NASA's LRO Captures High-Res Pics of Apollo Landing Sites 197
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."
The way I see it... (Score:5, Funny)
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?"
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Re:The way I *sigh*(t) it... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, to show the landing sight, I think they'd actually have to land again. To show the landing site, however, simply requires a sufficiently high-resolution camera.
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Which we apparently don't have. I could take a better picture of the moon with a telescope and a camera.
Better than the recent orbiters that have and will be sent up? No. Good enough to see the landing sites? Also no [discovermagazine.com].
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To show the landing sight, would require an observer with very powerful optics imaging the site from forty light years away.
That sight of the site would then be able to show the landing.
The best we can hope for is a sight of the landing site as it is now.
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Well, let's quickly send one out, then !
yes, I know that you are joking (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:yes, I know that you are joking (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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in my opinion, the best headline I will ever read in my life. It read, in giant lettering across its homepage;
Yes, We Did.
Best. Headline. Ever.
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" assure you, idiots breed in larger numbers than smart people in every country."
But america seems to be special in that it prides itself on it's ignorance, try having an intelligent discussion about ideology with many Americans to see what I mean. 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 mean seriously, most Americans still fail to realise the difference between it's and its even though most of us nonnative speakers are quite fluent with it. We can even tell the difference between you're and your, often even their, there and they're!
It just bugs me that there are so few Americans out there today who can actually use their native tongue. Horrible isn't it?
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Darn it! My mod points just expired.
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Unconscious neurological errors are common take some courses in neurology, many people (including myself) cannot help those mistakes.
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Form is irrelevant to the substance of what I was saying though, if I say the earth is round and I spell round as roudn, and everyone still understands what it was that I said, and that is what matters.
Although I have thought about using such grammar software like the following:
http://www.whitesmoke.com/ [whitesmoke.com]
On places like slashdot I like the more relaxed atmosphere and I'm not going to proofread and re-read everything I write, otherwise it would consume way too much time. I can live with people poking at my gr
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Nearly as horrible as people who don't hyphenate words correctly - there is no such word as "nonnative". Rather, it's "non-native".
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I mean seriously, most Americans still fail to realise the difference between it's and its even though most of us nonnative speakers are quite fluent with it. We can even tell the difference between you're and your, often even their, there and they're!
Non-native speakers are generally advantaged by having actually been taught English properly, whereas pretty much all native speakers under the age of 30 or so typically have not.
It's hard for people who have spent most of their life being told that "correc
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What amazes me is that you use the confusion of "it's" and "its" as a sign of actual education. Actual knowledge, instead of (ahem) actual knowledge, like understanding the scientific process, or mathematics, or how to balance a checkbook.
No, the average person gets to spend about a man-year over the 12 years focusing on things like spelling, because... ? The only thing that makes spelling important is that people who know how to spell use that to insult those of us who don't. It's largely an utter waste of
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Possessive pronouns do not have an apostrophe, so its fits in just fine. I agree that it isn't that intuitive for some strange reason, but it's not so bad to remember.
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A singular possessive usually has an apostrophe before the s? Like hers and his? Or theirs?
Those are poor examples. The normal possessive adjective forms are "her" and "their". You only use "hers" and "theirs" in sentences like "It is hers" (unfortunately I'm only above average in grammar, not a real expert, so I don't know the correct technical term). In the case of "his", you aren't just adding an "s" to the normal form of the word. I could be wrong, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I am, but "its" is the only case I can think of where the possessive adjective is formed only by adding an
Re:yes, I know that you are joking (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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It was about 6% of the whole American population, IIRC, in a Gallup poll. About the sort of percentage you'll get as a minimum for any claim, because people tend to agree to statements in surveys to get the surveyors to leave them alone.
Re:yes, I know that you are joking (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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At least as far as I can tell, Moon Hoaxers are considered to be fringe nutters even within conspiracy theory circles. Their theories are so shoddy that even the folks who believe firmly in in little green men at Area 51 want nothing to do with it.
Re:yes, I know that you are joking (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Well, amongst the people I know in that age group there while there are some who are highly enthusiastic about the idea I also know far too many who don't have the foresight to see the benefit such a venture would provide humanity. They see landing on the moon, or anywhere else as a complete waste of money. Every last one of them already thinks too much is spent on NASA and would rather see the money spent on social programs instead.
Re:yes, I know that you are joking (Score:5, Funny)
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".
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I agree. But your problem is that you are trying to attack schizophrenia with logic. I recommend trying to argue about something with someone with schizophrenia for an hour. Then you see that logic does not help here. My brother worked with a guy, who insisted that he was able to control the whole world. He ran on the highway, stating that nothing would hit him, because he would control everything. He got hit by a car. He landed in a hospital. And the first discussion when he could talk again, was that this
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Wow. The President got hit by a car? I hadn't heard about that.
