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

[eoincampbell]

Do you know if the LROC targets will be announced in advance ?

[mcaplinger]

Do you know if the LROC targets will be announced in advance ?

Yes. http://target.lroc.asu.edu/output/lroc/lroc_page.html

If you're asking if upcoming attempts to image these targets will be announced in advance, then I don't know, but I would doubt it.

[eoincampbell]

Thanks for the excellent link..

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

Probably offtopic, but we can see the blast zone on Lunar Orbiter images.

http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2009/09/...ed_lunar_1.html

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

First Surveyor found:

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/?archives/11...ar-landing.html

[elakdawalla]

Thanks! I always learn about these new releases here before my RSS reader picks them up I've posted the photo along with Phil's version of the Surveyor 1 pan at my blog.

My probably too feverish imagination is telling me you can see a light-colored blast zone around Surveyor 1 in the LROC pic. Do I need to tell my imagination to pipe down?

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

No This is really the white blast zone.

I'm very disappointed that the image wasn't made public in July during the press conference.

[Phil Stooke]

Your imagination is OK, Emily. I think we see the same thing around the Surveyor 3 bounce site just uphill from its final resting place.

Phil

(on the full image it's at the left edge just over half way up from the bottom)

[ilbasso]

I'm hesitant to say we can see blast zones for the Surveyors, when we can barely see them for the Apollo LMs, if at all. There are albedo variations in all the photos even in areas not directly under the landers. Looking at the Apollo 14 landing site, it appears that Antares is in the middle of a lighter colored blast zone. But if you check out the comparison "before" shot from Lunar Orbiter, the landing spot was already lighter than the surrounding area - what we might call a blast zone was in fact an preexisting area of higher albedo.

[Phil Stooke]

That's not my interpretation of the Apollo images. I think we see clear brightening at every site where we have good images. The first Apollo 11 LROC was very bad for that, very low sun angle, but this new one shows it clearly, as did Kaguya. I don't see the pre-Apollo 14 brightening in Lunar Orbiter images either.

Phil

[PDP8E]

Here is the Apollo 12 / Surveyor 3 image that Phil was taking about showing the Surveyor blast pattern higher up on the crater wall.
(...please correct me if I am wrong...)



Cheers

[Phil Stooke]

Yes, that's it, and you can see it surrounds a little crater, exactly as was shown in the mission maps of the footpad imprints.

Phil

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

I think I can see the blast zone of Apollo 11, but it doesn't look like a perfect circle. There are variations - remember that Armstrong manually piloted the LM.

[JRA]

It looks as though the Surveyor 1 site has been imaged. The image was taken when the LRO was still in the commissioning orbit.

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/?archives/11...ar-landing.html