubicle for hours until leaving to return home. The next day, the process is repeated and it continues to rain. Nothing new can come with the rain. Nothing dry. It ...