Re:yes, I know that you are joking (Score:5, Informative)
Since you brought it up, I thought I'd link to the video on YouTube. [youtube.com] One of my all-time favorites!
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It's simple to understand why some people question it really. If Spain had sent explorers to the new world, and then no one had repeated the journey for say 40 years, many people would have questioned it's existence. The fact that we propose to have done something in the 60's that we are incapable of doing today leads to the questions.
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It's a lot simpler to understand - there are a lot of crazy people around, and even more ignorant people, and conspiracy theories pop up about every major event. Look at how many people believe the "alternate theories" about the JFK assassination.
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"Someday I hope that we as a species will go back."
Back to the ocean?
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Also, the rabble-rousing conspiracy nuts would all have been assassinated.
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Actually, the people who would have had to be convinced would be NASA--they would be the hard ones to fake out. All the Soviet Union had was the voice signals to the moon, which could easily be faked.
As I've said before, the conspiracists I've read about say we didn't land people on the moon. There's nothing mentioned about our ability to land hardware on the moon. I've never heard anybody say the Surveyor probes were faked. So it's not impossible that NASA landed a transmitter on the moon that would re
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Why send a relay then send the signal to be repeated from the Earth to be bounced back? Video recorders were available in 1969 (or we wouldn't have the recordings of the landing), so they could just send a VTR and a transmitter.
Not that I believe they did.
Lost Tapes Not Lost (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yes, I know that you are joking (Score:4, Insightful)
What schools did you go to?? 20+ years ago when I was in school, Intelligent design had no place... in fact, the only religious references I can even remember were the secular Xmas parties and my senior year when we studied Dante for a few weeks.
Science was science. Evolution as a concept was pretty much a fully agreed upon fact even back then. So we want to have an argument whether the first amino acids came together as random chance, or if some higher power had something to do with it. WHO CARES!
-Restil
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Hey now, NASA engineers may not always know the difference between metric and imperial units but they aren't that stupid.
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Well, if I were a NASA engineer working on the LRO (sometimes I kinda wish I were, being the nerd I am) I'd probably ask the question to get a cheap laugh.
Who stole the rovers? (Score:2)
Nice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nice (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I took a webcam shot of the moon from my back yard.. That should be good enough for the CSI team.
Re:Nice (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, too high res - no challenge. You should have taken a webcam shot through a window and aim it at a crushed soda can.
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Sure, that would give a good enough image of the moon landing site to identify Neil's footprints, but it wouldn't give a good enough image to prove paternity of Neil's kids like the LRO images are! Come on people, "CSI enhancement" isn't magic!
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It's good how they can resolve 2 pixels into a VIN :)
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Hey, does this mean they could play Crysis in HD on a Smartbook with an ARM cpu and 2 watts of power usage? Sweet!
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I'm just waiting for someone to 'CSI enhance' this so that we can see Neil's bootprints.
On it. [univie.ac.at] :oP
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One of the shots showed Shepard and Mitchell's trail.
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A Moon belonged to the Who, though...
Awesome! Beautiful desolation. Cheap prices. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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More Lost Photos (Score:5, Funny)
fake pictures? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Of course they'll say NASA forged these photos. Or that the landers were placed by robots, which is already their excuse for the langer range-finders the Apollo missions placed on the moon. There's no conceivable evidence, even in principle, which could disprove their conspiracy theory. It's a matter of faith. The interpretation of the evidence must bend to that belief, no matter how implausible the leaps involved, to vindicate it.
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Crazy people claim that NASA forged all those moon landing videos and photos (missing stars etc.) They have to refine their theory now it seems (maybe NASA forged these pictures as well)...
Pssh. NASA put the landers on the moon after they faked the manned landings. To further the incredibly elaborate hoax, NASA obviously developed the technology to put unmanned crafts on the moon well after the landings. The current LRO was designed to photograph these unmanned crafts to further the fraud. The footprints were made by a rover. To top it all off, Netcraft confirms all of my findings.
There are so many questions about the moon landings that the only scientific conclusion is that the manned
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Re:fake pictures? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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The deniers are crazy - a bit like religious fruitcakes!
The funny part is that the Apollo deniers can't even agree on what happened: some claim that the astronauts never left the Earth, others that they went into space but not to the Moon, and at least one that they landed on the Moon but it had an atmosphere and inhabitants.
So we can safely say that at least 90% of the deniers are wrong, which makes the assumption that the other 10% are wrong pretty easy to justify.
Apollo 16 (Score:3, Interesting)
Looking at the Apollo 16 landing site, I bet they had a very real "Oh Shit!" moment just before landing...
