Photos of Apollo Moon Landing Sites From Space!
ALL Apollo Landing Sites
Was the moon landing a hoax? If not, why don't we have photos of Apollo moon landings from space? In fact, we do! Below are photos of all the Apollo spacecraft on the moon, plus astronaut footprints, instruments, lunar rovers, and flags at several different Apollo mission landing sites.
India's space program photographed tracks of Apollo 15's astronauts in September '09. Japan's Selene/Kaguya lunar probe imaged the Apollo 15 and 17 sites in 2008 with a stereoscopic 3D camera, including the "halo" of brighter material kicked up by Apollo 15's exhaust plume. China's Chang'e 2 lunar orbiter has imaged Apollo equipment on the surface, according to chief scientist Yan Jun. Also, it turns out that the Clementine spacecraft snapped a distant picture of the Apollo 15 landing site as far back as 1994. But those photos can't match the resolution of the new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's camera!
This page includes detailed photos of the landing sites of Apollo 11-12, Apollo 14-17, and the crash site of Apollo 13's upper stage booster.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images are from NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.
Apollo 11 Landing Site Overview
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped the Apollo 11 landing site on its early approach in July 2009, but we were disappointed -- it was as far away as a typical Earth satellite photo (see below) so there wasn't any detail. Later passes in November 2009 and 2011 brought the LRO nearer.
P.S. See the bottom of this page where I've got links to several recordings of the Apollo 11 mission picked up by amateur and foreign radio operators.
LRO Photo Gallery of Apollo 11 Landing Site
Click thumbnail to view full-size
The November 2009 photo is lit directly from above — with the sun directly behind the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter — so the metal platform left behind by the lunar lander module when it blasted back into orbit is reflecting sun-glare right back at the camera lens, making it look white.
Video Retrospective: Apollo 11's Final Scary Minutes
- Apollo 11: The Final Approach - Video - TIME.com
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin avoid near catastrophe on their final approach to Tranquility Base. All I can say is: "Use the Force, Neil!" Yikes.
Apollo 11 Almost Crashed
My parents talked about Armstrong having to pilot around some unexpected obstacle just before landing: the planned landing site turned out to be a boulder field.
It was worse than that: not only was the chosen landing site rougher than expected, but the computers had overloaded! With fuel running low, Armstrong performed a seat-of-the-pants landing.
It's well worth watching the 2:30 minute video above to relive the landing and learn what the viewers back home didn't realize at the time.
Compare Above Photos With Satellite Photography of Earth:
Why Can't We See Moon Landers From Earth Using Telescopes?
Detailed Google Maps photos are taken by low-flying aircraft flying at 800-1500 feet, not satellites. Above is an actual satellite photo of the tip of Manhattan in New York City. Hey, where's the cars? Prove to me they exist!
Now consider: The moon is 238,857 miles away. Satellite photos of Earth are taken by satellites (duh), only a few hundred miles up. So we couldn't take a picture of the Moon as detailed as that New York City image until we put an actual satellite (the LRO!) in orbit above the Moon.
I've marked the Brooklyn Bridge for scale. It's 26m wide. Lunar landing modules are 9 meters across (and that includes the legs.) Notice the white glare off concrete roofs. The moon lander's flat metal platform reflects even more glare at noon.
Apollo 12 Lunar Landing Site Photos
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Can Telescopes See Apollo Landing Sites?
Have you got a pair of binoculars? Try reading a book with them. The printing isn't even visible, because the focal point is all wrong for anything up close.
Space telescopes have the same problem. Tele + scope means "far + sight," and they are really far-sighted. Powerful telescopes like the Hubble are designed to see things on the other side of the solar system — or even the universe! — not for close-up studies of the Moon's surface.
Below is what the Hubble Space Telescope sees when looking straight at the Apollo 17 lunar landing site. The Hubble is one of the most powerful telescopes ever made, floating above the interference of the Earth's atmosphere, but it can't resolve objects 9m across. For that, it would need a giant pair of "reading glasses!"
See Can telescopes see lunar landers or lunar rovers? and Abandoned Spaceships and Moon Buggies for great articles answering this question in more detail, with photos.
Apollo 17 Landing Site Photographed By Hubble Space Telescope
Multiple LRO Images Show How Sun Angle Changes View of Site
Apollo 13 Third Stage Booster on Moon
You probably know why there are no Apollo 13 moon landing photos.
However, Apollo 13 did leave its calling card: the first two stages of its booster rocket fell to Earth and burned up, but the third stage used to nudge it into lunar orbit crashed on the Moon. Its impact was recorded by a seismometer left by Apollo 12.
Seismometers left by the various missions have helped to coordinate the crash sites of all the spent stages within a few hundred meters, but this is the first to be photographed.
