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An excavation of an archaeological site in Guatemala has uncovered Mayan astronomical records dating to the ninth century A.D. The tabulated numbers, which predate existing Mayan astronomical documents by several hundred years, chart the motion of the moon and also seem to relate to the orbits of Mars and Venus. (And good news: they do not predict the world will end this year --in fact, some of the numbers appear to refer to dates far in the future.) [More]

Whirling lumps of cold space rock could one day help power our economy. Really.

Bot Vid: The Naval Robot That Fights Fires The Navy has a big plan to put smart gesture-controlled bipedla firebots onto ships. These droids are able to scramble through compartments designed for human access, so they'd be invaluable in a crisis, and they can handle fires that humans cannot. The plan needs much research, and the Octavia bot shows a step along the way.

By Ron Cowen of Nature magazine A chemical analysis of lunar rocks may force scientists to revise the leading theory for the Moon's formation: that the satellite was born when a Mars-sized body smacked into the infant Earth some 4.5 billion years ago. If that were the case, the Moon ought to bear the chemical signature of both Earth and its proposed 'second' parent.

Why is the far side of the moon on, well, the far side of the moon? [More]

Newt Gingrich's bold plans for a moon base dominated last night's GOP debate.

The moon of today is a static orb with little to no internal activity; for all intents and purposes it appears to be a dead, dusty pebble of a world.

Here s the sort of crazy idea that animates our office conversation at Scientific American . It all started with my colleague Michael Moyer s joke that a certain politician could build his moon base using a balloon: just capture the hot air and float all the way up. Ha ha, we all know that balloons don t work in outer space

I knew it was going to be a wonderful night when I magically found street parking on Central Park West directly across from the American Museum of Natural History. Camera in hand I entered the planetarium where I enjoyed a presentation of vintage films and movies depicting space travel and life on other planets. I was soon flying towards the dark side of the moon and out into the Milky Way during a 3D presentation of the planets that was out of this world.

The next time humans set foot on the moon, they may well plant a five-starred red flag there. The Chinese space program is developing rapidly, and further progress should come this year when taikonauts, a colloquial term for Chinese astronauts, visit the Tiangong-1 space module. [More]

Two washing-machine-sized satellites recently went into orbit around the moon. In March, they’ll start to gather detailed data about the quirks of the moon’s gravity.

A pair of NASA spacecraft is getting set to orbit the moon this weekend, a move that will kick off the probes' effort to study Earth's nearest neighbor from crust to core. [More]

NASA has lost or misplaced more than 500 of the moon rocks its Apollo astronauts collected and brought back to Earth, according to a new agency report.

Oxygen has been thought to be a benefit to good health ever since Jules Verne envisioned the concept in his 1870 book, Around the Moon, in which the science fiction writer described rooms full of oxygen where those with weakened immune systems could go to be rejuvenated. It took more ...

With the return of the brilliant planet Venus to our evening sky, I'm reminded of an amusing anecdote related by a good friend of mine, George Lovi, a well-known astronomy lecturer and author who passed away in 1993. One night, while running a public night at the Brooklyn College Observatory in New York, the telescope was pointed right at Venus, which was displaying a delicate crescent shape at the time. Yet, one student gazing through the telescope eyepiece stubbornly insisted that he was really looking at the moon.