85 Million Have A Shot At Seeing Tonight's Moon Launch
If the skies are clear Friday night around 11:27 p.m. ET, there's a fair chance that anyone from as far south as South Carolina, west into Ohio and on over to New England will be able to see something of NASA's first launch of a mission to the moon from the agency's spaceport on Wallops Island, Va.
Our conservative calculations put the number of people who live within the "visibility map"that NASA has produced at more than 85 million.
As we said Thursday, if you're in that area this might be a night when you want to go outside and look up.NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer mission, as Space.com says, is carrying "a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere, as well as moon dust conditions near the surface."
Of course, light pollution, trees, buildings and cloud cover could spoil the viewing for many. Thankfully, NASA TV will be streaming its coverage.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/09/06/219674372/85-million-have-a-shot-at-seeing-tonights-moon-launch
NASA link: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/schedule.html
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