Thought this deserved a new thread- we can't talk about EVERY LRO target in the one thread
I made a mistake in this one - I didn't include the thruster plume guards. My MER/MPF simulation for HiRISE seemed to come out about right - so fingers crossed that this will be there or there abouts as well. Still in a comissioning phase, something of a slant angle - I'd expect approx 1.5m/pixel if it's at the 120km figure mentioned earlier.
First glimpse...:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1338
(bottom of the page)
Phil
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html
I had been expecting something better...
And more:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html
(same as above) - remember the instrument's still being calibrated and the final orbit will be half the height, or even less.
Phil
Are those LRV tracks from Apollo 17? They look about right for one of the EVAs, headed east and then curving north around the crater, but I can't put my mouse on a large-enough scale traverse map to be sure that's the right place.
Expected better? Sorry there are no individual footprints to be seen for you...!
These are AMAZING pictures when you think of what they represent. Better will follow. Let's enjoy these for now! :-)
Hello everybody!
Finally the images arrived!
Do you think we could expect any greater resolution, maybe through the lroc image browser?
Wow, this is so cool!
I don't know, I suspect the LRV of Apollo 17 should be a bit less south, it was finally parked about 154 meters east of the LM. My guess yet:
I was expecting a bit better. You can see the seismometer's western solar array just about. It's not map-projected, and calibration hasn't kicked in to fix that interlacing-look to the pictures.
MUCH better is to come - that's for sure.
This is roughly with the same illumination.
Apollo 15 - certainly see the tracks all around ALSEP.
Phil
Fordprefect - no, Geophone rock is casting the shadow just above left of your rock.
Phil
It'll get better, but for now I'm really happy just to see these old friends from my youth again.
I'm only disappointed that they haven't snapped A12 & Surveyor 3 yet, but apparently that's gonna happen in a few weeks.
Here's Apollo 17, first quick look.
Phil
LRO view of Apollo 15 compared to mosaic made from ascent footage - the white arrow points to a piece of the descent stage insulation that was blown off during liftoff.
So far it seems that the Apollo 14 Landing site shot has got the greatest resolution, aren't the MET tracks the ones visible?
A combination of shuffling astronauts and dragged met.
Now you can zoomify the whole images at the LROC site - here's the Apollo 17 Station 6 boulder:
YeeHAHHH!!
Great stuff! I make out the '11 site LM at about 200 pixels, some of the others, slightly less. You can clearly see the nozzle shadow going to the bulk of the stage with the plume deflectors very light. I'm trying to convince myself I see the flag - more to study. And they almost got all the sites! Really look forward to the best stuff to come - oh, yah... and all the new places to land and explore.
The north end of the Apollo 11 image came within about 6 km of the Surveyor 5 site - so close...
(PS - how am I supposed to get any work done?)
Phil
Yes Phil, I concur with the Geophone rock shadow!
I know this is a wild guess for the Apollo 14 image, but could this be the...
Apollo 16 ascent footage frame / LRO comparison:
Wow. LRO has really come out of the gate hitting on all cylinders. Very evocative shots.
Apollo 14 ascent / LRO comparison - the black arrow in both images is pointing toward Turtle Rock:
Apollo 11 descent footage frame compared to LRO view. Both have been oriented so that west is 'up':
Probable locations of LRVs (definite in the case of Apollo 16):
The main NASA LRO site has larger views centered around the landing sites:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html
This one, from '11:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/369440main_lroc_apollo11_lrg.jpg
...really shows West crater and those big boulders Armstrong decided against landing next to.
Even on its side, its bigger than the MET...
Anybody else having trouble finding the landing sites from the Zoomify big pictures on the LROC site? Man! I keep scrolling, hunting, but I can't find anything yet. Maybe I'm too excited. I'm using the larger scale maps from Lunar Orbiter for context, putting the image in Lat/Long focus around the published location for the site, and still no use... I thought I had a good eye! If anybody can give me a rough location on the big strip for Apollo 14, I would be much obliged.
Look on the extreme right side - Triplet crater only just makes it onto the image.
Phil
Thanks! Maybe an eighth of the image height above the center.
I was scanning for Cone crater and Triplet but, of course, no Cone crater. We'll have to look for the later shots to see exactly where Al and Ed ended up before turning back down the mountain without that view...
Ok... I just submitted post #41 and now I think I do see a very faint track to the east on the Apollo 14 image.
Craig
Sirs, I am speechless, first due to these LRO images (and perfect timing of release) and second for the great identification effort you're doing...
Is like to see man on the moon for the second time!
Seems strange to see the sites with sun from the west, though. Never saw these sites in afternoon sun before!
I am *really* looking forward to the pics that will come down from the science orbit!
-the other Doug
Here is an attempt to enhance the immediate Apollo 11 site from LROC
The striping of the camera system is apparent; just pushing noise around at this altitude and with no calibration
Here's an interesting view: a crop of the Apollo 16 image showing North Ray crater and House Rock (in the center of the image). For me, one of the highlights of the whole Apollo expeditions.
Maybe they'll wait until they get even closer to look in earnest, but one of the science goals of reimaging the sites also photographed at close range by the Apollo cameras is to look for evidence of fresh impacts, to get a handle on how often they occur & quantify the risk to a moon base.
One of my nightmares, too.
Fortunately, I'm optimistic that the meter-thick transparent artificial diamond dome over the entire site will be completed on schedule by the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2329...
EDIT: It is my sad duty to report the passing today of legendary newsman http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-us-obit-walter-cronkite,0,2702457.story, who was iconic to US viewers as the face of TV coverage for the Apollo 11 flight. How bitterly ironic.
Another attempt on the A11 image, using GIMP's Destripe filter and two runs of the NEDI upscaling algorithm:
One of LRO's goals is to characterize possible future unmanned and manned landing sites - what constitutes a hazard and where are you pretty much guaranteed to drop something in comfortably. Looking at the Apollo 11 approach, I wonder if such a characterization would not include the area before Baby West. It's clear that Armstrong looked there and changed his mind to overfly the last crater (not a small risk in itself), but I can't see anything at this rez which should hurt a landing. We need the higher resolution from the lower orbits of course, but I wonder what this will do to landing zone criteria or if it will just start silly debates and Monday morning (40 years later) quarterbacking, which I am endeavoring not to do here.
Paul, I think I see a higher population of boulders in the relatively clear area you've outlined than in the area where the LM is located. And seeing as there are fewer boulders visible on the rim and ramparts of West in the LROC image than can be seen on the descent film, I'd imagine that the actual boulder population short of Little West was the determinant in Neil's choice to continue on downrange.
IIRC, you can see the boulder population throughout that area short of Little West in the descent film, and it seems to me that it was the natural outlying fan of ejecta from West. I can certainly understand if Neil, seeing the boulder field thin out, would want to overfly the ejecta field entirely.
