John W Young recalled life from Georgia to Walking on the Moon

John Young gives a Navy salute during a Moon bounce in 1972. (NASA)

He was known as the astronaut's-astronaut.

A depression-era youth who grew up in northwest Georgia to become the seventh man to walk on the moon discussed his life in his recently released autobiography.

As a young boy attending school in Cartersville, located 40 miles north of Atlanta, John W. Young wrote about his meager life in the small town. And, how his strengths carried him on to college and into a flying career with the U.S. Navy and later upward to NASA.

Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space is the book on the life of a true American hero, John Watts Young. Co-authored by James R. Hansen, Forever Young puts you on the flight deck and in the cockpit as Young prepares to push America forward in the space race and toward space research.

Young described his father's job at a Cartersville filling station as a temporary one after being laid off from a prominent job as a world traveling civil engineer during the height of the economic collapse.

NASA LADEE spacecraft lifts-off to study earth's moon

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A low cost NASA spacecraft designed to study the moon's thin atmosphere darted into a midnight sky over Virginia on Friday to begin a science gathering mission in lunar orbit.

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft is a $280 million mission to help scientists learn more about the moon's atmosphere and the conditions near and on the lunar surface.

One question the space agency would like to know is if lunar dust is being kicked up into the very thin lunar exosphere.

The LADEE mission will be one of the first by the space agency to launch and operate a low cost exploration mission.

"(LADEE) is really designed to try to lower the cost and speed up the ability to put together a spacecraft," Dr. Pete Worden, Director of NASA Ames Research Facility, explained on Thursday. " We are very, very excited about (LADEE) and we're looking forward to a great mission."

Dr. Worden and Ames added they are serious about performing "a number of low cost, rapidly producible space missions" over the next decade.

Ames will manage the spacecraft's entire six month mission.

A brief flash of daylight heralded the maiden launch of Orbital Sciences Corp. Minotaur 5 rocket as it lept into the black sky late Friday from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at 11:27 p.m. EDT.

NASA unveiles new spacecraft to carry astronauts into deep space

The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle during construction. (Lockheed)

NASA unveiled today the future vehicle of American space travel which will carry humanity beyond the International Space Station and out into deep space and the moon.

Based on the plans for the Orion spacecraft, a new spacecraft known as the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, or MPCV, will be able to carry four astronauts on a voyage of up to three weeks, according to NASA Headquarters.

NASA's associate administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Douglas Cooke, told this reporter today that no time line has been established for the first test launch of this new system.

Cooke then added later that the first crewed flight would occur no earlier than 2016.

"We are committed to human exploration beyond low Earth orbit and look forward to developing the next generation of systems to take us there," NASA administrator Charlie Bolden said in a statement.

MPCV is built by Lockheed Martin Corp. in Colorado, the module will have a separate service module which will be jettisoned prior to it's return to earth. NASA states "this module can also transport unpressurized cargo and scientific payloads" during flights.

"The NASA Authorization Act lays out a clear path forward for us by handing off transportation to the International Space Station to our private sector partners, so we can focus on deep space exploration," Bolden continued. "As we aggressively continue our work on a heavy lift launch vehicle, we are moving forward with an existing contract to keep development of our new crew vehicle on track."

The crewed vehicle -- which will have a mass of around 23 tons -- will launch on a heavy-lift rocket toward a destination past the space station and beyond low earth orbit to the moon.

The spacecraft is based on designs and testing of the Orion craft going back to 2005, and on the Apollo spacecrafts of the 1960's and 70's.

The spacecraft would land much like the Apollo modules with a Pacific Ocean splashdown near the coastline of California.

Today's announcement comes fifty years after President John F. Kennedy's "We choose to go to the Moon" speech at Rice University in September 1961.

Apollo 14 at Forty: Crew return America to the moon

Commander Shepard stands upon the lunar surface. (NASA)

America's first man in space, Alan B. Shepard, stood on the dusty soil of the moon. His white space suit made it hard to move freely as he hopped across the plains at Fra Mauro, the landing site for Shepard and fellow moon walker Edgar Mitchell.

As the lunar journey neared its end, Shepard took his handle from a rock collection tool and fastened a six iron wedge at the end of it, dropped a small white ball onto the dry soil and made the first golf shot on another celestial surface.

The ball shot into a nearby crater, and he thought to himself, "A hole in one".

