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?"

Re:The way I see it...

[e9th]

More experienced members of the team were asking, "Are we sure we can get good pictures of the New Mexico desert from way up there?"

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

[MyLongNickName]

Actually, I took a webcam shot of the moon from my back yard.. That should be good enough for the CSI team.

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.

Re:Nice

[Cl1mh4224rd]

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

On it. :oP

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.

fake pictures?

[veci]

Crazy people claim that NASA forged all those moon landing videos and photos (missing stars etc.) They have to refine their theory now it seems (maybe NASA forged these pictures as well)...

Re:fake pictures?

[4D6963]

Yeah, but who fucking cares? I mean seriously, everytime the Apollo program comes up on Slashdot half of the discussion is about how hoax theorists won't shut up about it. How about we shut up about them, no one else cares about their ridiculous opinions, and if anything it'd be better to ignore such silly ideas.

Same thing for flat Earth theorists, creationists, holocaust deniers, global warming deniers and so on. If we stopped caring about what any looney/troll says we wouldn't even hear of those stupid ideas, cause we're the ones who do the best job at repeating and spreading those ideas.

Re:The way I *sigh*(t) it...

[Xtifr]

Actually, to show the landing sight, I think they'd actually have to land again. To show the landing site, however, simply requires a sufficiently high-resolution camera.

yes, I know that you are joking

[portforward]

It does always bug me that the people who are so mistrustful that they refuse to accept that US astronauts did in fact land on the moon. One of them even harassed Buzz Aldrin to the point that Buzz (in his late 70s) dropped the guy with one punch to the face. CNN just had a front page article where they stated that around 25% of 18-25 year olds doubted the truth of the landing. That is utterly depressing, showing the current level of science education.

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.

Someday I hope that we as a species will go back.

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

[girlintraining]

CNN just had a front page article where they stated that around 25% of 18-25 year olds doubted the truth of the landing. That is utterly depressing, showing the current level of science education.

They must have done the survey south of the mason-dixon line, because up here in Minnesota, I have yet to meet anyone who believes that garbage. I still remember when Fox News aired their little "moon hoax" series what NASA's response was. It was, in my opinion, the best headline I will ever read in my life. It read, in giant lettering across its homepage;

Yes, We Did.

Don't think that just because we have slathering idiots in the streets that America as a whole has become uneducated. I assure you, idiots breed in larger numbers than smart people in every country.

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[Sockatume]

It was about 6% of the whole American population, IIRC, in a Gallup poll. About the sort of percentage you'll get as a minimum for any claim, because people tend to agree to statements in surveys to get the surveyors to leave them alone.

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[spaceyhackerlady]

It wasn't just the Soviet Union listening in. Ham radio folks listened in too. Check QST for reception reports for Apollo 10 onwards.

I think it's interesting to compare how well we can fake it now (Apollo 13, From the Earth to the Moon, etc.) with real Apollo footage. Even today, we can't get it quite right.

...laura who has been comparing LRO pictures with the pictures taken by the astronauts

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[Hadlock]

Considering the lack of moon-based science we've done since the 70's, that number doesn't really surprise me. I grew up in the 80's, and when I found out as a kid that we'd not just sent one group of men to the moon, but several, I got excited wanting to know how I could go visit the moon myself. I was crushed, upon learning that less than 30 people had ever been to the moon, and nobody ever planned to go back again. It's been almost 20 years since I learned the awful truth, and nobody still yet has a firm launch date for sending a manned orbiter to the moon, let alone an idea of what it would look like. If you're under 30 - the idea of putting a man on the moon sounds damn cool - but it might as well be Arthurian Legend or a story out of an H.G. Wells book written long before you were born. I think people under 30 are highly supportive of putting a man on the moon, and a man on the mars (seriously, what government agency do I write a check to?) but they're skeptical of it ever happening in our lifetime.

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:yes, I know that you are joking

[Swizec]

" assure you, idiots breed in larger numbers than smart people in every country."

But america seems to be special in that it prides itself on it's ignorance, try having an intelligent discussion about ideology with many Americans to see what I mean. It often times seems even the most educated there are also as dumb as rocks in that they will never allow other points of view to penetrate their enormous ideological pride.

I mean seriously, most Americans still fail to realise the difference between it's and its even though most of us nonnative speakers are quite fluent with it. We can even tell the difference between you're and your, often even their, there and they're!

It just bugs me that there are so few Americans out there today who can actually use their native tongue. Horrible isn't it?

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[Foobar of Borg]

One of them even harassed Buzz Aldrin to the point that Buzz (in his late 70s) dropped the guy with one punch to the face.

Since you brought it up, I thought I'd link to the video on YouTube. One of my all-time favorites!

