New Craters On The Moon? Options

[Toma B]

I have a question about Apolo:

If I remember corectly they separated LEM (upper part of it) from Command/Service module before it ignited its engines to go back to Earth from Moon orbit...
Upper part of LEM would be left in Moon orbit and in time it will crash...

So if you drop something that's traveling at 2,38 km/sec (obital speed in Moon's orbit)speed to fall down to the surface , and there is no atmospheric drag to slow it down or even desintegrate it before impact it should create quite a BANG when it crashed... Just remember latest impact ( Deep Impact)....(Also upper part of LEM was several times more massive than impactor).

My question is :
Does anybody knows where are the craters left from impacts of uper stages of Apolo LEMs , perhaps how big/deep they are??? ...

[helvick]

It all depends.
Using
LPL Crater calculator
With data from
Wikipedia
Daimeter ~5m, Density ~ 68kg/m^3, impact velocity 4.69km/sec, Impact angle 90deg.
Crater size is somewhere between 10-26m diameter.

Velocity is too high in this calculation and the impact angle just wouldn't be 90deg, it'd probably be very close to 0 in fact. Might make an interesting streak of debris doubtful that it would make a crater that would be very big but the nature of the debris might make it possible to find.

[Chmee]

Well, what would have made a much more substantial impact on the moon than the LM was the 3rd stage of the Saturn rocket, which was allowed on several missions to impact directly into the moon.

Since it was not orbiting the moon but falling directly in, I imagine it would have left a much more substantial crater. I even think the seismometers left on the moon picked up the moon quake from the impacts.

[helvick]

Since it was not orbiting the moon but falling directly in, I imagine it would have left a much more substantial crater.  I even think the seismometers  left on the moon picked up the moon quake from the impacts.

Gotta Love google:
Apollo Lunar impacts

The impact energies listed range from 30% to about 400% of the values given by the LPL site for my estimates and the crater size range is still more or less right for the near vertical S-IVB stage impacts. The LM's did come in at extremely shallow angles (<5deg) but much slower than I thought .

[Phil Stooke]

There is a detailed discussion of this topic of impact craters in the 'Lunar Discovery' thread adjacent to this one (see reply 83 there). Some of the craters have been found, specifically Apollo 13, 14 SIVB and Apollo 14 LM ascent stage, plus Rangers 7, 8 and 9 and maybe 6...

Clementine images do show a few things, but only with hindsight. I have used Clementine LWIR images to see ejecta from Ranger 7 and A14 SIVB. And maybe Ranger 6... but the other impacts are not located precisely enough to find unambiguously in Clem images... they are not so hi-res, after all. LRO will do it for us. My forthcoming book looks at all these sites, giving unambiguous location images for all known impacts and context images for others.

The Apollo 16 LM impact reference... it's a proposal to do it, not a report after the fact. By the time of the flight the target point had been moved a bit to the south (see the A16 press kit). And then a malfunction prevented it from happening. It did hit eventually, but at an unknown location.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

Phil:

You keep talking about this book of yours, slipping it in just when things are getting interesting and then saying no more! Er, let me rephrase that...

Please tell us about your book, before we break a blood vessel or three. Who, where, what, why and best of all, WHEN!

Bob Shaw

[Phil Stooke]

Bob, The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration, available from Cambridge University Press in October 2007 (not a coincidental date).

It's an atlas, a book of maps, so every mission for which it's possible is treated with maps - landing sites in a series of nested maps and annotated images like the old Ranger Lunar Charts, to unambiguously locate them at all scales. Panoramas from every lander including cleaned up versions of Surveyors, the Luna 20 panorama, etc. Maps of coverage from all orbiters and flyby missions including Russian orbiters... and detailed coverage of all surface operations including Surveyor trenches, Apollo EVAs and Lunokhod routes. Also the nearly full story of site selection for Ranger, Surveyor, Apollo, basically a synopsis of the meeting minutes with copious illustrations. Wrapping up with a brief summary of proposals for lunar bases, commercial missions like Applied Space Resources or Lunacorp, Discovery lunar mission proposals (thanks to Bruce), and so on and so on.

It's my magnificent octopus. A virtual mars bar for the first to identify that quote.

Phil

[edstrick]

"The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration, available from Cambridge University Press... "

Edstrick drools and starts to look for places to pawn a kidney... <grin>

Could be worse.. could be Springer Verlag...

[Bob Shaw]

Phil:

And a website too? Or a CD with the book, like Bill Hartmann's 'Moons and Planets' had?

(hint)

Bob Shaw

[Bob Shaw]

Phil:

Wasn't the phrase 'magnificent octopus' in that play whot you wrote?

Bob shaw

[Phil Stooke]

Bob, you don't get a virtual mars bar for that miserable attempt!
As for CDs etc., that is for the publisher to decide, not me.


Phil

[Bob Shaw]

Bob, you don't get a virtual mars bar for that miserable attempt!
As for CDs etc., that is for the publisher to decide, not me. 
Phil

Phil:

You have a cunning plan, then?

Bob Shaw

[Bob Shaw]

On the fresh craters front, albeit on earth, the Wabar craters are presumably a good terrestrial analogue of the cratering process in Opportunity's environment...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabar_craters

[Phil Stooke]

Bob, NOW you deserve the Mars Bar. It's so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

Bob, NOW you deserve the Mars Bar.  It's so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.

Phil

Phil:

I'm sure I was right first time!

It was an o-l-d joke...

Bob Shaw