Shepard then perfected his back swing for the second and last golf ball. "There it goes... miles and miles and miles!" he exclaimed as the second ball soared and arced out into the solid black sky.

It had been a long journey for America's fifth human to reach the moon. As NASA worked to return America back to space following the Apollo One fire, the space agency's senior astronaut was loosing his hearing in his left ear and his balance. His equilibrium was gone by autumn of 1968.

A secret ear operation suggested by fellow astronaut Tom Stafford was then performed by a Los Angeles doctor which allowed the astronaut to return to flight status a year later.

He was ready to now aim for a moon flight, particularly Apollo 13 and the Fra Mauro region.

However, crew rotation by chief astronaut Deke Slayton put Shepard on board Apollo 14, and when the preceding flight aborted it's lunar landing due to a blown oxygen tank, Fourteen set it's mission sights on Fra Mauro.

Apollo 14 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on January 31, 1971, at 4:03:02 pm EST, forty minutes late due to rain over launch pad 39-A, to begin a nine day voyage upon the ocean of space.

Once the crew reached space and left earth orbit for the moon, they ran into a problem with the docking latches which connect the lunar module Antares with their command module Kitty Hawk.

For one hour, Kitty Hawk's pilot Stuart Roosa brought the command module in slowly to dock it perfectly on four tries, however the capture latches would not latch. Kitty Hawk's fuel was running lower than had been planned at this point in the flight as well.

If the latches could not dock the two craft together, the mission would have to be aborted.

As the crafts moved past a distance of 20,000 miles away from earth, the idea was discussed to go in at a faster rate to awake those latches and dock the module. It worked and the crew sped on toward lunar orbit.

The three day journey to lunar orbit was quiet.

Antares trip down to the lunar surface was not.

Software issues with the lunar module's landing computer, and later with the landing radar caused big concerns for both the crew and in mission control.

Once the control center sent up new commands to the computer, they were given a go for landing.

Antares single engine fired to bring the craft down and land. It was human kinds third landing upon the moon.

Landing at Fra Mauro on the eastern edge of the Ocean of Storms occurred on February 5 at 4:18:11 a.m., just 130 feet shy from the target site.

"Okay, we made a good landing," the 47-year-old Shepard said upon landing Antares.

Hours later, he became the fifth human to set foot upon the moon and radioed to mission control on what it took for him to reach this point, "Al is on the surface. It's been a long way, but we're here."

To which Slayton replied, "Not bad for an old man." Shepard would be the only Mercury astronaut to reach the moon.

Shepard and Mitchell collected nearly ninety-three pounds of lunar rocks during their nearly five hour set of two moon walks.

This week marks the fortieth anniversary of Shepard and his crew's flight aboard Apollo 14, the mission which returned America to the moon following the odyssey of the Apollo 13 flight the following spring.

In October 1995, this aerospace reporter enjoyed a candid conversation with Alan Shepard on his thoughts about the space program of the time. And, although it has been fifteen years, his words echo true in 2011 as it did then.

Charles Atkeison: How does the space program today differ from what you experienced during the 1960's and into the early 1970's? Do we still have a focus for what we want to do at NASA?

Alan Shepard: I think as far as NASA's concerned, yes. The difference as far as the general public's concerned is that the pure excitement of the early days is gone because, "so we've done that. What do we do tomorrow?", kind of routine. The fact that the public in general is excited about exploration made the lunar mission a very well recognized, well appreciated phase.

The folks that are flying today are just as dedicated as we were even knowing ahead of time that they are not going to receive the same kind of appreciation and recognition that those of us did in the early days.

Charles: Do you consider yourself the Christopher Columbus of the modern age?

Alan: I really don't. I consider myself very fortunate to have been allowed to make a couple of space flights for the United States. I recognize a few of us get a lot of attention, but literally hundreds of our close associates are the ones that did all the work. I remember saying in May of 1961 at the White House, when I received a medal from President Kennedy acknowledging that these hundreds, yes thousands of dedicated individuals on the ground are the ones to whom the accolades of the day should go. And I still feel that very strongly.

Charles: I remember the scene, Kennedy drops your medal during the presentation. What went through your head right then?

Alan: Well, we almost banged heads 'cause both of us (Shepard laughs) ... it was kind of cute. 'Cause Jack said, "Here", and Jackie (Kennedy) said, "No. No, Jack, pin it on." So then he recovered and pinned it on. So we had a lot of fun with that.

