Mars Discoveries

Here's an interesting question that may just win you a bet one day. Is anyone buried on the moon?

Yes.

Eugene Shoemaker was an astronomer and geologist and astronaut-wannabe who was disqualified from the Space Program due to a medical technicality. He instead worked with the teams that chose other astronauts and often sat at Walter Cronkite's elbow during the moon visits of the Apollo spacecraft era, providing technical expertise. His fondest wish was to visit the moon and on January 6, 1998, his ashes were launched with the Lunar Prospector, whose mission was to spend a year mapping the surface of the moon and in July of 1999 NASA crashed the probe into the moon in an attempt to locate water.

A little bit of Shakespeare was etched on the capsule containing his remains:

And, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

The original NASA news release is here. Now you can put a name to the man in the moon.

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LATEST DISCOVERIES ON MARS
Now that packs of ice have been found

Several Starbucks franchises.

A Coors Light factory.

Several unemployed NHL coaches.

Hey, doesn't that pack ice look an *awful* lot like the ice missing from Antarctica???

Under the ice is a 10% solution of vermouth, 90% gin, and a very large olive.

A Zamboni.

[thanks once again to Chris White's Top Five on Science with family-friendly edits by Mark Raymond]

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WONDER for YOUR WEEK: How come we only hear about parallel universes? Couldn't there be a perpendicular universe?

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