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[deathguppie]

It's simple to understand why some people question it really. If Spain had sent explorers to the new world, and then no one had repeated the journey for say 40 years, many people would have questioned it's existence. The fact that we propose to have done something in the 60's that we are incapable of doing today leads to the questions.

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[c6gunner]

It often times seems even the most educated there are also as dumb as rocks in that they will never allow other points of view to penetrate their enormous ideological pride.

I take it you've never had a conversation with someone who grew up behind the iron curtain, and didn't defect. I once had one such guy physically attack me because I kept shooting down all his theories about how the moon landing was faked. In his eyes, everything in recent history was either done by Russia, was stolen from the Russians, or is a big capitalist lie meant to malign the Russians. You want to talk about ideological blindness, I think Europe has the Yanks beat.

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[TyIzaeL]

You must be one of those creative types...

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[igny]

It is not as bad as me signing a present (a book) "To inteligent sister from intelectual brother"

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[zaivala]

I don't have a problem with an intelligent God, or an intelligent Universe (which to me are the same thing). My problem is teaching as Science a set of (not-that-well translated) metaphors written by a seer thousands of years ago, seen through the lens of many other seers and then taken as religious dogma as "inerrant". I would say the Hindu scriptures are quite a bit more in keeping with "modern science" -- note the discovery of Calculus and most other mathematical theorems far prior to the Greek, and the scientists of the Renaissance being censured, even tortured, by the official Church. I can read Genesis and see that it happens roughly the same as evolution; most who teach "Creation Science" would call me a heretic for even pointing out the similarity. I'm sorry that I am not providing the citation you requested. I'm sure the records are readily available. Nearly all Midwestern states and many others teach Creation Science, as though Gov. Huckabee were the Prophet of God. True spiritual people, in my experience, don't sweat the details.

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[mcrbids]

What amazes me is that you use the confusion of "it's" and "its" as a sign of actual education. Actual knowledge, instead of (ahem) actual knowledge, like understanding the scientific process, or mathematics, or how to balance a checkbook.

No, the average person gets to spend about a man-year over the 12 years focusing on things like spelling, because... ? The only thing that makes spelling important is that people who know how to spell use that to insult those of us who don't. It's largely an utter waste of time.

I'm a natural-born good speller, I haven't used a spell-check in at least a year, and manage to communicate quite effectively via the written word. Yet I think that spelling is a waste of intellectual energy that we could all well do without.

When you think about it, the confusion is natural. The apostrophe is commonly used to show possession. EG: "That is Bob's shovel.". Yet, as soon as you replace "Bob" with "it" - the apostrophe suddenly disappears. "Don't bother its shovel.". WTF?

But, just to add confusion, "It's" isn't a possessive "his" it is instead an abbreviation of "it is" which are two words and for which the apostrophe adds very little value intellectually. (Ohz noez! - there's a missing "i"!) The only thing saved is a space. w00t! And there's plenty of evidence that even extreme examples of mis-spelling have virtually no impact on our ability to comprehend the material.

Personally, I'd like to see spelling dropped entirely - let's just learn the vowel and consonant SOUNDS, and let's use the 1 or 2 man-years saved on REAL education like Science, Mathematics, or how to balance your check book.

I wud be haapy tu adopt pyerly fohnetik speling.

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[Restil]

What schools did you go to?? 20+ years ago when I was in school, Intelligent design had no place... in fact, the only religious references I can even remember were the secular Xmas parties and my senior year when we studied Dante for a few weeks.

Science was science. Evolution as a concept was pretty much a fully agreed upon fact even back then. So we want to have an argument whether the first amino acids came together as random chance, or if some higher power had something to do with it. WHO CARES!

-Restil

Re:yes, I know that you are joking

[mark-t]

It's not so much that we are incapable of doing it... it's that a straightforward and practical cost-benefit analysis doesn't really show up any reasons why we ought to continue doing it.... or for that matter, why we ought to have done it in the first place, beyond perhaps just being able to say that we did. Since there's no point in continually throwing good money after bad, we stopped going to the moon.

Apollo 16

[somenickname]

Looking at the Apollo 16 landing site, I bet they had a very real "Oh Shit!" moment just before landing...

Re:Apollo 16

[Concerned Onlooker]

Maybe. But if you look at pictures taken towards all four directions from the landing site it doesn't appear to have landed all that close to the edge of the crater.

Re:Apollo 16

[Attila the Bun]

If you've got balls enough to be a NASA astronaut, you don't have "oh shit" moments. Armstrong famously took manual control of the Eagle and landed with just 45 seconds of fuel remaining.

