#mare tranquillitatis

[lonestarflight]

Concept art of Apollo 11 landing on the lunar surface.

"TRW Incorporated's artist concept depicting the Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) descending to the surface of the moon. Inside the LM will be astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, commander, and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot. Astronaut Michael Collins, command module pilot, will remain with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) in lunar orbit. TRW's LM descent engine will brake Apollo 11's descent to the lunar surface. The throttle-able rocket engine will be fired continuously the last 10 miles of the journey to the moon, slowing the LM to a speed of two miles per hour at touchdown. TRW Incorporated designed and built the unique engine at Redondo Beach, California under subcontract to the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, Bethpage, New York, the LM prime."

Date: July 1969

NASA ID: S69-39011

[quiltofstars]

The Apollo 11 landing site (marked) in Mare Tranquillitatis ("The Sea of Tranquility") // Mike

[therealuniverse]

A hole in the moon This image, taken by the LROC instrument in orbit of Earth’s moon, shows a gigantic cave in Mare Tranquillitatis (The Sea of Tranquility). Based on the position of the sun and the spacecraft at the time this photo was taken and the length of the shadow on the bottom, scientists estimated the bottom of the cave was about 100 meters below the upper surface.

When large lava flows move over the surface of a planet, the uppermost layer of molten rock will cool down rapidly, creating a solid layer that insulates the molten rock below. That lava can keep flowing once the upper layer has chilled, and can even fully drain away – leaving the chilled surface layer intact and unsupported. This process of hardening the surface layer and draining away the lava would create a lava tube, a natural cave formed as part of a volcanic eruption. Here, the ceiling of one of those tubes collapsed, showing that there’s probably a hundred-meter high gap beneath the surface here. The darker areas on the Moon’s surface were massive fields of volcanic lava formed about 3 to 4 billion years ago. There are quite a few pits like this found around the Moon, sometimes in chains and sometimes valleys that look like the roofs fully collapsed. These caves have been proposed as potential spots for human habitation on other worlds, as the roofs would provide natural protection from radiation and heat associated with the space environment. -JBB Image credit: http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/230

[kuiperkat]

We are officially at T-10 days until the Apollo 11 50th anniversary!

Here are some facts about the Sea of Tranquility, the chosen landing site for our first walk on the Moon:

Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility)

00.67408° N latitude, 23.47297° E longitude

Named in 1651 by astronomers Francesco Grimaldi and Giovanni Battista Riccioli, the Sea of Tranquility is a large lunar basin thought to have been formed 3850—3800 million years ago during the formation of the Inner Solar System (ca., Late Heavy Bombardment). Basalts in the area date back to 3800—3200 million years ago.

For the first lunar landing, the Sea of Tranquility was chosen due to its relatively smooth and level area. However, a last minute change in the original landing site was made due to the amount of craters present. The lunar module Eagle, piloted by Neil Armstrong, landed some four miles away from the pre-planned site.

But Apollo 11 was not the first to visit this area of the Moon. On February 20, 1965, the Ranger 8 spacecraft was deliberately crashed into the surface after successfully transmitting over 7,000 photographs of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission.

Surveyor 5 also landed in Mare Tranquillitatis on September 11, 1967, after transmitting 19,118 images of the Moon, and was the fifth lunar lander of the unmanned Surveyor program.

Humanity's first steps beyond Earth were taken here on July 20, 1969 at 8:18 PM UTC (4:18 PM EDT). While astronaut Michael Collins orbited above, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set up experiments and collected 49 pounds of lunar rocks and soil — the first extraterrestrial samples returned to Earth.

Credits: @nasa; @usgs; Almagestum Novum – G. B. Riccioli, 1651.

[blasteffect]

“The boundary between Mare Serenitatis and Mare Tranquillitatis”

L' Ametlla del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain, 6 December 2017

© Jordi Delpeix-Borrell

[metal-is-art]

Mare Tranquillitatis - Novarupta

[clockworkalpaca]

[rjbailey]

Retrospective: Moon by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Via Flickr: The Moon was a focal point for NASA in 2017, whether it was blocking out the Sun during one of the most-viewed events in U.S. history, or reinvigorating the agency's human space exploration plans. But the Moon has always been a focus of humanity's imagination. This false-color image composed of 15 images taken through three color filters by the Galileo spacecraft, as it passed through the Earth-Moon system on Dec. 8, 1992. When this view was obtained, the spacecraft was 262,000 miles, or 425,000 kilometers, from the Moon and 43,000 miles (69,000 kilometers) from Earth. The false-color processing used to create this lunar image is helpful for interpreting the surface soil composition. Areas appearing red generally correspond to the lunar highlands, while blue to orange shades indicate the ancient volcanic lava flow of a mare, or lunar sea. Bluer mare areas contain more titanium than do the orange regions. Image credit: NASA Read More Read More about 2017 Total Solar Eclipse NASA Media Usage Guidelines