Apollo Moon Landing Revisited: 40 Years After
Filed under Science, Tech, Visual Graphics & Images, World
A US spacecraft has captured images of Apollo landing sites on the Moon, revealing hardware and a trail of footprints left on the lunar surface.
The release of the images coincides with the 40th anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the Moon, which falls on Monday.
The descent stages from the lunar modules which carried astronauts to and from the Moon can clearly be seen. The image of the Apollo 14 landing site shows scientific instruments and an astronaut footpath in the lunar dust. It is also the first time hardware left on the Moon by the Apollo missions has been seen from lunar orbit.
The images, taken over the last few weeks by cameras aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, include some of the 10-foot-tall landing structure called the descent stage as mentioned above. It was left behind when the astronauts returned home and is seen casting long shadows over the pale surface of the moon.
“It’s fantastic to see the hardware sitting on the surface, waiting for us to come back again,” Mark Robinson, chief of the camera science team, said in a news briefing in Washington, D.C.
Referring to conspiracy buffs who question whether the moon landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin really occurred, one reporter had apparently asked if the images show the American flag planted by the astronauts. Robinson said that would be difficult to resolve from space.
“If it’s standing, it would be very, very narrow,” he said. “We might be able to see its shadow at some point.”
But he said he believed the flag was knocked over by the exhaust from the Apollo 11 lunar module’s ascent engine as Armstrong and Aldrin lifted off for the trip home. The mission ended on July 24, 1969, when the module carrying Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins parachuted into the Pacific Ocean.
Source: BBC
Images: Microscopics blog
One Response to “Apollo Moon Landing Revisited: 40 Years After”
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ugendran Says:
July 26th, 2009 at 2:00 amYou should update about google earth’s Moon feature. its awesome!!
