Help - Search - Members - Calendar
Full Version: Unmanned landing sites from LRO
Unmanned Spaceflight.com > Earth & Moon > Lunar Exploration > LRO & LCROSS
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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. smile.gif

-the other Doug
eoincampbell
Do you know if the LROC targets will be announced in advance ?
mcaplinger
QUOTE (eoincampbell @ Sep 8 2009, 09:28 AM) *
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..
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
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 smile.gif 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?
Zvezdichko
No biggrin.gif 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...)

Click to view attachment

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
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

Zvezdichko
QUOTE (JRA @ Oct 1 2009, 09:37 AM) *
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


Old smile.gif

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=147019

Anyway, good contribution
JRA
QUOTE (Zvezdichko @ Oct 1 2009, 12:46 AM) *



Oops, didn't realize it was posted already. My bad smile.gif
Stu
Not a "bad" at all, don't worry about it JRA, it happens all the time smile.gif When I joined here I lost count of the number of times I alerted the board to something already mentioned by someone else.

I prefer to think of it as "being keen to share", not "old". smile.gif
charborob
I noticed some funny-looking craters on LRO's image of the Surveyor 1 landing site. Below is a sampling.
These three craters are all at the same scale. They seem recent and are around 100 m wide or less. It looks like the unconsolidated regolith was pushed back by the blast produced by the impact, revealing the surface of the bedrock. If this interpretation is correct., these craters would make great sampling spots. No need to dig through the regolith to get to the bedrock, the work has already been done by meteorites.
Holder of the Two Leashes
Surveyor 1 happened to land in one of the geologically youngest spots on the moon. The regolith there is exceptionally thin, which means you will get a lot of young looking craters, and they will plow into thin soil.
Phil Stooke
This type of crater was discovered in Lunar Orbiter images and recognized as a probe of the depth to bedrock. They can be used to map variations in regolith thickness. Apollo 12's backup landing site - a pinpoint landing spot in Apollo Site 5, was near a crater of this type.

Phil
charborob
Well, so I didn't discover anything new, but anyway, these craters are cool, especially at such high definition.
stewjack
QUOTE (charborob @ Oct 1 2009, 10:26 AM) *
Well, so I didn't discover anything new,

But I learned something new. smile.gif

Jack
PDP8E
Here is the Surveyor 1 site

I downloaded the TIFF (!pain!) and then adjusted the dynamic levels, cropped, destriped, and a little blow up (whew!)

(Dear LROC Team, please put non-annotated images up for us noodles to noodle with....like the Apollo sites!)

Click to view attachment

Cheers
BUDU
LRO is now orbiting over Mare Crisium and the Sun is low over there.I hope it's imaging Luna 23 and 24 landing sites.
Phil Stooke
LROC news from LPSC - heard from a thoroughly disreputable source (I'm only kidding, L!) - LROC has seen Luna 24 and Lunokhod 2. Results should be shown in a talk tomorrow. Maybe there will be a release soon after. Luna 24 apparently landed on a crater rim, which may have affected its sampling ability.

Phil
Geert
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Mar 1 2010, 08:26 AM) *
Luna 24 apparently landed on a crater rim, which may have affected its sampling ability.


That's great news Phil!
Have been looking forward to those images for some time.

Are they sure it's Luna 24 and not Luna 23 (which landed nearby), 23 was the one which damaged its drilling equipment on touchdown.
Phil Stooke
I can't tell you yet. Maybe more tomorrow.

Phil
Phil Stooke
Update. Mark Robinson showed images of three Luna landers, 20, 23 and 24. Luna 20 shows the shadow of its sample delivery arm "as if it's waving at us" according to Mark. Luna 23 is sitting on the very edge of a crater only 2 or 3 m across. No obvious sign of why it couldn't collect a sample. Luna 24 is on the rim of a c. 20 or 30 m fresh crater, which may explain an odd thing about its sample... not the amount, but the fact that it differed from the surrounding area as measured by remote sensing... it seems to consist of freshly exposed subsurface material rather than the space-weathered material all around it.

Beautiful pics - let's hope they are released very soon.

Phil
Paolo
No release yet of the Luna images (too bad, where are they?!?)
in their place, this image of the Marius Hills Hole has been published on the LROC image browser http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse/view/M114328462R
nprev
I would imagine that someone is preparing to publish a paper on this, hence the delay in release?
Lightning
Wow, just can't wait thoses images !
There is so many things to discuss, years later, when additionnal information become available.
Phil Stooke
It's unfortunate that we don't yet have the LROC images of Lunas 20, 23 and 24 released... but one little extra bit of news I picked up at LPSC was that it's not absolutely certain which is which of the 23 - 24 pair. The locations wouldn't have been known well enough to tell the difference. I suspect the shapes of the shadows in low-sun images may be able to identify the one with an intact ascent stage.