Re:Apollo 16

[burning-toast]

I imagine it may have been a little bit more tense. (From: http://history.nasa.gov/ap16fj/a16summary.htm)
(They had other issues before this excerpt too):
"The descent propulsion system throttle down occurred on time, and at 2200 metres the LM pitched forward into its landing attitude. At this point it became clear that Orion would land approximately 600 metres north and 400 metres west of its target, unless corrective action was taken. Using the guidance computer, John Young redesignated the landing target, effectively telling the landing computer to offset where it was guiding the spacecraft to land. Despite this, it became clear that Orion was going to end up slightly north-west of its intended location. At about 140 metres above the Moon, Charlie Duke saw the shadow of the Lunar Module appear on the surface. As Orion descended below 60 metres, John Young yawed the spacecraft right, allowing him to see the shadow also. This then allowed both the crew to estimate their altitude above the surface and their descent rate. John Young flew the LM slowly forward as the lunar module descent rate reduced from eleven to five feet per second. As a LM descended below 25 metres, small traces of dust were blown across the surface by the engine. This increased as the LM descended to surface but John Young was still able to see craters and small boulders on the surface despite this. Orion landed at ( time), only 270 metres north and 60 metres west of its original target. Charlie Duke greeted their success with an exuberant "Wow! Wild man! Look at that!". John Young was more laconic - "Well, we don't have to walk far to pick up rocks, Houston. We're among them!" "

Time to update Google Moon?

[FeriteCore]

It may be time to update Google moon soon. It is interesting to compare the quality of the images.

Come to think of it, it would probably be harder to produce an Apollo-quality fake moon landing than do it for real given 1960 era technology.

Eerie Moon Orbits

[Nom du Keyboard]

I don't know what the final orbit will be but what I find eerie about lunar orbits is that you should be able to insert something into orbit that is only say 10 miles above the highest peaks, possibly even less, and that would be amazing to watch fly over if one was in the position to be there.

Re:Eerie Moon Orbits

[Will_Malverson]

Actually, no.

The moon is lumpy and thus doesn't have a uniform gravity field. Objects in low orbits are slightly perturbed and don't take very long to hit the surface.

An object high enough to make the Mascons not matter is also high enough that Earth perturbs its orbit, and again, takes a short time (months, usually) to either get pulled completely out of orbit or hit the surface.

There are no stable orbits around the moon.

Re:Eerie Moon Orbits

[robinesque]

Relevant (and interesting) article: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/06nov_loworbit.htm

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.

Oblig

[fiannaFailMan]

"As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come â" but we believe not too long into the future â" I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record â" that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."

        â" Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 Commander. Last man to walk on the moon, December 14, 1972.

Couldn't they

[SnarfQuest]

Couldn't they have faked up higher resolution images? Everyone knows that they created all the moon landings on a sound stage. I mean, rockets making it all the way to the moon? Get real! I've played with Estes rockets, and they can't can't go anywhere near that high. If my 1 foot tall rocket could go a thousand feet up, you'd need a rocket several miles high to get anywhere close to the moon. And where are you going to find a rubber band large enough to attach the parachute?

Re:Before you look

[Rebelgecko]

The conspiracy theorists won't have too much time to try and explain away the photos because of their resolution; according to the article the LRO isn't in it's final orbit yet so "Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution."

What, no 12?!?

[redirect 'slash' nil]

I know that 12 is no stranger to coverage troubles, but this had to be one of the most exciting sites, with Pete Conrad and his team gratifying us all with the very first precision landing on the Moon, right next to the good old Surveyor III probe. With a LEM descent stage and a probe sitting close-by on the same picture, it's bound to be a winner.

Come on NASA; we have now come to accept that the good 11 footage has been destroyed forever - don't deprive us of 12 too!

Finally,

[Attila the Bun]

that'll shut-up the conspiracy theorists.

OK, so maybe not. One of the best, and least-quoted reasons to believe that the moon landings were genuine, is the way the dust was kicked up by the astronauts and the lunar rover. It follows a perfect parabola -- something dust in an atmosphere never does. So, NASA might have built a humongous vacuum chamber, big enough to contain a studio... But eventually it becomes simpler to go to the moon for real.

Re:The way I *sigh*(t) it...

[Anonymous Coward]

To show the landing sight, would require an observer with very powerful optics imaging the site from forty light years away.
That sight of the site would then be able to show the landing.

The best we can hope for is a sight of the landing site as it is now.

And on a related note...

[bmo]

40 years after Apollo 11...

Walter Cronkite is dead.

And that's the way it was. :-(

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/07/17/cronkite/

--
BMO

Re:The way I *sigh*(t) it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which we apparently don't have. I could take a better picture of the moon with a telescope and a camera.

Better than the recent orbiters that have and will be sent up? No. Good enough to see the landing sites? Also no.

Lost Tapes Not Lost

[wooferhound]

So . . . The lost tapes aren't really lost, they are up on the moon waiting to be rewound and copied to a DVD disc.

Re:Curse you moon crater illusion

[haifastudent]

Try looking from the side next time.