THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON?

by Dee Finney

4-6-2001
(Updated 2-9-04)

(Updated 9-3-06Smart 1 lands on the moon
Updated 9-23-06 - See Ukert Triangle

Updated 4-18-14 - See LADEE

"We’ve been to the Moon, which is a world with a land area the size of Africa. But we’ve only visited six spots, and the farthest we’ve roamed was maybe 3 or 4 miles (5 or 6 kilometers),"

red moon 4-15-14

LUNAR ECLIPSE APRIL 15, 2014

 
Subject: [Paranormal_Research] World's biggest telescope to prove Americans really walked on Moon

I wonder if they recently sent a prop to the moon so they can probe they really were there, in the Hollywood studio, "oh" I mean on the moon:)

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World's biggest telescope to prove Americans really walked on Moon
 
World's biggest telescope to prove Americans really walked on Moon
By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 24/11/2002)

Conspiracy theorists, you have a problem. In an effort to silence claims that the Apollo Moon landings were faked, European scientists are to use the world's newest and largest telescope to see whether remains of the spacecraft are still on the lunar surface.

For years, doubters have claimed that Nasa, the US space agency, spent billions of dollars faking the landings to convince the world that it had beaten the Soviet Union to the Moon. A host of supposed evidence has been put forward, ranging from the absence of stars on any photographs taken by the astronauts to the fact that the Stars and Stripes they planted seemed to flutter in a vacuum.

Earlier this month, Nasa tried to put an end to the controversy by commissioning a definitive account of the evidence for the landings. Days later, it dropped the idea after criticism that it was wasting money by taking on the lunatic fringe: naturally, this only boosted claims that the space agency was trying to hide something.

The row even boiled over into personal conflict in September when police in Beverly Hills were called in to investigate claims that Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin - the second man on the Moon - punched a conspiracy theorist who accused him of lying about the landings.

Now astronomers hope to kill off the conspiracy theory once and for all by using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) - by far the most powerful telescope in the world - to spot the Apollo lunar landers.

Operated by European astronomers in the Chilean Andes, the VLT consists of four mirrors 27ft across linked by optical fibres. It can see a single human hair at a distance of 10 miles.

Trained on the Moon, such astonishing resolution should enable it to see the base of one or more of the six lunar modules which Nasa insists landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. Any images of the modules would be the first not to have been taken from space by Nasa.

Dr Richard West, an astronomer at the VLT, confirmed that his team was aiming to achieve "a high-resolution image of one of the Apollo landing sites".

The first attempt to spot the spacecraft will be made using only one of the VLT's four telescope mirrors, which are fitted with special "adaptive optics" to cancel the distorting effect of the Earth's atmosphere. A trial run of the equipment this summer produced the sharpest image of the Moon taken from the Earth, showing details 400ft across from a distance of 238,000 miles.

The VLT team hopes to improve on this, with the aim of detecting clear evidence for the presence of the landers. The base of the lunar modules measured about 10ft across, but would cast a much longer shadow under ideal conditions.

Dr West said that the challenge pushed the optical abilities of one VLT mirror to its limits: if this attempt failed, the team planned to use the power of all four mirrors. "They would most probably be sufficiently sharp to show something at the sites," he said.

Dr West insisted, however, that the decision to examine the landing sites was not driven by the conspiracy theory. "We do not question the reality of the landings," he said. "It is more for instrument-testing purposes."


Supporters of the conspiracy theory welcomed the news that astronomers are to photograph the landing sites. Marcus Allen, UK publisher of Nexus magazine and a long-time advocate of the theory, said: "I would be the first to accept what they find as powerful evidence that something was placed on the Moon by man."

He added, however, that photographs of the lander would not prove that America put men on the Moon. "Getting to the Moon really isn't much of a problem - the Russians did that in 1959," said Mr Allen. "The big problem is getting people there."

According to Mr Allen, Nasa was forced to send robots to the Moon and faked the manned missions because radiation levels in space were lethal to humans. "We know that no lead shielding was carried on Apollo, so how were 27 astronauts able to survive a journey of several days to and from the Moon?"

Dr Duncan Steel, a space scientist at Salford University, said that the supposed radiation hazard is a myth spread by conspiracy theorists.

Dr Robert Massey, an astronomer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, said that the conspiracy theorists are unlikely to be deterred by photographic evidence. "Even if the VLT does see something, I suspect it won't silence them. In science we can never totally prove anything - but we can prove things beyond reasonable doubt."

ROYAL OBSERVATORY GREENWICH

http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/11/24/nmoon24.xml

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Enlarged photo of 7,000 ft high structure centered in the basin of Tycho
Crater on our Moon.  Looking down on it from 30 miles above, it looks
like a woven birdnest, or bldg with ramps surrounding its girth.

4-6-2001 - I've been almost obsessed by question as to whether we've been to the moon. I already did a page on Apollo 11 as that is the big question ... Did we really go to the moon?  So, I've been meditating on the question, reading books about it, written by people who say emphatically, 'YES!'. 

This is not the first time I've been involved with the astronauts, not that I've met any of them personally, but. I've dreamed of them before. I've been emotionally involved with them, particularly Apollo 1 and the Challenger explosion.  I was right there at my television set when this all happened. It had a great impact on me, and still does.  

I've received e-mails from people who've worked on the Apollo program. I could not just sit around and let this thought die ... that we spent all those millions of dollars ... and then faked going to moon just to win the cold war with Russia.  No! This is too big a program to mess with that, even though there are other questions remaining which are discussed endlessly by researchers.  What did we find when we went to the moon? That's the question I need to have answered.  That's the answer I'm going to get ... one way or another.

4-6-01 - I went to sleep begging spirit to tell me who or what was on the back side of the moon. The first part of the dream was quite lucid, then I slipped into a dream.

DREAM - I was flying through space with someone who was on my left. We came down towards what looked like a big dome-shaped pod on the ground or that was hovering in the air. It was too dark to tell. It's shape was something like a white watermelon but a little flattened on the bottom. It looked like it was white at first, but then it seemed I could see through the top and was told to me was a school. None of the rooms were the same size now, though they used to be in the beginning. 

This was a school for kids who really wanted to be here.  Twice as many kids were trying to get into the school than there was room for.  You had to take tests to get into it, and tests to stay in it.  Once you were in the school, and you tested well, you could have a larger room to stay in.  The new kids got the small rooms.  If you didn't pass your tests, you had to leave, so the competition was fierce to stay in this school.  (In a later meditation, a man's voice told me that kids had to be 13 before they could qualify)

I didn't get to meet any of the kids, but I was taken to the kitchen, in which huge pots of food were cooked. I don't know if these women were the mothers of the kids or volunteers like myself, but there were massive amounts of dishes to wash from feeding the kids.  There was no lack of food, and no end to the dishes either.

The kitchen had more than one sink, some regular sinks, some deep sinks to wash the piles of plates, and kettles in which I volunteered to wash after I did the smaller pieces of china.  The water didn't seem to be clear as it came from the faucet, rather more whitish. That could have been because of air in the water, or something else in the water, I don't know.  I was too busy working to question about that.  There were 4 or 5 other women working with me in the kitchen, none of whom I knew.

Before I came home, I was in a car with someone else who was driving. There seemed to be some kind of competition for space on the road as well. A dark blue car which was next to us at first, insisted he had to be in front of us at any cost, and he didn't care who else got hurt in the process. Finally, the cars up ahead had to stop for a red light and we couldn't stop in time, and ahead of us I could see a 5 or 6 car pileup and we crunched into the last car in front of us though I don't think anyone hit us from behind.  But there was a guy up front, whose entire car came apart.  He was delivering mussels from the seashore to restaurants.  The drivers were all sorry for him, because his entire catch of mussels was all over the street. 

I woke up and can't get that song out of my head, 'Singing cockles, and mussels, alive, alive O'.

COCKLES AND MUSSELS

4-7-2001 - I meditated on the topic of the dark side of the moon. What I saw resembled a helicopter and it was labeled 'Snoopy'!  At the time I didn't know what that meant. 

Then I went on the internet and read about Apollo 10: 

Apollo 10 was a dress rehearsal for a lunar landing mission and was conducted in lunar orbit, but it excluded the actual landing. Launched on May 18, 1969, the spacecraft Charlie Brown (CSM) and Snoopy (LM) spent over two days and 31 revolutions in lunar orbit. The crew of Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, and Eugene Andrew Cernan conducted all propulsive maneuvers required for a lunar landing mission. During lunar orbit, Stafford and Cernan descended in the LM to less than 10 miles of the lunar surface before completing the first lunar orbit rendezvous with the CSM. This eight-day mission was recovered in the Pacific Ocean and was completed less than two months prior to the planned launch of the first lunar landing mission. 

However, Apollo 8, with three astronauts, Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., and William A. Anders, aboard, made man's first moon orbit, at an altitude of about 60 miles above its surface, the first time the hidden face of the moon had ever been seen by man himself. This first moon mission lasted from December 21-27, 1968.

Because Walter Shirra aboard Mercury 8, was the first of the astronauts to use the code name 'Santa Claus' to indicate the presence of flying saucers next to space capsules, when James Lovell, Jr. on board Apollo 8 command module came out from behind the dark side of the moon and said for everyone to hear, "We have been informed that Santa Claus does exist!", many people sensed a hidden meaning in those words that were not difficult to decipher. 

The Gemini flights prior to the Apollo program apparently were the first to photograph unidentified flying objects. James McDivitt, on Mercury 4, Frank Borman and James Lovell on Gemini 7, and James Lovell and Edwin Aldrin in Gemini 12 all took photographs of UFOs. 

Apollo 8 had a similar experience, and so did Apollo 10, both during the orbit around the moon and on the homeward flight. 

Mission Objective:

Demonstrate crew/space vehicle/mission support facilities during manned Saturn V/CSM mission. Demonstrate translunar injection, CSM navigation, communications, and midcourse corrections. Assess CSM consumables and passive thermal control. Demonstrate CSM performance in cislunar and lunar orbit environment. Demonstrate communications and tracking at lunar distances. Return high-resolution photographs of proposed Apollo landing sites and locations of scientific interest. All mission objectives were achieved.
Apogee, 190 kilometers; perigee 180 kilometers. Translunar injection at 02:56:05.5 MET; maximum distance from earth, 376,745 kilometers; lunar orbit insertion 69:08:20 MET; lunar orbit 312km by 111km; transearth injection, 89:19:17 MET.
In lunar orbit 20 hours, with 10 orbits. First manned lunar orbital mission. Support facilities tested. Photographs taken of Earth and Moon. Live TV broadcasts
More info on Apollo 8

Edwin Aldrin took photographs of two UFOs hovering overhead as Armstrong was heading down the ladder to set foot on the moon. The magazine Modern People published these pictures in 1975 without divulging who their source was. They hinted it was from the Japanese. 

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Space Research Reveals The Probability of a Lunar Gravity Variable up to 64% Of the Earth's Gravity, and NOT the 16% Previously Theorized

How this works: Prior to going into space, scientists estimated that the neutral gravity point - the location between the earth and moon, where the moon's and the earth's gravitational pull is zero or neutral - was approximately 23,900 miles above the lunar surface. Based on this estimate, the theory of 1/6 lunar gravity
was rationalized. However, this is not  accurate because the actual neutral point is located approximately 
43,495 from the moon.  Using the actual distance equates to a much higher lunar gravity. 

ANOMALIES SEEN ON THE MOON FROM EARTH

Excerpts from NASA's own publication (N6624927), released in 1966, chronologically lists recorded lunar observations and activities: 

1870 Purplish haze illuminating lunar floor 
1881 Whole region between Aristarchus and Herodotus appeared in strong violet light 
1907 Part of Crater Plato glowing with light 
1912 Small red glowing area on shadow side of the moon 
1944 Mist on floor of crater Schickard 
1955 White flashes near Posidonius 
1958 Mt. Piton enveloped in cloud-like mist 
1959 Crater Littrow obliterated by hovering cloud

From 1871 to 1896, 40 members of England's Royal Astronomical Society reported observing various geometrical shaped light patterns on the moon. In the following years, came confirmed sightings of a moving 50 wide opaque object, great white domes and long bridge like structures on the Plane of Mare Crisium. In 1958 , both US and Soviet scientists collectively observed a huge glowing oval object upon the lunar surface. Washington Daily News 1968 

Commander Young, Apollo 10, "Boy, I never saw anything like that, it seems the colors are different on the backside; they seem lighter, primarily because of the miara. They're shades of white, black and brown."

Commander Cernan, Apollo 10 "The centers of some of the craters as if they may be radioactive. They just glow in the very dim light."

Astronaut Borman, "It looks like clouds down there."

NASA's Dr. John Freeman reported that instruments left on the moon by Apollo 12 and 14 detected lunar water geysers lasting 14 hours. Water clouds clouds erupted through the cracks on the lunar surface, and the cloud spread to cover an area of more than 10 square miles. "The moon is not a completely dead and inactive place, it is still actively quaking and still actively venting gas." 1971

Lighting Constraints on Lunar Surface Operations, Dean Eppler, NASA Technical Memorandum 4271, May 1991.

Eppler, with the Lunar & Mars Exploration Program Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center, bases his study of lunar lighting conditions on Apollo data and discussions with astronaut John Young, who orbited the moon on Apollo 10 (May 1969) and landed at Descartes on Apollo 16 (April 1972). The day-night cycle at most lunar locations lasts 28 terrestrial days, with sunrise on day one, noon on day seven, sunset on day 14, and midnight on day 21.

For the central regions of the hemisphere facing Earth (the nearside), earthlight provides sufficient light during lunar night to permit moonwalks (76 times the light of the full moon on Earth), though helmet lights are needed for close work and movement through shadows. 

On the nearside's eastern limb the crescent Earth is too slim for about 60 hours after sunset to provide more than about four times the light of the full moon, so supplemental artificial lighting is required for moonwalks. On the western limb the situation is reversed - the 60 hours before sunrise are dim.

