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Apollo Sites from LRO
charborob
post Jul 18 2009, 12:26 AM
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Here's an interesting view: a crop of the Apollo 16 image showing North Ray crater and House Rock (in the center of the image). For me, one of the highlights of the whole Apollo expeditions.
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jmknapp
post Jul 18 2009, 12:47 AM
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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.


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ElkGroveDan
post Jul 18 2009, 12:52 AM
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QUOTE (jmknapp @ Jul 17 2009, 04:47 PM) *
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).


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nprev
post Jul 18 2009, 12:58 AM
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One of my nightmares, too.

Fortunately, I'm optimistic that the meter-thick transparent artificial diamond dome over the entire site will be completed on schedule by the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2329... rolleyes.gif

EDIT: It is my sad duty to report the passing today of legendary newsman Walter Cronkite, who was iconic to US viewers as the face of TV coverage for the Apollo 11 flight. How bitterly ironic. sad.gif


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jekbradbury
post Jul 18 2009, 01:02 AM
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Another attempt on the A11 image, using GIMP's Destripe filter and two runs of the NEDI upscaling algorithm:
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jmknapp
post Jul 18 2009, 01:07 AM
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QUOTE (nprev @ Jul 17 2009, 08:58 PM) *
EDIT: It is also my sad duty to report the passing today of legendary newsman Walter Cronkite, who was iconic to US viewers as the face of TV coverage for the Apollo 11 flight. How bitterly ironic. sad.gif


Well, I can say I heard it first on UMSF.

<taking off glasses>


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Paul Fjeld
post Jul 18 2009, 01:08 AM
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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. rolleyes.gif




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Paul Fjeld
post Jul 18 2009, 01:23 AM
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QUOTE (charborob)
Here's an interesting view: a crop of the Apollo 16 image showing North Ray crater and House Rock ...

That is stupendous! I think that when all of the sites are shot and processed to their best, it will be a very great pleasure to put on a DVD and watch the EVAs with these images on hand. Perhaps someone will generate a really fine quality 3d environment from them and we can even, one day, walk along with those explorers.
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dvandorn
post Jul 18 2009, 01:31 AM
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Paul, I think I see a higher population of boulders in the relatively clear area you've outlined than in the area where the LM is located. And seeing as there are fewer boulders visible on the rim and ramparts of West in the LROC image than can be seen on the descent film, I'd imagine that the actual boulder population short of Little West was the determinant in Neil's choice to continue on downrange.

IIRC, you can see the boulder population throughout that area short of Little West in the descent film, and it seems to me that it was the natural outlying fan of ejecta from West. I can certainly understand if Neil, seeing the boulder field thin out, would want to overfly the ejecta field entirely.

-the other Doug


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Paul Fjeld
post Jul 18 2009, 01:39 AM
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Very good point. So it will be interesting when the highest resolution images come down of that area before Little West to see if those boulders are visible. If not, then how do you characterize a safe landing site from these images?

I've seen a paper somewhere (wish I could remember) describing a system with LIDAR images that are scanned and analyzed automatically for safe zones - perhaps you put in some smarts that adds a buffer to ejecta blankets (call the routine ArmstrongSmarts)?
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PDP8E
post Jul 18 2009, 01:54 AM
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Jekbradury...awesome de-stripe-ing!!


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stevesliva
post Jul 18 2009, 01:55 AM
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QUOTE (nprev @ Jul 17 2009, 12:55 PM) *
It'll get better, but for now I'm really happy just to see these old friends from my youth again. smile.gif


On this day, of all days, Walter Cronkite dies... crazy!
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robspace54
post Jul 18 2009, 02:03 AM
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Armstrong's said something like that the auto-targeting was taking them into a boulder strewn crater. And a pilot's adage "When in doubt, land long." He did land long, and that worked just fine, thank you very much. If Eagle had been a robot, she would have gone down in that crater, likely to no good end...

Also rememebr that at that point in their descent (you'd have to overlay the ground track under the altitude and velocity profile) they were not in a hover and still had some horizontal velocity to shed. So old Neil put the descent engine thrust more vertical and flew Eagle to a better spot. I guess he was right! :-)

These are fantastic photos and I am enjoying this side discussion very much.

Rob
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Paul Fjeld
post Jul 18 2009, 02:09 AM
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No question he was right! My interest is in how LRO data will characterize an area we know a person would not consider good - are half-meter boulders okay? Armstrong thought not, even though he had already gone past the serious danger of the big West's boulder field and had shed most of his forward velocity by the time he arrived near Little West.
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robspace54
post Jul 18 2009, 02:11 AM
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I found these scans on the Apollo Surface Journal...
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