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SMART-1 to Image Apollo Landing Sites

Posted by Hemos on from the blast-from-the-past dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Space.com is reporting that the European Space Agency's SMART-1 probe is imaging the Apollo landing sites on the moon. The resolution may be good enough to see mineral evidence of the blasts created by landing craft. Photos expected too. The article says it "might put to rest conspiratorial thoughts that U.S. astronauts didn't go the distance and scuff up the lunar landscape." I wouldn't bet my Buzz Aldrin doll that hoax buffs will cease and desist."

8 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Conspiracy Buffs by elecngnr · · Score: 4, Funny

    It is unlikely, IMHO, that these new pictures will satisfy any of those who do not believe that NASA landed men on the moon. It is much easier to doctor photos these days than to create the conspiracy they believe occurred in the 60's and 70's with the moon landings. In fact, I believe that you could take most of these folks, land them on the moon itself, and they would still claim that they were not actually on the moon, but had fallen victim to some form of mind control. Does anyone know if a tin foil hat will fit inside of a NASA space helmet?

    --
    Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
  2. Speaking of Buzz... by FuturePastNow · · Score: 4, Funny

    Buzz already knows how to shut up conspiracy theorists. I prefer his method, too.

    --
    Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
  3. How naive! by Nuffsaid · · Score: 4, Funny

    Who could actually believe that SMART-1 is really circling the Moon? How could it manage that, without smashing into the giant crystal sphere that holds it up? They try to blind us with all this "Ion Engine" technobabble while everybody knows that all you need is a really long ladder to reach the Apollo 11 landing site and see with your own eyes the flag, the lander an all that stuff.
    Some people misdirect their skepticism...

    --
    Nuffsaid
    ________

    Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
  4. We landed on the Moon. by node+3 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The site http://www.clavius.org/ really belongs in the body of the post. It answers in depth every "reason" why it's impossible to have landed on the Moon.

    If you have your doubts, or otherwise find yourself giving credence to the Apollo hoax theories, you owe it to yourself to visit that site. There's nothing wrong with questioning government and understanding that it's possible (possible != probable, and as hard as it was to land on the Moon, imagine how much harder it would be to fake it in an open society where not only would you have to trick hundreds of thousands of engineers and support personnel as well as thousands of scientists, but also the astronauts who are still alive today and have not contradicted the stories, all the while you can't have made a single mistake that would expose the conspiracy!) that the Moon landings were faked, but this is a case where the evidence is fully on the side of the conventional story.

    1. Re:We landed on the Moon. by hcdejong · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The argument that the photos have been faked have been comprehensively debunked.

      And what about the film/TV scenes shot on the moon? That were broadcast live to the entire planet? They would have been even harder to fake (1/6 G is hard to simulate), faking them would have involved a lot of planning beforehand (to create the shots in time for the landing and live broadcast).

      And botching ALL photos and film for ALL landings would be quite improbable. If Apollo 11 had come back without usable film, NASA would have corrected the problem before the Apollo 12 launch.

      Don't listen to the conspiracy theorists. They're morons.

  5. Re:What would REALLY be cool... by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Moon dust covering stuff? What would really be cool is if people would finally get it about the moon having no atmosphere...
    What would be *really* cool is if people posting smug 'corrections' understood that dust can be raised by things other than wind (atmosphere)... I.E. nearby impacts.

    That being said; I doubt anything we've left on the moon is visibly covered with dust. There's a fair chance however that there may be microscopic dust and damage.

  6. Of course, we really did go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Living in Houston, I occasionally run into folks who have some connection with JSC and the Apollo program. Two good examples.

    As an undergrad at Rice Univ, I took a space physics class for non-space physics majors taught by the chair of the space physics dept. The prof. happpened to have designed a bunch of the experiment packages that went to the moon during Apollo. He was pretty definite that the Apollo astronauts really had gone to the moon and played with his experiments.

    More recently, I had the very humbling experience of talking to a NASA engineer who had been in the control room when the Apollo 1 crew perished. Even today, the memory of that day brought tears to his eyes.

  7. Of course we landed on the moon! by NPN_Transistor · · Score: 3, Informative

    I couldn't agree more. I could think of a reason why every argument on that website is not correct... a good website to take a look at is http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html It doesn't specifically debunk the questions on the Clauvius website, it still debunks a lot of the general misconceptions on the site. Other arguments on the site can be de-bunked by thinking about simple scientific facts such as the lighting on the moon (reflected lighting from the surface of the moon) and perspective... these conspiracy theorists just need to learn about some really simple scientific facts.