Charles: Thank-you.

During a visit to the Kennedy Space Center's Saturn V center, guests can walk up to and study Kitty Hawk.

Commander Shepard passed away while at his home in California following a two year bout with leukemia in July 1998. Crew mate Roosa past away three years earlier due to an inflammation of the pancreas; and Mitchell is now eighty and lives near West Palm Beach, Florida.

In May, America will once again recall the Christopher Columbus of the space age in Shepard, as we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of America's first trip into space, Freedom 7.

North America treated to total lunar eclipse

The moon during Tuesday morning's eclipse in this NASA image.

Overcast skies across the Unites States forced many amateur astronomers inside to watch Tuesday morning's lunar eclipse by way of live video on the Internet.

Clouds over much of the country disappointed astronomers from watching the celestial show on this the first day of winter as the earth wedged between the Sun and the moon.

Low clouds over metro Atlanta forced many residents to give up their backyard moon parties and observations and head indoors.

Bill Sullivan of Lawrenceville, Georgia, was one resident dejected by the cloudy evening.

"My son and I had hoped to watch the eclipse, but I guess we'll just have to watch it on TV or something," he told this reported by phone.

Along the Texas Gulf Coast, residents were treated to an astronomical show as clear skies prevailed.

A total lunar eclipse occurs when the earth moves between the Sun and the moon, thus the Sun's light is blocked from reflecting off the moon's surface. The Sun's rays however do pass through the earth's atmosphere generating an orange to red light upon the moon's surface.

Just as predicted, the totality, or time when the earth's shadow fully covered the 1,060 mile wide face of the moon, began at 2:41 a.m. EST, and lasted just over seventy minutes.

The earth's dark shadow then gave way to a redish light upon the lunar surface as the Sun's light beamed through our planet's atmosphere.

Several observers in the south described the total eclipse to this reporter as looking like a "copper penny" or "copper and red".

A camera aboard the International Space Station was able to catch several dramatic views of the eclipse from 220 miles above earth.

On a historic note, the last time a lunar eclipse occurred on the first day of the winter solstice was 372 years ago -- Dec. 21, 1638. A time when Galileo de' Galilei, the father of modern astronomy, was alive and well in Italy.

The next total lunar eclipse to be visible from North America will happen again in April 2014.

America awaits total lunar eclipse on Tuesday

A total eclipse of the earth's moon on Tuesday will have sky watchers across North America braving cold temperatures to witness a rare celestial show.

Astronomers and space enthusiasts alike will have necks turned high and telescopes trained on earth's only natural satellite.

A total lunar eclipse is when the earth moves between the Sun and the moon, thus the Sun's direct light is blocked from reflecting off the moon's surface. Instead, the Sun's rays pass through the earth's atmosphere generating an orange to red light upon the moon's surface.

Astronomers from the east coast of the United States will begin to see the moon pass into the earth's shadow at 1:33 a.m. EST on Tuesday. Observers on the west coast will begin to see the eclipse at 10:33 p.m. local time Monday.

Even if you do not own a telescope, your own eyes or binoculars will do just fine.

As the earth flies around the Sun, and the moon orbits the earth, the totality -- or time when the earth's shadow fully covers the moon -- will last 72 minutes beginning at 2:41 a.m.

Weather permitting, thousands of amateur astronomers are expected to visit their local planetariums for the inside story on eclipse events on the first day of the winter solstice.

Cold temperatures and scattered clouds are forecast for the southeast early on Tuesday.

That's not stopping several we spoke with in north Georgia.

"I'm just planning on bundling up and letting my adrenaline fuel my observations on Tuesday morning," Jeff Weston of Alpharetta said on Friday.

At NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., a live camera feed of the eclipse is planned and can be viewed by visiting NASA's Eclipse page.

Also, follow this reporter via Twitter (@CAtkeison) for images and updates during the sky show.

This will be the last total lunar eclipse visible to North America until April 15, 2014.

NASA watches Duel Lunar Impacts Today

A rocket's upper stage and a NASA spacecraft made craters of their own upon the Moon this morning as the space agency begins a strong search for signs of water on the Lunar surface.

The LCROSS satellite and it's launch booster Centaur slammed into the south pole of the Moon today just four minutes apart beginning with the Centaur at 7:31 am EDT. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) then crashed into the Cabeus crater at 7:35:35 am.