-the other Doug
Very good point. So it will be interesting when the highest resolution images come down of that area before Little West to see if those boulders are visible. If not, then how do you characterize a safe landing site from these images?
I've seen a paper somewhere (wish I could remember) describing a system with LIDAR images that are scanned and analyzed automatically for safe zones - perhaps you put in some smarts that adds a buffer to ejecta blankets (call the routine ArmstrongSmarts)?
Jekbradury...awesome de-stripe-ing!!
Armstrong's said something like that the auto-targeting was taking them into a boulder strewn crater. And a pilot's adage "When in doubt, land long." He did land long, and that worked just fine, thank you very much. If Eagle had been a robot, she would have gone down in that crater, likely to no good end...
Also rememebr that at that point in their descent (you'd have to overlay the ground track under the altitude and velocity profile) they were not in a hover and still had some horizontal velocity to shed. So old Neil put the descent engine thrust more vertical and flew Eagle to a better spot. I guess he was right! :-)
These are fantastic photos and I am enjoying this side discussion very much.
Rob
No question he was right! My interest is in how LRO data will characterize an area we know a person would not consider good - are half-meter boulders okay? Armstrong thought not, even though he had already gone past the serious danger of the big West's boulder field and had shed most of his forward velocity by the time he arrived near Little West.
This one is a vertical view from the Eagle during rendezvous. Note the CM below and the "estimated" landing point.
Belleraphon1, even before reading your posts re the Apollo 14 landing site, I was pretty sure I saw tracks wandering off to the east/north east. And this is exactly in the direction of Cone Crater! BTW, I am not as up on my Apollo history as I should be, but the edge of Cone Crater is about 1 km from the landing site. That's pretty nervy, walking that distance from the [relative] security of the LEM!
robspace54, i's a very useful diagram you've dug up, of the various camera angles etc. around the Apollo 11 landing site.
Here's the Apollo 14 landing site, with the same processing:
This processing technique "doubles" some of the small craters, does it? I assume it's due to the compression? Or is it just my imagination too? Both this and the A11 site look like they have rabbit or deer prints across them.
A bit more on Apollo 14:
Can't wait for Apollo 12 and the images of an actual unmanned spacecraft
BTW, this thread is phenomenal. I am in awe at how fast board members update the imagery with the dialog- moving at the speed of thought!
This is Apollo 17 station 6, the big split boulder. If you compare it with my first view of it (page 2 of this thread), this is much better. This is from the raw TIFF file, which is much better to work with than the zoomify version. Thanks, Mark Robinson, for letting us have this so soon.
Phil
This is Apollo 17 station 5 on the edge of Camelot crater. It's the place where the famous images of an astronaut in a dramatic boulder field were taken. The rocks are visible along the rim, but no tracks I can make out.
Phil
Yes, that one. Pretty nice, huh?
Phil
I like it. Anyway, what would be nice will be to put the LM at Victoria near Duck's bay entrance and do the same for the 6 landings.
This will put it more in a UMSF perspective.
Very nice job guys, the images are really great !
Stunning image processing work guys, I'm in awe of your skills, as usual...!
Thanks to everyone who gave me permission to use their work in my CS blog post about these fantastic images from LRO...
http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/apollo-revisited.
Working fine now, Stu. Excellent post!
I know it has a lot to do with a variety of factors, including sun angle and such, but I'm impressed that the MET tracks in the Fra Mauro images are more visible than LRV tracks are in the Hadley, Descartes and Taurus-Littrow images.
Perhaps the tracks at Fra Mauro are more visible because they are accompanied by a track of footprints (which are more visible in the J-mission site images than are areas where you would only find LRV tracks). But I'm a little surprised that LRV tracks, when unaccompanied by footprint tracks, are far less visible than I would have expected.
-the other Doug
BTW -- my roommate seemed a little disappointed with the Fra Mauro image.
"Where's the golf ball?" is what he said to me.
-the other Doug
At the beginning of this thread there is some discussion about the visiblity of the flags. Doubtless this will be re-visited when higher-res images of the sites become available. If still upright, we'd perhaps be looking for a shadow, or if fallen over (as at the Apollo 11 site), we'd expect to see a bright rectangular object.
HOWEVER, in the opinion of the guy whose company made the flags out of nylon and sold them to NASA for $5.50 each.... they will have gone brittle, disintegrated and turned to "ashes". I suppose here might be a stain left, but maybe not even that.
http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Finding_Apollo.html
<shaking fist> @$%# LUNAR RODENT!!!
Which reminds me -- I would have to imagine that the LROC images will be good enough that we'll be able to make out the enormous mousetrap built by the lost Apollo crew at Sinus Medii, right?
-the other Rod Serling
Some very interesting stuff on this forum's LRO thread. Can't read French but the analysis of the LRO pics is fascinating...
http://www.forum-conquete-spatiale.fr/la-lune-f33/apollo-17-par-lro-t8404.htm
Some really good analysis "a la française."
Ariane 68 complains that his sister (he's not so sure now she really is his sister), about the LRO pics and the landings, is certain "c'est du pipo" (as he bangs his head against a brick wall).
I don't know what pipo means, but I think the Hoaxers are certainly "du pipo."
And how come we don't have a head-banging-a-brick-wall emoticon?
Thanks! You've done your good deed for the day...
Phil
I seem to recall the LRV did kick up a lot of soil as it sped along, it did indeed go pretty fast sometimes.
I don't think the dust raining down obscured them very much, but there were two tracks from the rover (essentially) but each one was less obvious than an astronaut's I think:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a17/AS17-140-21357.jpg
This might be of interest. I was at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on Sunday, and while driving around looking for parking I noticed that there is a life size LEM outside the building on the south side of the building. When I went home I went to Google Earth to see if I could compare the view of the LEM at the museum to the Eagle. It looks like the Google "eye altitude" that the Eagle picture was taken at was between 2500-3500'. This of course would refer to the apparent altitude of the LRO taking into account the magnification of the LROs zoom lens and or processing.
You can see the Franklin Institute LEM here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Franklin+Institute,&vps=6&jsv=166d&sll=39.957715,-75.172775&sspn=0.002969,0.006035&ie=UTF8&radius=0.16&ei=h5dlSqOjPIuqNe6kgfUL&sig2=aD5ur9ZzznydqkonsLEM0Q&cd=6&cid=5512096824570806595&li=lmd
If you have trouble locating it, it is on the Race Street side of the building between North 20th Street, and North 21st Street.
That's cool disamuel
A nice way to reference LRO's LM images.
Any other outdoor LMs that people know about?