Crash site of Apollo 13 third stage:
Apollo 13 Booster Crash Site
What's with the bright white glare in some images?
Here's a video of one of the lunar modules returning to space, leaving behind a base and its legs. Notice the bright glare on the flat metal. (No, they didn't leave someone behind -- this camera was the one on Apollo 17's moon rover, controlled from Houston.)
Apollo 14 Landing Site of Antares Lunar Lander
Next up, Apollo 14. The astronauts were being extra-cautious on this mission after Apollo 13, which meant they got lost hiking in hilly terrain and had to turn back just before finding a crater they were hoping to see!
The high-res version of the August 2009 LRO flyby just barely shows their tracks, but you'll have to see the large size on NASA's website because the footprints are too faint to show when I post the smaller version here.
But there are better LRO images of the site from closer, later passes:
Apollo 14 Landing Site Images
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Apollo 15 Moon Lander (Descent Module) and Site
Ever since the LRRRs from Apollo 11 and Apollo 15 were placed in position, astronomers back on Earth have been able to aim high-powered lasers at these mirrors and measure the Moon's distance with incredible precision from the light that bounces back.
40 years of measurements have shown not only the slight tidal rise and fall of the Moon's surface, but the fact that it's slowly spiralling away at a rate of 3.8 centimeters a year.
If you check that link, it's actually a fairly impressive feat of engineering. Since the Moon is hundreds of thousands of miles away, the light photons have to go straight there, straight back without even a tiny bit of deflection at an angle, or they'll miss the detector the astronomers are using.
In addition to the LRRR left by Apollo 15 astronauts, as usual, they did some rock collecting and exploration. See this page near the bottom matching up landscape photos taken by the astronauts with LRO overhead views.
Apollo 15 was also the first moon lander to include a Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), popularly known as a moon buggy.
LRO Photos of Apollo 15 Falcon Lander and Moon Buggy!
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Photos of Apollo 16 Moon Landing Site
Again, there's a moon buggy (LRV) to make these photos more interesting. The site looks drastically different when sun is low (July 2009) or at high noon (July 2010)!
Apollo 16 is daringly perched next to a crater — from our perspective, on the right side.
LRO Images of Apollo 16 Orion Descent Module with Moon Buggy
Click thumbnail to view full-size
Guide to Apollo 16 Site - What Are We Looking At?
Apollo 17 "Challenger" Lander, Lunar Rover, and Flag
Apollo 17's landing site happens to have been photographed more than any of the others, showing traces of the flag and lunar rover left behind in addition to the instruments and landing gear of Apollo 17's lunar module.
Apollo 17 was the last manned mission, December 1972.
LRO Images of Apollo 17 Landing SIte, Including Flag
Click thumbnail to view full-size
Exploring Apollo 17 Landing Site - What Are We Looking At?
Approximate Locations of Apollo Moon Landing Sites
Websites About the Apollo Moon Landings - Photos and Information About the Apollo Program
- Abandoned Spacecraft on the Moon
A lot of good links and information about the craft left behind by the Apollo program and what the LRO team *hoped* they'd see before they got their first images of Apollo landing craft. - Exploring the Apollo 11 Landing SItes By Telescope
This amateur astronomy website shows all the Apollo moon landing sites from earth. You can zoom in on each landing site. - PHOTOS: 8 Moon-Landing Hoax Myths -- Busted
Examine the evidence, and find out why experts say some of the most common "moon landing hoax" claims don't hold water. - MythBusters Episode 104: NASA Moon Landing
The Mythbusters put the moon landing conspiracy theory to the test to determine if NASA faked the Apollo landings. - Apollo 11: 35 Years Later
Interactive site commemorating 35th anniversary of Apollo 11 moon landing, with photos, videos, and a review of the historic mission. - Photos: The other Apollo moon landings - CNET News
Apollo 11 is the most famous moon landing, but there were five other successful manned missions to the moon! Camera technology improved with the missions, so some of the later photos are even better. - The Apollo Program - Smithsonian Institution
Photos, videos & information on all manned Apollo missions from NASA and the National Air and Space Museum. - The Project Apollo Image Gallery
The most comprehensive high-quality image gallery of Apollo lunar mission photos and videos on the net. - The Fox News Moon Hoax Investigation: A Hoax?
Here's just some of the mistakes, distortions, and selective editing of the "facts" in their "investigation" of the moon landings. Hey, why let facts and common sense get in the way of a sensational news story? - The Great Moon Hoax - NASA Science
"Yes, there really is a Moon hoax, but the prankster isn't NASA. Moon rocks and common sense prove Apollo Astronauts really did visit the Moon."
More Info on LRO's Survey of Apollo Sites
Funny Moon Mission Video - Apollo 17 Astronaut Jack Schmitt: "Twinkletoes"
We've seen plenty of "cool" videos of the moon, but here's what it was really like. Low gravity and a bulky spacesuit can be tricky!
