Unmanned landing sites from LRO, Surveyors, Lunas, Lunakhods and impact craters from hardware impacts |
Unmanned landing sites from LRO, Surveyors, Lunas, Lunakhods and impact craters from hardware impacts |
Sep 7 2009, 07:51 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
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 -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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Nov 4 2020, 04:03 AM
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10226 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
The lander is tilted so that its top is pointing towards the east. The image strip is looking down at the foreground on the east and up into the sky on the west - just catching he horizon at the bottom of the panorama. The trouble is, we don't know if that means it is sitting on a small rock or a crater wall. If it's a crater wall it is on the western inner wall of the crater so it faces towards the east - but there is no evidence in the image to say that is what it has to be. It could be on a small rock on otherwise level ground.
Your location is not very far from the hills to the south, and I think they should be visible in the southern part of the panorama. I would feel more comfortable being another 10 km north to get those hills below the horizon. The Soviet coordinates came with a big uncertainty, plus or minus about 15 km. An exact distance from a hill of any given height is difficult to state because the horizon could be formed by a local rise, not an ideal horizon on a smooth sphere. The crash stage - the discarded landing rocket - should be visible nearby as well, substantially larger than the lander and probably mostly intact as it was also travelling at low speed. -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PDF: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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Nov 26 2020, 11:06 AM
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#3
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 38 Joined: 7-October 20 Member No.: 8895 |
The lander is tilted so that its top is pointing towards the east. The image strip is looking down at the foreground on the east and up into the sky on the west - just catching he horizon at the bottom of the panorama. The trouble is, we don't know if that means it is sitting on a small rock or a crater wall. If it's a crater wall it is on the western inner wall of the crater so it faces towards the east - but there is no evidence in the image to say that is what it has to be. It could be on a small rock on otherwise level ground. Your location is not very far from the hills to the south, and I think they should be visible in the southern part of the panorama. I would feel more comfortable being another 10 km north to get those hills below the horizon. The Soviet coordinates came with a big uncertainty, plus or minus about 15 km. An exact distance from a hill of any given height is difficult to state because the horizon could be formed by a local rise, not an ideal horizon on a smooth sphere. The crash stage - the discarded landing rocket - should be visible nearby as well, substantially larger than the lander and probably mostly intact as it was also travelling at low speed. I believe the previous picture might not be the luna9 landing site as the craters surrounding it are too large (They are nearly 10m in Size whereas from your pictures its supposed to be less than 1m or 2m in diameter) And the most important thing I found out is the landing location of Luna13 is 440km from Luna9 (from Soviet sources & papers). If you calculate the distance between Luna9 (7.13, 295.63) and Luna13 (18.87, 297.95)..it comes to around only 390 kms.. so Luna9 might be have landed South of the intended landing site (If we find Luna 13 then we must be able to find Luna 9 sooner) |
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