Say "cheese!" on The Big Cheese!
NASA has released amazing new images of the Apollo moon-landing sites. They show the hardware left behind by astronauts in the 1960s and '70s. The images came via the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been circling the moon since 2009. These are the clearest pix yet - LRO recently lowered its orbit from 50km to just 25km above the surface. This makes it easier to see equipment, such as the landing descent stages. Some of the science experiments are visible too, as are trails of bootmarks in the dirt.
In an extreme blow-up, NASA could see Apollo 17's Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) or 'moon buggy' was parked with its wheels turned to the left!
LRO has sent back hundreds of thousands of lunar pix, and was originally meant as a precursor to future manned missions. However that dream now seems rather unlikely.
Without a substantial atmosphere, erosion on the moon is much slower but, eventually, all traces of the landings will be erased. The moon is constantly bombarded by micro-meteorites that will in time mix up the boot tracks and break down the
equipment. It's been estimated that rock at the surface erodes at a rate of about 1mm per million years.
To us, that may seem like forever, but there'll probably be no traces of the Apollo exploration in 10-100 million years.
Just enough time for conspiracy theorists to claim these photos are doctored too...! Yeup, I've always believed the moon was actually a balloon...here's my proof!
NASA has released amazing new images of the Apollo moon-landing sites. They show the hardware left behind by astronauts in the 1960s and '70s. The images came via the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been circling the moon since 2009. These are the clearest pix yet - LRO recently lowered its orbit from 50km to just 25km above the surface. This makes it easier to see equipment, such as the landing descent stages. Some of the science experiments are visible too, as are trails of bootmarks in the dirt.
In an extreme blow-up, NASA could see Apollo 17's Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) or 'moon buggy' was parked with its wheels turned to the left!
LRO has sent back hundreds of thousands of lunar pix, and was originally meant as a precursor to future manned missions. However that dream now seems rather unlikely.
Without a substantial atmosphere, erosion on the moon is much slower but, eventually, all traces of the landings will be erased. The moon is constantly bombarded by micro-meteorites that will in time mix up the boot tracks and break down the
equipment. It's been estimated that rock at the surface erodes at a rate of about 1mm per million years.
To us, that may seem like forever, but there'll probably be no traces of the Apollo exploration in 10-100 million years.
Just enough time for conspiracy theorists to claim these photos are doctored too...! Yeup, I've always believed the moon was actually a balloon...here's my proof!
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