мечта

On this day in 1959, the Soviet space programme launched the first interplanetary probe known as Luna 1—or with the alternate designation “Dream” above—and although due to a miscalculation on the burn-time of the last stage of the booster rocket, it over-shot its target, the Moon, but still in the process became the first spacecraft to escape Earth orbit.
The probe was able to take pioneering measurements of the Earth’s magnetic field (and the cosmic rays it protects the Earth from) and flying-by at a distance of some six-thousand kilometres was able to detect the absence of one on our satellite. In transit, the probe released a trail of sodium gas and scintillated like the tail of a comet and was to ultimately crash land on the lunar surface and release two metallic pennants and coat of arms of the Soviet Union on 4 January but veered off course (Luna 2 accomplished this mission of planting a flag in September of the same year) and remains in heliocentric orbit (along with some later cosmic interlopers) between Earth and Mars, designated according to the minor planet naming-convention, like Ultima Thule, as 1959 Mu 1.

earthrise

During the Apollo 8 mission, the first manned voyage to orbit the Moon, astronaut William Anders (it was a collaborative among him and his crewmates) on Christmas Eve 1968 photographed the emerging penumbra of the Earth rising into daybreak with nightfall crossing at the Sahara. This breath-taking image is credited as one of the most influential pacifistic and environmental photographs taken up until that point, preceding Voyager’s Pale Blue Dot by two decades, and brought with it acute awareness of the fragile beauty of our planet.

gibbous

To illustrate that even truly awful, jingoistic and pointless maps can be thought-provoking in more than pedantic ways and worth one’s consideration, Big Think reviews a few of the charts and infographics curated by the self-evidently titled Terrible Maps. I would certainly take objection to their map comparing the number of countries with their flag on the Moon (1: the US) with the number of countries with the Moon on their flags (13: Islamic majority countries.
While the US was the only country so far to land human beings on the lunar surface and return them to Earth safely, the first terrestrial flag planted on the Moon was the flag of Soviet Russia and since the Apollo missions, Japan (Hinomaru is the Rising Sun), China (the stars are symbolic of the four classes of worker and the Chinese nation) and India (the round symbol is twenty-four spoked Ashoka Chakra). Though no flags with the Moon on the Moon yet, I count at least twenty-one national flags with crescents. The thirteen ensigns right facing with a star and crescent are based off of the symbol of the Ottoman Empire, though depending on one’s location above or below the Equator and how the flags are hoisted and the way the horns are facing, the orientation of the Moon’s increscence is not a reflection of astronomical reality. What do you think? One has to wonder if this misrepresentation isn’t intentional on an important level and not meant to be emblematic the Earth’s satellite at all. Like discussion and debate about the privileging nature of map projections is conversation that we were late to bring to the table, it’s worth examining one’s geographical and historic biases, which are sometimes presented to us with a key and legend.

7x7

font specimen: a look at the vintage typeface “Choc” that’s come to dominate storefronts all over—via Slashdot

ionic wind: world’s first solid-state aircraft takes flight

southern exposure: the Moon’s orientation flips depending on whether a terrestrial viewer is north or south of the equator

gas, food, lodging: business rules for US interstate next-exit signage—via TYWKIWDBI

wysiwyg: digitally editing reality by Vladimir Tomin

franksgiving: for those of you for whom the holiday snuck up on you, the year of multiple Thanksgiving observances

blue note release: crafting the iconic covers of 1950s and 60s jazz albums 

moonrise

Thanks to some detective work, art historians and geomancers were able to reverse engineer the date, time and location of this black and white photograph captured by Ansel Adams of the Moon ascending over the unincorporated settlement of Hernandez, New Mexico.
Under contract with the Department of the Interior, Adams spent six months documenting the south west and came across this scene in the late afternoon of 1 November, 1941 and stopped on the shoulder of a highway, driving through the Chama valley toward the city of Española, to take the picture. Multiple prints were made from the original negative and became one of the most popular and collectible images for the next three decades, with one print personally developed by Adams selling for the unprecedented price at auction that’s strangely coincident (adjusted for inflation) with the first acheiropoieton executed by an artificial intelligence.

