Targets for LRO Options

[PhilHorzempa]

You can imagine this to be a companion thread to the one requesting suggestions
for MRO targets on Mars.

The LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) is set to launch in a little over a year
from now. There was to a be a site selection workshop in May 2007, next month, but
I see now that it has been cancelled. Therefore, it appears that it is up to us, the UMSF
Community to take up the baton and help NASA out. It was done for New Horizons at Jupiter
and was very productive.

So, what are the sites that you would like to see imaged at 0.5 meter resolution by
LROC, LRO's High-Resolution camera?

My first suggestion would be to re-photograph the Surveyor 1 landing site to compare
it with the images obtained by Lunar Orbiter 3.

My second suggestion would be to photograph the Surveyor 6 landing area. This
should image S-6 itself, but even more interesting, it may capture images of
Surveyor 4, which should be only a mile or so away. This would help to
determine whatever happened to S-4, which abruptly stopped transmitting just
short of touchdown.



Another Phil

[Stu]

I don't care how vague or fuzzy or blurry the images are when they appear, they'll still be very moving, I'm sure. I remember how I felt when I saw that first MRO shot of Oppy on the edge of Victoria Crater, I actually didn't say a word for about five minutes, I just sat there thinking "Wow... we built that and sent it to Mars, where it was photographed by something else we built and sent to Mars..."

(BTW, I'm mega-chuffed that Phil Plait has just plugged my 'LRO vs Apollo Hoaxers' blog post on his "Bad Astronomy" blog. )