Apollo Sites from LRO Options

[djellison]

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.

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[jmknapp]

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.

[ElkGroveDan]

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,

Imagine the reaction after all this talk about historical preservation, if we finally got a look at the A11 site and it was occupied by a large fresh new crater and nothing else. Fortunately that didn't happen (yet).

[Paul Fjeld]

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.

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