There are few shadows and the landscape is very bright when the Sun is within 20 degrees of vertical, making it difficult to distinguish rocks and judge slopes. Eppler states that "difficulty in distinguishing surface topography may require some restrictions in EVA surface operations during this time, such as operations only in familiar terrain, or operation of rovers only along known tracks that are marked." The Sun is generally within 20 degrees of vertical for about four days centered on lunar noon.

After sunset all locations on the hemisphere facing away from Earth (the farside) are dark because Earth is not visible, so moonwalkers operating there at night require artificial lighting.

 

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I'm not writing this page to prove that extraterrestrials exist.  If you need proof of that, you can look elsewhere, this paper is presenting facts as I know them to be true.  This paper will tell it like it is, you can believe it or not. That is up to the reader. I KNOW it's true. I've seen UFOs, and I've seen ETs. I KNOW there are multiple type of ETs as I've seen them for myself.  Scientific Proof?  It doesn't exist except in government files and warehouses.  However, you can see the evidence of the scientific proof all around you these days.  You think we went from bicycle parts and balsa wood wings to stealth bombers in less than 60 years?  Not!  You think we went from vacuum tube radios to solid state components overnight in the 60's?  Not!. You think we went from clunky old gear computers as large as a house to do math to computers that fit in the palm of your hand all by ourselves in just 20 years? Not! You think we developed lasers for everything from micro-surgery to weapons that take down airplanes in less than 20 years?  Not!  I don't expect anyone to take my word for it. You can take the facts or leave them. I really don't care.  These are the facts. 

The original members of the Majestic12 are as follows:

Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter
Dr. Vanevar Bush
Secretary James V. Forrestal*
General Nathan P. Twinning
General Hoyt S. Vandenberg
Dr. Detlev Bronk
Dr. Jerome Hunsaker
Mr. Sidney W. Souere
Mr. Gordon Gray
Dr. Donald Mensel
General Robert M. Montague 
Dr. Lloyd V. Bernker


Secretary of Defense Forrestal Objects to Alien Secrecy

Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal began to object to the secrecy since he was a very idealistic and religious man who believed that the public should be told. President Truman asked him to resign his position for divulging to leaders of the opposition party and to leaders of the Congress the alien problem. He expressed his fears to many other people and rightfully believed that he was being watched. His actions were interpreted by those who were ignorant of the facts as paranoia. Forrestal later was said to have suffered a mental breakdown and was admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital. In fact it was feared that Forrestal would begin to talk again and he had to be isolated and discredited. Sometime in the early morning of May 22, 1949 agents of the CIA tied a sheet around his neck, fastened the other end to a fixture in his room and threw James Forrestal out the window. The sheet tore and he plummeted to his death becoming one of the first victims of a cover-up.

As a permanent replacement Walter B. Smith was appointed to Forrestal's job.

 

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I don't see any written evidence that we in the U.S. were being 'attacked' by UFOs in the 40's, but I do see evidence that we were afraid of them.  Later evidence shows that Germany had knowledge of UFOs way before we did in the U.S.  Germany was way ahead of the U.S. in shooting down UFOs and using the technology to try to win WWII.  

I have yet to see any evidence of the reason why so many UFOs were crashing. It seems rather iffy to think that UFOs flew to earth and then couldn't handle flying in the air for whatever reason.  Films/videos show too much evidence that they have excellent control over their vehicles, and their vehicles weren't of the caliber of our first meager efforts to fly in planes made of  bicycle parts and balsa wood..  Their vehicles were made of such technology that we couldn't even figure out what they were made of, nor how they were flown. The evidence shows that they were caught in lightening storms and were shot down by the military in Germany and the U.S.

The Apollo program was instituted because of the fear that a military base was going to be established on the far side of the moon and whoever got there first, whether human (Russia) or the extraterrestrials, who we were in dire fear of, would be in control of earth.  No matter what the cost, either in dollars or lives, the U.S. had to win that race to the dark side of the moon.

By then, Germany had lost WWII and we were now on even footing with Russia as far as brains go. At the end of WWII, Russia got half of the brains out of Germany, and the U.S. got the other half.  Perhaps knowing what we know now, we should have demanded all the brains, but we didn't. Through what we called Operation Paperclip, we got some characters (Nazi's if you will) who were responsible for killing millions of people. That was the level of our desperation. 

The U.S. Military rounded up Nazi scientists and brought them to America. It had originally intended merely to debrief them and send them back to Germany. But when it realized the extent of the scientists knowledge and expertise, the War Department decided it would be a waste to send the scientists home. Following the discovery of flying discs (foo fighters), particle/laser beam weaponry in German military bases, the War Department decided that NASA and the CIA must control this technology, and the Nazi engineers that had worked on this technology.

There was only one problem: it was illegal. U.S. law explicitly prohibited Nazi officials from immigrating to America--and as many as three-quarters of the scientists in question had been committed Nazis. Military Intelligence "cleansed" the files of Nazi references. By 1955, more than 760 German scientists had been granted citizenship in the U.S. and given prominent positions in the American scientific community. Many had been longtime members of the Nazi party and the Gestapo, had conducted experiments on humans at concentration camps, had used slave labor, and had comitted other war crimes.

Here are some more notable ones:

ARTHUR RUDOLPH;
During the war, Rudolph was operations director of the Mittelwerk factory at the Dora-Nordhausen concentration camps, where 20,000 workers died from beatings, hangings, and starvation. Rudolph had been a member of the Nazi party since 1931; a 1945 military file on him said simply: "100% Nazi, dangerous type, security threat..!! Suggest internment."

WERNHER VON BRAUN;
From 1937 to 1945, von Braun was the technical director of the Peenemunde rocket research center, where the V-2 rocket --which devasted England--was developed. As noted previously, his dossier was rewritten so he didn't appear to have been an enthusiastic Nazi.

Von Braun worked on guided missles for the U.S. Army and was later director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. He became a celebrity in the 1950s and early 1960s, as one of Walt Disney's experts on the "World of Tomorrow." In 1970, he became NASA's associate administrator.

KURT BLOME;
A high-ranking Nazi scientist, Blome told U.S. military interrogators in 1945 that he had been ordered 1943 to experiment with plague vaccines on concentration camp prisoners. He was tried at Nuremberg in 1947 on charges of practicing euthanasia (extermination of sick prisoners), and conducting experiments on humans. Although acquitted, his earlier admissions were well known, and it was generally accepted that he had indeed participated in the gruesome experiments.  Two months after his Nuremberg acquittal, Blome was interviewed at Camp David, Maryland, about biological warfare. In 1951, he was hired by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps to work on chemical warfare. His file neglected to mention Nuremberg.

MAJOR GENERAL WALTER SCHREIBER;
The US military tribunal at Nuremberg heard evidence that "Schreiber had assigned doctors to experiment on concentration camp prisoners and had made funds available for such experimentation." The assistant prosecutor said the evidence would have convicted Schreiber if the Soviets, who held him from 1945 to 1948, had made him available for trial. Again, Schreiber's Paperclip file made no mention of this evidence; the project found work for him at the Air Force School of Medicine at Randolph Field in Texas. When columnist Drew Pearson publicized the Nuremberg evidence in 1952, the negative publicity led the JIOA, says Hunt, to arrange "a visa and a job for Schreiber in Argentina, where his daughter was living." On May 22, 1952, he was flown to Buenos Aires.

HERMANN BECKER-FREYSING and SIEGFRIED RUFF;
These two, along with Blome, were amoung the 23 defendants in the Nuremberg War Trials "Medical Case." Becker-Freysing was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for conducting experiments on Dachau inamtes, such as starving them, then force-feeding them seawater that had been chemically altered to make it drinkable. Ruff was acquitted (in a close decision) on charges that he had killed as many as 80 Dachau inmates in a low-pressure chamber designed to simulate altitudes in excess of 60,000 feet. Before their trial, Becker-Freysing and Ruff were paid by the Army Air Force to write reports about their grotesque experiments.

GENERAL REINHARD GEHLEN;
It was five years after the end of WW2 but one of Hitler's chief intelligence officers was still on the job. From a walled-in compound in Bavaria, General Reinhard Gehlen oversaw a vast network of intelligence agents spying on Russia. His top aides were Nazi zealots who had committed some of the most notorious crimes of the war. Gehlen and his SS united were hired, and swiftly became agents of the CIA when they revealed their massive records on the Soviet Union to the US.  Gehlen derived much of his information from his role in one of the most terrible atrocities of the war: the torture, interrogation and murder by starvation of some four million Soviet prisoners. Prisoners who refused to cooperate were often tortured or summarily executed. May were executed even after they had given information, while others were simply left to starve to death. As a result, Gehlend and members of his organization maneuvered to make sure they were captured by advancing American troops rather than Russians, who would have executed them immediately. With the encouragement of the CIA, Gehlen Org (Licio Gelli) set up "rat lines" to get Nazi war criminals out of Europe so they wouldn't be prosecuted. By setting up transit camps and issuing phony passports, the Gehlen Org helped more than 5,000 Nazis leave Europe and relocate around the world, especially in South and Central America.

KLAUS BARBIE;
Known as the Nazi butcher of Lyons, France during World War 2, Barbie was part of the SS which was responsible for the and death of thousands of French people under the Germany occupation.

HEINRICH RUPP;
Some of Rupp's best work was done for the CIA, after he was imported in Operation Paperclip. Rupp has been convicted of bank fraud. He was an operative for the CIA and is deeply involved in the Savings and Loan scandals. A federal jury has indicated they believe testimony that Rupp, the late CIA Director William Casey - then Reagan's campaign manager, and Donald Gregg, now U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, flew with George Bush to Paris in 1980, during the election in which Bush was on the ticket with Ronald Reagan. The testimony states that three meetings were held on October 19 and 20 at the Hotel Florida and Hotel Crillion. The subject? According to the court testimony, the meetings were to sabotage President Jimmy Carter's reelection campaign by delaying the release of American hostages in Iran. The hostages were released on January 20, 1981, right after Reagan and Bush were sworn into office. Iran was promised return of its frozen assets in the United States and the foundation for the Iran- Contra deal was set into motion.

LICIO GELLI;
Head of a 2400 member secret Masonic Lodge, P2, a neo-fascist organization, in Italy that catered to only the elite, Gelli had high connections in the Vatican, even though he was not a Catholic. P2's membership is totally secret and not even available to its Mother Lodge in England. Gelli was responsible for providing Argentina with the Exocet missile. He was a double agent for the CIA and the KGB. He assisted many former Nazi high officials in their escape from Europe to Central America. He had close ties with the Italian Mafia. Gelli was a close associate of Benito Mussolini. He was also closely affiliated with Roberto Calvi, head of the scandal-ridden Vatican Bank. Calvi was murdered. Gelli's secret lodge consisted of extremely important people, including armed forces commanders, secret service chiefs, head of Italy's financial police, 30 generals, eight admirals, newspaper editors, television and top business executives and key bankers - including Calvi. Licio Gelli and others in P2 were behind the assassination of Pope John Paul 1. While on one hand, the U.S. participated in the war crime tribunals of key Nazi officials and maintained an alliance with the Communist Soviet Union, secretly, the U.S. was preparing for the cold war and needed the help of Nazis in the eventual struggle the U.S. would have with the Soviet Union. Gelli's agreement with U.S. intelligence to spy on the Communists after the war was instrumental in saving his life. He was responsible for the murder and torture of hundreds of Yugoslavian partisans.

Project Paperclip was stopped in 1957, when West Germany protested to the U.S. that these efforts had stripped it of "scientific skills." There was no comment about supporting Nazis. Paperclip may have ended in 1957, but as you can see from Licio Gelli and his international dealings with the CIA in Italy/P2, and Heinrich Rupp with his involvement in October Surprise, the ramifications of Paperclip are world-wide. The Nazis became employed CIA agents, engaging in clandestine work with the likes of George Bush, the CIA, Henry Kissenger, and the Masonic P2 lodge. This is but one of the results of Operation Paperclip. Another umbrella project that was spawned from Paperclip was MK-ULTRA.

So, there are a few choice personnel who helped the U.S. to go to the moon in the Apollo project. If you think by now that we were just kidding around, you need to re-read the above until you realize that we meant business.  We were going to win the cold war, get control of the world whether against the Russians and/or the extraterrestrials or both.  To be honest ... it was more against the extraterrestrials than the Russians, but the Russians provided the excuse the U.S. needed so that we didn't have to admit that Roswell was about a real crashed UFO.  That kind of knowledge was kept from the Americans who were deemed to be too emotional and panicky, and would get out of control to know that the whole history they  believed in was a lie. And that includes their religious history. 

Wernher Von Braun was one of the world's first and foremost rocket engineers and a leading authority on space travel. His will to expand man's knowledge through the exploration of space led to the development of the Explorer satellites, the Jupiter and Jupiter-C rockets, Pershing, the Redstone rocket, Saturn rockets, and Skylab, the world's first space station. Additionally, his determination to "go where no man has gone before" led to mankind setting foot on the moon.

Living in Huntsville, Alabama from 1950 to 1970, Dr. von Braun first directed the technical development of the U.S. Army's ballistic missile program at Redstone Arsenal, and later served as Director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. When he transferred to Washington, D.C., he left Huntsville with a rich legacy: the research institutions at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the Alabama Space and Rocket Center, and the Von Braun Civic Center.

He enrolled at the Berlin Institute of Technology in 1930. In 1932, at the age of 20, he received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, and was offered a grant to conduct and develop scientific investigations on liquid-fueled rocket engines. Two years later, Wernher received his PhD in physics from the University of Berlin.

During the 30's the German military was searching for a weapon which would not violate the Versailles Treaty of World War I, and at the same time defend Germany. By 1934 von Braun and Walter Dornberger had a team of 80 engineers building rockets in Kummersdorf, about 60 miles south of Berlin. Von Braun's natural talents as a leader shone, as well as his ability to assimilate great quantities of data while keeping in mind the big picture. With the successful launch of two rockets, Max and Moritz, in 1934, von Braun's proposal to work on a jet-assisted take-off device for heavy bombers and all-rocket fighters was granted. However, Kummersdorf was too small for the task, so a new facility had to be built.

