Once the two GRAIL satellites are in orbit, their next step is to begin a five week phase in which they increase the speed at which they orbit the Moon.
FORBES: NASA's GRAIL Mission Will Unlock Secrets Of The Moon's Interior
In their paper, the co-authors argue that gravitational tidal heating caused by the gravitational friction of an earth-like exo-moon on an eccentric orbit around a Jupiter-like planet lying at a Jupiter-like distance from its parent star, could, in fact, create habitable conditions.
FORBES: Earth-Like Exo-Moons Can Lurk Well Beyond Planetary Habitable Zones, Say Astronomers
Since the orbit of the moon is not a perfect circle, there are times when the moon is closer to our planet.
The more easily visible outlier in Saturn's famous bands of ice and dust is its E-ring, which encompasses the orbit of the moon Enceladus.
The Earth is just too unusual a place, they insisted, with its stable orbit, nearby moon, watery surface, plate tectonics and unique position in the galaxy.
Mr. GLEN FOUNTAIN (Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab): Leaving Earth, the New Horizons will be traveling at eight miles per second, and eight hours later, the spacecraft will pass the orbit of the moon.
"In a nutshell, the plan in NASA's hands calls for catching an asteroid with a robotic spacecraft and towing it back toward Earth, where it would then be placed in a stable orbit around the moon, " read a statement from the office of Florida Sen.
It holds that the Moon formed from the debris kicked into orbit by the collision of a smaller proto-planet with the infant Earth.
The other way of doing things is for the company to retrieve smaller asteroids, put them into orbit around Earth or the moon, and then dissect them at its leisure.
My company, Moon Express, is focused on the next stage of commercial space beyond low Earth orbit, and is already developing early precursor robotic missions in partnership with NASA to explore the Moon and learn how to develop its resources for the benefit of life on Earth.
FORBES: The Moon is a Natural Platform for Asteroid Mining, Detection and Deflection
The game begins in 1957, with the preparations to launch the first satellite into orbit, and ends with the first Moon landing.
It took 60 hours to get to the Moon so we waited until the craft was in orbit and then we had a mad rush to get from Launch Control to Mission Control (in Houston, Texas).
America put a man in space, put a man in orbit, put a man on the moon, created the world's first reusable spacecraft, sent unmanned probes to other planets and led the world in making important scientific discoveries outside the Earth's atmosphere.
The most recent Russian probe, which was launched to the Mars moon Phobos last November, never made it out of Earth orbit.
They have measured microwaves as they warped around the sun, studied variations in the orbit of Mercury, and bounced signals off the Moon and Mars.
WSJ: Researchers Spent $750 million��and 52 Years��Affirming Theory of Relativity
The intention was to give the US a crew-carrier and rocket technology that could go beyond low-Earth orbit to more distant targets, back to the Moon and further.
The modular tin cans that took us to the moon and back, and have kept us in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) ever since, will eventually be superceded by full-scale space cities.
FORBES: Space Architecture And View Condos In Low Earth Orbit
Just as with Apollo, any modern venture would need some kind of CSM element for the astronauts, together with a departure stage - a propulsion unit that could accelerate the astronauts' vehicle out of low-Earth orbit, putting it on a path to the Moon.
Update 19 July 2011: This story has been amended to clarify that previous references to the Moon "speeding up" actually refer to it moving into a higher orbit.
He says that if the technology does work in orbit, the habitats will be ideal for building bases on the moon.
ECONOMIST: The Americans may still go to the moon before the Chinese
Russia says it also remains committed to sending cosmonauts beyond Earth's orbit in the future, including to a permanent base on the moon that it says could be used as a future launching pad for flights to Mars.
The architecture calls for two new rockets: the Ares 1 to launch crew, and a new heavy-lift rocket known as Ares 5 that could put into orbit the equipment needed by an Orion capsule to travel to the Moon and beyond.
One part, space tourism, is a luxury service that is, in any case, unlikely to go beyond low-Earth orbit at best (the cost of getting even as far as the moon would reduce the number of potential clients to a handful).
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