Iconic 'Apollo Earthrise' Crater Just Helped a Spaceship Get Better at Hunting Aliens

Iconic 'Apollo Earthrise' crater just helped a spaceship get better at hunting aliens

A large lunar crater featured in the iconic 'Earthrise' photo has just helped the European JUICE spacecraft hone its alien-hunting instruments during a once-in-a-lifetime flyby.

How the Moon’s Hidden Protection Shields Against Solar Wind Erosion

It seems the Moon has been protecting itself from cosmic erosion all along! Using Apollo moon dust for the first time, a team of researchers found that the lunar surface's rough, porous texture acts as a natural shield against solar wind bombardment, thus reducing erosion rates by up to ten times more than previously thought. This groundbreaking finding not only solves a long standing puzzle about the Moon's thin atmosphere but also rewrites our…

Juice radar shows lunar mapping success in Apollo Earthrise region

Paris, France (SPX) Jul 22, 2025 When ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) performed a lunar flyby in August 2024, its Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) captured its first radargram by listening to radio echoes bouncing off the Moon's surface. The data, tracing surface elevation with a vivid pink-to-yellow line against a dark purple backdrop, aligned closely with NASA's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) elevation mod

Lunar soil shows promise for in-situ oxygen and fuel production

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jul 22, 2025 Scientists have developed a new method to extract water from lunar soil and use it to generate oxygen and fuel, offering a potential path toward sustainable life-support systems on the Moon. The technology, described in the Cell Press journal Joule on July 16, combines water extraction and photothermal CO2 conversion in a single step to reduce resource transport needs from Earth. "This int