By now Hitler had taken over Germany and Herman Goering ruled the Luftwaffe. Dornberger held a public test of the A-2 which was greatly successful. Funding continued to flow to von Braun's team, developing the A-3 and finally the A-4. 

1934 - First treaty with Greys aboard U.S. naval ship off Balboa. Hitler evokes "Law for Removing the Distress of People and Nation"; which overnight, eliminates power of Political Parties, State Institutions and Trade Unions while also
extinguishing the personal liberty of every citizen of the Reich. 

1938 - Evidence of German recovery of downed Alien craft. Construction of advanced Luftwaffe aircraft begins at underground research facilities: Reineckendorf, Kummeradorf and Thuringia. 

U.S. government backs "War Of The Worlds" broadcast in order to gauge public reaction to Alien invasion scenario. 

Hitler invades Austria and claims Spear of Longinus. Adolph Hitler views Spear of Longinus; believed to be the same spear
that pierced the crucified Christ's side, which he had viewed for first time at Hofburg treasure house in 1909. 

1939 - World War 2 begins.  Nazi Alien technology compromised by necessity for jet propulsion,
which keeps gravitational R&D effort in labs for duration of war. 

1941 - German underground excavation begins in Antarctica. 

In 1943 Hitler decided to use the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon," and the group found themselves developing the A-4 to rain explosives on London. Fourteen months after Hitler ordered it into production, the first combat A-4, now called the V-2, was launched toward western Europe on September 7, 1944. When the first V-2 hit London von Braun remarked to his colleagues, "The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet."

The SS and the Gestapo arrested von Braun for crimes against the state because he persisted in talking about building rockets which would go into orbit around the Earth and perhaps go to the Moon. His crime was indulging in frivolous dreams when he should have been concentrating on building bigger rocket bombs for the Nazi war machine. Dornberger convinced the SS and the Gestapo to release von Braun because without him there would be no V-2 and Hitler would have them all shot. 

On arriving back at Peenemunde, von Braun immediately assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Most of the scientists were frightened of the Russians, they felt the French would treat them like slaves, and the British did not have enough money to afford a rocket program. That left the Americans. After stealing a train with forged papers, von Braun led 500 people through war-torn Germany to surrender to the Americans. The SS were issued orders to kill the German engineers, who hid their notes in a mine shaft and evaded their own army while searching for the Americans. Finally, the team found an American private and surrendered to him. Realizing the importance of these engineers, the Americans immediately went to Peenemunde and Nordhausen and captured all of the remaining V-2's and V-2 parts, then destroyed both places with explosives. The Americans brought over 300 train car loads of spare V-2 parts to the United States. Much of von Braun's production team was captured by the Russians.

On June 20, 1945, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull approved the transfer of von Braun's German rocket specialists. This transfer was known as Operation Paperclip because, of the large number of Germans stationed at Army Ordnance, the paperwork of those selected to come to the United States were indicated by paperclips.

They arrived in the United States at New Castle Army Air Base, just south of Wilmington, DE. Afterwards, they were flown to Boston, and then taken by boat to an Army Intelligence Service post at Fort Strong in Boston Harbor. Later, with the exception of von Braun, the men were transferred to Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland to sort out the Peenemunde documents. Those documents would enable the scientists to continue their rocketry experiments where they had left off.

Finally, von Braun and the 126 Peenemunders were transferred to their new home at Fort Bliss, Texas,  a large Army installation just north of El Paso, under the command of Major James P. Hamill. They found themselves in a strange situation as they began their new lives in America. Because they could not leave Fort Bliss without a military escort, they sometimes referred to themselves as "PoPs", Prisoners of Peace.

While at Fort Bliss, they were tasked to train military, industrial, and university personnel in the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles and to help refurbish, assemble, and launch a number of V-2's that had been shipped from Germany to the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. Further, they were to study the future potential of rockets for military and research applications.

A 1947 photo of the German team at Fort Bliss, Texas. Dr. von Braun, inset, is in the front row, seventh from right. Operation Paperclip came to a fitting conclusion with the naturalization of the first group of more than 50 German scientists and technicians on November 11, 1954, in Birmingham, Alabama.

Renato Vesco

This Italian aeronautical technician claimed modern "flying saucers" are the Anglo-Canadian development of very advanced German projects, namely the circular unmanned crafts "Feuerball" and "Kugelblitz". Both of them were in the prototype stage and maybe they were even flown-tested just at the end of the war. Vesco and his impressive documentation have been often used by many later authors in order to try to substantiate their empty claims.

The first book of Renato Vesco was published in 1968, but the original manuscript was ready since 1956. Because of job engagements he stopped its publication and went on collecting more material. So he had enough material to write three large books.

The first one had a Spanish edition and two in US (1971, Grove and 1974, Zebra), soon becoming a reference work for most but all the authors and researchers writing about the highly controversial subject of German "flying saucers". In 1994, the book was nearly fully reprinted within a book edited by D.Childress "Man-Made UFOs 1944-1994".


Here is the second Vesco book.

The author was born in Arona in 1924. He died in November 1999 in Genoa, the town where he had been living for many years. Since some years he was writing a new manuscript to publish a fourth "ultimate" book. The huge archive of Vesco has been retrieved safely and now preserved from destruction. The inventory should allow to find and evaluate some of the original sources used by the author.

The third book by Renato Vesco is a thick 553-page volume loaded with a real wealth of info. On the ground of some late war German projects (including the Norvegian-based development of the original Belluzzo's blueprints and the German atom bomb project) and post-war British breakthroughs in aeronautics and astronautics, he pointed out a fascinating but hard-to-believe scenario.

British spaceships had been built after blueprints and technology captured in Germany and flown since 1947. In 1951 they landed on the Moon and in 1954 they reached Mars. Though these claims look quite unlikely and unsubstantiated, most of the evidence and sources offered by Vesco lead to some interesting considerations about German secret technology and some late '40s and '50s UFO sightings.


Following the Canadian AVRO CAR project rumours, many magazines of the early '50s published news about soon-to-come man-made "flying saucers".  Vesco found in these rumours more background for his theory.

Other sketches of wanna-be man-made flying saucers. Besides the official AVRO project, there were tens of inventors with plans of fantastic flying machines, often related to revolutionary discoveries with anti-gravity.

The concept of the "man-made flying saucer" was really exciting and even welcome in an era of fast technological advancements. The wonders of science and technology of the atomic age could well explain even a dream-machine like the flying saucer.

The well-known aviation magazine "Flying" devoted some space to the idea of a circular aircraft as the ultimate air weapon.

1945 - World War 2 ends with geographic defeat of Axis powers and panic exodus of high proportion of remaining Jews from continent.  A crew-carrying the "Kugelblitz" flies from Thuringia. Kugelblitz engines were extracted and ship destroyed by SS. Scientists, plans and engines were shipped to Antarctica, where Fourth Reich White Wolves regroup. 

There is some evidence to show that the 'flying saucers' seen by Kenneth Arnold over Mt. Rainier in Washington State were of 'German' origin, and not flown by aliens. 

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"THE RESORT"

THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION

RUSSIAN LAW ON SPACE

Starting with Sputnik I

Even before the first announced Soviet spaceman blasted off in 1961, rumors reached the West about the existence of secret graves of anonymous dead cosmonauts, killed on unannounced missions. Moscow vigorously denied them all, to no effect. Lists of dozens of dead cosmonauts circulated in the Western press for many years. The Soviets denounced the originators of such material as "enemies."  (Dead and Missing Cosmonauts)

From: http://www.think-aboutit.com/Underground/under_the_ground.htm

The material here has been reported by real people. The government, of course, would deny it. If you do believe that the concepts represented here may be possible, then you may learn a great deal in the following lines of text.

If you are a person who believes that this information is not possible because the government has not agreed to it, or because the government disagrees with it, then this material is not intended for you. It is intended for those who already know that the government has much to lose by admitting any of this information, or at least they feel that they have something to lose. So don't expect government confirmation of this, expect them to disagree totally with everything here. It's to their advantage to disagree, and keep trying to maintain their secrecy.

U.S. CITIZENRY TOTALLY EXPENDABLE In the book *Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security* General George Keegan tells of the Russian civil defense shelters. He found that every factory in Russia had a shelter. The city of Moscow had 75 underground command post/shelters, each one the size of the Pentagon. Yes, that's what he said. They were each covered with 100 feet of reinforced concrete and four hundred feet of dirt. He said they were each 2 or 3 times as strong as Hoover Dam.

There are currently 96 Government (mostly FEMA) underground bases, and 129 Deep Underground military bases in the U.S.A. (See above link for map) Listed are underground bases in other countries, as well.  (If you are squeamish, you might not want to read that page) I'd like to know where is my pass to get in one. Where is your pass?  If you had 20 minutes warning that hydrogen bombs were about to be dropped all across America, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?  I know what many of you will say. "I don't worry about it, whatever is God's will, will be." That type of brainwashing has gotten us into this mess. God's will, is for us to have free will. If you want to step in front of a railroad train, God will let you. He will not stop you! And if you do nothing about the mess you/we are in, God will let you die! If the Russians want to attack this country, or if we want to attack them, God will allow it - He allows free will to all sides!

Excerpted from "The Day After Roswell" by Col. Philip J. Corso (Ret.)  (Unfortunately, also now deceased)

From pg. 315 - "General Trudeau also shared with me some intelligence reports that described antimissile missile tests the Soviets had conducted with very powerful tracking radar. We'd known about their radars because I'd seen them work during exercises in Germany when each side would test the other's responses over the East German border. Their radars and their ability to lock onto aircraft was just as good as ours. But what the general showed me were reports that described the Soviets firing intercept missiles at incoming ICBM vehicles and exploding the intercept warheads so as to knock out the navigational systems on the aggressor missiles. One of those test intercepts had been conducted successfully right through an atomic cloud on one of the Soviet missile test ranges in Asia. this was especially disturbing because anyone who knows anything about the nature of an atomic cloud knows that the electromagnetic pulse immediately knocks out any form of electronics. That's also how we knew what the signatures were of the alien UFOs that buzzed our ships and bases.  So much of our nonhardened power was knocked out by the pulse that we knew an electromagnetic wave had hit us. So, if the Soviets could harden their antimissile missile guidance system to home in on a target through an electromagnetically charged atomic cloud, they were using a technology significantly more advanced than ours and it spelled trouble. "

Page 316 - "So if the Soviets have something that can take out missile warheads through an atomic cloud and are using devices that may have come from an alien technology, we have something to worry about," the general said. 

Included in the long list of secret bases is:

The Moon  

Map of Moon with Points located

Lunar Locator: Want to buy Property? I'm assuming this in tongue in cheek. 

Russian bases on the Near side of the Moon:

  • 1. 55 54' N, 51 00' E ...East of the Sea of Cold.
    2. 16 33' N, 48 51' E ...West of the Sea of Crises. - Photographs - Apollo 15
    3. 31 53' S, 73 09' E ...Southwest of the Sea of Fertilio.
    4. 72 26' S, 67 30' W ...Near the South Pole on the SW side.
    5. 50 53' S, 57 49' W ...Near Phocylides Crater in the SW quadrant
    6. 09 26' S, 66 52' W ...Southwest of the Ocean of Storms
    7. 01 23' S, 12 27' W ...Northeast of the Apollo 14 landing site.

Russian bases on the Far side of the Moon:

  • 1. 36 00' S, 147 00' E ...Jules Verne Crater. Contains large underground
    • lakes, plants, alien machinery, food storage, spacecraft hangers. Approximate 37,000 humans. Base is approximately the size of New York State.

    2. 13 36' S, 108 26' E ...Southwest of Pasture Crater.
    3. 51 03' N, 095 00' E ...Southwest of Compton crater.

Functions: Living spaces, mining, strategic bases, particle beam research.
Levels: Multiple
Tunnels to: Unknown

Mars  

Functions: Living facilities for German/Japanese base
Levels: Multiple
Tunnels to: Unknown

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two Russian scientists, Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov advanced an amazing theory in relation to the origin of the moon, in an article published in the Soviet journal Sputnik, in 1970.  In the article entitled, ‘Is the Moon the Creation of Alien Intelligence?’ they theorise that the moon is not a completely natural world but a planetoid that was hollowed out by the technology of intelligent beings who directed it through the cosmos and placed it in precise orbit around the earth.  In their extraordinary article the Soviet scientists wrote:
“Abandoning the traditional paths of ‘common sense’, we have plunged into what may at first seem to be unbridled and irresponsible fantasy.  But the more minutely we go into all the information gathered by man about the moon, the more we are convinced that there is not a single fact to rule out our supposition.  Not only that, but many things so far considered to be lunar enigmas are explainable in the light of this new hypothesis” (Marrs, p.10).

 

.

ALTERNATIVE THREE

Then along comes ALTERNATIVE THREE, which suggested that the world was going to be destroyed, and that if the elite wanted to save themselves and a few hand-picked members of the human race, they must establish self supporting colonies on the moon and Mars, and then come back to earth to repopulate after the EARTH CHANGES are completed and the world has settled down. Hence we have what were called BATCH ASSIGNMENTS, in which large groups of people were simply ABDUCTED, taken to special camps, had their personalities and will DESTROYED, and were made into robotics slaves to carry out the work of colony establishment. That there are reports of large groups of people that have simply vanished during the TIMELINE of Alternative Three should be of no concern, should it? 