Mythbusters Moon Hoax Episode
MythBuster's Moon Hoax Episode
Many of the well-known conspiracy theories put to the test
Why did the flag move? How could one leave crisp footprints in dusty-dry spoil? What about the shadows? Find out all this and more on the "Moon Hoax" episode of Mythbusters (Season 6, Episode 2, available on YouTube as a cheap purchase).
Radio Transmissions from Apollo 11
A number of radio operators picked up signals from Apollo, including both other countries' tracking stations and one rather impressive amateur radio operator.
- West German Bochum Observatory Picks Up Apollo 11 Signals
Recordings of Apollo 11 landing from a West German radio telescope. - Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station (Australia)
Canberra, Australia tracking station picked up signals between NASA and the Apollo 11 astronauts. See Apollo 11 links. - Honeysuckle Creek's records of Lunar Landing
Canberra, Australia tracking station's audio recording, intercepting the radio signals from Neil Armstrong's exit from the lunar lander and "one small step" at 3:00. - Lunar Eavesdropping in Louisville, KY
Amateur radio operator recorded signals from Apollo 11: news clippings, information, and the audio files picked up by Larry Baysinger.
Feel free to leave comments! However, if you're skeptical, may I suggest you check out the three "moon hoax" websites I listed above in my "Websites" and links section. They have a lot more information for you.
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Guestbook - Leave Your Comments!
Interesting read. Thank you for sharing.
You can see me on moon in those pics. I went there on flying bicycle which is free gravity. I know you will not believe it, as I cannot believe it what you want to prove. If they can go once their. Then they can go again. Just tell me how much money needed for this trip. I have few rich people to pay for this trip. Please dont tell me that all equipment is distroyed and all scientists are died and it is not possible to reach there again.
sorry to upset those who believed we landed on the moon but i don't see how it could be possible. getting to the moon, not a problem. However NASA couldn't guarantee that they could get the astronauts back so in order to not have a catastrophe broadcast around the world, President Nixon said that filmed footage should be created. i mean seriously, how can a moon buggy that runs on an ordinary car battery (NASA's own admission) withstand the temperatures on the moon? NASA said nothing else was used to power the moon buggy but just a regular car battery. how could photographs taken by the astronauts with a camera with no protection have survived exposure to radiation? all the film would have been ruined. even the recent photos taken from satellites going around the moon were probably altered to make them look like you can see evidence of the alleged moon landings. Its known around NASA that photos are Photoshopped to remove ufo's or anything that shows the alien bases that are on the moon. so if NASA makes a habit of removing objects from pics then they can easily add objects to pics.
Thanks for sharing
"It was worse than that: not only was the chosen landing site rougher than expected, but the computers had overloaded! With fuel running low, Armstrong performed a seat-of-the-pants landing."
This is a ridiculous claim. There was no "seat of the pants" landing because there were no seats. Also, the LGC did indeed register anomalous load but the fail-safe design of its software executive ("OS kernel", if you're very generous with the terminology) simply put the spurious low-priority task aside to concentrate on the more immediate task of landing safely.
Ridiculous. So your evidence that NASA did not lie and hoax the landings with fake photos is.... NASA photos. Time for you to go back to school for some lessons in logic. Oh, that's right... schools don't teach logic. How fortunate for the Rockefellers and the rest of the US Military-Industrial Complex which miraculously leapfrogged the Russians to repeatedly visit the Moon... but strangely can't get the tech together to do it just once recently, just for old time's sake... or to explore the dark side. Maybe they should dig up the old blueprints for the orbiter, lander and spacesuits. Oh, it seems somehow NASA "lost" them all... LOL!
I didn't know if my comment was actually going to post so I cut it short, but there are lot more reasons to be skeptical of the moon landings than the 2 I mentioned.
My father was an electrical engineer and worked on the Titan program at both cape Canaveral and Vandenberg AFB. I was 6 years old and vaguely remember watching Apollo 11 with dad in i969.
The first time I ever met a moon landing skeptic, I thought he was crazy - of course America landed men on the moon! But over the years I've become a skeptic to the point that I seriously doubt the moon landings actually happened.
And the pictures here do nothing to change my mind, because I'm not trained to analyze satellite images and these could easily be fakes - remember Colin Powell showing us the sat photos of mobile WMD labs? I fell for that BS too.. at first.
Instead of accepting possibly faked photos as "proof", anyone interested in finding the truth needs to take a good look at how the Apollo program was developed compared to other manned space programs - when you do that, it isn't very believable. First of all, there were only 2 unmanned test launches of the Saturn V rocket - the first was only at 80% power with no payload, and the second was actually a failure - a phenomenon known as the pogo-effect shook the rocket so violently that 2 rocket motors failed and NASA chase plane footage actually showed parts of the rocket falling off.
