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Decades-Old Soviet Reflector Spotted On the Moon
cremeglace writes "No one had seen a laser reflector that Soviet scientists had left on the moon almost 40 years ago, despite years of searching. Turns out searchers had been looking kilometers in the wrong direction. On 22 April, a team of physicists finally saw an incredibly faint flash from the reflector, which was ferried across the lunar surface by the Lunokhod 1 rover. The find comes thanks to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which last month imaged a large area where the rover was reported to have been left. Then the researchers, led by Tom Murphy of the University of California, San Diego, could search one football-field-size area at a time until they got a reflection."
... it was on the moon the whole time.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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In Soviet Russia...
Nah, too obvious.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Well if they'd been looking kilometres in the wrong direction, it implies that there wasn't a precise record of its position!
is this an imperial unit or what?
factor 966971: 966971
My god, your logic is impeccable!
I believe that this story is very informative and that we all will get very insightful comments from everyone involved, and some of the posts will be funny, while others may be somewhat redundant, however there always will be a few underrated and overrated commentators, but it is all good as long as it does not lead to any flamebait here. Of-course Trolls are welcome to join the conversation, just as per usual arrangement.
Oh, and the Anonymous Cowards... I see you, I see you and your reflections in the Moon.
You can't handle the truth.
or maybe they had a very precise, but inaccurate record of the position.
This means there are now six useable reflectors. See the list from the investigators.
This I always felt was the best proof that humans were on the moon, as opposed to say that the whole thing was faked in a movie studio.
Eh, personally, I think that's not a very good argument. This soviet thing is as much a counterargument as anything -- the Soviets have one on the moon, but they didn't send anyone. Probes can place reflectors.
The best argument for the moon landing IMO is the scrutiny the Soviets would have had to put into it. They would have been able to pick up telemetry and the transmissions from the craft (hell, amateurs were able to see the Apollo ships through telescopes) during the flight.
Long story short: we sent something of the right size to the moon, landed it there, and brought it back, and it was transmitting what we said it was transmitting. You can concoct some half-baked explanation of us sending up a recording or something like that (actually a recording wouldn't work as they transmitted time-sensitive information, so you'd have to say that NASA was transmitting a hidden stream to the craft what they would transmit back), but IMO by the time you get to this point it seems like the hard parts of Apollo were basically done.
But it could have been damaged by the environment. The thermal cycling is pretty extreme on the moon.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
There are other mirrors up there. why actually search for this one ?
FTFA: Now the team can eventually pin down the changing shape of the lunar orbit to the millimeter to help test Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
There might be other reflective things on the moon, but I assume that this one is somehow special. I at least *hope* that the people searching for it know what they are doing :p
There are certainly other reflectors out there on the moon, that could and have been used for measuring the moon's distance--and for some time now. I can't imagine what could be special about this one, except for the quality, perhaps? Nah. What if it's not kosher for others to shoot lasers at the reflectors that other scientists use? The article ends there and is skimpy on details.
...reflector dish spots YOU!!!
Every time I see pictures of the soviet rovers, I can't help but think how bizarre the things look. Like a combination of a bathtub and a baby carriage.
wiki article about one of the rovers.
I found it neat that it had some decaying isotope, and a lid, to close and keep the internals warm during lunar night. Too bad they didn't have lithium ion batteries back then eh? Not sure what they used, but 1970's era rechargeable batteries tend to suck period.
The wheels are especially weird looking, like something from a nightmare.
wheel closeup picture
Sent from my PDP-11
The moon landing was a fake, but it was filmed on the moon. They didn't want you to know that we've had a moon base since 1964.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
If you take decades to find a reflector in the nearest astral body, it quite puts in perspective the whole difficulty of searching for extraterrestrial life light-years away.
No you dummy, it was a soundstage on mars.
Lunokhod 2 is in the most northerly position out of all available retroreflectors on the Moon, which will contribute to much more precise data about the Moon "wobble" (since the distance of Lunokhod 2 is greatly affected by it, in comparison to something near the center of the view from Earth)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Well, of course, with only 1/6 gravity, using an off the shelf standard velodrome construction, the banking on the track would be totally out of whack.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
It's all true:
http://www.vgg.com/tr/tr_102201_moon.html
The best argument for the moon landing IMO is the scrutiny the Soviets would have had to put into it
For me the best arguement is the fact that it's forty years later and no one has made a deathbed confession that they worked on faking the landing. To fake it you would have needed many many many people to keep a secret for 40 years. Impossible IMO.
They find it, and what do they do first? Zap it with a laser. No wonder it was hiding!
Thank God they were there too. If not for the film crew that day the nuclear waste dump on the far side of the moon would have gone supercritical and possibly launched the moon and all that was on it deep into space.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
To expand upon this a bit I can say that Pi = 5.981734819456272. As you can see I am very precise however, I am not at all accurate.
That's because we game them Nikola Tesla and the location of Atlantis in exchange for their silence on the matter. I'm not sure what we gave them to keep quiet about 9/11; perhaps the location of Tesla's base on Mars after he escaped from Earth.
I'm going to ask my boss for a purchase order. The only item on that purchase order will be for a sufficient quantity of whatever this guy's smoking to get the rest of the office to stop asking me why Verizon blew up our office phone service again.
That is all.
Nazis always say that..
This is way cool. The LLR (Lunar Last Ranging) people have been looking for this for a long, long time.
This (by providing a new fiducial point on the Moon) will significantly help Lunar geodesy.
Note, by the way, that LLR returns are always exactly 1 photon per shot, so this flash was no fainter than any other LLR return.
Their space program pretty much sucked.
Well, considering the fact that they : - launched the first satellite in space - shot the first animal in space - had the first man in space - reached the moon first (Luna I & II) I'd have to agree with you that their program obviously sucked!