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This just in from the Department of Suspiciously Timed Discoveries: The Daily Express in London, which is in some country that is not the US, is reporting that the original, long-thought-missing tapes from Apollo 11's walk on the moon have been discovered.

As the tabloid paper tells it in a "World Exclusive," the original, "amazingly clear" tapes were found when "scientists looking for other data stumbled across a number of Nasa tapes in a storage facility in Perth, Australia."

The original video was downloaded to an observation in Perth from the moon, where it was fiddled with before it could be shown, the paper says.

From the moon, the signal was beamed to the Earth's closest tracking station at the Parkes Observatory in Australia where, along with other important data, it was recorded on to high-grade magnetic tapes.

From there, the raw images were downsized to American television resolutions by a special scanner in Sydney, heavily compressed so they could be transmitted live, and then relayed to the US via the Intelsat III satellite.

The final loss in quality came when Nasa made its US recording of the event--the one always seen in archive footage--by simply placing a 16mm film camera in front of a television monitor in the US.

However, it is the original magnetic tapes recorded back at the Parkes Observatory in Australia that contained the unadulterated and highest quality images.

In case you don't realize it, you soon will -- next month brings the 40th anniversary of man landing on the moon.

If you were older than eight years old in 1969, you no doubt remember where you were the moment One Small Step happened (Me: In a rental house down the shore in New Jersey, more interested in going to sleep than in following my Dad's orders to stay awake to see history.)

Expect lots and lots of media coverage of this. Much of it will be fascinating -- the moon trip was indeed mind-boggling, depending on winging it to a large degree, not to mention technology that today would be laughably backward.

One of the first out of the block is GQ magazine, which today offers a lengthy look at NASA then and now.

Photo courtesy Space Center Houston

Science fact and science fiction come face-to-face at the "Cinema of George Lucas" and "Live the Adventure" exhibits currently at Space Center Houston. Comprised of  the personal memorabilia of filmmaker George Lucas (much of it never seen before in public), and an interactive center, the exhibits have been drawing large crowds from their opening last week.

"It's interesting to meet astronauts and talk to them about how science fiction has inspired them in their careers," Jack Moore, the exhibits developer for Space Center Houston, tells Hair Balls. "Look at George Lucas's career...when he did Star Wars they literally had to invent new technology to fit his vision and that's a parallel to NASA. They both have these big ideas, these big dreams. People would tell them, 'You can't do that because it's impossible,' and they would say, 'It's not impossible because I'm going to invent the technologies to make it happen.' It's that spirit of innovation that we're celebrating with these exhibits."

The exhibit includes props -- R2D2 and 3CPO are featured stars -- and costumes from a variety of Lucas films, as well as his handwritten notes when he first outlined the Star Wars series. "To be able to have the [documents] from when he first put pen to paper to create the story, is really incredible," says Moore. "You can see where his handwriting gets a little sloppy when he gets excited and see where he scratched through something."

Photo by bobbymond

Today NASA made history again, breaking down barriers: For the first time (that we know of), astronauts drank their own urine in space.

The piss was said to be "purified" and "recycled" and all that, but the bottom line is the bottom line: They might as well sign up for this website. (Note: About as not, not, NOT Safe For Work as humanly possible. Unless you work at NASA.)

NASA gave the International Space Station astronauts the go today to drink water from the finally fixed "Water Recovery System," and the debauchery began.

"Expedition 19 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Mike Barratt and Koichi Wakata celebrated the decision with a toast in the Destiny laboratory," NASA reported.

"This has been the stuff of science fiction," Barratt said, but we were thinking it was some other kind of fiction. (Note: Same warning applies. As does the same exception.)

Photo courtesy NASA

You thought you had some crummy honey-dos this weekend? You could have been Mike Massimino, Mike Good, John Grunsfeld or Andre Feustal.

Their job was to fix some long-past-its-prime, but still working, POS vehicle. The nuts were rusted and sheer brute force was needed.

Oh, and they weren't in the driveway working on a Trans Am -- they were orbiting and spacewalking, doing one last repair job to the Hubble telescope.

The Hubble became a running joke when it was sent up in 1990 with a damaged lens, but it has since far exceeded the fondest hopes of NASA.

They decided to send up one last mission to give it new batteries, some other updates, and freshen it so it's good for another five or ten years.

But it wasn't easy.

Houstonians have always had a special place in their heart for Apollo 13, the Tom Hanks movie that chronicles the only moon mission that didn't make it.

(And for the mission itself, of course, which unfortunately enough gave us the "Houston, we have a problem" cliche that leads to lots and lots of lazy writing.

One of the scenes in the film depicts Commander Jim Lovell's son, who is at military school, being told of the accident that's put his dad in harm's way.

In a feature on the restaurant that the son, Jay Lovell (who was raised in Houston), owns in a small Illinois town, we find that the scene was a little overplayed.

"Actually, at the time, I didn't really appreciate how serious the Apollo 13 incident was," Lovell told the reporter. "Not until I saw the movie and realized exactly what had gone on."
 

How serious was Stephen Colbert about having that new NASA space node named after him? Pretty darn. We think.

Hair Balls recently spoke with Nick Prueher, who runs the Found Footage Festival that's making its first trip to Houston in a few weeks (more on that to come). Prueher also works production at the Colbert Report, and he was on hand Tuesday night when NASA announced its decision. (Quick recap: NASA had an online vote to decide the node's name. Colbert had his viewers win it for him. NASA went with Tranquillity--and named a treadmill after Colbert instead.)

We asked Prueher for some insight into Colbert's reaction.

"At the show [Tuesday] night, he was legitimately excited about this. He's not feigning enthusiasm when stuff gets named after him. He's like a school boy. He's really excited when he talks to people from space and astronauts."

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Space Module: Colbert - Sunita Williams
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contes

In case you missed it, the new node to the space station is not going to be named after Stephen Colbert, even though he won the write-in vote in the naming contest.

Astronaut Suni Williams went on the show last night to announce the node will be named Tranquillity, in honor of Apollo 11 and spell-checkers everywhere.

"We don't typically name U.S. space station hardware after living people and this is no exception," NASA official Bill Gerstenmaier said in a press release issued late last night.

But Colbert didn't come away empty-handed.

Photo courtesy The Colbert Report

Tonight's the night!

On tonight's Colbert Report, the nation will learn whether NASA has a sense of humor or not.

They famously had a contest to name the new node on the space station; they didn't take any of our suggestions. But Colbert's fans put him over the top through write-in votes, and the space agency will declare tonight just what the name will be.

Of course, some are outraged. There was this painfully earnest op-ed in the Chron.

But NASA has not always been so dreadfully serious about naming their craft. In the days when astronaut crews got to pick their own names, they were some outliers.

Among the craft that either landed on the moon or circled it are Gumdrop, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Casper and, in the age of Hair, Aquarius.

Lisa Nowak, the former Houston astronaut whose lovesick, (possibly) adult diaper-enabled 1000-mile drive from Houston to Orlando made international news in 2007, has been ordered by a Florida judge to undergo psychiatric testing.

According to an Orlando TV station, Nowak's attorneys might be planning an insanity defense. They claim she suffers from depression, obsessive behavior and Asperger's syndrome, and thus was not in her right mind when she confronted romantic rival Colleen Shipman.

One of her attorneys previously claimed that she also suffered from partner-relational problem, insomnia, brief psychotic disorder with marked stressors, loss of body mass, problems with primary support group, marital separation, problems related to social environment, inadequate social support system and inability to confide in social contacts. Surely one of those will stick...

In the meantime, Nowak sought and was granted the right to travel to all but three states - Alaska, Pennsylvania, and California.