Yet, we're expected to believe that the very next Saturn V launch sent men not just to low Earth orbit, but all the way to the moon. This is not the way launch vehicles are developed, and if there had been a catastrophic failure, the Apollo program might've ended then.
Another big problem I have is that Apollo 11 supposedly landed on the moon without even 1 test of the lunar lander or ascent vehicle - if it turned out that LAV could not take off, leaving Neil to die a slow death, that probably would've ended Apollo if not the entire US manned space program.
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Take that, lunar landing conspiracy theorists!
Wow, these pictures are amazing to view. Simply awe inspiring.
Great article! I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid (among other things). I love planetariums (reference to your bio entry). Your passion for the subject certainly shines through - obviously in your genes.
Thank you for this. Really interesting. I just love space :)
@shamblesman lm: Of course man has been to the moon. What a silly statement. Great lens by the way. Just one note though. The reason telescopes, even Hubble can't see the landers on the moon is not due them being far sighted. It is because they don't have enough resolving power. You would need a space telescope (in space to negate the atmospheric interference) with an objective (mirror) a bit bigger than 100 meters. The Hubble had a 2.4 meter objective. The biggest land based telescope at present has a 10.4 meter mirror.
Love it GreekGeek, The tracks are awesome. I can't believe people still think it never happened.
@mythphile: There is really little reason to be debating these nitwits. If they had the facilities to process your info, u wouldn't have heard from them in the firstplace. Imagine expecting rationallity from a person who asserts "we haven't been there because we havnt gone back"...!!!!!? This same person carefully explained to me that at on any shuttle mission they could have at a whim, flitted of to the moon for a visit! I mentioned fuel, he came back with the astounding idea that it would take no fuel because the earth could "slingshot" one to the moon. I suggested he research and learn about the slingshot effect, which was a mistake.Or, we havnt been there because he saw a vid of a spectacular armstrong LLRV crash, or now its the vid of a morpheus crash/ burn! Somehow in their formative years, they didn't developed normal simple tools for rational thought
cool interesting videos and photos..
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@anonymous: The link I gave you above is Google saying that those photos are taken by a plane. Next?
Someones really talking shit here. Plot into your browser, Googles eye of the world, What you will see is photos of NASAs launch pad and streets, roads cars etc and they have even been able to see a dustbin lid. These photos are NOT taken from a plane but as it says, from a satalite which is 425 miles above the earth. NASAs LRO camera which is just 15 miles from the surface should be able to show two ants having a jump if there was any therem but all they are prepared to show is white dots and airbrushed tracks, which still need arrows and word indicators.
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Cool! I love space!
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@anonymous: Because it would cost billions of dollars, and Congress and Obama have slashed NASA's budget so that the Orion program has basically been cancelled. It's now up to private companies like SpaceX to get us to the moon again.
Space is actually tremendously expensive, and the more you know about all the accidents and rickety technology that went into the Apollo program, the more you realize that we're lucky we didn't lose more astronauts than we did getting to the moon. Once we got to the moon, we'd fulfilled Kennedy's mandate, so the government was no longer to treat manned missions as a priority. Suddenly cost-cutting (remember, there was a recession in the 70s) became much more important, and NASA no longer had a huge budget to work with.
So we wound up doing robot probes, which are tremendously cheaper, instead. (And we've lost a lot of those, but you don't hear about the ones that crashed or went off course or went silent so much since they're not manned).
You can show lot of proof, but the fact remains that was a big lie. Simply answer me why men did not return to moon since 1972 ? With present day modern technology Mr. Bush gave a time line till 2020, why ?
Lee ... if you look at the videos taken from the Japanese sat as it shot high-def in lunar orbit, and you look to the horizon and the sky, you will notice that, just like Neil, it doesn't recall seeing any stars. There are none. The sky is as black as black can be.
@anonymous: Lee, you got it all wrong, and to use an ASTROLOGER--that asinine pseudoscientific superstitious bull--as a reliable source just shows how weak your grasp is on science and technology.
You can't see stars in a black sky from a well-lit spacecraft cabin, or from your spacesuit on the glaringly well-lit lunar surface. Try to see some stars at night from a spot that is illuminated by a bright streetlight or porch light. You might see one or two bright ones if you squint hard.
The only liars are the conspiracy theorists who can't or wont' improve their understanding of science. Don't spout your anti-science views here.
Isn't it amazing what people choose to believe (or not believe) even when presented with science and facts. Evolution for example - there can be few other scientific theories with so much evidence to support them (gravity perhaps). And yet people choose not to believe it. Much to their, and the world's, detriment. If only more people posted accurate and detailed info like this then perhaps we'd have a chance of surviving as a species! Read and learn guys! Great lens.
Love space.
