Imaging Lunar Landing Sites

[viper101]

Quick question - a few years ago I recall reading about a Lunar Probe that would be capable of imaging the Apollo landing sites. I'm not sure if this was the European Space Agency’s SMART-1, or some other probe. <br /><br />I'm not a Lunar-Landing hoax theorist, but I would be really interested in seeming photos of some of the landing sites today. <br /><br />Anyone know if or when we will get that kind of resolution from an orbiting probe?

 

[rsp1202]

Go to:<br /><br />http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/apollolanding/ApolloLanding/apollolanding_index.shtml<br /><br />or wait for hi-rez photos to come from Lunar Recon Orbiter in 2008, which will re-image Apollo sites.<br />

 

[jschaef5]

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will be going up sometime soon hopefully and it will be mapping out the moon and looking for water and hydrogen and stuff. I think it will have a high resolution camera also, but I don't know if it will be good enough to see anything that we left behind on the moon. I thought they said like 1 meter per pixel but that is really high and I am not sure if i read or heard that right. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">Anyone know if or when we will get that kind of resolution from an orbiting probe?</font>/i><br /><br />LRO is supposed to launch in about a year and a half (Oct. 2008). Links to the mission, instruments, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) are below. One of the goals is to re-image the Apollo landing sites because we do have ground truth as to that terrain. That information can then be used to interpret the results of images taken elsewhere.<br /><br />http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/missions/index.html<br />http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/missions/scandinst.html<br />http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/missions/lroc.html<br />http://cps.earth.northwestern.edu/LROC/</i>

 

[henryhallam]

I'm pretty sure it won't pass over the old Apollo sites, but SMART-1 should get a very highly detailed view of the surface later this year as its orbit decays - I read somewhere that on the final few passes it will be just a few hundred feet above the surface, at orbital velocity! I'm not sure whether it will be possible to relay any pictures back to Earth.

 

[n_kitson]

You're probably thinking of the Transorbital Trailblazer probe. Transorbital were going to send an orbiter in 2003/4 to the moon. The camera would have had sufficient resolution to image Apollo hardware.<br /><br />I have no idea what happened to Transorbital, but the website still exists: Link