The Verge: This nonprofit plans to send millions of Wikipedia pages to the Moon — printed on tiny metal sheets. “A nonprofit with grand ambitions of setting up a library on the Moon is planning to send the entire English archive of Wikipedia to the lunar surface sometime within the next couple of years. Don’t worry: there won’t be reams of Wikipedia printouts sitting in the lunar soil. Instead, the organization says it will send up millions of Wikipedia articles in the form of miniaturized prints, etched into tiny sheets of metal that are thinner than the average human hair. The nonprofit claims that with this method, it can send up millions of pages of text in a package that’s about the size of a CD.”
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Fortune: How to Livestream the Super Blue Blood Moon on Wednesday
Fortune: How to Livestream the Super Blue Blood Moon on Wednesday. “The Super Blue Blood Moon eclipse is set to happen on January 31st. According to Space.com, the eclipse should be visible in-person by people in California, western Canada, Hawaii, Alaska, Australia, and eastern Asia, weather permitting. However, if you live somewhere else, catching the eclipse in action might be a bit more challenging.”
New Scientist: Google-sponsored private moon race delayed for the fourth time
New Scientist: Google-sponsored private moon race delayed for the fourth time. “The deadline for the Google Lunar X Prize has been pushed backed once again, from the end of 2017 to 31 March 2018. The prize offers $30 million to the first privately-funded venture that puts a spacecraft on the moon. In order to win the money, competitors’ rovers will have to explore at least 500 metres of the moon’s surface and send back high-definition images and video. However, this new deadline came with additional ‘milestone prizes’ which will let the companies win some money even if they are not entirely successful.”
The Guardian: Hopping rockets and flying washing machines in Google’s wacky race to moon
The Guardian: Hopping rockets and flying washing machines in Google’s wacky race to moon. “By the end of the year, space engineers hope to fulfil one of their greatest dreams. They plan to land a privately funded probe on the moon and send a small robot craft trundling over the lunar surface. If they succeed they will open up the exploitation of the moon for mining and ultimately human colonisation – and earn $20m prize money as winners of the Google Lunar XPrize.”
Watch Tomorrow’s Solar Eclipse Online
Hey! There’s a total solar eclipse today! And it’s gonna be webcast! “The online Slooh Community Observatory will host a live webcast between 6 and 9 p.m. EST (2300 and 2600 GMT) to watch the eclipse from Indonesia and “several other locations” along the eclipse path, which can be joined at Slooh.com; the period of totality (total eclipse) will take place between 8:38 and 8:42 p.m. The webcast will also visible at Space.com, courtesy of Slooh.”
Online Archive for the Apollo 17 Mission
A gentleman named Ben Feist has created an online archive dedicated to the Apollo 17 mission. “He combined more than 300 hours of audio, 22 hours of video and more than 4,000 photos, to create a minute-by-minute archive of the mission. He also published a blog explaining the process.” Terrific work.
Putting a Digital Archive on the Moon
Two companies are teaming up to put a digital archive on the moon. And they want your contributions. “Astrobotic Technology Inc. and Lunar Missions Ltd, the company behind the global, inclusive, not-for-profit crowd-funded Lunar Mission One, have signed a deal to send the first digital storage payload to the Moon. The payload will support Lunar Mission One’s ‘Footsteps on the Moon’ campaign, launched earlier today, which invites millions of people to include their footsteps – in addition to images, video and music – in a digital archive of human life that will be placed on the moon during Astrobotic’s first lunar mission.”