Of course Alternative Three was declared a hoax, as were the Protocols. ALTERNATIVE THREE was  declared to be a hoax, but ALTERNATIVE TWO, the digging of huge underground cities and a tunnel complex has been accomplished. Numerous reports of huge underground cities and underground highways have been given by eyewitnesses. Yet it is all declared a hoax!! Have the space colonies been established? If so, that requires advanced technology and space vehicles capable of  high speed travel to be used as shuttle and transportation craft. Was Nazi technology used to establish ALTERNATIVE THREE? Are the numerous UFO sightings of "mother ships" actually ALTERNATIVE THREE VEHICLES? The Bible implies that ALTERNATIVE THREE IS AN ACTUAL REALITY, and points directly to America-Babylon as the chief instigator. It is also interesting that many of the moon mission photos that were given to the public as authentic have problems with "lighting" and the shadows don't fall correctly. The movie CAPRICORN ONE was about this very thing. Could it be that the general public was shown fake pictures because of activity on the moon would have been revealed? Or is "Alternative Three" more disinformation?

Dr. Peter Bater, a top intelligence operative in the CIA and NSA claimed we had colonies on the moon and Mars, and he said that YEARS AGO. He also claimed that the RICH MEN OF THE EARTH WERE BEHIND IT, especially ROCKEFELLER and ROTHCHILDS. He claimed that we had a WAR out there as well, called the WAR OF THE HARVEST MOON!! Bater is dead now, so no one knows. The ENIGMA continues!!!

Alternative Three

Alternative One - elimination of a huge portion of world population.
They are in the process of doing that.

Alternative Two - to build many underground bunkers, as large as small towns, to protect the government in seclusion until the surface population thinning was finished.
They have built over 200 such "underground cities". (Mt. Weather)

Alternative Three - to build a "transfer station" on the backside of the Moon, build an underground base on Mars and remove a certain limited "Noah's Ark" cross section of Earth's population, artists, scientists, engineers, writers, etc., to Mars as a survival colony in the event of "catastrophy" on Earth.
They started this project in 1961 and may have accomplished most of this as well.

By secret Executive Order of President Eisenhower, the Jason Scholars were ordered to study this scenario and make recommendations from their findings. The Jason Society CONFIRMED the finding of the scientists and made three recommendations called "Alternatives One, Two, and Three." 

"Alternative One" was to use nuclear devices to blast holes in the Stratosphere from which the heat and pollution could escape into space. Change the human cultures from that of exploitation into cultures of environmental protection. Of the three this was decided to be the least likely to succeed due to the inherent nature of man and the additional damage the Nuclear explosions would themselves create. 

"Alternative Two" was to build a a vast network of underground cities and tunnels in which a select representation of all cultures and occupations would survive and carry on the human race. The rest of humanity would be left to fend for themselves on the surface of the planet. 

"Alternative Three" was to exploit the alien and conventional technology in order for a select few to leave the earth and establish colonies in outer space. I am not able to either confirm or deny the existence of "Batch Consignments" of human slaves, which would be used for the manual labor in the effort as a part of the plan. The Moon, code named "Adam," would be the object of primary interest followed by the planet Mars, code named "Eve." 

During Eisenhower's first year in office, 1953, at least 10 more crashed discs were recovered along with 26 dead and 4 live aliens. Of the 10, 4 were found in Arizona, 2 in Texas, 1 in New Mexico, 1 in Louisiana, 1 in Montana, and 1 in South Africa. There were hundreds of sightings. Eisenhower knew that he had to wrestle and beat the alien problem. He knew that he could not do it by revealing the secret to the Congress. Early in 1953 the new President turned to his friend and fellow member of the Council on Foreign Relations Nelson Rockefeller for help with the alien problem. Eisenhower and Rockefeller began planning the secret structure of alien task supervision which was to become a reality within 1 year. The idea for MJ-12 was thus born. n 1953 Astronomers discovered large objects in space which were moving toward the Earth. It was first believed that they were asteroids. Later evidence proved that the objects could only be Spaceships. Project Sigma intercepted alien radio communications. When the objects reached the Earth they took up a very high orbit around the Equator. There were several huge ships, and their actual intent was unknown. Project Sigma, and a new project, Plato, through radio communications using the computer binary language, was able to arrange a landing that resulted in face to face contact with alien beings from another planet. Project Plato was tasked with establishing diplomatic relations with this race of space aliens. In the meantime a race of human looking aliens contacted the U.S. Government. This alien group warned us against the aliens that were orbiting the Equator and offered to help us with our spiritual development. They demanded that we dismantle and destroy our nuclear weapons as the major condition. They refused to exchange technology citing that we were spiritually unable to handle the technology which we then possessed. They believed that we would use any new technology to destroy each other. This race stated that we were on a path of self destruction and we must stop killing each other, stop polluting the Earth, stop raping the Earth's natural resources, and learn to live in harmony. These terms were met with extreme suspicion, especially the major condition of nuclear disarmament. It was believed that meeting that condition would leave us helpless in the face of an obvious alien threat. We also had nothing in history to help with the decision. Nuclear disarmament was not considered to be within the best interest of the United States. The overtures were rejected.

As a delaying action, All THREE ALTERNATIVES included birth control, sterilization, and the introduction of deadly microbes to control or slow the growth of the Earth's population. AIDS is only ONE result of these plans. There are others. It was decided, since the population must be reduced and controlled, that it would be in the best interest of the human race to rid ourselves of the undesirable elements of our society. The joint U.S. and Soviet leadership dismissed "Alternative One," but ordered work to begin on Alternative Two and Three virtually at the same time. 

In 1959, the Rand Corporation hosted a Deep Underground Construction Symposium. In the Symposium report, machines are pictured and described which could bore a tunnel 45 feet in diameter at the rate of five feet per hour. It also displays pictures of huge tunnels and underground vaults containing what appear to be complex facilities and possibly even cities. It appears that the previous five years of all-out underground construction had made significant progress by that time.

,

STRANGE THINGS ON THE MOON

NASA was originally established with a charter that encouraged full public access for all information received. However, a BROOKINGS INSTITUTE report that was written shortly after its inception warned that alien "artifacts" discovered by the space program may shatter the social balance, frighten "religious fanatics", and upset scientific and engineering establishments, and therefore such discoveries should be kept hidden from the public. In short, keep the masses in the playpen and don't let them 'see' what's going on 'out there', for they are not mature enough to handle the truth without going into a panic; The closest point of the lunar surface to earth -- and the exact center of the lunar disc as seen from earth -- is near the crater UKERT, which just so happens to contain a remarkable and seemingly perfect TRIANGLAR or TETRAHEDRON like design fit perfectly into the 'circle' of the crater. The Tetrahedron geometry is very similar to the mathematical layout of the 'Monuments' in the Cydonia region of Mars, which in turn is based on the exact mathematical and geometric formulas as the pyramids of GIZA in Egypt.

Slides of lunar photographs, some which were public domain and others which were previously suppressed from the public yet obtained through good fortune and ingenuity,. include multiple views of an area west of UKERT where there isolated a 'shard' which rises a mile and a half above the horizon and widening out from a narrower base. 

Photo taken by the Lunar Orbiter
It's difficult to believe that such a huge structure actually stands on the moon... 
so what are we seeing in this photo? Is it a plume of "smoke" from some
lunar gaseous emission? Are we seeing the ejecta from a meteorite impact? What is it?

Lunar Orbiter, February 1967

The original negative from National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD: III-84M of "Shard" and "Tower" on southwest side of Sinus Medii from 30 miles altitude, taken by 3" camera objective (film developed on board satellite; scanned with 6.5 mu dot scanner; images transmitted, reconstructed, and reassembled at NASA). Horizon at 256 miles; "Shard" and "Tower" about 230 and 200 miles distance from camera, respectively; resolution of Shard and Tower calculated at about 70 and 60 meters, respectively. Orientation of this photograph 45 degrees to south of Apollo 10 photographs AS10-32-4854, AS10-32-4855, and AS10-32-4856.

THE SHARD

The Shard is an obvious structure which rises above the Moon's surface by more than a mile. Its overall irregular spindly shape (containing a regular geometric pattern) with constricted nodes and swollen internodes, if natural, has got to be a wonder of the Universe. No known natural process can explain such a structure. Computer enhancement with about 190 feet (60 meters) resolution shows an irregular outline with more reflective and less reflective surfaces. The amount of sunlight reflecting from parts of the Shard indicate a composition inconsistent with that of most natural substances. Only crystal facets and glass can reflect that much light (polished metallic surfaces are unnatural). Single crystals the size of city blocks are currently unknown. The Shard may be a highly eroded remnant of some sort of artificial structure made of glass-like material. Other larger structures and their reflectivity in the area support this theory.

The Ukert Crater. The Ukert crater, located near the center of the moon as it is viewed from the Earth,
contains this amazing equilateral triangle. According to Luna: Arcologies on the Moon, each side
of the triangle is 16 miles in length. And note the three bright objects around the perimeter of the crater -- 
if they are joined by straight lines, they too would from an equilateral triangle. 
Is this evidence of intelligent design, or merely a fantastic coincidence?

MORE PHOTOS

UKERT

Ukert is a crater-like feature that displays a circumscribed equilateral triangle at full Moon (Noon local time) in its center. I agree with Hoagland's interpretation that this triangle is not natural, because the sides of the "crater" are much brighter only opposite the sides of this triangle. The apices or angles of the triangle intersect the darkest three areas of the "crater" rim, while the brightest three areas of the rim are opposite the sides of the triangle. In addition, the brightest parts of the rim are midway between the apices of the triangle, and are at 120 degrees orientation from one another. If a line is drawn from the centers of each bright area across the triange to the opposing angle, the lines will exactly bisect each angle. Such regular geometry is not a natural
feature of any terrain, either on Earth or on the Moon. Furthermore, the symbolism of an equilateral triangle within a circle is a two dimensional representation of a tetrahedral pyramid within a sphere. Tetrahedral geometry is hypothesized to be the primary message encoded in the geometry of the Cydonia complex on Mars (Hoagland, 1992; McDaniel, 1993).

Beyond and to the left of this 'shard' is another huge 6-7 MILE HIGH tower with a tripodal base and a cubical array atop which is over a mile in diameter. Appearing like a huge air traffic [or space traffic?] control tower, this crystalline structure appears to be suspending a huge "dome" with an enormous geometric web-like grid-system, although the dome and the 'twin towers' themselves appear to be partially smashed and twisted by either meteoric bombardment or possibly even an ancient nuclear attack. These structures are clearly visible in computer-enhanced photographs. 

THE TOWER

The Tower represents an enigma of the highest magnitude, because it rises more than five miles above the surface of the Moon, and has been photographed from five different angles and two different altitudes (from 30 miles altitude, and from 70 miles altitude at three different distances). In all four photographs the same structure is visible, and can be viewed from two different sides. The Tower exists in front of and to the left of the Shard in the Lunar Orbiter III-84M photograph. The distance from the Tower and the camera is estimated at about 200 miles, while the distance of the Shard beyond the Tower is estimated at about 230 miles. The top of the Tower has a very ordered cubic geometry, and appears to be composed of regular cubes (similar in size) joined together to form a very large cube with an estimated width of over one mile! There is apparent damage to the outline and surface of this megacube, because many cubic spaces or indentations occur over its surface (these spaces are 50-60 times larger than pixel size, and their shapes are
not controlled by the rectangular shape of the pixel). A narrow columnar structure connects this cube with the surface of the Moon. The columnar support is at least three miles tall, and tapers towards its base. The taper may be in part due to perspective, if the Tower is oriented at an angle and is leaning towards the camera. The leaning Tower may be part of a larger more transparent structure, which is also inclined.

THE CUBE

To the left of the shard, a faint anomaly was photographed. After printing the negative over and over again at different exposure levels, and analysing the results with various computer imaging processes, the anomaly was found to be a massive "tower/cube" hanging more than seven miles above the Moon!  Note the highly reflective "debris" surrounding this structure seemingly embedded in a darker material. This looks very much like reflective crystalline material being held miles above the lunar surface by a framework or matrix of "rebar" (reinforcing bars).

Surrounding the Tower are faint indications of additional light-reflective material. The amount of light coming from this material is very small compared with the amount of light reflected off the lunar surface. In order to make it visible, the surface of the Moon has to be over-exposed on the photograph. The pattern that becomes visible above the Moon's surface is not caused by the scan lines that make up the Lunar Orbiter photography. The scan lines can be seen clearly, and are oriented at different angles from the orientation of patterns in the sky. The regular cubic and/or rectangular nature of this pattern, and indications of radiating structures that connect the Tower with the surface indicate that material of low light reflectivity exists above the Moon's surface over a large area measured in hundreds of miles. The irregular splotchy reflection from some of this
aerial material may be due to meteorite and projectile damage over millions of years. Its highly transparent nature (bright stars can be seen behind and through this material) indicates either an open grid with cubic spaces or glass-like material held together by some sort of structural grid or a combination of both. Other photographs described below confirm the size and extent of this grid-like construction.

THE SKY GRID

The Surveyor 6 photograph of the Sun's corona at the horizon (Photograph published in NASA Technical Report 32-1262) is a view just to the north of the Tower (less than 100 miles). Total image was recorded in primary data, and variations in image reproduction are due to processing differences. Two major anomalies are apparent in this photograph: 1) sunlight at the surface of the Moon is refracted towards the camera and appears as elongate beads of bright light on top of the horizon (JPL measurements indicate light saturation for the camera was reached in these beads); 2) a regular cubic pattern of horizontal benches appears above the surface, and extends nearly as high as the view in the photograph to an altitude of several miles. Due to the angle of incidence of backlit sunlight from the Sun, which was located below the horizon, the visibility of the pattern above the surface decreases with increasing angular reflection from the center of the Sun. This
means that whatever was causing the reflection and refraction above the Moon's surface is geometrically dependent on the Sun's position below the Moon's horizon, and is therefore not likely an artifact of imaging, reproduction, or processing. Six additional pictures of this horizon were taken within 90 minutes, and if available (obtainable) will provide additional data for further analysis.