Phil
Hungry4info
How close together did they land?
Phil Stooke
The usual sources always said a few hundred meters or something like that. but in reality it could be several km apart - each point would be uncertain by a few km.

Phil
Hungry4info
Ah, wow. Was that intentional?
Paolo
Also Luna 18 and 20 are said to have landed within a few hundred meters of each other
Phil Stooke
Right, Paolo - in each case the first one failed and the second was sent to the same place, knowing it would get close but not exactly at the same point, so it would avoid any local hazard that might have affected the first one.

Luna 20 was imaged... will 18 show up in the same frame? I hope so. I'm very impatient!

Phil
PDP8E
Hey Phil,

I have my destriper and blower-upper tools at the ready for some Luna X fun.

~pdp8e
Phil Stooke
The LROC site has a place to ask questions. I asked for these images, sneakily hiding my identity by only describing myself as Phil - hmm, I hope they're not reading this...

Phil
gndonald
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Mar 2 2010, 03:44 AM) *
Update. Mark Robinson showed images of three Luna landers, 20, 23 and 24. Luna 20 shows the shadow of its sample delivery arm "as if it's waving at us" according to Mark. Luna 23 is sitting on the very edge of a crater only 2 or 3 m across. No obvious sign of why it couldn't collect a sample.


Pure speculation on my part here, but is it not possible that the drill is pointing into the crater and thus the drill head could not be extended far enough to reach the ground inside the crater to take a sample. It might also explain why the Russians operated the probe for two or three days on the surface after landing, without a camera they would have been unable to see the terrain around the spacecraft and might have tried to diagnose the problem by running the drill at different times of the lunar day.
Phil Stooke
They said the drill was damaged - maybe struck a rock as it landed? But that we may not be able to tell from LROC images. I think a GLXP-type rover may have to examine the site to answer that!

Phil
Phil Stooke
Now they're teasing us (or just me) - today's release is about 30 km from the Luna 24 position.

Phil
gndonald
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Mar 11 2010, 10:43 PM) *
They said the drill was damaged - maybe struck a rock as it landed? But that we may not be able to tell from LROC images. I think a GLXP-type rover may have to examine the site to answer that!

Phil


For a definitive answer probably, but if the drill head was not making ground contact the following scenarios are likely:

1. Free rotation, which could damage the motors.

2. Someone assumes they've bent the guide rails on the drill.

It would be wonderful to know if they left the drill at full extension or not when they abandoned the probe.
Geert
The longer I look at these new images, the more I get a feeling that Luna 23 is standing at some quite extreme angle, not yet completely on its side but certainly tilted a lot (maybe due to the fact that it landed on a crater rim, possibly with one or two legs inside the crater?).

Shadows and reflections just don't seem to match up with what I feel you should see if it was standing upright. Maybe this large tilt was preventing the drill from operating, or the ascent stage from taking off?

I'm searching everywhere in the vicinity of Luna 20 to find any trace of number 18, but as yet nothing. We know it failed at the very final stage of landing, more or less on touch-down, so it should have landed more or less intact although it might be laying on its side..

peter59
Luna 23 and Luna 24 smile.gif
http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse/view/M111185087
Phil Stooke
Moving into this thread from the other one... here's the full resolution data of Lunokhod 2, end of track, with details of its last maneuvers and a dark spot marking the rover. Nice detail in the tracks themselves. Image number is in the file name if you save it.

Phil

Click to view attachment
robspace54
Much clearer in the original higher - resolution shot, Phil. Here is what it looks like from the photo Emily L. posted on the Planetary Society blog. This is a negative and clipped image with the contrast adjusted slightly in the old MS Photo Editor - and it is still visible!

Rob
elakdawalla
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Mar 16 2010, 06:45 AM) *
Moving into this thread from the other one... here's the full resolution data of Lunokhod 2, end of track, with details of its last maneuvers and a dark spot marking the rover. Nice detail in the tracks themselves.

Phil, the gray levels in the plains look posterized -- is that how the original data looks or did the histogram get squished during processing somewhere?

Marvelous to be able to resolve the rover tracks like this!!
Phil Stooke
The original is rather low contrast. I'm not doing any calibration etc. - the fully processed versions might be better than this.

Phil
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.
Invision Power Board © 2001-2024 Invision Power Services, Inc.