Great idea about the Franklin Institute LM
Here is a link about LM 14
http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/lunar-module/lunar-module.php?cts=space-flight
It's http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Franklin+Institute,&sll=39.957715,-75.172775&sspn=0.002969,0.006035&ie=UTF8&radius=0.16&ei=h5dlSqOjPIuqNe6kgfUL&sig2=aD5ur9ZzznydqkonsLEM0Q&cd=6&cid=5512096824570806595&li=lmd&ll=39.957748,-75.173483&spn=0,359.998633&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=39.957563,-75.173541&panoid=cq2NhwznCgtD7U1VLV-QBw&cbp=12,8.16,,0,-1.89, too.
A new stereo view of Taurus-Littrow is on the LROC site now.
Phil
When landing *anything* on what is essentially a horizontal flight profile for all but the last 100 feet, manned or unmanned, it is always easier to land long. Stopping short means taking out more of your horizontal velocity than planned, more quickly and higher than planned. That maneuver inevitably ends up costing more in fuel than any of the alternatives for steering away from your targeted site. Landing long costs you a little less fuel, and gives you more time to find an acceptable site.
I'm hoping that this kind of thinking is being applied to automated landing systems -- you don't always have a parachute system to kill your horizontal velocity, after all.
-the other Doug
More fundamentally, Armstrong later said "I was just absolutely adamant about my God-given right to be wishy-washy about where I was going to land."
Love these landslides on a crater wall south of the Apollo 14 site.
Phil
Poem celebrating LRO's portrait of Tranquility Base: http://twitpic.com/btqo5
Phil, I have a question and several others here may enjoy hearing the answer.
When the Fra Mauro site was designated for Apollo 13, they had designed traverses for various landing locations, including a traverse in case the LM landed long, to the west of the Doublet craters. This would have put Cone crater out of range for a crew exploring on foot, so the primary EVA-2 objective from this western location would have been something called Star crater. (When Lovell was leaving the Moon, he made a comment that he was "still looking for Star crater," so I know the crew was very aware of it.)
I've only ever seen Star crater labeled on a map within the Apollo 13 presskit in PDF format, in which you really can't pick out the crater itself. Do you have any way of determining which crater is Star and identifying it on the LRO images? As it was west of Doublet, I would have to imagine it's in the current LRO image of the Fra Mauro region.
-the other Doug
I followed the subtle switches in EVA options from 13 to 14 at the time, and I have also looked for Star crater a few times. I had a feeling, perhaps wrong, that it was north of the 13 landing site. The crew also named other craters out west of Doublet - I think one was Sunrise. I have them somewhere in old magazines, not readilly accessible at the moment, but perhaps with some foraging...
Yeah -- the 13 main traverse plan was nearly identical to the 14 plan (the primary aim point was moved back east about 60m from 13 to 14, which would have put Aquarius on a fairly steep forward-pitching slope in the "deep depression" that Shepard and Mitchell walked through en route from their LM to their ALSEP site).
But the 13 traverse planning began before Apollo 12 demonstrated the pinpoint landing capability, and so some traverse planning was done for various dispersions. They had plans for over- and under-shoots of as much as a kilometer or two; ISTR seeing a traverse plan for a landing short of Cone Ridge, one for a landing in the valley between Cone and Triplet, the final 14 plan for the landing between Doublet and Triplet, and yet another for a landing downrange of Doublet. However, I also STR that there were no significant north-south dispersions considered, just uprange-downrange. (Any links or examples you might have, Phil, of/to the original 13 traverse plans would be most welcome indeed...)
I have to wonder if Lovell expected an overshoot in the primary guidance, since only an overshoot would put Star on their traverse maps, and Lovell was on the record as being determined to do very little LPD-ing and to allow the automatic system land the LM without going into P66 to take manual control. He wanted to demonstrate that the LM was able to land automatically. (Note that every single other CDR in Apollo took over manual control and hand-flew their LMs to their final touchdown points. They used varying degrees of manual control, most of which let the computer control the descent rate while the CDR tooled the LM around with attitude changes. But no one let the LM land in P64, fully automatic mode. Lovell was the only one willing to try it.)
One reason I'd enjoy seeing where Star is located is that it was obviously considered a valuable sampling site, and if we land an unmanned Moon rover near to the Fra Mauro site, we'll want to land it a ways away from the Doublet-Triplet-Cone operations area. I'm thinking it would be really kewl to have such a rover do a geologic investigation of Star before moving in to observe the Apollo artifacts to its east from a respectful distance.
-the other Doug
I'll get to it tomorrow.
Phil
It's all in the atlas!
I've attached two composites of figures from my book. First Apollo 13:
[quote name='Phil Stooke' date='Jul 26 2009, 07:20 AM' post='143881']
Love these landslides on a crater wall south of the Apollo 14 site.
Phil
Me Too...
with the LROC resolution, will be great to compare sites with HRIS on Mars. Dust slides on Selene with similar morphologies on Mars. What constitutes a 'gully' made by possible volatiles, vs a dry dust slide as on Selene...
Comparative planetology, Babie!!!!
Craig
I gotta say the more and more I look at the LRO pics, they are beginning to far exceed my expectations. The thread that blew my mind was http://www.forum-conquete-spatiale.fr/la-lune-f33/apollo-17-par-lro-t8404.htm posted earlier in this thread. A certain poetic phrase caught my eye, ombre double du rocher 1...
ombre double du rocher 1... the double shadow of Rock 1... Two white lines darting over to what is most certainly a rock at the end of a very strange and obviously straight trench, a boulder path. The two white lines are covering up the two shadows. Laying scattered across the moon like a giant golf ball settling in to a sand trap, likely flung off from another larger impact site some ways away. This is the great rocks of Geology Station 6, a beautiful vista and home of one of the strangest and most easily identified objects from the Apollo missions. Here's a fun diagram of the rocks you should look at before looking at the LRO photo again.
In the diagram we can see the rock has split into a few big junks, two big bits essentially laying next to eachother with a big gap in between, a gap that runs straight east and west. NASA really did us a favor taking it with the sun so low, in les ombres the features of everything in the LRO pics just pop. Okay now check it out without the labels and take in the double shadow of Rock 1, running along east and west.
And of course Rocher 1 can be seen quite nicely in this gorgeous panoramic taken at the bottom of that deep sand-trap on the Apollo 17 mission (the spot where it is taken is annotated on the first pic), our two chunks of the discarded golf ball, even at this noon hour with the sun high in the sky le ombre double is quite evident.
This one's huge so i'll just post a link:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Apollo_17%2C_station_6.jpg
A smaller version avec les annotes francais:
I like to make that one huge on my monitor and just stare at the whole vista for a quarter hour just taking in the beauty and the realness of this huge natural but clearly alien landscape. Everything sounds better in french, Trancheé d'éboulement sounds better than 'boulder path'.
