The explosion was caused by a meteorite, 0.3 to 0.4 meters wide, weighing in at about 40 kilograms. When it hit the moon, it was travelling at 56,000 miles per hour. According to NASA, it exploded with the force of 5 tons of TNT.

“On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we’ve ever seen before.”

The impact was so bright, in fact, that anyone looking would have seen it without the help of a telescope.

“It jumped right out at me, it was so bright,” says Marshall Space Flight Center analyst Ron Suggs, who was the first to see the impact.

This type of lunar strike is common, but NASA has yet to see one this large in the nearly 8 years its been monitoring the moon for such impacts. Here’s why:

Unlike Earth, which has an atmosphere to protect it, the Moon is airless and exposed. “Lunar meteors” crash into the ground with fair frequency. Since the monitoring program began in 2005, NASA’s lunar impact team has detected more than 300 strikes, most orders of magnitude fainter than the March 17th event. Statistically speaking, more than half of all lunar meteors come from known meteoroid streams such as the Perseids and Leonids. The rest are sporadic meteors–random bits of comet and asteroid debris of unknown parentage.

Oh, by the way, the “explosion” is special thanks to the lack of oxygen in the Moon’s atmosphere.

“The Moon has no oxygen atmosphere, so how can something explode? Lunar meteors don’t require oxygen or combustion to make themselves visible. They hit the ground with so much kinetic energy that even a pebble can make a crater several feet wide. The flash of light comes not from combustion but rather from the thermal glow of molten rock and hot vapors at the impact site,” says NASA.

[NASA via Wired]

Anyway, it’s garbage. But it’s always nice to see some guy explain why it’s garbage in a simple, well-constructed video.

Simply put: The American Government didn’t fake the Moon landing because they couldn’t have faked the moon landing. Technologically speaking.

“Please understand, I’m not saying this defend the honor of the United States. The U.S Government lies all the time about all kinds of things. And if they haven’t lied to you today, maybe they haven’t had coffee,” says our narrator.

But the fact remains. In 1969, we had the technology to send a man to moon but we didn’t have the technology to fake send a man to the moon.

[sgcollins via Gizmodo]

“High-quality planetary maps and 3D terrain models have become essential for NASA to plan exploration missions and conduct science,” says Google in the video description. “This is particularly true for robotic missions to the Moon and Mars, where maps are used for site selection, traverse planning, and planetary science. This is also important for studies of climate change on Earth, where maps are used to track environmental change (such as polar ice movement).”

“In this talk, we will describe how the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames builds highly accurate, large-scale planetary maps and 3D terrain models from orbital imagery using novel statistical stereographic and photometric techniques,” it says. “Orbital imagery includes data captured by the Apollo missions, on-going NASA and international missions, and commercial providers (such as Digital Globe). The mapmaking software that we have developed (Vision Workbench, Ames Stereo Pipeline, Neo-Geography Toolkit) is available as open-source and is widely used by scientists and mission planners.”

More recent At Google Talks here.

The transmission was a test of laser communication with the lunar satellite. The Mona Lisa was piggybacked on laser pulses that are normally sent LOLA’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) to track its position. The successful transmission was verified by sending the image back to Earth using the LRO’s radio telemetry system.

“This is the first time anyone has achieved one-way laser communication at planetary distances,” said David Smith, LOLA principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “In the near future, this type of simple laser communication might serve as a backup for the radio communication that satellites use. In the more distant future, it may allow communication at higher data rates than present radio links can provide.”

Satellites around Earth are normally tracked using radio waves. The LRO is the only non-Earth satellite to be tracked by laser.

“Because LRO is already set up to receive laser signals through the LOLA instrument, we had a unique opportunity to demonstrate one-way laser communication with a distant satellite,” said Xiaoli Sun, a LOLA scientist at Goddard.

For the transmission, the Mona Lisa was split into an array of 152 x 200 pixels. The pixels were then converted into a shade of grey, then transmitted by laser pulse at a data rate of around 300 bits per second. The LRO’s LOLA instrument reconstructed the image based on the arrival times of the laser pulses from Earth. All of this was accomplished without interfering with the NGSLR’s tracking and the LOLA’s primary task: mapping the moon’s elevation and terrain.

“Sally was all about getting the job done, whether it be in exploring space, inspiring the next generation, or helping make the GRAIL mission the resounding success it is today,” said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “As we complete our lunar mission, we are proud we can honor Sally Ride’s contributions by naming this corner of the moon after her.”

The GRAIL probes were crashed into the moon at 1.7 kilometers per second (3,760 mph) because they had fulfilled their primary and extended missions, were low in orbit, and did not have enough fuel to be of any further use. The Sally K. Ride impact site, located on the southern face of a lunar mountain near Goldschmidt crater, was chosen to avoid the disturbance of U.S. and Russian historical sites scattered across the moon’s surface.

The site was in shadow at the time of impact, so no images of the event were recorded. However, NASA‘s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will be able to snap photos of the crash site in several weeks.

During their time in orbit, Ebb and Flow collected data that allowed scientists to create the highest-resolution gravity map of any celestial body.

“We will miss our lunar twins, but the scientists tell me it will take years to analyze all the great data they got, and that is why we came to the moon in the first place,” said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “So long, Ebb and Flow, and we thank you.”

NASA provided live interviews and analysis by the GRAIL team in the moments leading up to the mission’s destructive finale. A recording of the events can be seen below.

“NASA wanted to rule out any possibility of our twins hitting the surface anywhere near any of the historic lunar exploration sites like the Apollo landing sites or where the Russian Luna probes touched down,” said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Our navigators calculated the odds before this maneuver as about seven in a million. Now, after these two successful rocket firings, there is zero chance.”