It's so nice to see how far we've gone through time, specially with going to Mars now!
@anonymous: Dear "Lee," I just checked and you don't exist. I have proof. No one has stepped forward to swear on a Bible that you exist. Proof. A photo of Earth does not show any sign of you and no accomplishment of yours has been found. Proof. You think an astronomer is an astrologer. No one with a brain thinks that. Therefore, you don't exist. I can't imagine the burden you must carry. The good news is that we don't need to listen to your koo koo ravings until someone swears an oath that you exist. Good luck with that. Just FYI Quakers refuse to swear oaths because it implies they ordinarily lie. Armstrong's motivation may have been similar. If you existed your foolishness would be an insult to the work of thousands and the bravery of astronauts who dared to rely on 1960s technology to land on the Moon and return safely. Therefore, I'm delighted that you don't exist!
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@anonymous: As a mythology scholar, I understand the psychological need for people to invent urban legends and made-up stories like yours to "solve" what they don't understand.
But here. In the past two thousand years, we've invented this thing called logic, so we no longer have to invent crazy stories about mythical astrologers (what?) and Armstrong refusing to swear a Binding Oath (VERY Harry Potter Like) to explain something that a TINY bit of logic and knowledge would let you comprehend.
I know you've probably never used a film camera, but here's how it works. The shutter opens and lets in a certain amount of light. Let in too much light, and the film is washed out to pure white.
So, if you use a film camera in broad blazing sunlight -- especially on a moon with no atmosphere to filter the sunlight and a highly reflective surface (which you can see for yourself if you care to step outside at night) -- you can't open the shutter for very long. If you do, the film will be overexposed. On the other hand, if you want to photograph stars, which are very dim, you have to leave the shutter open for 10 to 20 seconds to capture their light and their image on the film.
The astronauts were in broad daylight. If they had left their camera shutters open long enough to for the film to pick up starlight, the sunlight would've blasted out everything leaving the film overexposed, a fuzzy white glare obscuring the picture.
As a matter of fact, you can test this for yourself. Get a camera with a good zoom, put it on a tripod, and focus it so that the full moon fills most of the photo (full moon is when it's in sunlight). Let the light meter guess how long to open the shutter. If the moon is clear and not washed-out, there will be NO STARS.
After reading that Armstrong's family asked us to "wink at the moon", I tried taking a photo of the moon through my own point-and-shoot camera... and what do you know... this is an automated camera, so I just focused on the moon and didn't think about the stars in the background...
http://www.istad.org/album/moon-photo.png
Where'd the stars go? Give it a try for yourself and you'll see the same thing.
The '69 moon landing never happened and you can delude yourself but the truth is out there. Aside from the thousands of anomalies, Neil Armstrong was asked to swear on the bible that he set foot on the moon - he refused! That in itself isn't proof, however. Mr Armstrong was also asked by a famous British astrologer what the stars looked like from the moon........Armstrong replied that he doesn't recall seeing any.....LOL! Right there and then the astrologer understood everything - that he was in the midst of one of the greatest lies ever perpetrated against mankind! Who ever was responsible for the moon landing stage set (Nevada?) had forgotten to 'paint' the stars in! RIP now Neil, yours was such a heavy burden to carry - one small lie from man, one giant lie to humanity.
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@Commandrix: Yes. Except that I get all the moon hoax conspiracy theorists coming out of the woodwork, which makes me sad: they can't enjoy one of the most astounding things that the human race has ever done, and it happened within our own lifetimes.
RIP, Neil. A hero to millions of us.
The news hit me pretty hard. And I'm still getting over Sally Ride. She was a personal idol, because my Dad worked on the shuttle program.
Man...Has it been as crazy for you as it has been for me? I'm minding my own Squidoo-business and the news hits me out of left field...RIP, Neil Armstrong.
Very interesting. Loved the pictures and videos.
Awesome article! Thanks for sharing!
Very informative for all.
So cool - thanks
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@SciTechEditorDave: Ooh, you have has some great adventures! And congratulations o getting to work at Ames for a while.
My parents got to know Neil Armstrong a little, because as luck would have it, seating at big aerospace dos was sometimes alphabetical, putting them next to him. (Mom says they spent most of the dinner geeking about Star Trek.) But the only astronaut I've met is Bob Crippen, who was my Dad's boss for a while. Lots of fun stories!
My son will love this page. He is trying to read a book on the moon. He is only 6 and he asked me if I could find him some of the original news papers that came out during the moon launch. Enjoyed your page.
