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

[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.

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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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."

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.

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: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:Eerie Moon Orbits

[robinesque]

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