6x6

connect-the-dots: the distant constellations discovered by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope include the TARDIS and Godzilla

᚛ᚑᚌᚐᚋ᚜: an introduction to the Ogham script through the challenge of encoding an alphabet without spaces

teslaquila: a look at the other probable intent-to-use trademark applications from Elon Musk

frigate shoals: rather than being erased by sea level rise, a powerful storm obliterated an ecological significant Hawaiian archipelago over the weekend, via Super Punch

cloak & dagger: former Central Intelligence Agency’s Chief of Disguise reveals how field agents go undercover

geo-stationary: Chengdu announced plans to launch its own, fully adjustable artificial moon to replace street lighting

superlunary

Though the final arbiter of such things will be left in the capable hands if the International Astronomical Union, researchers have already hit upon a perfectly acceptable and sensible term for a natural satellite with its own sub-satellite: a moonmoon.
Despite the lack of such an arrangement present in our solar system, scientists have recently confirmed the existence of exomoons and believe that arrangements where smaller moons orbit larger one could indeed occur. The proposed term is also reviving a very silly meme in circulation last year about how the combination of one’s initials yielded an unfortunately derpy spirit animal name.

嫦娥

Like its counterpart Apollo, the Chinese lunar exploration programme has a divine namesake and their space agency has presented an ambitious plan to turn a bit of lore into reality with its aim to construct a “palace” near the Moon’s south pole by 2030. The lunar base or rather tubular palace is in reference to the abode of the immortal Chang’e (嫦娥)—a rather reluctant goddess, who had divinity thrust upon her, estranging her from her mortal husband.
In the distant past, ten suns came to dominate the skies and threatened to scorch the Earth, but the heroic archer Yi shot down all but one, saving the planet. As reward, the gods gave Yi a single portion of the elixir of life, which would render the imbiber undying. Yi didn’t want to live forever if he could not be with his beloved wife Chang’e, so hid the potion. One of the archer’s apprentices, however, attacked Chang’e while her husband was out hunting and tried to force her to give him the elixir, and overpowered, Chang’e escaped by the only means she had—drinking the potion herself. Instead of allowing herself to ascend to the highest heaven in the company of the other gods, Chang’e settled on the Moon to be as close to her husband as possible. Inconsolable, her only companion for the past four millennia has been a white rabbit Yutu—which was the name of the rover vehicle that was delivered to the Moon’s surface by the mission Chang’e 3 when mankind returned to the satellite for the first time in nearly four decades in December of 2013. Read more about the programme at the link up top.

7x7

figgy pudding: 1970s era Sainsbury’s Christmas dinner packaging

fun-size: definitive ranking of convenience store movie scenes

dalí atomicus: teacher and photographer Karl Taylor recreates the 1948 iconic, action-filled photograph of the artist with flying cats

the shape of water: a Hollywood theme park produced a Creature from the Black Lagoon musical

ghost of christmas future: retro-future ventriloquist Paul Winchell brings the War on Christmas to the Moon

alta vista: a look at some of the internet’s memorable relics

and a happy new year: a curated collection of the New York City Public Library System’s cartographic greeting cards

moonshot

According to an announcement by SpaceX CEO and visionary Elon Musk, a manned-mission to the Moon will take place next year. The craft will not land but rather loop around the dark side of the Moon and make several passes, skimming close to the surface—close enough to fill the entire cockpit’s view with the lunar landscape. Two space “tourists” who’ll have much more than a passive role as astronauts are in training already and are fully committed. As exciting as this mission will be in its own right, it more importantly paves the way for future missions and significantly brings down the cost and cruises in space may in a few years be within all our aspirations.

free-return trajectory

An internet giant and associates intend to land an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon before the end of 2017, we learn via Kottke, after overcoming the administrative embargos established under the terms governing the parties of the Outer Space Treaty, which provides that no government can claim ownership of any celestial body, nor can weaponise space and is responsible for commercial spacecraft launched under their jurisdiction—no matter how close or loose that association is, what with multinational entities beholden to no state.  The treaty was installed shortly after the US government seeded the upper atmosphere with tens of thousands of microscopic needles at the height of the Cold War as a contingency for maintaining global communications in case the Soviets cut the undersea cables spanning the Atlantic.
Incidentally, the first private, commercial mission to the Moon was a fly-by and fourteen day Earth orbit executed by a German ærospace company in October of 2014 (EN/DE), memorialising its founder who had recently departed, but entailed no actual touch-down or permanent presence and this upcoming enterprise will be a first. In addition to being liable for the craft that take-off under their auspices, space-faring nations also retain ownership of the artifacts that they leave behind, space-junk, equipment, rovers and flags but can stake no claim—despite America’s push to have Tranquility Base protected as a national historic monument. I wonder how the Outer Space Treaty applies to wholly private activities—like asteroid mining, whose mere spectre should have already stopped the gold speculators, or space tourism. While we have to have confidence that governments with the urge to explore and not exploit, will only vet businesses of a like character, on the other hand, one has to wonder about burdening entrepreneurs with an insufficient regulatory framework and disincentives when private innovations may be a far greater boon to all of humanity than anything government can produce. What do you think? Not only do I not want to see tatty resorts crowding up the lunar surface, who’s to say that one could brand hollowed-out planetoids (or at least overlay them with advertising in a virtual augmented reality) or net a comet and remove it from the skies forever?  I think the potential amazing advances will carry the day and prevail, however, in the end.