Well... I studied biology and chemistry in college... and was working on an MS in bio when I had to cut it short. Followed the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs when I was in junior high school and high school. Actually met Collins, Armstrong, and Aldrin -- shook hands with Collins and Aldrin when they visited Guam after their flight on their world tour. Then, met and shook hands with Astronauts McBride and Onizuka when I was a high school science teacher. And finally, was working on the NASA-Ames Research Center International Space Station Project Gravitational Biology Facility as a tech writer--one of my career highlights. Your lens is truly wonderful - love the close-up shots of the moon. Congrats on a Squidoo masterpiece!
One thing the conspiracy people seem to forget is that this was in the middle of the cold war with the Soviet Union. You can bet the farm that every radio transmission was monitored by them. If they found the transmissions not eminating from the moon, you know they would have screamed foul. Yet, not a word is said from them.
Hi there! I'm the child of a solid propellent chemist as well! My mom worked on the Tritium production for the Saturn rockets. She went on to become an MD though after only a couple of years at the Savannah River Site in SC, but I have enjoyed a lifetime of "Rocket Scientist" jokes nonetheless. :)
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@anonymous: We've got communications satelliites parked out in that zone right now. If the astonauts had stayed in the Van Allen Belt for weeks, they would have suffered radiation poisoning, but as it was, the dosage was not enough to make them ill. You can read the calculations on the approximate radiation dosage they took here:
http://www.wwheaton.com/waw/mad/mad19.html
On the other hand we DID get lucky: there was a strong solar flare between Apollo 16 and 17 that might have killed our astronauts, had any been on the Moon at the time when the flare erupted. But the radiation from a flare doesn't hang around: it's just a burst, then done. Space is indeed more dangerous than we realized back then, and I wouldn't be surprised if some astronauts die of one form of cancer or another.
We can't go period. can't go through the van Allen belt. Not even the space shuttle could.
@mythphile: Here is an in depth article on the math:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/200...
In a nutshell:
R = 11.6 / D
Diameter of Hubble is 240cm
Resolution = 11.6/Diameter = 11.6/240 = 0.05 arcseconds, and taking into account the Nyquist rate you double that to a resolution of 0.1 arcseconds for the Hubble.
The lander is 4 meters wide and 400,000,000 meters away.
Angular size = size/distance * 206265 = 4/400,000,000* 206265 = 0.002 arcseconds
0.1/0.002 = 50 so the Hubble would need to be 50 times wider to see the lander as a *single pixel*.
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@anonymous: (Dammit, Jim, I'm a humanities major, not a mathematician) ;) I wound up explaining it with an analogy -- distance glasses vs. reading glasses -- instead of math. But you make a good point. I will have to look for the website you mentioned, as that sounds logical. Or maybe bug my dad, although he knows more about solid rocket propellant and nozzles than he does optics.
You left one thing out. It *is* possible to see the moon lander from Earth or from Hubble's orbit with a big enough telescope, and I've seen websites calculate how big of a scope you would need (100s or thousands of meters wide). I think you should add a quick equation and answer addressing that just as a final nail in the coffin of "then why can't we see it with the Hubble?"
Okay - I am convinced. But I was anyway, so I was not a tough audience. Pinned to my board "This I want you to Know" so that others can see the information.
Wow, someone needs to learn some points on providing constructive criticism. I think your page is laid out very well. In the allotted space, you do a great job of illustrating the facts showing the moon landings were not a myth. Love the Mythbusters video at the end too. And why do we have to question everything that's happened? Great lens. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
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@anonymous: As noted in my article, the lunar landing gear is 9M across.
The photo Dave was talking about --
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/24/51...
features a natural bridge 20m across, and it's pretty fuzzy, not "detailed."
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@Richardryder: The Japanese imaged Apollo 15's landing site in 2008; see the links at the top of this article. However, their optics aren't quite as good as the LRO.
The Apollo landing sites don't get imaged all that often, since the goal of these probes is to explore/study the moon -- NEW things -- not take pictures of places we've already visited.
Note also that every day, various astronomers are bouncing a laser off the reflector left on the moon by Apollo astronauts to measure the distance between Earth and the Moon (since it changes). That bounce is easy enough to measure. It wouldn't work if the astronauts hadn't placed a reflector there and positioned it correctly. (See the Mythbusters episode above for a live demo of such a test.)
To Greekgeek: it is funny to see a student of mythology write about science with so much self assurance of knowing the answers. It is no wonder that you keep repeating the fact that you are the daughter of a microbiologist and a rocket scientist - because these are the only credentials you have to give some validity to your arguments. I guess you did pick up some basics from your parents while roasting marshmallows and looking at the stars.
About the moon landings; I am not fully convinced by the moon hoax theories, but there is some believable arguments that we never landed on the moon. Even some of today's NASA astronauts admit the possibility we never made it to the moon. But with your experience in mythological studies, you unequivocably came to the conclusion that we must have landed on the moon.