The crash landing is a planned event, necessary because the probes’ low orbit and fuel levels make them useless for any further study. The impact will take place near the moon’s north pole, close to a crater named Goldschmidt. The area will be in shadow at the time, and no photos or video of the event are expected.

NASA will, however, be live-streaming commentary of the event starting at 5 pm EST on Monday. The commentary will come from the control room at the JPL and will include interviews with the GRAIL team. It can be viewed on NASA TV or on the JPL Ustream channel.

The probes began orbiting the moon on January 1, 2012. In their year of orbit, Ebb and Flow collected data that helped scientists create the highest-resolution gravity field map of any celestial body to date.

The crash-landing is purposeful, as the probes’ low orbit and low fuel levels make it impossible for them to be of any further use for scientific studies. The probes have successfully completed their primary and extended science missions.

Just last week, NASA revealed a gravity map of the moon that was based on GRAIL data taken by the probes. The map is the highest-resolution gravity field map of any celestial body to date, and will provide researchers with a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets formed.

“It is going to be difficult to say goodbye,” said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Our little robotic twins have been exemplary members of the GRAIL family, and planetary science has advanced in a major way because of their contributions.”

Ebb will be the fist probe to hit the moon’s surface, with Flow following 20 seconds later. The spacecrafts will be travelling at 1.7 kilometers per second (3,760 miles per hour) when they hit the surface. The area of the moon where the probes are expected to impact will be in shadow at the time of impact, so no images of the event are expected.

Before their final flight, the probes will both empty their propellant tanks by firing their main engines. This will show exactly how much fuel each probe has remaining, helping NASA engineers improve computer models that predict fuel consumption for future missions. After the burn, the probes will skim the surface of the moon for several hours until the lunar mountain rises in front of them.

“Our lunar twins may be in the twilight of their operational lives, but one thing is for sure, they are going down swinging,” said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Even during the last half of their last orbit, we are going to do an engineering experiment that could help future missions operate more efficiently.

“Such a unique end-of-mission scenario requires extensive and detailed mission planning and navigation. We’ve had our share of challenges during this mission and always come through in flying colors, but nobody I know around here has ever flown into a moon mountain before. It’ll be a first for us, that’s for sure.”

“This is the first look at the fully calibrated, digital dust data from the Apollo 14 and 15 missions,” said David Williams, an NSSDC data specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The digital data from the two missions’ dust detectors has not been archived before, and NASA estimates that a year and a half of the data have never been studied. The new data can be used in a long-term analysis of the dust readings. The restoration of the data is part of the Lunar Data Project, a n effort to provide Apollo scientific data in modern formats.

The data was restored in a tedious manner, with an undergrad from the Florida Institute of Technology named Marie McBride going through data sets and separating raw detector counts from temperatures and other information. An incomplete second set of data then indicated how raw counts could be converted to usable measurements. The second data set had to be converted from microfilm, then synched up to the first set.

Though the state of the data may suggest it, scientists haven’t abandoned their studies of lunar dust completely. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which launched in 2009, has taken lunar dust measurements. Next year’s launch of NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) will begin a new phase in studying the moon’s dust.

“Just last week, LRO did some important measurements seeking dust profiles in the lunar atmosphere,” said Rich Vondrak, the LRO deputy project scientist at Goddard.

“What this map tells us is that more than any other celestial body we know of, the moon wears its gravity field on its sleeve,” said Maria Zuber, GRAIL Principal Investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “When we see a notable change in the gravity field, we can sync up this change with surface topography features such as craters, rilles or mountains.”

The gravity map was created from data taken by two washing machine-sized spacecraft (GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, or “Ebb” and “Flow”) orbiting the moon. The probes transmit radio signals to each other to precisely measure the distance between them while orbiting the moon. As they pass over areas of greater or lesser gravity on the moon, the distance between them shifts slightly.

The probes also revealed that the bulk density of the moon’s highland crust is “substantially” lower than predicted. The density is, however, consistent with data from the Apollo missions in the 70s. This suggests that samples of the moon brought back by astronauts are a good representation of processes on the moon. The bulk composition of the moon is also similar to that of Earth, providing evidence for models that show the moon was formed from a giant impact with Earth in the early solar system.

“We used gradients of the gravity field in order to highlight smaller and narrower structures than could be seen in previous datasets,” said Jeff Andrews-Hanna, a GRAIL scientist at the Colorado School of Mines. “This data revealed a population of long, linear gravity anomalies, with lengths of hundreds of kilometers, crisscrossing the surface. These linear gravity anomalies indicate the presence of dikes, or long, thin, vertical bodies of solidified magma in the subsurface. The dikes are among the oldest features on the moon, and understanding them will tell us about its early history.”

(Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/GSFC)

NASA says that the video will also be accompanied by blogging from NASA administrator Charlie Bolden.

NASA is also hosting a Google+ Hangout after the speech ends (3 pm ET) called “50 Years Later: NASA Discusses Using Innovation and Ingenuity to do Big Things.” During the Hangout, you can expect to hear from NASA Administrators, former astronauts, and a current ISS commander.

JFK’s speech at Rice University on September 12th, 1962 is one of the most famous speeches in American history. In it, he advocated for progress, exploration, and shifting America’s space program into “high gear.” Here’s one of the most well-known quotes from the address:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too,” said President Kennedy.

And in less than a decade, Americans set foot on the surface of the moon.

You can watch the high quality version here at 11:15 ET, or you can cheat and watch a lower quality version below: