Unmanned landing sites from LRO, Surveyors, Lunas, Lunakhods and impact craters from hardware impacts Options

[dvandorn]

I figured it was time to begin a thread like this, especially since some of us may still be looking for the Surveyor III retro motor casing (assuming the bright dot to the north of the landing site isn't it).

We ought to be seeing some of the other Surveyors fairly soon, I would think. We know most of their locations pretty accurately. Again, I think there is a lot to be gained, both from scientific and engineering standpoints, from detailed imaging of the Surveyor VII landing site, just to mention one. And I really want to see how visible the Lunakhod tracks are as opposed to the MET and LRV tracks.

So... until we begin to see images of other unmanned hardware (or the craters caused by same), we could always discuss comparisons of Surveyor III surface imagery to the new LROC images of its landing site here. I'm especially taken by how you can resolve many of the blocks in Block Crater in the LROC image, which gives you a good feel for the explosive nature of the ejecta and roughly where in the ejecta plume a given block might have come from. Might be interesting/useful to apply this information to the samples taken at that location.

-the other Doug

[Phil Stooke]

They said the drill was damaged - maybe struck a rock as it landed? But that we may not be able to tell from LROC images. I think a GLXP-type rover may have to examine the site to answer that!

Phil

[gndonald]

They said the drill was damaged - maybe struck a rock as it landed? But that we may not be able to tell from LROC images. I think a GLXP-type rover may have to examine the site to answer that!

Phil

For a definitive answer probably, but if the drill head was not making ground contact the following scenarios are likely:

1. Free rotation, which could damage the motors.

2. Someone assumes they've bent the guide rails on the drill.

It would be wonderful to know if they left the drill at full extension or not when they abandoned the probe.

[Geert]

The longer I look at these new images, the more I get a feeling that Luna 23 is standing at some quite extreme angle, not yet completely on its side but certainly tilted a lot (maybe due to the fact that it landed on a crater rim, possibly with one or two legs inside the crater?).

Shadows and reflections just don't seem to match up with what I feel you should see if it was standing upright. Maybe this large tilt was preventing the drill from operating, or the ascent stage from taking off?

I'm searching everywhere in the vicinity of Luna 20 to find any trace of number 18, but as yet nothing. We know it failed at the very final stage of landing, more or less on touch-down, so it should have landed more or less intact although it might be laying on its side..