![]() Apollo 11 installed the lunar laser ranging retroreflector array, which is still operational today, allowing us to reflect lasers off of it and measure the Earth-Moon distance to ~centimeter precision.Lunar seismometers were installed by Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, and 16, with the most advanced ones transmitting data to Earth until 1977.Did you know that we brought up a large amount of scientific equipment and installed it on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions? NASA / Apollo 12ģ.) Scientific equipment we've installed on the Moon. installation and operation of this equipment was well-documented both remotely and in situ by the astronauts who installed it. Some of the deployed scientific equipment taken to the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission, where the. The Apollo 12 image shows not only the physical landing site (marked "Intrepid Descent Stage" on the image), but also the Surveyor 3 probe that had been on the Moon since 1967, visited by the Apollo 12 astronauts two-and-a-half years later! There's the bright, white "L" shape near the ALSEP equipment label the "L" is due to highly reflective power cables that run from the central station to two of its instruments.Īnd finally, the dark paths that look like dried-up canals? Those are astronaut footprints. By going close to the lunar surface and photographing it with modern instruments from that low altitude, they were able to achieve resolutions as low as 35 centimeters (about 14 inches) per pixel. ![]() The orbiter's Narrow Angle Camera has photographed three of the landing sites: Apollo 12, 14, and 17, to unprecedented precision and accuracy. The dark grey markings on the surface are astronaut footprints, which have stood the test of time on the Moon, as the processes that erase them on Earth are absent on the Moon. amount of the lunar surface than during the first landing. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has orbited and mapped the Moon at the highest resolution ever, returning hundreds of Terabytes of data, has something to say about that.Īpollo 12 was the first precision landing of humans on the Moon, and we explored a much greater. If we ever landed and traveled on the Moon, the evidence should still be there. ![]() Sunlight striking these particles is inefficient the lunar atmosphere is only approximately one atom thick launch and lander activity isn't energetic enough to substantially alter the distribution of material on the Moon. The only rearrangement of lunar sand and grains that we know of occurs when there are impacts on the Moon which kick up dust, which then can settle across the lunar surface. Without winds, rains, snows, glaciers, rockslides, or any other means of moving and rearranging the particles on the surface of the Moon, any footprints that we left there should remain for an interminable length of time. On the Moon, however, those conditions are absent, and any alterations to the surface, even those made by humans some ~50 years ago, should persist. the winds, rains, and other surface activity that comes about on a world with an atmosphere, oceans, and life. ![]() On Earth, footprints or other markings on the surface are only temporary, and are easily erased by. ![]()
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