Google Lunar X Prize Options

[Stu]

Thanks for that, Astroblogger, really appreciate your feedback on this very important issue. Good to know that you're aware of the concerns many people have, and are open to input from them.

[helvick]

One of our favourite PI's gets involved in the Google Lunar X-Prize - Alan Stern to join The Odyssey Moon project in a part time consulting role.

[Phil Stooke]

Thanks for this, Astroblogger. This is a very flat site, and I would see few problems with approaches from either the east or the west. A landing west of the LM would not be far from a secondary crater cluster called Cat's Paw - its rim was visible as a low hill on the horizon in Apollo 11 panoramas. That would make a nice target as well, climbing the gentle slopes of the crater rim to enjoy the views from the top, including a look back at Tranquillity Base in the distance. And Surveyor 5 isn't far away, though its position is a little uncertain.

Phil

[dvandorn]

The only thing we need to be reasonably careful of, landing close to Tranquility Base, is to make *certain* that even if your targeting is a bit off, you don't run the risk of blasting the historic area with rocket exhaust or pelting it with dust blown by said exhaust.

From the various sources that came out of Apollo, I'd have to think that we can model the closest safe distances from the historic site that you can allow overflights (at various altitudes) and landings.

-the other Doug

[PDP8E]

Here is a map of the Apollo 11 site superimposed on a baseball diamond

<credit to Bruce Wyman of the Denver Art Museum and NASA>




Cheers

[Phil Stooke]

Using some ideas already discussed here - including an idea from nprev - I have put together this poster (grossly reduced to fit on here) for the NASA Lunar Science Conference at Ames in two weeks.

Phil

Edit: I have updated the poster. And fixed the attachment problem...

[nprev]

Looks great, Phil! Very honored by your acknowledgement; thanks, happy to help!

[dvandorn]

Very nice, Phil!

Just one caution (and I know, this is so obtuse it's beyond belief) -- your southwest "safe" landing zone at the Descartes site, located just west of Survey Ridge and just north of Wreck and Stubby, was reported by Young and Duke to be a pretty deep depression in the local lurrain. While the sides of this old depression are shallower than the sides of the larger craters in the area, the topo maps are a little misleading. Survey Ridge (just west of the return leg of the EVA-2 plot) was a very steep slope on its east side, and at the one point where the crew could look over to the other side (south of the beginning of the ridge), they estimated the western side of the ridge dipped down quite a bit further than the east side they traversed. This general impression is also borne out by the pans taken from up the side of Stone Mountain.

Unfortunately, their plan to climb to the top of the ridge and head back north along it had to be scrapped when they discovered the power to the rover's rear wheels was off. With only the front wheels powered, the rover was actually unable to climb the east side of the ridge, even angled north along it. Tells you just how steep that ridge actually was.

(Good thing that, at their next stop, the crew found the power problem to the rear wheels was due to a circuit breaker misconfiguration...)

-the other Doug

[AndyG]

Good stuff, Phil. However, I have an issue with the preservation of tracks and footprints.

In the UK we have organisations such as English Heritage and Historic Scotland to protect historical sites from the blatant effects of vandalism and trophy-hunting, and to (gently) control access by members of the public in order to preserve the sites as much as possible for posterity. Preservation for posterity naturally implies "future visitors"...yet a trip to Stonehenge or Skara Brae is many magnitudes easier for anyone on the planet than a trip to the lunar surface, and it's likely to stay that way for generations: possibly to a time when footprints and tracks are considerably degraded.

I'm all for the preservation of the material artifacts - they're in an environment which should allow them considerably more longevity than most Earth-based equivalents - but I'd personally draw the line at staying clear of tracks. We know, for example, that there's no "first footprint" we can gaze at in awe in some future decade: it was trampled by Aldrin just a few minutes later, and all subsequent prints near the LM presumably (largely) blasted away during lift-off.

Why not treat these sites just like normal, historical, "built sites" on Earth: take care of the artifacts, look but don't touch, only take photos, only leave (new) footprints..?

Andy

[Phil Stooke]

I don't suggest tracks or footprints should be inviolable for all time, only that they should be avoided if possible and until the regulatory regime is defined. In other words, keep GLXP rovers off the tracks for now. I just edited the poster and replaced the file.
Phil

[Phil Stooke]

I posted a map earlier showing previous landing or impact sites, and then a GLXP site proposal map.

Now I'm adding a map showing all known landing or impact sites on the nearside. It's off topic a bit (though GLXP teams interested in the heritage prize might like it) but I thought people might like to see it. A few are VERY uncertain, especially the Luna 2 upper stage and Lunar Orbiter 4.

Phil

[ilbasso]

Great map, Phil, thanks for posting! I had not seen anything that had all of the impact sites shown. I thought it was especially interesting to see how clustered the S-IVB impacts were. I did not know that they all hit in essentially the same general area, which I find intriguing since the launches from Earth were at different phases of the moon.

[Phil Stooke]

I did this partly because I don't know of any other map that shows everything.

The background is a composite of USGS relief and Clementine albedo.

later, I'll get around to adding other text, grid labels and so on.

Phil

[ugordan]

That's a keeper, Phil!

*looks around for a high quality printer*

[Phil Stooke]

This is the farside map. Of course, these are very heavily compressed to fit here. The originals are 4000 by 4000 pixels.

I have done this because we are going to get a lot of new points soon. In the next year there should be 4 new impacts (Chandrayaan's MIP, Kaguya's Rstar subsatellite, LCROSS (2 events but one point on the map) and Kaguya itself about 6 months after its primary mision ends. Kaguya's Vstar satellite will remain in orbit for about a decade.

After that there will be various other end of mission impacts, the ILN landers, and Chandrayaan 2, Selene 2, Chang-e 2 etc., and whatever comes from the GLXP (link to thread topic slipped in at the last minute!)

Please point out any omissions or (shudder) errors.

Phil