I think you are very selective about the posts you decide to answer. Dave asked a valid question how come NASA made a detailed picture of a crater with 20 m in diameter, yet the lunar landing pictures have such poor quality. Although you spent a great deal of work on building this website and answering the easy questions, you decided to ignore this one. I guess answering Dave,s question would require some quantitative research and analysis. What happened? Couldn,t you think of an analogy in the NASCAR world or cardboard experiment?
This could be proof if the pictures did not come from NASA i suppose - I love to play with the hoax theory - The Japanese are surveying the Moon so that should give final proof
Great photos and hopefully these will just add to the already existing mountains of evidence that the hoax conspiracy nutjobs can finally admit to being legitimate but much more like they will just plug their ears and double down even harder.
Angels Blessings to add your Moon Dust
Very cool! I didn't know these pictures existed. These pictures certainly provide rock-solid evidence that the "moon hoax" crowd is wrong.
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@anonymous: Goodness, 200 meters isn't very far!
I don't know, but as you can see from the film above, the rover couldn't have been much closer, or it would not have been able to film the lander's blast-off and return to the command module. The camera didn't have a huge field, and of course it had to pivot to track the lander's lift-off. Try filming a NASCAR on the far side of a racetrack, as opposed to catching it in close-up when it zooms past you only a few yards away, and I think you'll see why this was more convenient.
Frankly, I'd be worried if our astronauts couldn't even hop 200 meters in the moon's wimpy gravity.
Why would you park the lunar roving vehicle so far from the lunar lander and then walk back to the landing site?
Valuable and inspire for next step forward. I am going back to moon for space solar power for earth ! Thanks.
- AUTHOR
@norma-holt: The Mythbusters vids I linked to above exploded most of the common questions like that. They tested a flag like the one set on the moon in a complete vacuum. Sure enough, it waved. The reason is because it's a sheet of tough material (plastic, mylar, can't remember which) hanging from a stiff strut across the top of the flag like a shop sign. Adjusting and moving the flag while putting it into the ground caused the hanging part of the flag to sway and wave. There is no air friction on the moon to slow down that waving, so it took much longer than on Earth for those waves to slow to a stop after the astronaut finished fiddling with it. Like I said, mythbusters tested it by trying to set up the exact same kind of flag in a vacuum chamber, and it waved around for quite a while in exactly the same way before --eventually-- stabilizing.
Nice lens on a tricky subject, There is a lot of confusion especially about things like why was the flag fying when there is no wind there, and so on. I tend to believe what I saw at the time of the moon landing. It was a great step forward and there is no way they could have scammed all the moon landings. Hugs.
- AUTHOR
@anonymous: No, the photos have not been edited; you're just not understanding what you're seeing. Here's why you're confused: The shadow is on the right side of the moon lander, yet the shadows in the craters are on the left side of the craters around it. How can that be? Because the moon lander sticks up, and the craters are HOLES. Think about it.
The moon lander sticks up, and its shadow shadow is streaming off to its right. Whereas the shadows IN the craters are being cast by the high walls of the left side of the craters. The crater's left hand wall is casting a shadow to its immediate right. That shadow does not reach all the way across the crater wall, so the right side of the crater is in sunlight and is brighter.
Got it?
If you're having trouble visualizing this, try an experiment at home. Get a cardboard box or a styrofoam food carry-out container. Using the butt end of a ballpoint pen underneath the lid, twist and turn until you've pushed up some bumps that stick up. Then push some bumps that stick DOWN, forming craters. Now carry your "moon surface" to one side of a light source. You will see that the shadows are on the far side of the light source, on the bumps that stick up, and on the inner wall closest to the light source, on the "craters" that go down.
is it just me, or are the shadows created by the lunar lander in every photo pointing the wrong way ?, the pictures show the moonscape casting shadows astho the sun was shining from the right of the picture, yet the luner landers shadow is cast the opposite direction, astho the sun was shining from the left of the picture ? very curious as to why, im a firm beliver than men went to the moon, but i also believe the photos have been edited, why is this ?
Well done! Can't believe there are moon landing hoaxters out there.
If I were a skeptic, I'm not sure these photos would convince me. But now that I've taken a close look at that Google maps image, you've convinced me that all the morning commute traffic is obviously a hoax. I can't see any cars in that image, so obviously they must not exist. Thanks for clearing that up. :-)
I especially like the Astronaut's footprints
- AUTHOR
@anonymous: I explained all this on the article above, but Dave couldn't take the time to read it, so I doubt he'll see your comment.
I'd love to ask some of these people, "If you can't see the answers to your questions on a webpage in front of your nose, how do you expect us to see tracks on the moon 200,000+ miles away?" But again, they'd probably miss the question, as they have missed the answers.
But thank you for trying. :)
Hi Dave!