slipping the surly bonds

Via the esteemed Everlasting Blört comes the latest work of information design from Pop Chart Labs that reveals nearly six decades of space exploration on one dashboard, that cleverly organizes the missions—from Luna II to the climate survey missions of last year. The trajectory of every exploratory craft is featured on this vast astronomical orrery with further details about each satellite, probe and rover.

space oddity

While orbiting around the dark-side of the Moon, in the communications shadow cast by the intervening planetary body, the crew of Apollo 10 debated on whether to disclose to Mission Control they had picked up on the eerie whistling sounds of the music of the celestial spheres, for fear they might be grounded from future missions.
The entire affair was not suppressed exactly but went mostly unnoticed until 2008 after it came out in a memoir and the same bursts of errant sounds were heard on successive lunar visits and by other space probes, and technicians could be reasonably certain that the noise was some sort of feedback or interference or naturally occurring report—and not extra-terrestrial transmissions. The audio, however, had not been made publicly available until now, so one can judge for one’s self—though it smacks of a promotion-stunt rather than any kind of government-sanctioned UFO cover-up. Even if the explanation is a mundane one, it would have been quite jarring to encounter in the silence of the void.

almanac or full moon madness

Though a touch sad that we are always reading yesterday’s news because of the middling hours separating Germany from Canada, I still find Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet to be quite timely and topical, reminding us to anniversaries that don’t loom just as large in our consciousness and importantly, with the invitation to learn more. Below the Twelve Days of Christmas/Kwanzaa gift tally and some other curious and obscure events that took place on this/that date, for the lycanthropically inclined there’s a guide to the year’s upcoming lunar cycles (with clever musical accompaniment), that’s really a nifty primer in reconciling one’s luni-solar calendars.

umbrage

This season was quite nicely bookended by two astronomical events, I thought, what with the partial eclipse of the Sun—for those of us in Central Europe—just as the weather was beginning to wax comfortable and the Blood Super Moon just as the daylights and temperature begins to turn. I was not able to capture either event that I witnessed too terribly well and did not do justice to the Moon coloured red and by no means lost in the pre-dawn horizon but I did like the airplane flying in its direction and of course most things are better imparted first-hand and every one of us will be treated to privileged spectacles, however the rarity, I’m sure.

mondknoten und nutation

Europe will be treated to a partial solar eclipse on Friday, 20 March, which is also the Spring Equinox—with some lucky souls on Svalbard and the Faroe Islands losing daylight to the Moon’s shadow completely.
Weather permitting, for one in the western part of Germany, the event will start at 09:24 (earlier for those more westerly and later for those more easterly), reaching totality at (some 80% in Germany and France) at 10:32 before going on the wane for the next hour. Researchers in Germany are interested, among other things, in observing the dip in photovoltaic power production. The southern hemisphere will be treated to a similar spectacle in September of this year.

sea of serenity or columbiad

Though the first steps and thoughts uttered on the Moon are much celebrated and well-known, the final reflections of the last human to walk on the lunar surface are also profound and poetic. As he was getting ready to return to the lander 13 December, 1972—just over forty two years ago, astronaut Eugene Cernan mused:

‘...I'm on the surface; and, as I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come—but we believe not too long into the future—I’d like to just say what I believe history will record. That America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. “Godspeed the crew of Apollo XVII.”’

It always strikes me how short of period those missions spanned, in the crippling, unhappy days of the Vietnam War, and the reference-realisations that we thought we needed and had a really good reason for the exploration and the whole retroactive time-travel associated with adventures and imaginations that only seemed to have crept in one direction.

