Towards the end of my first year of law school I, like most of my classmates, attended a meeting in preparation for the writing competition. The writing competition is used for the law journals at Cornell to select their associates for the next year. At this meeting all the journals gave a brief presentation and distributed a handout providing information on their journal; during the presentation for one of the journals, I noticed that when they formed they originally funded themselves with a bake sale. This struck me as an excellent idea, and I decided I wanted to start my own law journal, The Cornell Journal of Space Law, which I would fund by selling cookies shaped like rocket ships, the sun, etc. (if this idea failed it was suggested to me that I should solicit Richard Branson for funds). While I never followed through with this idea, I do actually remain very interested in space law as a field, and many law students still approach me to discuss or joke about space law.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will crash into the moon on Friday morning, destroying itself in search of water in the form of ice on the surface of the moon. Four minutes after the Centaur upper stage rocket will hit the Cabeus A crater at 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 9, the Shepherding Spacecraft will make impact. The Centaur will create a plume possibly containing ice that may be visible to some areas on Earth. By traveling through the plume, the Shepherding Spacecraft will be able to analyze the material that was sent flying off of the moon.

NEW DELHI (AP) — India launched its first mission to the moon Wednesday, rocketing a satellite up into the pale dawn sky in a two-year mission to redraw maps of the lunar surface.

Clapping and cheering scientists tracked the ascent on computer screens after they lost sight of Chandrayaan-1 from the Sriharikota space center in southern India. Chandrayaan means "Moon Craft" in ancient Sanskrit.

Indian Space Research Organization chairman G. Madhavan Nair said the mission is to "unravel the mystery of the moon."

"We have started our journey to the moon and the first leg has gone perfectly well," he said.