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In the News

Here is a comprehensive list of all the publications of LUNAR related research and activities. The publications range from peer reviewed articles that have been published in various scientific journals to interviews with LUNAR team members by news broadcasting agencies. 

2015

  • February 2015:  LUNAR director Jack Burns was interviewed for Radio National in Australia, discussing the future of space exploration and telerobotics.  Listen to the show by clicking here.  The article "New space race concentrates on Mars, extraterrestrial life" can be found here.

2009-2013

  • September 2013:  Dr. Jack Burns, director of LUNAR, has joined Moon Express as the Science Advisory Board chair to aid in scientific and resource utilization goals.  Click here to read the article.
  • September 2013:  LUNAR principal investigator Jack Burns is featured in a podcast describing the opportunities the lunar farside offers for science and exploration.  Click here to listen to the podcast.
  • July 2013:  There was much press coverage of our 2013 International Space Station Telerobotics Simulation.  Astronauts aboard the ISS will remotely teleoperate NASA Ames' K10 rover in deploying an approximation of LUNAR's telescope.  This is the first time a planetary rover has been piloted from space and is the first step in joint human-robot exploration.  The following articles and videos detail the successful completion of the second of three crew sessions:  Space.com, Wired.com, Phys.org.com, SpaceFellowship.com, and Professor of Astrophysics Jack Burns Explains Telerobotics.

2011

2010

2009

  • November 13, 2009: Space.com, "Water Discovery Fuels Hope to Colonize the Moon", read on...
    Hopes, dreams and practical plans to colonize or otherwise exploit the moon as a source of minerals or a launch pad to the cosmos got a boost today with NASA's announcement of significant water ice at the lunar south pole. The LCROSS probe discovered the equivalent of a dozen 2-gallon buckets of water in the form of ice, in a crater at the lunar south pole. Scientists figure there's more where that came from.
  • November 13, 2009: CBC News, "NASA's moon crash reveals 'lots of water'", read on...
    NASA has announced that it found a "significant amount" of water on the moon as a result of the LCROSS impact last month. Anthony Colaprete, a scientist on the project, estimated there were about 100 litres of water in the crater where the LCROSS spacecraft hit the moon on Oct. 9. Colaprete presented some of NASA's data from the spacecraft's instruments, including spectrometer readings that strongly suggest the presence of water.
  • October 9, 2009: Boulder Daily Camera, "Boulder moon-crash watchers cheerful, if not dazzled", read on...
    NASA successfully bulldozed two spacecraft into the moon's south pole at 5:30 a.m. in search of hidden ice — but without the expected live photos. Still, there was plenty of cosmic cheer among the early risers at CU's Fiske Planetarium and Sommers-Bausch Observatory. Children in their pajamas, college students and space enthusiasts flocked to the CU hub to watch the spectacle and ask scientists questions.
  • October 9, 2009: 9News.com, "CU professor excited about moon crash", read on...
    When it comes to all matters lunar, Jack Burns is the man to talk to. He's a professor of astrophysics and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado and he's looking forward to Friday's experiment. "It's fun seeing something go pound, smash into the moon and see what it's going to do," Burns said. Video Interview
  • October 8, 2009: The New York Times, "NASA Prepares to Bombard Moon", read on...
    In what sounds like the plot of a Bruce Willis movie — but is in fact a real scientific experiment on a grand scale — NASA is preparing to plow a satellite and its booster rocket into the surface of the moon on Friday morning, to see if there is any sign of water in the two dust clouds created by the impacts. The spacecraft rapidly approaching the moon right now — at 2,638 m.p.h. — is known as the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS.
  • September 25, 2009: Science, "Exotic Telescopes Prepare to Probe Era of First Stars and Galaxies", read on...
    Radio telescopes that substitute antenna arrays for dishes are gearing up to peer to the brink of the billion-year "dark ages" that followed the big bang
  • September 24, 2009: msnbc.com, "Moon water findings are a game-changer", read on...
    The discovery of widespread but small amounts water on the surface of the moon, announced Wednesday, stands as one of the most surprising findings in planetary science. Three spacecraft picked up the signature of water, not just in the frigid polar craters where it has long been suspected to exist, but all over the lunar surface, which was previously thought to be bone dry.
  • July 19, 2009: denverpost.com, "CU following Apollo's footsteps", read on...
    We have walked on the moon, driven over it and hit golf balls off its rugged surface. Most of us have also shelved moon exploration as a grainy memory from the last century. But as the 40th anniversary nears of man's first lunar landing, Apollo 11, the moon continues to ignite the imagination of scientists at the University of Colorado. They say it holds the key to deeper understanding of our solar system and beyond.
  • July 19, 2009: Boulder Daily Camera, "Boulder scientists still look to the moon", read on...
    Hundreds, if not thousands, of scientific studies have been published about what the 842 pounds of moon rocks hauled back to Earth have taught us. Thanks to the 22,000 separate samples of lunar rock collected by the Apollo astronauts between 1969 and 1972, astronomers have come to better understand the violent beginnings of the solar system, the formation of the moon and the creation of Earth. But as scientifically profitable as the moon rocks may have been, the prospect of heading back to the moon for fresh data is invigorating to lunar scientists in Boulder.
  • July 17, 2009: USA Today, "40 years after Apollo 11: What's our next step?", read on...
    Forty years ago Monday, Neil Armstrong made his "giant leap for mankind." Since that triumphant moment, astronauts in the U.S. space program have gone no farther. The first footsteps on the moon — made by Armstrong on July 20, 1969, on the mission known as Apollo 11 — came 3½ years before the last ones. Since then, astronauts have been stuck close to the Earth, mostly circling a few hundred miles overhead in a spacecraft that's little more than a glorified cargo truck.
  • June 13, 2009: CNET News, "NASA kick-starting lunar science", read on...
    If you're in the planning stages of sending people back to the moon, as NASA is, you'd better know as much as possible about it. That's one of the reasons NASA launched, in late 2007, the Lunar Science Institute (LSI), an organization with an annual budget of $10 million for the study and research of the moon, as well as the role of supporting and inspiring new generations of lunar scientists.
  • May 24, 2009: denverpost.com, "Back to the moon", read on...
    The moon is our nearest natural celestial neighbor. Its origin and evolution are intimately linked to our most fundamental questions about Earth. How and when did the Earth form and evolve? What was primordial Earth like? Did primitive life gain an early foothold, or was it extinguished again and again by giant asteroid collisions? In order to study the primordial Earth, the best place to go in the entire solar system may be the moon.