Humans first landed at the Sea of Tranquility (Mares Tranquillitatis) carried aloft by the orbiting command module called the Columbia after the Columbiad, the giant space-canon in Jules Verne’s book From the Earth to the Moon (which bears a lot of other similiarites to the actual missions’ execution), and humans left for the last time from a canyon called Taurus-Littrow in the Mares Serenitatis, the Sea of Serenity. Though never meant to be a party-crasher as the programme held its own and in many ways surpassed the achievements of the Americans—and in the first act of cooperation with the US, Soviet mission-controllers released the flight plan of its latest launch to ensure the safety of astronauts, Luna XV overlapped with Apollo XI and the first manned landing on the Moon. The Soviet module collided with the side of a mountain was it was coming down at the moment when the Apollo astronauts were first emerging from the lander for their walk-about.

Had the Soviet mission—the third attempt aimed to bring back rock samples, been a success, it might have still been overshadowed by humans presence, but the programme might have demonstrated that the same feats could be accomplished without risk to life and limb, being the first space programme reliant on advanced robotics and computers. IX having landed successfully on the Moon some three years earlier, II having rammed into the Moon a decade prior, while the first mission overshot its mark and became the first satellite to orbit the Sun and others—continuing until later summer of 1976—taking photographs and measurements, delivered roving vehicles and did succeed in returning soil samples, the scientific value—for the cost—of Luna XV would have outshone Apollo. If this pace and urgency had been sustainable, and even friendly as it later became, I wonder where we might be now. I hope too that we have the patience and the ambition to realise the vision that the last human to walk the Moon expressed.

taurus-littrow

Just ahead of the fortieth anniversary of mankind’s absence from the Moon, Boing Boing shared a poignant little website that exists for the sole purpose of answering the question how many people are there in space right now.

Kurz vor dem vierzigsten Jahrestag der letze Mondlandung, dargestellt einer schmerzlich Web-Seite, dass nur insoweit besteht als Anwort zu den Frage wie viel Leute sind jetzt im All.

umbrage or full name

In addition to being the engine and regulator of calendars and holidays in many traditions, the waxing and waning of the Moon to its gleaming and unshadowed visage is also named as the year makes its transit through the seasons. It seems a bit tautological as the word for month in many languages is derived from the word for Moon, but with the asynchronicity of the Sun and our calendar systems (since some months can have an extra full phase, a Blue Moon, or be absent a full moon altogether), that tidal pull I think acts as a correcting force, bring our sense of time back in line and turned from schedules and agendas. It’s nice to reflect on the ruling Moon, governing its portion of the year, and what lyrical names and moods, mostly from mixed Native American traditions though I would be interested to see more on what other folk-practises and conventions there are, we give it.

Winter Solstice

January Old Moon, Yule Moon, Ice Moon

February Storm Moon, Hunger Moon
March Lenten Moon, Crow Moon

Vernal Equinox
April Pink Moon, Fish Moon
May Flower Moon, Hare Moon
June Honey Moon, Hot Moon

Summer Solstice
July Hay Moon, Thunder Moon
August Dog Moon, Lightening Moon
September Harvest Moon, Wine Moon

Autumn Equinox
October Travelers’ Moon
November Hunters’ Moon
December Oak Moon, Frost Moon

it’s only a paper moon

Some months ago, I heard some discussion about a crowd-sourced, independent science-fiction feature with the premise that during the final days of World War II in Europe, remnants of the government of Nazi Germany retreat to the dark side of the Moon, and from that lunar base, study world developments and regroup to found a Fourth Reich. The Moon and exploration, cinematically, has been taking a beating lately, what with the Transformers' Movie and the cover-up depiction of the missions, general lunar skepticism, and now this.  Iron Sky, nonetheless, sounds fantastic, and I was not following at first but the movie has premiered at the Berlinale film festival, with audiences and critics indulging in the guilty pleasures of this trashy fun. Irreverent, the movie reminds me of Mel Brooke's The Producers, and shows that (maybe trampling on good taste and the realities of war) this era continues to be inexhaustible. There are several theatrical trailers out there, but I really like this one, featured on Boing Boing, because it pokes fun at itself and the ridiculousness of the idea, and I agree that an invasion of space Nazis from the Moon would be a natural consequence of electing Sarah Palin as president of the United States.