Rocher 1 is either a meteor or a bit of moon kicked up by the collision of a meteor, but it is also a unique monument placed there on the moon, by the moon. We have some very good pictures of it from both high up and up close on to the ground and it is a strikingly recognisable from any angle and any elevation. The gap gives it away, like a brutalist lunar Stonehenge; the gap marking out east and west as it dances with the sun, throwing out l'ombre double. Even at the disappointment educing initial shots level of resolution of the LRO pics (pictures NASA managed to get to us quite a bit sooner than I think anyone was really expecting, and there's no disappointment in that...hats off to you, NASA!) it stands out quite nicely.
Christmas day isn't here yet tho, we'll get to open our real presents soon though This is just the preview!
Anyway, I have been really mulling over the great stuff in this thread and joined the website, and wanted to share some really cool evidence that really physically connects you to a place they just took a picture of from a camera in the sky, a place we've been before, without a doubt. Figure that'll make a good first post.
-- SMP
p.s. there is a second panorama taken from a spot just west of the big chunk and we can see the sun high in the eastern sky, roughly in line with the gap.
and here's the http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/2719/pano2f.jpg for lunar meditation.
The rock is not a meteor, it's a melt breccia created by meteor impact. Someone has added a jokey cut-out figure next to the LRV in the big version of the last pan.
It's common to fix the messy sky in panoramas - many of our UMSF colleagues have done the same with Mars Rover panoramas. But what's the problem with the figure near the rover in the big pan? Looks like Gene to me...
Phil
PS for the record, Dale Hubert of Flat Stanley fame is my neighbour here in London, Ontario.
Oh, THAT figure! I'm going to have to have a word with Dale.
Phil
Ah, Photoshop -- so many nice things one can do with it...
Thanks for the Fra Mauro details, Phil. Looking at it now, I can see why Star crater was never very visible in the photocopy-quality images I've seen in .pdf files. It's not very big at all, just has a rather bright halo (making me believe it would have been difficult to find from the surface, akin to how difficult it was to find Halo crater for the 12 crew). Looks to me like Sunrise would have been a much better choice for getting deep samples.
Also good to see that the planning for 14 also included some downrange-dispersion EVA plans. By the time we got to the official Apollo 14 press kit and such, they were really only showing the prime site and EVA routes.
I do have to wonder, though, whether you might get some different types of rocks from Sunrise vs. Cone. The Imbrium basin ejecta blanket on which the Fra Mauro site is located was rather ropy in texture, emplacing itself in thick, ropy ridges and leaving apparently thinner layers in the valleys between the ridges. Cone was created by a later impact onto the top of one of the thick, ropy ridges (named by the Apollo planners after the crater, Cone ridge). Sunrise seems to have been a similar impact (roughly the same size as Cone, no more than 20% smaller) but into the inter-ridge valley terrain. While I don't believe that either impact could have drilled down beneath the Imbrium ejecta blanket, it would be interesting to compare the mineralogy of samples from the Cone rim to samples from Sunrise's rim. It could tell us whether the uneven-ness of the ejecta, as emplaced, is simply a function of the motion of the ejecta as it re-impacted the surface (wave dynamics and such) or whether there are compositional differences in the possibly thinner, less viscous material that filled in the valleys from the thicker, more viscous material that created the ropy ridges.
-the other Doug
p.s. -- I think that Lovell's comment of "still looking for Star crater" was more along the lines of exaggeration for effect -- rather like someone who had a layover at the San Francisco airport on a very foggy day at the Bay, saying to friends asking about the trip "Well, I'm still looking for the Golden Gate bridge." -dvd
Are there any traverse maps for the original Apollo 14 landing site at Littrow? (had Apollo 13 been successfull)
IIRC, traverse planning was done for both the H-mission Littrow site and for the H-mission Censorinus site. Had Apollo 14 been able to fly in July of 1970 (per the original every-four-month schedule following the first successful landing), I believe the Littrow site would have been unavailable, and the Censorinus site would have been used. For the October, 1970 date that was settled on after the flights were spread out to every five to six months, Littrow was to have been the site.
Phil likely has the traverse plans for both sites. I just recall that the Censorinus landing point was a kilometer or less west of the crater proper, and the second EVA would have taken then back east to the crater rim. The Littrow site was, I want to say, about 20 km west of the mouth of the valley of Taurus-Littrow, near a wrinkle ridge. The second EVA at that site would have been a walking tour of the wrinkle ridge.
-the other Doug
I've looked at more EVA plans than most people still alive, and I never saw a specific EVA plan for Littrow - it was abandoned too early for that. But there were studies of sampling areas. They would have landed at the south edge of the 'ghost crater' where a wrinkle ridge meets the elevated dark mantle area, and would have sampled the mare, the dark-mantle hills and the wrinkle ridge. (Fig. 192 in my book).
Phil
I wonder if they plan to image the sites where Saturn IVB/IU stages impacted the Moon? That kind of encounter would have a big footprint I imagine. For example the SIVB/IU from Apollo 17 impacted at 4.23S 12.36W according to post-flight reports.
The Apollo 13 and 14 SIVB impact craters and ejecta were imaged back at the time, so we know what to look for. I can confirm that all these types of site are LROC targets.
Phil
I assume that is so they can get a handle on what a very fresh, small impact crater looks like on the moon?
Actually, the impacts from known hardware are useful to observe. We can calculate pretty accurately the mass of the impactor, the speed of the impactor at time of impact, and the trajectory.
Remember, our theories on impact processes are based primarily on theoretical physics, with experimental results limited to very small impactors in laboratory conditions. Exacting measurements and analyses of relatively large-scale impacts (at least, larger than can be achieved in a lab setting) are valuable to the testing and verification of our theories on how impact processes actually work.
-the other Doug
The impact crater left by the ascent stage of the Apollo 17 LM should be visible up on the (south?) massif near the landing site. That'd be cool to see. Has anyone identified it yet? Such a shame the rover didn't get to see the actual impact.
I have searched for this in Clementine, HST and Earth-based radar images, and seen nothing. There were no Apollo 17 images of the landing site after the impact, unfortunately. The first Taurus-Littrow LROC image doesn't show the area (it's off the west edge and would probably be in shadow anyway). The Taurus-Littrow stereo image released after the first landing site image might be far enough west but we don't have the full version of that yet.
I suspect that the LM ascent stage did not impact exactly where it was predicted to, but who knows? Finding this and other impact sites is a high priority for me.
Phil
Well, we have a lot of Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 pan camera high-resolution imagery of the Taurus-Littrow site, so we ought to be able to identify any new crater in the LRO images.