The bright beads of light on the surface decrease or become more non-continuous laterally along the horizon. This anomalous beading was explained by NASA as diffraction by fine dust suspended above the surface. No such suspended dust was found by the Apollo astronauts, and an alternative hypothesis is warranted. I agree with Hoagland's interpretation that a) the light is refraction, and b) the intense concentration of light is likely caused by glass imaging the Sun from beyond the horizon. It is unlikely that the material causing this phenomenon is natural dust or glass tectites on the surface, which are largely opaque to only partly transparent. The glass refracting the light has to be nearly transparent to transmit so much light to such a height above the surface, particularly if the refracting material has any depth to it. It may represent the basal more intact part of a superstructure that is apparent above the surface. Because of less damage, and more massive
glass support structures at the base (visible in some photographs as a hierarchy of stacked glass arches, each with expanded bases), more light is conducted and focused there like a series of glass lenses. Simple reflection can be ruled out as an explanation for the beads because of the position of the Sun below the horizon. 

The three Apollo 10 photographs showing the Tower in the distance also show the grid structure from above. These photographs were taken at three different distances from the Tower as the Apollo spacecraft moved towards the Tower. Within the sky above the horizon and around the Tower a regular grid pattern emerges with proper contrast control. This grid pattern appears to be three-dimensional, and is expressed as dark lines with random points of reflection around those lines. The grid appears to be some sort of support structure, perhaps formed from a metallic rebar. The reflective material associated with it is cubic and hexagonal in design, but incomplete. With different attitudes or angles of sight, different areas of the grid structure become illuminated or reflective, implying that angle of incidence is important. I agree with Hoagland's interpretation of
this material as remnant portions of the glass structure, which still remains attached and suspended above the Moon's surface on a metallic cross support structure. The Tower, by contrast, is visible in all three photographs, because there is much more glass remaining than on the suspended grid structure around the Tower. Even from different angles and distances in these photographs, the top of the Tower appears as a giant cube made up of smaller cubic and hexagonal objects.

There is no way to get around this evidence once it becomes apparent. Altering the contrast of the Moon's surface can make this faint structure seem to disappear, but such photographic manipulation (cf. NASA catalogs) will not invalidate it. The evidence that Richard Hoagland has brought to light may assail one's sensibilities because of its magnitude and artificial implication, but it cannot be dismissed or ignored. It is there and it must be explained. 

One tower in the same region nicknamed the "castle" reaches an incredible 30 MILES into the air from the 1/6th earth gravity environment of the lunar surface. 

The Castle. This strange object, photographed during an Apollo mission, has been named "the castle"
by Richard Hoagland. It seems to have a definite structure, like the remnant wall of some ancient building. 
The bottom looks as if it has rows of support columns, above which is a high spire. Whatever it is, it's much
brighter than the surrounding landscape. Is it just a trick of light and shadow? A photographic anomaly?

One formerly suppressed Apollo 10 photo, #4822, showed an incredible array of artificial lunar constructions.

Soviet example of a "lunar dome"? This photo, taken
by the Soviet Zond 3 unmanned spacecraft (July 20,
1965), was taken on the farside of the moon. Did this
photo and other similar ones cause the sudden
cancellation of a manned Soviet circumlunar mission
only 3 years later. The structure rises ten miles above
the lunar limb! [A larger version of the Dome]

FASTWALKERS

 

The dark object 
(circled in the left photo)

moved from north to south some unknown distance above the lunar surface.

Strange things have been seen on the moon for centuries -- usually flashes of light or color, or lights that appear to move across the lunar surface. These are known as transient lunar phenomena (TLP), and many of the reports, dating from 1540 to 1969, have been cataloged by NASA. But perhaps the best source for this kind of information is The Lunascan Project, an organized effort by amateur astronomers to record and document TLPs.

Such flashes of light and color could be attributed to meteor impacts or perhaps some kind of gaseous emissions, but harder to explain are the "fastwalkers" that have been videotaped by several amateur observers. This one, from the Lunascan Project, is a capture from a video taken by an amateur Japanese astronomer several years ago.  What could account for this anomaly? A satellite orbiting the moon? (It would have to be enormous to show up like this.) A satellite orbiting the Earth that happened to cross the the observer's field of view as he or she was videotaping the moon? (Steve Davis at Lunascan puts this idea in doubt, too.) So what could the unexplained object be?

WATCH THE CULT MOVIE - ALTERNATIVE THREE
There is a lot of truth in this film

In a provocatively speculative book entitled Alternative 3, author Leslie Watkins proposes that scientist have become concerned with the state of the Earth's atmosphere, a scenario that is much easier to accept these days. Secret meetings between scientist produce three alternatives for handling the imminent danger. 

"Alternative 1" was a plan to blast holes through the stratosphere to release heat and pollution. 

"Alternative 2" was a plan to relocate Earth's population in massive underground caverns drawing fresh, cool air from the soil (Perhaps there is a real Alternative 2 in progress). 

"Alternative 3" was to escape the Earth and go to Mars. We will consider Alternative 3 later. Whether any real such alternative plans exist is not being argued here, but the concepts are useful in examining the future directions of secret projects. 

The Atomic Energy Commission initiated Project Plowshare in 1957 to develop peaceful uses of nuclear explosives. It has explored the use of nuclear blasts to build harbors, dams, highway cuts, and canals, and to stimulate oil and natural gas production by following up the widely used practice of detonating ordinary chemical explosions in oil- and gas-bearing strata. The first test of this technique, known as Project Gasbuggy, took place 4,240 feet below ground in a desolate area of New Mexico know as the San Juan Basin, on December 10, 1967, where a 26-kiloton nuclear "device" was exploded in a sealed well. 

While Gasbuggy was only a single experiment, the A.E.C., in partnership with Austral Oil Company of Houston, subsequently began the first of what promised to be a long series of even larger nuclear explosions, on the order of two 100-kiloton shots each year, for a period of 10 years or more. The first explosion, known as Project Rulison, was a 40-kiloton shot, some 8,400 feet below ground at a site near Rifle, Colorado, on September 10th, 1969. 

A method that has been suggested to build bases on the moon may already be in operation on Earth. With the use of controlled nuclear blasts it will be possible to excavate cavities beneath the lunar surface. A missile could be used to drill a hole approximately 50 feet deep, then a second blast would produce a cavity about 45 feet in diameter. An igloo would be constructed over the hole, a plastic bag dropped down the cavity and filled with air. The work area and living quarters would then be constructed. 

It may prove more efficient and practical to "house" future moon colonies in artificial or natural caves beneath the lunar surface, than to attempt construction of exposed meteorite domes. Living quarters, spacious parks, lakes, and wooded areas could be constructed underground. A transportation tube would connect various colonists to other ports and distant parts of the moon. 

Back on Earth, we have reports of equally suspicious parks. An ex-security officer, who once worked underground in the Groom Lake area of Nevada, said he once saw a baseball diamond and an Olympic-sized swimming pool in one of the caverns a mile below the Nevada desert. 

What's going on in the deep underground tunnels below Mercury Base at the Nevada Test Site? After hearing the story of Bob Lazar on KVEG radio, a construction worker called Billy Goodman and Bob Lazar to say, "We are the construction workers...we put things together and take them apart...of the meeting of seven people, there are two who will come forward to support you." This mysterious caller further said, "There's more than just tunnels down there. There's everything you can imagine down there. I know because we put it up. We installed. We did everything." 

Informants have mentioned underground tunnels and facilities in New Mexico at Dulce, Sunspot, Datil, Corona, Taos Pueblo, and Albuquerque; in Arizona in the Santa Catalina Mountains; in Colorado at Delta, Grand Mesa, and Colorado Springs; in California at Needles, Edwards AFB, Tehachapi Mountains, Ft. Irwin, Norton AFB, and Morongo Valley; in Nevada at Blue Diamond, Nellis AFB, Groom Lake, and Papoose Lake areas, Quartzite Mountain, and Tonopah. 

A disgruntled contractor reported that he worked on constructing the tunnels in the underground area and was bothered by the Air Force probes that were often seen hovering in the tunnels. He described these probes as small orbs, and said that this facility was nicknamed "The ANTHILL" because of its resemblance to underground ant colonies. The tunnels have round doorways without doors. Adjacent to the doorways are security panels with red and green lights. There are some kind of cylinders embedded in the doorway jams that protect a field of energy of some sort. 

Black helicopters have been sighted around Boynton and Secret Canyon near Sedona, Arizona. A man living in Long Canyon has sighted a lot of strange things in the canyon areas, and residents suspect a secret government installation has been established in, of all places, Secret Mountain!

Since that time, we have located two other secret facilities. One is at a place in the Mojave-Desert called Llano. It is an extremely secure facility, but witnesses have seen an extremely bright light burning atop a pylon inside of a movable behemoth- sized structure. This light does not illuminate the interior of the structure!

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Apollo 11

Apollo 11 Page in Detail

This west-looking image of the landing site in the southwestern Sea of Tranquility was taken from the lunar module one orbit before descent, while still docked to the command module. The Tranquility base site is near the shadow line, just to the right of center. The large crater at the lower right is Maskelyne. The large black object in the
lower left is not a shadow but a LM thruster in the camera field of view.
(NASA photo ID AS11-37-5437)

Aldrin posed for this picture next to the U.S. flag. The rod to hold the flag out horizontally would not extend fully, so the flag ended up with a slight waviness, giving the appearance of being windblown. The flag itself was difficult to erect, it was very hard to penetrate beyond about 6 to 8 inches into the lunar soil.
(NASA Photo ID AS11-40-5875)

The astronauts returned to the Lunar Module after 2 hours and 32 minutes on the surface and took this picture. The footprints of the astronauts and the lunar surface television camera can be seen. The flag was actually knocked over when by the LM's exhaust when the astronauts took off from the Moon at 1:54 p.m. EDT on July 21.

Walking on the lunar surface was not difficult, but took a little practice. Despite the fact that the backpacks and astronauts only weighed 1/6 on their 350 pound Earth weight, their center of gravity was shifted so they had to lean slightly forward to balance, and they still had to overcome the inertia of all that mass, so stopping usually took a few steps.


View of a full Moon photographed from the Apollo 11 spacecraft during its transearth journey homeward. When this picture was taken the spacecraft was about 10,000 nautical miles from the Moon, after a successful burn of the command/service module main engine to leave lunar orbit. After a two and a half day coast the astronauts would re-enter Earth's atmosphere.
(NASA photo ID AS11-44-6667)
Apollo 12 

Apollo 12 carried Charles Conrad, Jr., Richard F. Gordon, and Alan I. Bean through thunderclouds right at the start, experiencing an electrical discharge of short duration that did not hamper the flight. The mission, lasting 10 days, November 14-24, 1969, took Conrad and Bean to the Sea of Storms, right next t Surveyor 3, which had landed there two and a half years before. Some of the more important parts from Surveyor 3 were brought back in remarkably good condition. 

Despite the late Carl Sagan’s assurance in his 1966 book Intelligent Life in the Universe, that “a natural satellite cannot be a hollow object”, there is amazing evidence that the moon could indeed be hollow.  In 1969 the crew of Apollo Twelve, in an attempt to create an artificial moonquake sent the ascent stage of the lunar module crashing back down to the moon’s surface.  To everyone’s surprise the highly sensitive seismic equipment recorded something totally unexpected.  For more than one hour, the moon continued to reverberate like a bell.  Dr Frank Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) commented, “None of us have seen anything like this on Earth.  In all our experience, it is quite an extraordinary event.  That this rather small impact ... produced a signal which lasted thirty minutes is quite beyond the range of our experience” ( Marrs, p.6).

Apollo 12 Photos

Apollo 12 November 14, 1969 Conrad, Gordon, Bean

On day out on the earth moon leg of the trip the astronauts radioed Mission Control that two flashing lights had appeared off the bow . of their capsule. After rejecting the possibility that the objects could be spinning pieces of the Apollo booster rocket the capcom suggested that they could be the jettisoned protective panels. One of the astronauts replied " Gee that could be, but one of those lights just shot out of here at tremendous speed ".

 

Apollo 13

Apollo 13, with James Lovell, Jr., Fred W. Haise, Jr., and John L. Swigert, Jr., aboard, ran into trouble, seemingly confirming the superstition tied to the number 13. The mission which took place April 11-17, 1970, was halfway to the moon when one of the oxygen tanks exploded, knocking out some instruments. The question was no longer how to land on the moon, but how to get back to earth as soon as possible. It was decided to continue the flight to the moon, make a loop around it, and come back straight for splashdown, all the time saving as much oxygen as possible. The cause of the explosion was never determined, although several official explanations were given.

Apollo 13 Photos

There was some discussion about Apollo 13 carrying a nuclear device to the moon to be used to show seismograph recordings placed at several locations. Rumours were that the UFOs had deliberately caused the explosion on board to prevent the detonation of the atomic charge that could possibly have destroyed or endangered some moon base established by the extraterrestrials.

When Apollo Thirteen’s third stage was deliberately sent hurtling into the lunar surface by radio signal, crashing with the impact of eleven tons of TNT, NASA claimed that the moon, “reacted like a gong.”  Seismic equipment as distant as one hundred and seventy-three kilometres from the crash site recorded reverberations lasting for three hours and twenty minutes and travelling to a depth of thirty-five to forty kilometres.  Writer Don Wilson in Secrets of our Spaceship Moon, claims that one NASA scientist had admitted that the United States government had conducted a series of experiments (without any public announcement) to determine if the moon is hollow.  Nobel prize winning chemist Dr Harold Urey suggested that the reduced density of the moon was due to the fact that large areas inside the moon were “simply a cavity” and Dr Sean Solomin of MIT wrote, “the Lunar Orbiter experiments vastly improved our knowledge of the moon’s gravitational field ... indicating the frightening possibility that the moon might be hollow.”

Apollo 14

Apollo 14, with Alan B. Shepherd, Jr., Stuart A. Roosa, and Edgar D. Mitchell aboard, went to the moon from January 31-February 9, 1971, landing in the hills of Fra Mauro, using a cart to transport the scientific instruments.

