Printable Version of Topic

Click here to view this topic in its original format

Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Lunar Exploration _ Lunokhod 1 found

Posted by: SteveM Apr 26 2010, 11:03 PM

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/04-26SovietReflector.asp tells us that the Apache Point Observatory is now getting laser ranges to the newly recovered Lunokhod 1. The reflected signal is twice as strong as that from Lunokhod 2 and this new target means there are now five functioning reflectors on the moon.

Steve M

Posted by: nprev Apr 26 2010, 11:46 PM

Huh. Very cool! Score another victory for LRO!

Kind of amazing that they've been trying for almost 40 years to get a laser reflection off of it, yet the reflector was apparently very well-oriented with respect to the Earth. Of course, they did state the detection levels in terms of photons returned, and snagging 2000 is seemingly remarkable performance; the SNR for this sort of thing must be quite low indeed.

Posted by: SteveM Sep 30 2010, 12:20 PM

There's a preprint of a paper summarizing the first four months of ranging to Lunokhod 1 that has been submitted to Icarus : "Laser Ranging to the Lost Lunokhod 1 Reflector" at http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.5720. The authors find Lunokhod 1 to be "especially valuable for science because it is closer to the Moon’s limb than any of the other reflectors and, unlike the Lunokhod 2 reflector, we find that it is usable during the lunar day."

Steve M