Apollo 16 Booster Impact Site Found (asu.edu)

NormalVisual writes: After decades of mystery, the lunar impact site for the Apollo 16 S-IVB third stage has finally been found. These boosters were directed to impact on the Moon beginning with Apollo 13 in order to allow scientists to learn more about the Moon's inner structure by measuring the effects of the collisions with lunar seismographs. Five boosters were directed into the Moon during the lunar missions, and the other four impact sites had already been found shortly after the missions themselves. The Apollo 16 booster had been difficult to find because of a loss of radio contact with the booster before the impact, and the actual impact location was 30 km away from the original estimate.

Comments

Re:And it starts

[TWX]

Lawyers all over the earth are filing lawsuits for damages today.

And the judges rule that the cases have no legal standing. They have no jurisdiction over the moon, and instruct the attorneys to seek the correct court on the moon in which to file for proceedings.

But conspiracy theory

[sjbe]

But the conspiracy theorists all tell me the moon landings were fake... You mean to tell me there is actual evidence of us landing on the moon that we can see?

(yes I'm joking for the humor impaired)

Re:But conspiracy theory

[Nidi62]

But the conspiracy theorists all tell me the moon landings were fake... You mean to tell me there is actual evidence of us landing on the moon that we can see?

(yes I'm joking for the humor impaired)

Clearly what happened is, since we all know the original landing was faked, that as technology progressed the US was finally able to build rockets powerful enough to get to the moon, so they left these behind to later claim them as "proof" that the original claims were true.

Either that or: I'm not saying it was aliens...but it was aliens.

Re:But conspiracy theory

[UnknowingFool]

Of course this is a conspiracy. See what you really see is not from Apollo. It's the spacecraft that brought Obama to this planet. The liberal media will tell you he's an alien from Kenya but he's really an alien from outer space specifically, Arrakis. The entire Apollo program was a cover for his landing created by his dad, Jango Fett. Together with the Knight's Templar and the Masons, they made the entire world think it was some sort of space exploration program. It was all too easy.

Re:Hmmmm.....

[Talderas]

Don't underestimate the power to blow up a moon. You never know when you run into a moon that turn out to be a battle station.

Re:I did not know that

[Nidi62]

Turns out, we did think of that. Of course, the two experiments differed in what they were looking for, but they were alike in that someone said, "Hey, let's crash something into the moon in order to learn something more about it."

Apparently it's a universal human trait to wonder "What happens when we hit X with Y really hard/fast?". This trait also probably led to the evolutionary dead end of "hey, watch this!"

How about a Moon rover?

[k6mfw]

It would be interesting to see what this impact site looks like up close, in significant detail like Mars rovers (we got plenty of those). Is there any significant piece of metal or because of impact energy it exploded like a high powered bomb where entire third stage is bits and pieces scattered over miles. Probably most interesting is the soil, be able to look at fresh soil that hasn't been exposed for millions of years. Also what would it look like up close on impact (i.e. a GoPro on a tripod near impact site). A lunar rover can go to all these interesting places like landing sites, take a close up of what solar radiation does to materials over past 45 years. Unfortunately Mars Underground folks hijacked the space program setting most resources to bypass the Moon and go straight to Mars.

Speaking of Apollo 13, the third stage impact was the only planned objective accomplished by that flight. Geologists were very interested to see how much the Moon shakes. They did alert the crew good data was measured by seismographs left by Apollo 11 and 12, though crew probably didn't give it that much thought as there were more pressing matters to deal with.

Re:Hmmmm.....

[MachineShedFred]

That's no moon...

Re:I did not know that

[Coren22]

Apparently it's a universal human trait to wonder "What happens when we hit X with Y really hard/fast?".

Perhaps it is related to procreation in some way.

Old news.

[hey!]

Here is an image of the impact site.

Clarification

[NormalVisual]

The other four impact sites weren't found right after the missions themselves as the summary says. They were also found by the LROC team, just more quickly because they had a better idea where to look for them. I noticed that as soon as I hit "Submit". Sorry guys, I fail at reading comprehension.

Re:I did not know that

[MichaelSmith]

A good example is with the PLSS (personal life support systems) used by Apollo astronauts. These systems were small versions of the life support system in their vehicles, they filtered CO2 from the air. The Russian systems were more like SCUBA gear and could only operate for a short time. Russian plans for operation on the moon showed that the astronauts would have to be tethered to their vehicles most of the time, while US astronauts did eight hour EVAs and drove 20km across the surface in a day.