In general the astronauts, nearly all military officers controlled by security regulations, have maintained a united front.  However, there have been exceptions.  Dr Edgar Mitchell on the Oprah Winfrey Show of July 19, 1992, suggested that all information regarding UFOs had not been released, adding, “I do believe that there is a lot more known about extraterrestrial investigation than is available to the public right now (and) has been for a long time....  It’s a long long story, it goes back to World War II when all of that happened, and is highly classified stuff” (Good, p.206).  Colonel Gordon Cooper, in a letter to a meeting of the United Nations in 1978, to discuss UFOs, stated, “I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets, which are obviously a little more advanced than we are here on Earth” (Huneeus).

Apollo 14 Photos

Apollo 15

Apollo 15 took David R. Scott, Alfred M. Worden, and James B. Irwin July 16-August 7, 1971, to the Appennine Mountains of the moon. It carried a 'lunar rover', an electric vehicle that made it possible for Scott and Irwin to take several trips on the moon's surface, covering nearly 20 miles. This moon 'jeep' also made it possible for people on earth to see the takeoff blast of the lunar module on live television, since the rover and its television camera and transmitter were left behind on the moon. 

Apollo 15 Photos

16 33' N, 48 51' E ...West of the Sea of Crises. - Photographs - Apollo 15

July 26 - Aug. 7, 1971. Conversation: 

Scott: Arrowhead really runs east to west.
Mission Control: Roger, we copy.
Irwin: Tracks here as we go down slope.
MC: Just follow the tracks, huh?
Irwin: Right we're (garble). We know that's a fairly good run. We're bearing 320, hitting range for 413 ... I can't get over those lineations, that layering on Mt. Hadley.
Scott: I can't either. That's really spectacular.
Irwin: They sure look beautiful.
Scott: Talk about organization!
Irwin: That's the most *organized structure I've ever seen*!
Scott: It's (garble) so uniform in width.
Irwin: Nothing we've seen before this has shown such uniform thickness from the top of the tracks to the bottom.

(Harrison Schmitt was a trained geologist and the only civilian ever to walk on the Moon)

Schmidtt: I see tracks - running right up the wall of the crater.

NASA scientist Farouk El Baz admitted in a magazine interview that NASA did commit itself to a secretive search for various things on the Moon. 'We're looking for something - something ...' He admitted that 'a huge bridge-like structure in Mare Crisium has been reported ... That is all I can say about it.' When asked if 'that was a bridge - that you've actually found artificial structures or some kind of intelligently placed artifact?' El Baz quickly denied it.

'No. No. I am not admitting such a thing. But when you start to think about it, almost anything is possible. There are almost no limits [to] how you can interpret the many things astronomers have been observing and reporting for several centuries. Now the astronauts are seeing many anomalies close up'."

Astronaut sees white objects flying by:

Capcom: You talked about something mysterious ...
Orion: O.K., Gordy, when we pitched around, I'd like to tell you about something we saw around the LM (LEM or Lunar Excursion Module). When we were coming about 30 or 40 feet out, there were a lot of objects - white things - flying by. It looked as if they were being propelled or ejected, but I'm not convinced of that.
Capcom: We copy that Charlie.

"It is very strange the way the ejecta ... from Proclus crosses Crisium. It is almost like flying above a haze layer and looking down through the haze ... It looks like it is suspended over it."
Al Worden, Apollo 15 - Command Module Pilot

Apollo 16

Apollo 16, with Charles M. Duke, Thomas K. Mattingly, and John W. Young abord, landed in the Descartes highlands. The mission, April 16-27, 1972, brought back the most extraordinary photographs in ultraviolet light of the earth's atmosphere, interplanetary gases, and many stars, constellations, and galaxies.

Apollo 16 Photos

April 16 - 27, 1972;
Charles Duke, Thomas Mattingly and John Young land in the Descartes highlands: Conversation: 

Duke: These devices are unbelievable. I'm not taking a gnomon up there.
Young: O.K., but man, that's going to be a steep bridge to climb.
Duke: You got - YOWEE! Man - John, I tell you this is some sight here. Tony, the blocks in Buster are covered - the bottom is covered with blocks, five meters across. Besides the blocks seem to be in a preferred orientation, northeast to southwest. They go all the way up the wall on those two sides and on the other side you can only barely see the out-cropping at about 5 percent. Ninety percent of the bottom is covered with blocks that are 50 centimeters and larger.
Capcom: Good show. Sounds like a secondary ...
Duke: Right out here ... the blue one that I described from the lunar module window is colored because it is glass coated, but underneath the glass it is crystalline ... the same texture as the Genesis Rock ... Dead on my mark.
Young: Mark. It's open.
Duke: I can't believe it!
Young: And I put that beauty in dry!
Capcom: Dover. Dover. We'll start EVA-2 immediately.
Duke: You'd better send a couple more guys up here. They'll have to try (garble).
Capcom: Sounds familiar.
Duke: Boy, I tell you, these EMUs and PLSSs are really super- fantastic!


Apollo 16: Domes and Tunnels
Duke: We felt it under our feet. It's a soft spot. Firmer. Where we stand, I tell you one thing. If this place had air, it'd sure be beautiful. It's beautiful with or without air. The scenery up on top of Stone Mountain, you'd have to be there to see this to believe it - those domes are incredible!
Mission Control: O.K., could you take a look at that smokey area there and see what you can see on the face?
Duke: Beyond the domes, the structure goes almost into the ravine that I described and one goes to the top. In the northeast wall of the ravine you can't see the delineation. To the northeast there are tunnels, to the north they are dipping east to about 30 degrees.
Capcom: What about the albedo change in the subsurface soil? Of course you saw it first at Flagg and were probably more excited about it there. Was there any difference in it there - and Buster and Alsep and LM?
Duke: No. Around the Alsep it was just in spots. At Plum it seemed to be everywhere. My predominant impression was that the white albedo was (garble) than the fine cover on top.
Capcom: O.K. Just a question for you, John. When you got halfway, or even thought it was halfway, we understand you looped around south, is that right?
Young: That is affirm. We came upon - Barbara.
Apollo 17

Apollo 17, with Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, and Harrison H. Schmitt aboard, flew to the moon on December 7 and returned on December 19, 1972. The landing spot was in the Taurus-Litterow Valley. This Apollo mission was the longest both in time and in distance covered and also brought back the biggest load of moon rocks. In addition, Schmitt, a geologist, was the first civilian to visit the moon, all the other astronauts having been military men. 

Apollo 17 Photos

By this time in the series of missions, the population in the U.S. were rather shocked to find out how much the missions were costing, and some even complained that live television coverage of the missions were taking the place of their beloved football games.


Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmidt; Landed in the Taurus-Littrow Valley; Dec 7 - 19, 1972.

Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, in a Los Angeles Times article in 1973 said about UFOs: "...I've been asked (about UFOs) and I've said publicly I thought they (UFOs) were somebody else, some other civilization."

Mission Control: Go ahead, Ron
Evans: O.K., Robert, I guess the big thing I want to report from the back side is that I took another look at the - the - cloverleaf in Aitken with the binocs. And that southern dome (garble) to the east.
Mission Control: We copy that, Ron. Is there any difference in the color of the dome and the Mare Aitken there?
Evans: Yes there is... That Condor, Condorsey, or Condorecet or whatever you want to call it there. Condorecet Hotel is the one that has got the diamond-shaped fill down in the uh - floor.
Mission Control: Robert. Understand. Condorcet Hotel.
Evans: Condor. Condorset. Alpha. They've either caught a landslide on it or it's got a - and it doesn't look like (garble) in the other side of the wall in the northwest side.
Mission Control: O.K., we copy that Northwest wall of Condorcet A.
Evans: The area is oval or elliptical in shape. Of course, the ellipse is toward the top.


Orion: Orion has landed. I can't see how fat the (garble) ... this is a blocked field we're in from the south ray - tremendous difference in the albedo. I just get the feeling that these rocks may have come from somewhere else. Everywhere we saw the ground, which is about the whole sunlit side, you had the same delineation the Apollo 15 photography showed on Hadley, Delta and Radley Mountains ...
Capcom: O.K. Go ahead.
Orion: I'm looking out here at Stone Mountain and it's got - it looks like somebody has been out there plowing across the side of it. The beaches - the benches - look like one sort of terrace after another, right up the side. They sort of follow the contour of it right around.
Capcom: Any difference in the terraces?
Orion: No, Tony. Not that I could tell from here. These terraces could be raised but of (garble) or something like that ...
Casper: (Mattingly in lunar orbit overhead): Another strange sight over here. It looks - a flashing light - I think it's Annbell. Another crater here looks as though it's flooded except that this same material seems to run up on the outside. You can see a definite patch of this stuff that's run down inside. And that material lays or has been structured on top of it, but it lays on top of things that are outside and higher. It's a very strange operation.

Apollo 17 - Halo with Number One extending

DMP (lunar module pilot): What are you learning?
Capcom: Hot spots on the Moon, Jack?
DMP: Where are your big anomalies? Can you summarize them quickly?
Capcom: Jack, we'll get that for you on the next pass.
CMP (command module pilot): Hey, I can see a bright spot down there on the landing site where they might have blown off some of that halo stuff.
Capcom: Roger. Interesting. Very - go to KILO. KILO.
CMP: Hey, it's gray now and the number one extends.
Capcom: Roger. We got it. And we copy that it's all on the way down there. Go to KILO. KILO on that.
CMP: Mode is going to HM. Recorder if off. Lose a little communication there, huh? Okay, there's bravo. Bravo, select OMNI. Hey, you know you'll never believe it. I'm right over the edge of Orientale. I just looked down and saw the light flash again.
Capcom: Roger. Understand.
CMP: Right at the end of the rille.
Capcom: Any chances of - ?
CMP: That's on the east of Orientale.
Capcom: You don't suppose it could be Vostok? (a Russian probe).

NOTE: Vostok flights took place in the early sixties and were *strictly Earth orbiters*. They never reached the Moon.

NOTE from Dee:  (There seems to be a difference opinion on this) 

Apollo 17  "Watermarks":

Capcom: Roger, America, we're tracking you on the map here, watching it.
LMP: O.K. Al Buruni has got variations on its floor. Variations in the lights and its albedo. It almost looks like a pattern as if the water were flowing up on a beach. Not in great areas, but in small areas around the southern side, and the part that looks like the water-washing pattern is a much lighter albedo, although I cannot see any real source of it. The texture, however, looks the same.
Capcom: America, Houston. We'd like you to hold off switching to OMNI Charlie until we can cue you on that.
CMP: Wilco.
LMP: Was there any indication on the seismometers on the impact about the time I saw a bright flash on the surface?
Capcom: Stand by. We'll check on that, Jack.
LMP: A UFO perhaps, don't worry about it. I thought somebody was looking at it. It could have been one of the other flashes of light.
Capcom: Roger. We copies the time and ...
LMP: I have the place marked.
Capcom: Pass it on to the back room.
LMP: O.K. I've marked it on the map, too.
Capcom: Jack, just some words from the back room for you. There may have been an impact at the time you called, but the Moon is still ringing from the impact of the S-IVB impact. So it would mask any other impact. So they may be able to strip it out at another time, but right now they don't see anything at the time you called.
LMP: Just my luck. Just looking at the southern edge of Grimaldi, Bob, and - that Graben is pre-Mare. Pre-Mare!
Capcom: O.K., I copy on that, Jack. And as long as we're talking about Grimaldi we'd like to have you brief Ron exactly on the location of that flashing light you saw ... We'll probably ask him to take a picture of it. Maybe during one of his solo periods.

Apollo 17: "Watermark" cont'd:

While the Apollo 17 astronauts were discussing the "Watermarks", the sighting of the UFO occurred. The conversation them returns to the Watermarks.

DMP: O.K. 96:03. Now we're getting some clear - looks like pretty clear high watermarks on this -
CMP: There's high watermarks all over the place there.
LMP: On the north part of Tranquillitatis. That's Maraldi there, isn't it? Are you sure we're 13 miles up?
Capcom: You're 14 to be exact, Ron.
LMP: I tell you there's some mare, ride or scarps that are very, very sinuous - just passing one. They not only cross the low planar areas but go right up the side of a crater in one place and a hill in another. It looks very much like a constructional ridge - a mare-like ridge that is clearly *as constructional as I would want to see it*."
Apollo 18 

Apollo-Soyuz

Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 Launched: July 15, 1975
Meeting in Space: July 17, 1975
Soyuz 19 Landed: July 21, 1975
Apollo 18 Splashed Down: July 24, 1975
Duration:

Apollo 18: 217 hours, 30 minutes 
Soyuz 19: 143 hours, 31 minutes

Orbits: (Apollo 18) 136; (Soyuz 19) 96

Astronaut Crew: Thomas P. Stafford , Vance D. Brand , Donald K. "Deke" Slayton
Cosmonaut Crew: Alexei Leonov , Valeri Kubasov

This, the final flight of the Apollo spacecraft, was the first docking of spacecraft built by different nations and presaged the era of cooperation between the Russians and the Americans that is now such an essential part of our efforts to build a permanently occupied space station. 

The American crew included three-flight veteran Thomas P. Stafford, rookie Vance Brand, and the last of the original seven
Mercury astronauts to make it into orbit, Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, whose heart murmur had previously kept him grounded.
The Soviet crew included the first space walker, Alexei Leonov, and rookie Valeri Kubasov. 

While this mission is generally remembered as a political/public relations venture, it resulted in some major technological
advancements necessitated by the requirement to dock the two extremely variant spacecraft, neither of which had been built for the purpose, together. 

The two spacecraft were launched within seven and a half hours of one another, and, three hours after they docked two days later, the Astronauts and Cosmonauts met in the middle ahd shook hands in orbit, exchanged flags and gifts (including the seeds of trees that were later planted in each others' countries) and conversed haltingly with one another in each other's native tongues. 