Re:Apollo 16 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Apollo 16 (Score:4, Interesting)
I imagine it may have been a little bit more tense. (From: http://history.nasa.gov/ap16fj/a16summary.htm [nasa.gov])
(They had other issues before this excerpt too):
"The descent propulsion system throttle down occurred on time, and at 2200 metres the LM pitched forward into its landing attitude. At this point it became clear that Orion would land approximately 600 metres north and 400 metres west of its target, unless corrective action was taken. Using the guidance computer, John Young redesignated the landing target, effectively telling the landing computer to offset where it was guiding the spacecraft to land. Despite this, it became clear that Orion was going to end up slightly north-west of its intended location. At about 140 metres above the Moon, Charlie Duke saw the shadow of the Lunar Module appear on the surface. As Orion descended below 60 metres, John Young yawed the spacecraft right, allowing him to see the shadow also. This then allowed both the crew to estimate their altitude above the surface and their descent rate. John Young flew the LM slowly forward as the lunar module descent rate reduced from eleven to five feet per second. As a LM descended below 25 metres, small traces of dust were blown across the surface by the engine. This increased as the LM descended to surface but John Young was still able to see craters and small boulders on the surface despite this. Orion landed at ( time), only 270 metres north and 60 metres west of its original target. Charlie Duke greeted their success with an exuberant "Wow! Wild man! Look at that!". John Young was more laconic - "Well, we don't have to walk far to pick up rocks, Houston. We're among them!" "
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You can see the shadow of the lander inside the crater wall. Great landing site though to be so close to a crater.
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Ok, maybe I need some medicine...
Time to update Google Moon? (Score:2, Interesting)
Come to think of it, it would probably be harder to produce an Apollo-quality fake moon landing than do it for real given 1960 era technology.
Eerie Moon Orbits (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Eerie Moon Orbits (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, no.
The moon is lumpy [wikipedia.org] 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.
Re:Eerie Moon Orbits (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Eerie Moon Orbits (Score:4, Funny)
The moon is lumpy and thus doesn't have a uniform gravity field.
Um NO It's not.
and I have a very uniform gravity field thank you. Plus I have lost quite a bit of weight. I have not been mistaken for a large moon since high school.
NASA is the coolest... (Score:2)
government agency in any civilization, ever.
Everything they do is cool.
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Everything they do is cool.
In fact, everything they do is about -455 degrees Fahrenheit (-270 C) cool!
Oblig (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
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The tokens "Godspeed" and "God willing" have become generic to the point that they are often used without any religious intent. They can simply mean "good fortune" and "in all humility."
I enjoyed seeing this quote, as a fan of space travel, and as a borderline athiest. It didn't even occur to me to read it with religious connotations until I saw your reply.
Couldn't they (Score:3, Funny)
Couldn't they have faked up higher resolution images? Everyone knows that they created all the moon landings on a sound stage. I mean, rockets making it all the way to the moon? Get real! I've played with Estes rockets, and they can't can't go anywhere near that high. If my 1 foot tall rocket could go a thousand feet up, you'd need a rocket several miles high to get anywhere close to the moon. And where are you going to find a rubber band large enough to attach the parachute?
Disappointed! (Score:2)
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What, no 12?!? (Score:2, Interesting)
Come on NASA; we have now come to accept that the good 11 footage has been destroyed forever - don't deprive us of 12 too!
Finally, (Score:5, Informative)
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.
And on a related note... (Score:3, Interesting)
40 years after Apollo 11...
Walter Cronkite is dead.
And that's the way it was. :-(
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/07/17/cronkite/ [salon.com]
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BMO
Curse you moon crater illusion (Score:2)
I can never seem to see lunar craters correctly. They always look like domes to me.
Six Landing sites (Score:2)
I can't understand how anyone at the time could look at all six landing on the moon as anything short of amazing as opposed to mundane. It sure says a lot about the differences of the times. I look at the landing sites and think that everyone of those is as important as the first moon landing. I wonder if the attitude towards the moon program would have been then if they'd have known how complacent and cynical people would become.
Back then they had all the promise of what the future would be like. Who know
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I can't understand how anyone at the time could look at all six landing on the moon as anything short of amazing as opposed to mundane.
I wonder if they would have felt the same if they had known there would only be six and then at LEAST another 40 years before the next one. I suspect it became "routine" because everyone just assumed we'd have vast moon bases by now.
Re:Before you look (Score:5, Informative)
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."
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still the landers will be pretty tiny in the photos.
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So you admit it's a fake then...
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And this post is the worst evidence that you exist.
Prove to me that you're not a perl script.
As a matter of fact, I believe I can replace all anonymous cowards in this topic with a perl script channeling art bell quotes.
Come on, people can't be this dumb.
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BMO
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