This might be a good situation for doing a photographic subtraction in Photoshop. If you can get roughly similar sun angles, a subtraction of the LRO image from an A15 or A17 image of the same area would highlight any major changes to the terrain. In fact, that's something we want to do in a variety of areas, I think -- it will let us get good empirical data on the cratering rate (down to sub-meter cratering events) over a period of nearly 40 years.
-the other Doug
Anyone have any intelligence on when the Apollo 12/Surveyor 3 site was due to be imaged? LRO must have passed over it in daylight by now. At low sun angles (sunrise and sunset) Surveyor is invisible in the crater shadow, but the LM descent stage should be vsiible in any lighting conditions.
Surveyor 3 will not be in shadow because the sun is coming from the west in images at the moment, and higher above the horizon than in the first images. I think we have to wait a week or so to get another attempt.
Phil
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/index.php?/archives/91-Trail-of-Discovery-at-Fra-Mauro.html
LRO successfully photographed Apollo 14 site again. ALSEP and the trails are visible.
The change in lighting conditions.
I'd do an a anaglyph with those two, but I'm rushing off early right now. Stu?
Would love to anaglyphalise (did I just invent a word? Cool!) those pics but I'm away from home and my software right now... came up to my mother's to celebrate her 70th birthday, bought her a hot air balloon ride, but mission control just informed us that launch has been scrubbed due to high winds...
Look cross-eyed at John Moore's images and you'll see the 3D effect. The LM stands out nicely.
Nice, except I had to wear my glasses upside down.
The large image is stunning. You can see the entire outbound segment of EVA2 and much of the return track. Weird Rock is clear, as is the "large boulder" I indicated in my previously-posted descent movie image (post no. 136). My "large boulder" is the one directly south of the last r in the label Weird Crater, not the even larger boulder to its Northeast.
I see an intriguing long bright artefact apparently lying oriented N-S just South of Saddle Rock, near the arrow showing the outbound track. I at first thought this might be the Lunar Portable Magnetometer experiment on legs which was abandoned in this vicinity, but perhaps not... they discussed abandoning it further east, across the nearby crater.
>GWIZ: Nice, except I had to wear my glasses upside down.
>EGD: Good point.
Yes, but I'm in the Southern Hemisphere remember
I wore my glasses back to front. How do you account for that?
Phil
Same reason we drive on opposite sides of the road?
This discussion would be much better if someone just took the time to redo the image with the correct left and right.
Oh yeah - never thought of that...
The cross-eyed technique on the double set of images works best of all for this observer -- the 3D effect gets better and better as ones eyes relax into the cross-eyed position.
But as to how one un-crosses the headache afterwards, I don't know
John
I too prefer the cross-eye technique. The glasses never work as well for me. I always see a slight ghosting. Of course staring comfortably cross-eyed for long stretches makes me worry that I am rewiring my brain - never mind the headaches!
What strikes me about the image is how deep the large craters to the southeast seem to be in this 3-D image. That can't be right? The low angle light shadow in the first image makes me think the upper crater, for example, is much more shallow.
Here's an interesting comparison: Lunar Orbiter III & LROC
http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2009/08/loirp_and_lro_confirm_that_hum.html
The most amazing thing for me is the fact that the wheelbarrow Apollo 14 astronauts used, made such good tracks
I would expect most of that track to be their footprints and soil kicked around by their feet. I doubt if the MET tracks contribute very much. It will be interesting to compare these tracks with Apollo 12 when we get that image. That will show the contribution of MET.
Phil
Does anyone know if the area where Lunokhod 1 (likely) ended up and Lunokhod 2 did end up has been imaged by LROC yet? I'd be interested to see if the tracks from those rovers can be seen yet.
Been going back and forth with some Hoax Shills who are claiming the tracks we can see in the A14 pics from LROC were probably made by a rover.. I know, pretty absurd... But it would be interesting to compare the Lunokhod tracks to the A14 tracks.
They've not been imaged yet, as far as I know ( they've not been released, certainly ).
I think it's best to wait for the final orbit before we chomp at the bit for more 'hardware' images.
"I think it's best to wait for the final orbit before we chomp at the bit for more 'hardware' images."
Aaaahh, I had assumed that it had settled in to it's low orbit by now, when can we expect that to happen?
Mid-September.
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/?archives/98-First-Look-Apollo-12-and-Surveyor-3-.html
Apollo 12 - Surveyor 3!
At last.
Thanks !!!
Another hero of this mission was Ewen Whitaker of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, who found Surveyor 3 by comparing images from Surveyor with Lunar Orbiter images until he found common features. As he described it to me, very soon after the landing they were at JPL and Gene Shoemaker came in with prints of the very first images, several wide angle shots of part of the horizon. The height of the horizon (unexpectedly high) showed they were in a depression, apparently a few hundred m across. Whitaker identified a couple of small craters and a big rock that should be resolved in the orbiter image, and looked at all the craters of about that size near the tracking position of the spacecraft until he found features which matched them. Then when the site was chosen as the target for Apollo 12 he hoped he hadn't made a mistake.
Surveyor rode down on a retro-rocket, then discarded it and set down gently on small vernier rockets. That retro-rocket (especially its big spherical fuel tank) is somewhere near here, waiting to be discovered. I might predict that it will be the first piece of exploration hardware to be discovered in an LROC image, if a Lunokhod doesn't come along first.
Phil
This is a crop of the raw TIFF. The tracks will let us revise the EVA map - it's wrong in several places. I have marked what looks like a saturated pixel about 500 m north of the Surveyor - could it be the fuel tank? I'm not sure how away we would expect it to be.
Phil
I could't find an image of Surveyor showing the retro tank, but I found this document:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19690008399_1969008399.pdf
It gives the specifications for the Surveyor system. On p. 35 is a table detailing the main retro burnout conditions. I wonder if it may be possible, using those numbers, to calculate the trajectory of the spent tank and determine at least an approximate crash zone.
That's true! But so does the Surveyor itself.
Phil
No. We know where Surveyor is. We don't know where the retrorocket is.
That's not a CRH. Doesn't look anything like one. It looks just like a Surveyor sized object on the ground.
On Surveyor 3 the retro rocket was jettisoned 2 mins 6 secs before landing at an altitude of 32,900 feet, a little to the east of the landing site, when the spacecraft was traveling in a westwards direction. The spacecraft continued its descent a little off the vertical (with a westward drift) on vernier engines, and bounced a couple of times in a westerly directly upon landing. The postion of the bright mark does seem to me fairly consistent with the dynamics of the landing as given in the Post-Mission Report, and abbreviated in Dave Harland's "Paving the Way for Apollo 11" (Springer Praxis 2009).
So I guess this thing with a shadow must be a good-sized isolated rock, then?
Are there any images from Surveyor 3 anywhere? I can only find images of Surveyor 3 v_v.