It would be six long years before another American astronaut would fly in space, this time aboard the reusable Space Shuttle. The Apollo era, an era of the greatest achievements in mankind's history, had ended. 
THE AFTER EFFECTS OF FLIGHT IN SPACE

It has been said that many of the astronauts felt strong and strange sensations that something was trying to take over their minds and experienced visions during these flights to the moon. Some of the astronauts became deeply religious after their missions and others experienced mental problems. This could be coincidence, but with men this well trained, coincidence isn't the most likely explanation. 

     
The 12 men who walked on the moon:


      --1. Neil Armstrong. Apollo 11 (1969). Age 68. Businessman in Lebanon, Ohio.
      --2. Buzz Aldrin. Apollo 11 (1969). Age 69. President of three companies in Los Angeles and chairman of National Space Society board of directors.
      --3. Charles "Pete'' Conrad. Apollo 12 (1969). Killed Thursday in a motorcycle accident in California at 69. Founded and headed Universal Space Lines Inc. of Newport Beach, Calif.
      --4. Alan Bean. Apollo 12 (1969). Age 67. Artist in Houston who paints only space scenes.
      --5. Alan Shepard. Apollo 14 (1971). First American in space. Died in 1998 at 74.
      --6. Edgar Mitchell. Apollo 14 (1971). Age 68. Founder and board member of an institute that researches the mind and nature of consciousness. Lives in Boca Raton, Fla.
      --7. David Scott. Apollo 15 (1971). Age 67. Aerospace consultant living in Manhattan Beach, Calif.
      --8. James Irwin. Apollo 15 (1971). Died of heart attack in 1991 at 61. Founded High Flight Foundation, evangelistic organization in Colorado Springs, Colo. Led six expeditions to Turkey's Mount Ararat in search of Noah's Ark.
      --9. John Young, Apollo 16 (1972). Age 68. Associate director for technical matters at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
      --10. Charles Duke. Apollo 16 (1972). Age 63. Businessman in New Braunfels, Texas, and "committed Christian'' who gives motivational talks.
      --11. Eugene Cernan. Apollo 17 (1972). Age 65. Chairman and chief executive of Johnson Engineering Corp. in Houston.
      --12. Harrison "Jack'' Schmitt. Apollo 17 (1972). Age 64. Former U.S. senator and geologist living in Albuquerque, N.M. Teaches part time at University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Key Members of Apollo 11 Program

      Some of Apollo 11's key players, in alphabetical order:
      --Buzz Aldrin: Lunar module pilot and second man to walk on the moon. Now 69, he's president of Starcraft Enterprises and two other companies in Los Angeles, and pushing space tourism.
      --Neil Armstrong: Mission commander and first man to walk on the moon. Now 68, he's a businessman in Lebanon, Ohio.
      --Michael Collins: Command module pilot who circled the moon. Now 68, he lives in Marco Island, Fla., and spends much of his time fishing.
      --Kurt Debus: Director of Kennedy Space Center who started out as a member of Wernher von Braun's German rocket team. Died in 1983 at age 74.
      --Robert Gilruth: Director of Manned Spacecraft Center, now Johnson Space Center, in Houston. Now 85, he suffers from Alzheimer's disease and is in a nursing home in Charlottesville, Va.
      --Christopher Kraft: Director of flight operations for Manned Spacecraft Center. Now 75, he lives in Houston and is writing a book.
      --Gene Kranz: Flight director who later led Mission Control team that brought Apollo 13 safely back to Earth. Now 65, he lives in Houston and is writing a book.
      --George Low: Manager of Apollo spacecraft program for Manned Spacecraft Center. Died in 1984 at age 58.
      --Richard Nixon: President who addressed Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon and later canceled the Apollo program. Died in 1994 at age 81.
      --Thomas Paine: NASA administrator. Died in 1992 at age 70.
      --Rocco Petrone: Launch director. Now 73, he lives in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., and is enjoying retirement.
      --Air Force Lt. Gen. Samuel Phillips: Director of Apollo lunar landing program. Died in 1990 at age 68.
      --Deke Slayton: Director of flight crew operations and one of seven Mercury astronauts. Died in 1993 at age 69.
      --Wernher von Braun: Director of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., who led team of World War II rocket scientists from Hitler's Germany to America and led design of Saturn V moon rocket. Died in 1977 at age 65.

 

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THE BATTLE OF HARVEST MOON 

From: Dr. Beter Audioletter, Box 16428, Ft. Worth, Texas 76133.

Hello, my friends, this is Dr. Beter.  Today is April 28, 1978, and this is my Audioletter No. 33.

On a summer day in 1971, two men in space suits sat aboard an awkward looking four-wheeled vehicle that was making its way across the surface of the moon .  American astronauts David Scott and James Irwin, the lunar landing crew of Apollo 15, were on their way to get a close look at the gigantic lunar canyon known as Hadley Rille.  They were the first men in history to go for a ride on the lunar surface.  

As they bumped along, they passed the rim of a crater, which they named Earthlight Crater.  Mission Control in Houston radioed back, "Arthur Clarke would be proud of you."  Sixteen years earlier, in 1955, the renowned British writer Arthur C. Clarke had published a prophetic book with the title "Earthlight."; Published two years before the Space Age dawned with Sputnik One, Earthlight was about man's then future occupation of the moon; and in honor of Clarke's vision, the Apollo 15 astronauts named Earthlight Crater after the book. 

And very often during television coverage of the American visits to the moon, Walter Cronkite of CBS News had at his elbow none other than Arthur C. Clarke.  In his book, Clarke painted a vivid picture of the great value the moon would acquire--scientifically, economically, and strategically.  The climax of this book, honored so uniquely by the Apollo 15 astronauts, is called the "Battle of Pico", a hypothetical space battle centered on the moon; and while the details are quite different, Clarke's fictional Battle of Pico foreshadowed in eerie ways the real space battle that took place more than two decades later in September 1977.

The Battle of the Harvest Moon has been kept a secret from the public, both by the victor (the Soviet Union), and by the vanquished (the United States of America); but it is the key to understanding the increasingly headlong retreat of the United States on all fronts under the new boldness of the Kremlin. (The U.S. doesn't like to admit it when they lose)

(This entire file is available as an e-mail attachment from Dee777@aol.com

RUSSIAN COSMONAUTS IN SPACE Russia's space program seemed completely silent. What we didn't know was that Russia had been deploying her secret particle beam weapons in space, and on September 17, 1977, Russia started smashing our spy satellites in what was called the Battle of the Harvest Moon. They launched their *Salyut-6* Space Station into orbit on September 29, 1977, and thus began a steady stream of Russian cosmonauts back and forth into space. They even took cosmonauts from at least seven other countries including Cuba and Vietnam into space with them, while we just wrung our hands.

Russia destroyed an American spy satellite on September 20, 1977, Cosmos 929 destroyed a US satellite,.and a week later put our secret Moon Base out of action. Seven months later, Russia finished destroying all our spy and early warning satellites. Since then, we have tried several times to deploy spy satellites to get targeting information to launch a nuclear war, a war we have come very close to starting several times. All we found out was the Russia had moved the targets around and we dared not launch (although some wanted to anyway).

Since mid-October 1977, the Moon had been a Russian outpost. There were seven manned long-range particle beam installations on the near side and at least one large base on the far side. In the past, regular missions were flown to and from the Moon in order to resupply the bases and rotate crews, and slowly but surely, the Kremlin was inching its way toward breaking the news about its control of the Moon.

They were already beginning to drop hints about it as in the example of a publication circulated in the U.S. called *Soviet Life* in February, 1982. It stated: "Today spaceships shuttle between the Earth and the Moon with greater frequency than did the first voyages to the New World."

At the top of the page was a nighttime photo of a moonship ready to blast off from a Russian Cosmodrome. Below was a picture of the Earth as seen from space, and in between was a statement in bold type designed to give another hint about the moon flights which stated, "From a distance of 70,000 kilometers above the Earth, the planet looks peaceful and even
defenseless. The common goal is to protect our blue and green home."

Hint: Satellites are not used at altitudes of 70,000 kilometers. The highest orbit that is generally useful for Earth satellites is the geosynchronous orbit for stationary satellites over the equator. Seventy-thousand kilometers is almost twice that far from the Earth. The only time a spacecraft reaches that far from the Earth is when it is on its way to or from the Moon or another planet.

(#80 audioletters of Dr.Peter Beter from June 1975 till November 1982.  Connect
Some info:

  • Soviet hovering platforms on electro gravity: manned Cosmos Intercept. Killer Satelites, Cosmospheres, "Super Heavis" or "Jumbos", (Cosmos 929 - 1st one) armed with charged particle beam weapons,
  • US Secret Beam-weapons base on the Moon: 27.September 1977 - Battle of Harvest Moon at Copernicus crater, which America lost when russias Cosmospheres killed all astronauts in their base by neutron particle beam weapon. Then Russia established 7 bases on the front side armed with Powerful charged particle beam weapons, and 3 supporting bases on the back side of the Moon...
  • 1st. Russian manned landing on the Moon at October 16, 1977 (on the back side of the moon at 'Jules Verne' crater)

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FUTURE PLANS
Scientists predict Moon base by 2007
 
BY MARK HENDERSON, SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT
 
MAN could return to the Moon to set up a permanent base by 2007 at half the cost of building the International Space Station, a Nasa scientist said yesterday.
A lunar space station staffed by four astronauts would offer unprecedented opportunities to advance human understanding of the Universe at an affordable price and should be a priority for Nasa and the European Space Agency, Paul Spudis told the National Astronomy Meeting in Cambridge.
Dr Spudis, from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, said that such a project was already technically feasible and could be accomplished within six years of gaining approval from politicians and funding bodies. It would cost an estimated $50 billion (£35 billion) — less in real terms than the $25 billion spent on the Apollo Moon missions of the 1960s and 1970s.
Once established, an international base would house powerful telescopes to take advantage of the Moon’s lack of atmosphere and clouds and allow detailed surveys of the surface. It would also provide an ideal test bed for technology that might one day sustain astronauts on a mission to Mars.
“There are certain scientific goals that can only be accomplished by sending humans into space,” Dr Spudis said. “The experiments require human intelligence to perform. A return to the Moon would give us a natural laboratory for planetary science and a unique astronomical observing platform on which to set up instruments. There are few earthquakes and there is no wind, cloud or rain. Astronomers can examine the skies constantly and without atmospheric interference.”
He said that the Moon base should be situated on the rim of Shackleton’s crater, near the “south pole”. The location had nearby ice deposits which could be mined as a source of water and oxygen; it also had a stable, if cold (-50C) temperature, and a long, sunlit day allowing the prolonged use of solar panels.
The first team of four astronauts, who would stay for an initial 45 days, would set up a permanent living module buried under the Moon’s surface to shield from solar radiation. That could then be used by future missions, which would take new modules and experiments to expand the station.
Scientists would use the base to build on the knowledge gleaned from the Apollo missions, the last of which landed on the Moon in 1972. A base would pave the way for a future manned mission to Mars. “The lessons we learn through life on the Moon would be invaluable,” Dr Spudis said.
Ian Crawford, an astronomer at University College London, agreed that a return to the Moon should be a priority, but Andrew Coates, of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College, said that money would be better invested in robotic probes. “I would love to send people, but I am worried about the cost and about whether they would survive,” he said. He thought that $50 billion was a “huge underestimate” and was concerned about the effects of cosmic radiation.
NOTE:  I guess these guys aren't in on the "KNOW'!
 

Tuesday April 10, 2001

Future Moon Base Sited!

By Leonard David Senior Science Writer, SPACE.com

Fresh looks at data from the Pentagon’s Clementine spacecraft that circled the Moon for the first half of 1994 is supportive of the view that the lunar south pole is an ideal locale for a future human-tended outpost.

"Shackleton crater has turned out to be a very interesting," said Stuart Nozette of the Naval Research Laboratory’s Center for Space Technology in Washington, D.C.

Nozette said that new work using Clementine data, along with ground based radar, as well as results from NASA’s Lunar Prospector, all converge to show one area inside Shackleton crater to hold a resource of hydrogen, likely in the form of water ice, ammonia, and other materials. 

The crater is right at the Moon’s south pole and is some 30 kilometers in size, Nozette said.

"It’s not just the water ice that’s interesting about this area. Right next to the crater is what we call the "peak of external light," a spot where there is more or less continual Sun between one of three points within about 15 kilometers of each other," Nozette told SPACE.com. 

Bathed in constant sunlight, solar energy becomes usable all the time, Nozette said. That is ideal to build up an extraction industry. Also, in the permanently shadowed areas in that region, various astronomical instruments could be operated with telescopic optics kept cold and stable, he said.

"As a place for a lunar base, Shackleton is an option to think about," Nozette said.
Friday March 30, 2001

Scientists Press NASA To Reconsider Luna

By Leonard David  Senior Space Writer, SPACE.com

WASHINGTON – Earth’s celestial next-door neighbor needs a house call. 

Angered by NASA’s seeming lack of interest in anything lunar, scientists are petitioning the space agency to put the Moon back on the exploration agenda.

Leading scientists argue that the Moon remains a harsh mistress of mystery. Recent robotic probes that have gone the lunar distance – the U.S. Pentagon’s Clementine spacecraft in 1994 and NASA’s Lunar Prospector in 1998 – have both sent back data showing the Moon to be a world of vacuum-sealed secrets.

Moonstruck scientists

One way to reestablish scientific contact with the Moon is via robotic return to Earth of select lunar samples. 

A petition was circulated among some 1,200 space scientists at the recent 32nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), held March 12-16 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The open letter was addressed to NASA’s head of space science, Edward Weiler. It urged the space agency "to consider lunar sample-return missions as a very high priority and an essential element in the future scientific exploration of the solar system."

The letter proposes lunar sample missions to such sites as Oceanus Procellarum; the craters Giordano Bruno, Copernicus and Tsiolkovsky; and the floor of the Moon’s south pole-Aitken basin. Hauling back the goods from these spots can help unravel the chronology of lunar volcanism, thickness of the lunar crust, as well as how much a beating the Moon took by impacts during the last third of the solar system's history.

