Tracks on the Moon

[Jason Thompson]

This is by far the best image yet of an Apollo landing site taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows the Apollo 12 landing site. Apollo 12 landed in the Ocean Of Storms in November 1969, the aim being to carry out a pinpoint landing next to the Surveyor 3 probe and collect pieces of it for return to Earth. On this image you can clearly see the lunar module Intrepid's descent stage, the Surveyor 3 probe, the site some distance from the LM where a small set of scientific experiment packages were delpoyed, and the tracks made by astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean as they walked around the site collecting samples and taking pictures.



I'm impressed, I don't know about you lot...

[Rob McCow]

That could be anything. We should send up a few hundred people to have a closer look and examine the evidence.

That level of resolution is amazing. And to actually spot those details is even more impressive!

[SiHart]

Wow! That's really impressive

Si xx

[Si Hunt]

Bench? Has someone put a bench on the moon? I guess they felt like a sit down.

Si.

[Jason Thompson]

Yes, not the most obvious name for a crater. I'm sure they had their reasons at the time for naming it Bench....

[Captain Tancredi]

Given that the next one is called Head I'd imagine that some rather prescient manufacturers of sports bags and casual wear were getting in there early.

But that's probably the most impressive handbrake turn ever...

[Stuart Wallis]

Considering what head is a US naval term for - well, at least we know what Armstrong and Aldrin were doing up there now!

Out of interest, what's the ALSEP?

[Jason Thompson]

ALSEP is the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package. It consists of a set of experimental packages placed by the astronauts, powered by a small nuclear thermal generator and transmitting data directly to Earth on such things as temperature, solar wind, magentic effects and seismic activity.

[Si Hunt]

Wern't the moon landings faked? I'm sure I read that somewhere.

Si.

[Larry]

Wern't the moon landings faked? I'm sure I read that somewhere.

Si.

well I very much doubt that photo will do anything to convince the conspiracy brigade.

[Jason Thompson]

It won't. Cries of 'photoshop!' have already gone up from the more obstinate hoax believers, and of course those who actually make money from promoting it.

Let's be honest, if someone can dismiss tens of thousands of photos, hours and hours of film, millions of pages for documentation, personal testimonies, surviving hardware, hundreds of pounds of lunar rock and soil samples, and more besides, covering everything from the very first plans for manned spaceflight through to the last landing on the Moon and beyond, with a straight face, a few more pictures aren't going to convince them. You could send half of them up there and show them the leftovers and they'd say they were placed artificially or recently to fool everyone.

[Stuart Wallis]

The "more besides" presumably counting the data signals from the ALSEPs, which you encouraged me to find more about on Wikipedia, Jason, and there are photos of them there that the theorists can ignore.

[Jason Thompson]

Indeed, Stuart, indeed. The ALSEPs from all the landing sites (although, being pedantic, the first one was acalled EASEP) which continued to transmit data to Earth until the mid 1970s, long after Apollo had finished.

[Jason Thompson]

The images from LRO get better. Here is the Apollo 17 landing site. Now the resolution is so improved that we can not only almost make out the shape of the LM descent stage but also the individual components of the ALSEP setup. Lots of tracks, the rover, and even the shadow from the flag are visible here.

[Paul Monk]

Cool!

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Could be anything, I'm unconvinced

[Jason Thompson]

It gets better. The LRO satellite is now in its proper mapping orbit and has returned this image of the Apollo 11 site.



Zooming in to the landing site itself the detail is amzing.



(By the way, this thread is getting quite picture-heavy now, so if the mods want to move it to the picture gallery board then please do)

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Could be anything, I'm unconvinced

[Jason Thompson]

If your effects budget is big enough you can actually go to the Moon....

[WhiteCrowNZ]

If your effects budget is big enough you can actually go to the Moon....

Sorry Jason, I was looking through the new demotivators and couldn't resist!

God I love those things ...

[Jason Thompson]

Don't worry, I took it in the spirit in which it was intended.

[Jason Thompson]

Resurrecting an old thread, but here is a new picture of the Apollo 15 landing site, and the detail is amazing. You can even make out the double tracks from the rover! Woo!

[Rob McCow]

Won't those tracks will be there for thousands of years?

Is the LRV1 where they dumped the rover?

[Jason Thompson]

Those tracks will indeed be there for a long time. And yes, LRV1 is the spot where they parked Lunar Roving Vehicle 1 in order to position it to televise the liftoff from the lunar surface (the TV camera in Apollo 15, 16 and 17 was on the rover, remotely operated from Earth).

[Rob McCow]

I did wonder why it was parked so far from the landing site.

That's fantastic. It says in Moondust that the lunar astronauts were eternally frustrated at being unable to explore more of the moon. There were all these features all around them yet that picture clearly shows how short a distance they were able to travel. They're only a short distance from a couple of craters that might be worth investigating!