I went through all the high-res versions of the Hassleblad pics making up a panorama taken by Pete Conrad at the ALSEP site. It shows the complete horizon to the north of the LM, including the area where the bright spot is visible from LRO. There is no sign of the bright object on the horizon. However the surface is slightly undulating and if that is indeed the retro casing, and it's flattened by impact, then it could easily be out of sight in a hollow.
Check out Emily's Blog!
If that object, or a similar but smaller one a bit west of it, are real they are not on the pre-landing Lunar Orbiter image.
Phil
To aid interpretation, some more parameters for the spent retro-casing - it was a sphere 0.94 meters in diameter, made of steel, with a large protruding nozzle coming out the bottom. The one on Surveyor 1 weighed 146 pounds after burn-out, so presumably that for Surveyor 3 was similar. And as noted earlier, it fell free after being jettisoned at about 33,000 feet altitude.
Good call on the thermal blanket, other Doug. I'd think the Surveyor descent stage ought to have at least a wee bit of a "splat" around it from the impact. There doesn't appear to be any disturbed regolith around that bright what-ever-it-is.
And while we're on disturbed regolith - is it possible to see where Surveyor 3 made its first bounce? Are there any Apollo 12 images of it from the surface?
As I recall, the bounce marks where the verniers disturbed the wall of Surveyor crater weren't very visible during A12 operations, since they were on a wall of the crater that was under a very low sun angle. They are much more obvious under a high sun angle. I remember seeing them identified in S-III panoramas of the crater wall taken while the sun angle on the wall was pretty high. (That panorama might well be in "Exploring Space with a Camera," for those who still have a copy.)
The LROC image of the area shows the wall where Surveyor bounced under a very high sun angle. You'd think they would be pretty obvious in this image.
-the other Doug
I'm not sure what angle the Surveyor was coming in for its landing, but if the engine dropped out at 33,000 feet, I would expect it to be farther away from the actual landing site than this.
FYI, for comparison's sake here are a couple of photos of Surveyors - http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a12/AS12-48-7100.jpg as seen by the Apollo 12 crew, and from almost the same angle, http://collections.nasm.si.edu/media/full/A19700294000Cp01.JPG. I looked back at my photo of the same test article taken in 1971 http://s407.photobucket.com/albums/pp155/texwardo/?action=view¤t=surveyorengineeringvehicle.jpg, and I'm not sure it has the large engine and fuel tank on it.
If the fuel tank was less than a meter in diameter, and the picture's resolution is a little over 1 meter for pixel, I think it would be really hard to find the fuel tank unless it pancaked (unlikely for a pressure vessel) or created a crater.
Just to be completely clear -- I think we should stop referring to a "tank," as it seems some people are envisioning tankage that fed liquid propellants into a combustion chamber complete with attached nozzle extension.
The Surveyor main retro motor was a solid rocket motor. It was a sphere a little less than a meter in diameter that was filled with between 1,200 and 1,300 pounds of solid propellant. A star-shaped core opened out to a throat and nozzle that, when the spacecraft was properly aligned, faced into the velocity vector. Ignition charges would ignite the fuel down into the core, the fuel burns from the core out to the casing, and the rest is a simple application of the Rocket Principle.
While the motor is a "pressure vessel" in the same way that any SRBs are pressure vessels (they must contain the pressure of the expanding gases as the solid fuel burns), it's not what comes to my mind when I think of a pressure vessel. My conception of a pressure vessel is a tank that holds a liquid at pressure. (After all, other SRBs are referred to as "motors" when filled and "casings" when empty, but never referred to as "tanks"...)
It's hard to say how much impact force a burned-out solid rocket motor casing, with only a few pounds of fuel left inside, could withstand without pancaking. But the assembly did have a big open throat when it impacted, and was vented to vacuum inside and out, so we'd only be talking about the inherent tensile strength of the metal and the welds after they had been heated dramatically by the burning of the fuel and been stressed by containing the pressure of the burning fuel (in all directions except through the nozzle, of course). It would not have the same kind of resistance to pancaking that a pressurized tank would have.
-the other Doug
p.s. -- no, Ilbasso, the mock-up you have pictured doesn't include the retro motor. The motor nestled in a cavity exactly in the middle of the landing legs. The sphere extended below the plane of the footpads, and the nozzle, of course, extended even further down than that. Any Surveyor model you see that doesn't have a big sphere sticking out like a potbelly from between its legs doesn't include the retro motor. DVD
http://historicspacecraft.com/Photos/Probes/Surveyor_NASM_RK_2008_3.jpg is a nice view of the cavity where the SRM went, and http://historicspacecraft.com/Photos/SRM/Surveyor_Motor_CMSI_RK_2008_2.jpg a reasonable picture of the motor itself.
I can't believe i have never seen a surveyor from below before! Thanks for the picture.
That SRM was a good hunk of the total volume and mass of the package, and it could have made some kind of splat.
Me neither; a great shot!
IMO, the Surveyors never got nearly the love they deserved; these were some really amazing little spacecraft!
Great LRO shot! I think this can help to identify landing location in the original frame:
"If you recall the liftoff movie from Apollo 15 (and verbal comments from other crews), big pieces of thermal blanket (the MESA blanket, for example) have been known to blow out and away from the LM upon APS ignition. On Apollo 15, a big blanket narrowly missed knocking over the ALSEP central station and flew on downrange at least another half a kilometer or more."
Remarkable footage seen here on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbOq-fRp5YI
ODoug's right about the word tank - I was the culprit, but now I withdraw it. Henceforth I shall call it 'the big round thingy'. He's also right about thermal blankets, they are a possibility for these bright spot or spots. I'll keep looking further out for other objects.
I think the second bounce area is the bright spot immediately uphill from the Surveyor itself. That was identified in the Surveyor images (as footpad prints, not a bright spot). I don't see an obvious first bounce location yet. It was just over the rim and not visible to the spacecraft.
Phil
Here's a blow-up of the area near the LM. I have noticed other bright spots including two some distance west of the LM, and one thing I see is that every small bright spot has a second spot immediately to its west, presumably a CCD artifact. The LM itself is big enough that the two are merged.
Phil
Is there a spot just at the 11:00 position next to the LM...maybe the S-Band antenna?
Here is an image of the Apollo 12 site
I wrote a program to destripe (thanks to all the guys at MIT this afternoon in Rm 514 when we talked about how to approach it.... I know you lurk!)
It's blown up just a little...
Amazing!!! If I squint, I can make out the octagonal shape of the Descent Stage! Are you planning to run this process for the other Apollo site photos?
here is a de-striped close-up of the Descent stage, the Alsep and the Surveyor lander
I suspect that the object at the 11:00 position by the lander are the disposed lunar backpacks (what is the technical name? its been a long time!) The wireframe dish antenna is anyone's guess. We can't wait until LROC gets to its final low orbit!
