NASA's LRO Captures High-Res Pics of Apollo Landing Sites

The Bad Astronomer is one of many readers who wrote to tell us about NASA's release of high-res photos showing the Apollo landing sites. The photos were taken from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and show the traces of earlier visits to the Moon. "The satellite reached lunar orbit June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images came before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution."

Comments

The way I see it...

[cmowire]

I'm sure at least once, somebody in the team asked "Now, you guys do know that this will show the landing sight. We really didn't fake the landing, right?"

Nice

[Kell Bengal]

Neat shots. I'm just waiting for someone to 'CSI enhance' this so that we can see Neil's bootprints.

Re:Nice

[The_mad_linguist]

Nah, too high res - no challenge. You should have taken a webcam shot through a window and aim it at a crushed soda can.

Awesome! Beautiful desolation. Cheap prices.

[itsybitsy]

Awesome place. Beautiful desolation. Cheap prices. Vacant land. Good views of Earth. Historic properties. Once in a lifetime chance to own a piece of history.

More Lost Photos

[DieByWire]

Sheesh. These pics are just a few days old and they've already lost the images of the Apollo 13 landing sight.

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[clarkkent09]

Honestly, I think the best argument is that the Soviets would definitely have called us out on not landing. They would have had the technology to disprove us, and don't tell me that they wouldn't have called us out.

That's easy, I have reliable evidence from the voices inside my head that we just exchanged some alien technology from the Roswell UFO crash for their silence.

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[Tomfrh]

Honestly, I think the best argument is that the Soviets would definitely have called us out on not landing.

The top tiers of the Soviet machine were in on the hoax. It was excellent propaganda. It generated fear in their people, and fearful people are more easily herded.

Instead of "Iraq has WMDs" it was "America has moon rockets".

Re:Eerie Moon Orbits

[Lumpy]

The moon is lumpy and thus doesn't have a uniform gravity field.

Um NO It's not.

and I have a very uniform gravity field thank you. Plus I have lost quite a bit of weight. I have not been mistaken for a large moon since high school.