“Moon” on The Daily Caller

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joked Thursday that a proposal to allow a moon colony U.S. statehood was actually inspired by former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. (more)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — NASA kicked off the new year with a pair of probes circling the moon in the latest mission to understand how Earth’s closest neighbor formed. (more)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The moon has come a long way since Galileo first peered at it through a telescope. Unmanned probes have circled around it and landed on its surface. Twelve American astronauts have walked on it. And lunar rocks and soil have been hauled back from it. (more)

“Super Moon” describes a new or full moon occurring at the same time the Moon comes within 90 percent of its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit.  (more)

The Moon, at least at the bottom of a deep, dark cold crater near its south pole, seems to be wetter than the Sahara, scientists reported Thursday. (more)

Swallowing its pride, NASA says it wants to learn from future commercial missions to the moon – and it is willing to pay up to $30 million for the privilege. (more)

A meteor strikes, damaging solar arrays and life support systems, and as you watch the billowing dust cloud move ominously toward your lunar camp, you have to restore critical systems and oxygen flow. Starting July 6, a new NASA video game will let you save the day, in 3-D. (more)

WASHINGTON — Neil A. Armstrong, the most famous man in the history of NASA and the first man to walk on the moon, on Wednesday sharply criticized President Obama’s plan to cancel the space agency’s program to send astronauts back to the moon. (more)

On the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, President George H.W. Bush capitalized on the excitement surrounding the commemoration of the landmark spacewalk by announcing big goals for the U.S. space program. In remarks delivered at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on July 20, 1989, he said the U.S. would go, “Back to the moon: back to the future. And this time, back to stay,” hinting at the much promised manned moon base that was supposed to have gotten under way in the 1970s. He also said the U.S. would launch a manned mission to Mars. Though Bush’s announcement served to excite NASA and the public, the numbers weren’t pretty. A NASA study estimated the long-term cost of Bush’s plan would be approximately $500 billion — a staggering figure, even when spread across 20 to 30 years. As a result, NASA transitioned away from human exploration and focused on earth and space science. (more)

The first man to walk on the moon blasted President Barack Obama’s decision to cancel NASA’s back-to-the-moon program on Tuesday, saying that the move is “devastating” to America’s space effort. (more)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – President Barack Obama travels to Florida on Thursday to sell his vision of a reoriented U.S. space exploration program that could spell job losses in this state as well as Texas and Alabama. (more)

Some might say he was a little too mature to be performing on a dancing show. (more)

A dark object may be lurking near our solar system, occasionally kicking comets in our direction. (more)

The White House is launching a political counterattack to fend off escalating congressional criticism of its proposals to outsource U.S. manned space missions to private industry. (more)

It turns out the LCROSS spacecraft’s discovery of water ice at the moon’s south pole wasn’t the whole story. (more)

“We choose not to go to the moon. We choose not to go to the moon in the foreseeable future and not to do the other things, not because they are hard, but because they are expensive, because that goal will serve only to waste our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are unwilling to pay for, one we are unwilling to continue, and one which we intend to abandon…” (more)

The Chinese space agency could land its first astronauts on the moon within a decade in a move that would mark the beginning of a new age of lunar exploration, experts said today. (more)

Details of a new vision for America’s space programme are expected on Monday. (more)

HONOLULU (AP) — Missing moon rocks from the first and last human lunar landings have been discovered in a locked cabinet in Hawaii. (more)