PLSS that's it! (thanks Mcapinger!)
Here is the Apollo 11 site from LROC with a home brew de-striper and a try at an initial calibration.
It has been zoomed by 3X
Here is the processed Apollo 14 landing site
(destriped, rough cal)
Nice work, PDP! In particular, the A14 image really shows the contours of the old, extremely subdued crater that Antares landed in. It's also obvious that all of the Triplet craters, even the subdued-itself North Triplet, are an awful lot younger than the old, extremely subdued craters, as North is directly superposed on the landing site crater's northeast rim.
-the other Doug
Thanks Doug (as a fellow Apollo witness, these are truly good times)
Here is the Apollo 15 LROC site (same processing)
Here is the LROC Apollo 16 site (with the same processing)
and here is the last ...Apollo 17 landing site for LROC (same processing)
Those images are astonishing. On A16, but also on A17 and possibly A14, you can actually see the 2 shadows of the thin blast deflectors from the RCS thrusters, which stand up from the descent stage at 2 corners. We know from the lunar lift-off TV on A15, 16 and 17 that these structures survived the blast from the departure of the LM ascent stage.
Here is an annotated image of the Apollo 11 landing site.
After processing and looking at the map of 'where things should be' at the site, I have annotated what I think are footprints and the location of the ALSEP. Now, as we get to a lower orbit and re-image I could be totally wrong, but still, I present them for your inspection and careful scrutiny.
That crater is actually Little West Crater, and the bigger West Crater is out of shot to the right. Confusingly, on some maps, Little West is actually called East Crater because it is east of the landing site. Armstrong's pan location was right on the rim, so a little east of where you mark it.
Your ALSEP looks about right for the PSE, but the LRRR was closer to the LM. Amazing if the actual PSE instrument is visible, which I think it is.
This post mission A11 map has most of the features:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11_lpi_trvrsmap.gif
That Apollo 11 map is a bad copy of this original (USGS drawing, Defense Mapping Agency publication):
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/mapcatalog/LPST/ap_11_12_14/
Using the same map as a source, in this image I have superimposed the Apollo 12 traverse on the LROC image (copied from one of the above posts) and attempted to map out in red the tracks we can see with LROC. In some areas it's not easy to see where the tracks are so there's some guesswork involved, but in many areas they are clear. More troubling, you can find linear markings - subtle topographic shading - in places that were never walked on, so care has to be taken in interpreting the faint trails. It shows where the traverse was reconstructed accurately and where it was not - the EVA mapping was based on debriefing done weeks after the events, and you can try mapping an off-trail hike from memory to see how difficult it is.
One thing that never made it onto the EVA maps was a very quick run around at the end of EVA 2 in the general area north of the LM, using Tom Gold's Lunar Surface Close-Up Camera to take stereo images. Some of the tracks and spots north of the LM come from that.
Phil
Ah, Phil... exquisite! And let me say, you're the only guy here I know of who would know to correctly identify Middle Crescent Crater.
Now what I'm really looking forward to is seeing how well we can see Rover tracks on Hadley Delta, Stone Mountain and the North and South Massifs, and whether or not we can see sets of footprint tracks at the sampling stations at Hadley, Descartes and Taurus-Littrow. (The instance we do have, of Station 6 from A17, doesn't show much in terms of tracks of any kind, a fact which I'm tempted to attribute to the sun angle.)
-the other Doug
Thanks, oDoug. Here's a look at another site, Apollo 17 Station 8 on the Sculptured Hills. Tracks are faintly visible if you know what to look for - this is located based on an original sketch in the USGS Professional paper on Apollo 17 and the derived version in my atlas. 'SWP' is a crater named after the 'Science Working Panel' (successor to GLEP, the Group for Lunar Exploration Planning) which defined science activities at the landing sites.
Phil
Oh, go on, you guys - I bet you say that to all the cartographers.
Phil
Thanks for reminding me that you had referenced Middle Crescent, Kenny. Sorry I missed it!
As for the crater itself, I'm only impressed because the crater itself wasn't even named on half of the crew maps of the landing site, and IIRC was never referred to as Middle Crescent during conversations between the crew and Houston. Heck, due to the loss of the TV camera and subsequent lack of media coverage, there wasn't even much public awareness at the time that the crew made a short little geology walk after deploying the ALSEP.
I think you'd likely have to have pored over the ALSJ as much as I have to be familiar with the name Middle Crescent. IIRC, there's no real definitive source of the name, either -- just one set of maps that showed up one day that labeled three large craters arrayed in a crescent after their positions in the crescent. I don't recall off the top of my head if the other two were Upper and Lower or Right and Left or whatever, but that's generally what I recall. And again, this was on a somewhat larger-scale map than the map of the Snowman, to be used, I guess, if the crew landed significantly off-target.
Of course, these are all unofficial names, anyway. Am I right in thinking, Phil, that the names of the craters at the A12 site were never proposed to the IAU for official recognition?
-the other Doug
No, actually many of the names, maybe all of them, on that green map I linked to, are official. USGS has a nomenclature website which lists all 'landing site names' which are official:
http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/jsp/FeatureTypes2.jsp?system=Earth&body=Moon&systemID=3&bodyID=11
Phil
Here is an attempt to compare the Apollo 14 tracks with the old EVA map on the green map I linked to above. It's uncertain in places, especially below Flank crater.
Later missions will have to wait until we have higher sun images of their landing sites.
Phil
Nice.. I too had wondered about the apparent extra crossing of outbound and inbound tracks on EVA2, and some of those other deviations. But all in, the post-mission analysis guys in 1971 did a pretty good job, given the astronauts themselves were frequently unaware of their location...
Here is a an update de-stripe, a better calibration (?) , plus a 3x blow up of the Apollo 12 site.
(waiting for that lower orbit ...)
The Apollo 16 site... here are all the sampling stations. Missing numbers are stations that were dropped for lack of time. I'm not certain about Station 13 (Shadow Rock) - this looks the most likely of all the big rocks in the vicinity to be Shadow Rock, but it's not guaranteed.
Phil
Are they planning to take images of the Apollo sites from the lower science orbit of 50km to get the 50cm/pixel resolution.
Yes, repeatedly in stereo at different sun angles.
Phil
29-Sept-2009 Apollo 11 , LRO
Here is an attempt at taking the new raw TIFF, stretching the range, then destripe, and a little blow up.
(I don't think I got the dynamic range from the TIFF to PNG right...)
oh my this is cooool!!