The NASA image above was take by LCROSS two minutes before it's own demise of the Cabeus crater.

NASA has begun a new era in the exploration of the Moon as humankind works toward it's return with a new set of footprints after 2020.

The LRO was 50 KM over head of the impact regions in lunar orbit taking images. Meanwhile, the Edwin Hubble Space Telescope was also trained on the impacts as it orbited earth 350 miles above earth.

NASA satellite & booster to impact Moon Friday

A NASA Lunar observation satellite and it's booster rocket will leave their orbit around the Moon and make pinpoint crashes as the space agency looks for signs of ice in the shadows of a crater.

The double impact early on Friday morning will see the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and it's Atlas-Centaur upper stage booster slam into the crater Cabeus near the Moon's south pole.

Beginning at 7:30 am EDT tomorrow, the Centaur booster will take the plunge first as it hits the shadows of the crater and, as NASA states, creating "10 billion joules of kinetic energy into a blinding flash of heat and light".

LCROSS will be focused on the 4,850 pound Centaur as it provides Live TV of the first impact.

LCROSS will then move in and fly through the Lunar plume of dust and rock photographing and scanning for any form of moisture, as NASA looks for signs of ice in the minus 250 degree shadows.

Four minutes following the first impact, the 1,543 pound LCROSS will begin it's own crash landing into the same crater creating a smaller size plume of lunar soil.

Meanwhile, NASA will have the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Edwin Hubble Space Telescope photographing the first and second Lunar impacts from their postions between the earth and the Moon.

Tony Colaprete, the Lunar mission's investigator stated days ago, "We've just learned that Cabeus may contain relatively-rich deposits of hydrogen and-or frozen water. Cabeus is not as close to the lunar limb as we would have liked, but it seems to offer us the best chance of hitting H2O."

Here on Earth, astronomers will have their own telescopes trained on the Lunar impacts a few hours before the events begin.

Look for the Moon, which will be 82% full, to be high above the horizon at the impact times.

SpaceLaunchNews.com will have LIVE TV beginning at 6:14 am EDT on Friday. Follow our updates via Twitter @SpaceLaunchNews.

Read my LRO-LCROSS mission stories from 2009.

40 Years Later: Mankind's First Lunar Landing

Buzz Aldrin walks on the Moon on July 20, 1969. (NASA/Neil Armstrong)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Forty years ago today, two NASA astronauts brought a golden spacecraft down upon the Moon's surface, and stepped onto another world as America walked upon the lunar surface for the first time.

Launched on July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission was commanded by Neil A. Armstrong. Command module pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Lunar Module Pilot Michael Collins rounded out the crew. This was the second space flight by each astronaut.

After traveling for a few days, the trio reached lunar orbit; and it was time for Neil and Buzz to leave Collins in the command module Columbia, and take the lunar module Eagle down to the surface.

With only sixty seconds of fuel left to keep them aloft, Armstrong, steered their tiny lunar lander away from a boulder field in which the craft's computer was sending them to land in. Alarms then began to go off in the cabin alerting them. The alarms, Mission Control in Houston would later state, was telling them that the computer was not able to process all the data coming in.

"30 seconds," called CAPCOM Charlie Duke in Houston to the Apollo 11 lander, Eagle, warning of how much time Armstrong and Aldrin had left in order to land or abort the entire landing.

NASA's LRO enters Lunar Orbit This Morning

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter entered our moon's orbit this morning, beginning a year long period of imaging the lunar surface for possible manned landing sites as America returns to the moon in 2020.

At 6:27 am EDT today, LRO entered lunar orbit. Over the next few days, according to NASA's Ames Research Center, the spacecraft will begin powering up its instruments and imager and begin to lower its orbit slightly to begin mapping operations.

Meanwhile, several thousand miles behind is the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite or LCROSS. Both LRO & LCROSS were launched together aboard an Atlas V last Thursday from Cape Canaveral. LCROSS is towing the Atlas' spent centaur upper stage to the moon and will crash it into a dark crater near the moon's south pole. The plume of lunar dirt kicked up by the centaur's impact will allow LCROSS to fly through it to chemically measure for any water or ice make up in the soil.

We are awaiting possible LIVE television from LCROSS at about 8:20 am EDT.