James Head, a planetary geologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, helped draft the back-to-the-Moon petition. 

"There is a critical need to understand better the Moon as a cornerstone in the evolution of the planets," Head told SPACE.com. "There are a lot of things that are unusual and missing in our knowledge about the Moon," he said.

Well-placed lunar sampling missions would help discern what has happened on Mars too, along with plotting out the impact-cratering record throughout the inner solar system, Head said.

The Apollo program to put humans on the Moon was of great benefit to lunar scientists, Head said. By hurling to the Moon robotic sample-return missions, "we’ll be cashing in on the Apollo investment, a return on the dollar that also spreads out to the rest of the planets as well," he said.

Ice chest

No need to go back in geologic time to realize the covert nature of the Moon. 

On Dec. 3, 1996, the Pentagon (news - web sites) announced that its high-tech Clementine spacecraft in lunar orbit found ice at the Moon's south pole. This deposit was discovered by Clementine’s radar, showing the ice chest to be within an area hidden from the Sun’s warming rays. The military reconnaissance orbiter also returned over 1.5 million images of the lunar terrain.

NASA’s Lunar Prospector later found evidence for water ice near both lunar poles. That craft circuited the Moon for some 19 months, snagging a bountiful data set that is still being sifted through. It found relatively few permanently shaded craters that were large enough at the lunar north pole to harbor temperatures low enough to trap water ice indefinitely. 

But at the lunar south pole, it’s a different story. There, within the bottoms of several large, permanently shaded craters, predicted temperatures fall well below climes needed to stabilize water ice, said William Feldman, a Lunar Prospector scientist working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Lunar Prospector data "rule in favor of the existence of significant water-ice deposits at both lunar poles," Feldman reported at the recently held LPSC gathering earlier this month.

"There are two different arguments for going back to the Moon," said Ben Bussey, a planetary scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. "One is for the Moon itself. Apollo was a good start, but there is much to do and learn. The recent discovery of ice at the poles, together with the possibility of highly illuminated areas near the poles, make those interesting regions to visit," he said.

A core sample of ice might reveal the comet impact record on the Moon, Bussey said. Furthermore, that resource of ice is ideal to crank out rocket fuel and help maintain a future Moon base for astronauts, he said.

"While I think the Moon is interesting enough in its own right to be explored, there is another reason. It is close and, therefore, the Moon makes a good testing ground for equipment relating to a human Mars mission," Bussey said.

Been there done that

Wendell Mendell, a lunar expert at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said that there’s new life in studying the Moon. 

"Everybody just seemed to assume that after Apollo we knew everything that there was to know about the Moon…so why bother with it? That was the attitude," Mendell said. 


However, courtesy of Clementine and Lunar Prospector, as well as the Apollo project, the true picture of the Moon is still emerging, Mendell said. 

"New kinds of information are forcing us to rethink the Moon. It still has things to tell us. As the keystone to our understanding of the solar system, I don’t think it’s fair to characterize the Moon as scientifically uninteresting," Mendell said.

The detail churned out by Lunar Prospector "is just fantastic and getting better and better," said Alan Binder, head of the Lunar Research Institute in Tucson, Arizona. As principal investigator for the robotic Moon mission, he is impatient waiting for any NASA  return to the Moon.

"The academic community is sort of waiting for NASA to lead the way instead of pushing the envelope," Binder said. 

A commercial break

Binder contends that commercial space exploration is a route back to the Moon. 

Binder wants to see broad, global exploration of the Moon. Along with lunar-sample spacecraft, he sees a systematic set of Moon orbiter missions, each outfitted with instruments to better chart Luna’s entire surface. "You want to get all that data in your pocket as you start surface exploration. That way you’re not poking around in the dark," he said.

"The commercial world can do the detailed exploration. That’s the way it went on Earth," Binder said.

Having private funds support a return-to-the-Moon campaign is no easy go. Ask Bill Gross, founder and CEO of Idealab, based in Pasadena, California. He formed Blastoff, a heavy-hitting and top-drawer corps of space engineers tasked to build a low-cost Moon lander. Their private lunar effort was eclipsed earlier this year by a shortfall of space funding to fuel the enterprise.

"Thinking that you can fund missions on pure entertainment value is naïve. My reading is that the only product is science data. And the only customer is NASA, or the European Space Agency (ESA), or other countries that are interested. They are used to dealing with data," Binder said.

International interest

Several nations are hungry for a chance to shoot for the Moon. 

The European Space Agency’s Small Missions for Advanced Research and Technology (SMART 1) is to orbit the Moon for a nominal period of six months. The spacecraft is to be ready toward the end of 2002, then launched as an auxiliary payload atop an Ariane 5 booster. It will be the first time that Europe sends a spacecraft to the Moon. 

Japan’s Lunar A is now targeted for a 2003 liftoff and is to conduct the first surface science measurements since the days of Apollo Moonwalkers and Russian robotic landers. Another ambitious Japanese Moon mission is Selene A, an orbiter to be dispatched from Earth in 2004.

"We have de facto a new international lunar exploration program," said Bernard Foing, an ESA project scientist for the SMART 1 mission. "The Moon has and will be used as a test bed for solar system exploration. We can test the Moon instruments, robotic outposts, techniques of telepresence and virtual reality -- and the deployment of large infrastructures," he said.

Foing said that he envisions a mix of international cooperation and competition in a 21st-century return to the Moon. As chairman of European-based Young Lunar Explorers, he said there is no doubt that, ultimately, the scientific return to the Moon will lead towards a permanent human presence there.

Mars Mafia

"The Moon is the logical destination for NASA," said Paul Spudis, staff scientist and deputy director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. "It’s doable from a budgetary and political sense. Within five to six years, we could be back on the Moon," he said.

Spudis is blunt about his feelings that Mars has hijacked NASA's exploration thinking.

"If you want to ‘make a case’ for lunar return, it helps to have somebody listen to what you say. NASA’s antipathy to the Moon is almost completely due to [NASA chief] Daniel Goldin, who thinks a lunar return would kill his Mars program," Spudis told SPACE.com. 

The Moon is a valuable and nearby resource node -- ideal for carrying out astronomy; for evaluating the "best of" skills of robots and humans; as well as to ready crews and equipment for long-distance expeditions to Mars, Spudis said.

"We’ve been to the Moon, which is a world with a land area the size of Africa. But we’ve only visited six spots, and the farthest we’ve roamed was maybe 3 or 4 miles (5 or 6 kilometers)," Spudis said. 

"There’s a whole world to explore there and a lot we don’t know."

 

The SMART-1 probe was roughly the size of a washing machine,
weighing just over 800lbs.
Picture: AFP/Getty Images

Astronomers over the Moon as probe crashes on surface

FERGUS SHEPPARD

EUROPE'S first lunar mission ended its three years in space yesterday with a controlled and spectacular crash on the Moon, slamming into the planet's surface at 4,500mph and creating a flash visible to astronomers on Earth.

The SMART-1 probe, roughly the size of a washing machine and weighing just over 800lb, struck a volcanic plain called the Lake of Excellence at 6:42am yesterday, at a glancing angle of between five and ten degrees.

Applause broke out in the European Space Agency (ESA) control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, as Octavio Camino, the head of operations, declared: "That's it - we are in the Lake of Excellence. We have landed."

The impact scattered debris over an area estimated at 30 square miles and scientists hope the dust plume kicked up will be studied by telescopes on earth to yield more clues about the origins of the Moon.

One theory ESA hopes SMART-1 may shed light on is the possibility that the Moon was formed from the impact of a massive asteroid with the Earth 4.5 billion years ago.

The moment of the SMART-1 impact was captured by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mount Kea, in Hawaii. However, professional and amateur astronomers from South Africa, the Canary Islands, South America and the US mainland were also hoping to witness the collision.

The Moon crash-landing was the last stage of the 16-month phase in which SMART-1 had been producing detailed maps of the Moon's composition, analysing craters and studying the volcanic processes that formed the planet.

While astronauts have explored several areas of the Moon, ESA believes the information collated by its craft will create a more comprehensive picture.

ESA officials said they will study all the data received over the coming days and publish results "as soon as possible". The spacecraft also tested new technologies for communication and navigation. On board the SMART-1 were a miniaturised imaging camera, an X-ray telescope, an infrared spectrometer to study minerals and an X-ray solar monitor.

However, the main mission of the craft, flanked by 45ft solar panels, was to test a new ion propulsion system officials hope to use on future interplanetary missions.

SMART-1 - short for Small Mission for Advanced Research and Technology - was launched into Earth orbit by an Ariane-5 booster rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, in September 2003. The craft used its ion engine to slowly raise its orbit over 14 months until the moon's gravity came to bear.

The engine, which uses electricity from the craft's solar panels to produce a stream of charged particles - the ions - generates only small amounts of thrust but required just 176 pounds of fuel.

Ground controllers learned to adjust to the slow but continuous acceleration from the ion engine, requiring them to check the craft's course more often than with the "one-time" push from a rocket. US astronauts on Apollo missions flew to the moon in just three days, launched by giant Saturn-V rockets.

The final descent on Saturday involved mission controllers raising the craft's orbit by 2,000ft using its positioning thrusters to avoid hitting a crater rim on final approach. Had the orbit not been raised, the craft would have crashed one orbit too soon, making the impact difficult or impossible to observe from earth.

Built by a European consortium led by the Swedish Space Corporation, SMART-1 took the long way to the moon, travelling 62 million miles rather than the direct route of 250,000 miles.

However, ESA said the cost of the mission was a relatively economical £73 million.

Professor David Southwood, the ESA's director of science, said

: "Future scientific missions will greatly benefit from the technological and operational experience gained thanks to this small spacecraft."

NASA, the American space agency, is planning a manned mission to the moon by 2020.

 

LADEE CRASHES ON THE MOON

LADEE, NASA's moon-orbiting robot, crashes into moon as planned


NASA SPACECRAFT vs. THE LUNAR ECLIPSE: NASA's LADEE spacecraft, now orbiting the Moon on a mission to study the lunar atmosphere, might not survive the lunar eclipse. "LADEE wasn't designed to go through a long eclipse and keep things running," says Richard Elphic, the project scientist for LADEE at NASA Ames.

The spacecraft is solar powered, and it uses battery-driven heaters to keep itself warm. LADEE regularly experiences periods of low-to-no sunlight for 45 minutes when it passes over the nightside of the Moon. During the eclipse, the "shadow time" will last as much as 4 hours.

"Even dipping into the penumbra (the outskirts of Earth's shadow) means we lose power generation, and for the full Earth umbra (the dark core of Earth's shadow) there's no solar array generation at all," continues Elphic. "So we'll be running on battery, with no array generation, and using heaters more than usual to keep things warm."

"There are some areas of the spacecraft that will not be warmed up by heaters – part of LADEE's propulsion system, for example.  So it is possible these might freeze and never warm up sufficiently again.  We won't know until after eclipse and we get housekeeping and state of health data," says Elphic.

And now for the good news. "Our in flight data show that power and thermal are behaving better than predicted, because of the built in margins, so we expect the spacecraft to survive just fine," reports Butler Hine, the LADEE Project Manager at Ames. "The unheated portions of the propulsion system are mainly what we will be watching for any freezing."

Regardless of how LADEE emerges from the eclipse, the mission is near its end. NASA's plans to crash LADEE into the lunar surface as part of a "skimming" maneuver that will allow the spacecraft to sample the Moon's near-surface atmosphere. "We have already used our extra fuel for the one month extension we are in now," concludes Hine. "Even if we survive the eclipse we will impact as planned. We do get an extra week of science data if we survive the eclipse, however."

Stay tuned for updates from LADEE.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- NASA's robotic moon explorer, LADEE, is no more.

Flight controllers confirmed Friday that the orbiting spacecraft crashed into the back side of the moon as planned, just three days after surviving a full lunar eclipse, something it was never designed to do.

Researchers believe LADEE likely vaporized when it hit because of its extreme orbiting speed of 3,600 mph, possibly smacking into a mountain or side of a crater. No debris would have been left behind.

"It's bound to make a dent," project scientist Rick Elphic predicted Thursday.

By Thursday evening, the spacecraft had been skimming the lunar surface at an incredibly low altitude of 300 feet. Its orbit had been lowered on purpose last week to ensure a crash by Monday following an extraordinarily successful science mission.

LADEE - short for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer - was launched in September from Virginia. From the outset, NASA planned to crash the spacecraft into the back side of the moon, far from the Apollo artifacts left behind during the moonwalking days of 1969 to 1972.

It completed its primary 100-day science mission last month and was on overtime. The extension had LADEE flying during Tuesday morning's lunar eclipse; its instruments were not designed to endure such prolonged darkness and cold.

But the small spacecraft survived - it's about the size of a vending machine - with just a couple pressure sensors acting up.

The mood in the control center at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., was upbeat late Thursday afternoon, according to project manager Butler Hine.

"Having flown through the eclipse and survived, the team is actually feeling very good," Hine told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

But the uncertainty of the timing of LADEE's demise had the flight controllers "on edge," he said.

As it turns out, LADEE succumbed within several hours of Hine's comments. NASA announced its end early Friday morning.

It will be at least a day or two before NASA knows precisely where the spacecraft ended up; the data cutoff indicates it smashed into the far side of the moon, although just barely.

LADEE did not have enough fuel to remain in lunar orbit much beyond the end of its mission. It joined dozens if not scores of science satellites and Apollo program spacecraft parts that have slammed into the moon's surface, on purpose, over the decades, officials said. Until LADEE, the most recent man-made impact was the LCROSS crater-observing satellite that went down in 2009.

During its $280 million mission, LADEE identified various components of the thin lunar atmosphere - neon, magnesium and titanium, among others - and studied the dusty veil surrounding the moon, created by all the surface particles kicked up by impacting micrometeorites.

"LADEE's science cup really overfloweth," Elphic said earlier this month. "LADEE, by going to the moon, has actually allowed us to visit other worlds with similar tenuous atmospheres and dusty environments."

---

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