Anyone wanting to find Eagle on the "Zoomify" image for themselves, take a look at this screengrab: you can see a little box superimposed on the strip, to left. That's where you have to zoom in to to find Eagle.
http://twitpic.com/jn0i4/full
Aww, come on, Stu! Real men don't need finder charts! True space geeks have the surrounding terrain for all of the landing sites for all probes memorized!
Thanks Stu.
I see http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/whereislro/ that LRO just flew over the Apollo 17 site. I wonder if the site has been re-imaged, this time at 0,5m/pixel. It is around local noon there at the moment. There should be a good contrast between the pristine lunar soil and the soil disturbed by the astronauts.
I have been trying to find out how much could be gained by combining the old Apollo SIM bay images and the LRO images, especially in trying to find out whether anything had changed in between.
To do so I aligned the SIM bay images (from after the LM ascent) with the new LRO image, cropped them to show exactly the same area at the same scale, then normalized them so they gave same average brightness, and finally set some small software to work out the differences. Below is the result for Apollo 15.
New LRO image - the Apollo 14 SIVB impact crater. Here's a detail with the location diagram at top left to help locate it.
Phil
Now I want to see the Apollo 13 S-IVB site. The only part of 13 that made it to the surface of the moon!
Sweet...it even kicked out a few rays, apparently!
Wonder if LCROSS' Centaur will do the same, although it's not as massive. Will the impact speeds be comparable?
I'm trying to figure out what the mass of the Apollo 14 S-IVB when it crashed was, but am having a little difficulty. Can anyone help me out? I did turn up a nice Apollo 16 image of the same crash site: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-362/ch5.2.htm (scroll down to figure 120, near the bottom)
Hum, http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_objects_are_on_the_moon_that_have_been_sent_there_or_left_there_by_man says 14016 kg -- that's dry weight. Did it still have any fuel onboard when it crashed?
EDIT: OK, I should have read the entire LROC image caption It says:
And here I was scouring the Net for S-IVB info!
Pretty big difference, all right. Might leave a ray or two still, though. Geeky thought: Hope LRO gets a few good passes shortly thereafter just in case any putative rays have enough volatile content to fade rather quickly...?
My primitive calculations (sans info on the impact angle) seem to say that LCROSS will hit with less than a fifth of the A14 S-IVB's kinetic energy, around 1.2 exp 10 joules.
Of course I had to take my shoes off to do the math, so won't vouch for accuracy!
This would be to search for any possible post-impact ejecta (rays) that might extend into the lit areas. It's a long shot, no doubt, but worth a look if feasible.
Fantastic new Apollo 17 image from LROC!
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/?archives/137-Exploring-the-Apollo-17-Site.html
Phil
The Flag !!!
Wow much better resolution!
Are the rest of the apollo landing sites to be imaged?
Yes, and at different sun angles.
Phil Stooke
More like the flag pole. The flag itself should have been destroyed after ~37 years of exposure, and in looking at that image, I can't find any evidence for the flag itself.
Good to see geophone rock again, too. Last seen in the post-launch video pan:
I'm not convinced about the shadows. Shadows seem to be to to the upper right of objects in the picture, yet what appears to be the flag pole's shadow extends to the left. I'm guessing that the "shadow" is an artifact of the enhancing method for that image.
Alright yeah, it makes sense that the pole shouldn't be resolvable.
But really? Could it be that after all these years, the flag is still there and not disintegrated?
I wonder why the LRV shows up as a dark patch. I was expecting it to be brighter than its surroundings. Is it a shadow effect?
The dark spot at the rover is probably a combination of disturbed soil adjacent to the rover plus shadows of parts of the rover seen through the open structure. I'm wondering about the dark spot just south of the LM... I'll have to go look that up.
Phil
Compare the new view of the flag to its appearance in the ascent film mosaic:
Amazing, just absolutely amazing how everything matches up and everything still looks the same. You guys convinced me, the flag is apparently still there.
Here is the Apollo 17 site, from the raw TIFF (253MEG!), cropped, brightened, destriped, and blown up 3x
Here is a 'hyper-processed' image of the Apollo 17 Lunar Rover Vehicle
I believe you can see the approximate outline
And given time we'll see both.
Curious to see how 'close' Luna 15 cam to the Apollo 11 landing site
Luna 15's the least well known of the lot... but I can assure Philco that it's nowhere near Apollo 11. It is in Mare Crisium. There's almost no chance LRO can find it.
Phil
A new very high sun Apollo 12 image... does it show the elusive Surveyor 3 descent rocket thingy?
Phil
Here is the new low orbit Apollo 12 site, with an almost overhead sun!
(destriped and enhanced)
Check out the annotated image on the LROC site.
The black splotch that is Surveyor is a mystery (to me)
My only other observation is the the dark spot with rays to the north east of lander, and almost in-line with Surveyor ... could this be the spent descent motor from Surveyor? ( a blink with the other image may be interesting...)
Phil Stooke!
you and I posted the exact same picture the exact same minute with the exact same observation!
(I knew I shouldn't have taken my dog out a few minutes before hitting return!)
Cheers
Hah! And I was fuming because just as I made that image but before I could post it, my wife needed the computer. But I just managed to get it back a millisecond before you!
Phil
Looks much like the fresh impacts we've seen with HiRISE - could very well be just what you say.
Surely that is it..... the direction of travel on impact, however, appears to be eastwards, whereas the Mission Reports (according to Dave Harland's latest book, Paving the Way for Apollo 11, which sumarises them) suggest the spent casing was travelling with a small westwards component. However if it was tumbling on impact the disturbed material could have sprayed out in any direction, I suppose.
I just reviewed the surface panoramas taken by the astronauts around the LM and the ground level in that direction is undulating, with no sign of anything man-made evident.
Unfortunately there is a subdued crater rim just north of the landing site, with the location of this dark spot hidden behind it, so I don't think it will be visible from the LM area.
Phil
How about this before and after comparison? The Lunar Orbiter image was taken before Surveyor 3 landed. The LROC image shows our dark spot - even with the difference in illumination, it looks like it was not there in the older image.
Phil
I'd consider that a positive result - good work
Now THAT is good..... !
Your're right, Phil, the lunar surface shots taken from astronaut chest height are too low to see over the surface bumps. BUT, they also took shots out of the LM window in that direction, from about 5 metres off the ground. Some are blurry, but at least one is cranked right round to peer over the right thruster and out in a partly backwards direction. And the LM was yawed 10 degrees to the right on landing, which helps see further round in that direction.
I think this is the best of the bunch, taken after EVA2. If the general location is in view, it's at the far right side of this frame. I see a few things out there, but nothing conclusive...?
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a12/AS12-48-7165HR.jpg
Good sleuthing... but based on a reprojection of that lovely image, I don't think it gets quite far enough around. It would be perfect if it did. Too bad there was no SEVA as on Apollo 15!
Phil
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