Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images Apollo landing sites

[mmcirvin]

I missed this when it appeared a few days ago, but it's a good day to post it: LRO has imaged five of the six Apollo landing sites at a resolution of a few meters per pixel.

The largest human-made object in each of these pictures is the lunar module's octagonal descent stage, which was left behind when the ascent stage took off to take the astronauts back to lunar orbit on the first leg of their trip home. The best picture (because of a favorable sun angle) is actually of the Apollo 14 site, where you can see suggestions of the lunar module's landing legs (or their shadows), and the tracks made by the astronauts (and their handcart?) as they walked between the sites of the lander and the ALSEP science package.

I'd hoped to see the rover tracks from the last three missions' sites, but they're not visible; LRO may get them later in pictures taken from final mapping orbit.

Comments

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

The footpath is so neat.

The lunar module is surprisingly large compared to some Apollo and Gemini ships, at least compared to the ones I saw at the Cosmosphere. Astronauts must have been tiny out of necessity. And Sputnik is like the size of a volleyball. Adorable!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

They had to build the LM so flimsy that the door bulged out from the air pressure. Once (on Earth) a technician dropped a screwdriver through the floor.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Bear in mind that about half of the size of that LM in the photo is the descent stage, which was filled with a rocket engine, various tanks, and some additional cargo; and that the ascent stage also contained another rocket engine and more tanks. The habitable space inside of it (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=964.0) wasn't that large. There wasn't even any place to sit down; the astronauts were in a standing position during ascent and descent. They hung hammocks inside to sleep, not that they were ever very successful at that.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Another, slightly poignant fact: Some of the Apollo LM ascent stages were intentionally crashed at known locations, to help calibrate the lunar seismometers. But the Apollo 11 ascent stage wasn't; it was left in lunar orbit, where nobody bothered to track it, and it crashed into the Moon at an unknown time and place. (Nothing can orbit the Moon for very long without active maneuvering, because of its lumpy gravitational field, which makes orbits unstable.)

So the ruins of perhaps the most historic space vehicle of all time, the little piece of the ship in which Armstrong and Aldrin actually rode down to the Moon and back again, are lost.

The Apollo 9 and 13 lunar modules burned up in Earth's atmosphere. But the ascent stage of the Apollo 10 LM, "Snoopy", was left in heliocentric orbit and is still out there somewhere.

[doug-palmer.livejournal.com]

I can't help wondering how moon landing conspiracy theorists are going to respond to these photos. Photoshopped, I suppose.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Faking these new images would be much, much easier than faking the original Apollo films. I could do it. I can't imagine that anyone who thinks the landings were fake would be impressed.