There are in fact very detailed photo's of the lunar landing sites! They even show dark bands indicating the trails where the astronauts walked. This is of course (in case you wonder) because there is no wind on the moon, so they trails stay perfectly intact. Unless of course dust from a meteor impact was to cover them. And if you wonder why it took a moon satellite to take these photos and why Hubble couldn't, I suggest you study optics a bit more. Have a nice day!
I liked the way you opened - it had never occurred to me the potential for a moon hoax.
I have always been a believer, but this is a great website for anyone -- the doubters as well as those who appreciate space exploration. Thanks!
If NASAâs moon orbiter can photograph, with detail, a spot on the moon 20 meters (65 feet) across and roughly 8 meters (25 feet) wide why is it so impossible to get better pictures of the equipment on the surface? http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/24/51... The bridge is about 20 meters (65 feet) across and roughly 8 meters (25 feet) wide. Based on interpretations of the slanting shadows, the depth of the chasm ranges from 6 to 12 meters (20 to 40 feet).
No doubts here. We live about 15 miles from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral...
I never doubted, but it's fun to see additional info. Cool lens!
Had never heard about the pictures of the moon from space... puts things in a different light.
With Love and Gratitude,
Jeremiah
Apollo and here we are in the Squidoo Sratosphere! Wow
I can safely say. yes they did, i know they did because they suggested that people go out and look at the moon and you will see a bright light coming from the moon, i did and i saw it, a light leaving the moon and started to head for the orbiter, they di it and i can vouch for it as i was a witness.
Well I'm a skeptic ... about the hoax theories. Moon landing - plenty of evidence!
I'm not skeptical, just curious!
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@LabKittyDesign: Unfortunately, some of the whackadoodles have demonstrated that they have great difficulty reading the text on this page, even the large type and short sentences in big black boxes.
Awesome! One of these days, I'd like to see the Moon hoaxers raise the funds to recreate the Apollo 11 flight. Whenever I need a laugh, I just watch that video of Buzz Aldrin's left hook...Classic.
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@anonymous: It was taken from the rover's remote control camera, like it says right on the caption. ;)
Sure, you can photoshop anything... NOW.
But how about all the live footage that was streamed from all the different Apollo missions in the 70s? Do you know what computers were like back then? No photoshop. No hi-res graphics. Barely any color. Photo manipulation, let alone live video manipulation, would've been akin to magic.
Whereas we had the technology to go to the moon by the end of WWII, and submarine technology advanced enough to transport humans.
Getting to the moon was difficult, but it simply required a lot of resources.
FAKING getting to the moon... all those hundreds of hours of videos, of lunar rovers bouncing over the landscape, of the video above of that guy falling down in a way you can't do on earth... pretty much impossible.
But also, of course, there's a very easy test that's been done for decades. One of the missions left a mirror behind on the moon. Many observatories bounce lasers off that mirror which reflects back to earth. They use it to measure the distance between the earth and the moon more accurately.
first of all those pictures are too far to see exactly and I can doctor up that kind of stuff using my photshop program, meanwhile as the astronauts take off who's zooming out the camera on the moon and panning it up!!!
Thanks for sharing!
amazing. how a man can walk on the moon...
Excellent... Nice photos from space!
Most excellent work!
I had not seen these. I grew up in the Sixties and the Astronauts were my heroes. I've always been amazed by the Lunar Landing Conspiracy folks. I just didn't make sense to me! This is some excellent information and fabulous photos! Thank you!
I never saw these. I would hope that they would put an end to the moon landing was a hoax thing. I have little faith in that though. These could have been faked, they will say!
That makes sense, we should be able to see something. Fascinating!
nice info - I've not seen these pics before!
This is super-interesting! Thanks for putting this together!
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@indigoj: If it was the FOX Special, take a look at the links above. There was an amazing amount of selective editing and distortion in that thing.
I imagine they also skipped over the inconvenient fact that while telescopes are too far-sighted to sight something on the moon in great detail, a number of observatories around the world employ lasers, and it's a simple enough matter bounce a laser beam off the equipment the astronauts left behind and get an increase in light when the beam bounces straight back at them. Rock does not bounce laser beams, as you can test with a laser pointer on your patio. It takes a highly-polished metal surface or a mirror. The mirror left behind by Apollo 11 is used to measure the distance between the earth and moon precisely and monitor the tidal tug and pull between them with far more precision than otherwise possible. it was one of the things the Mythbusters tested...yep, get a big enough laser, know exactly the right coordinates for the mirror, and you'll get a flash off it!
I'm sure hoaxers would have a rationalization for that as with all else, but the problem is, every time they come up with a rationalization, they have another batch of stuff to deny. See the Myth Busters vids above for a few other things the "hoaxers" pick at (e.g. the footprints, the flapping flag, the astronaut movements they claim are fake) which they haven't actually tested and compared in both lunar and earth conditions.
As someone who grew up with an astronomer grandmother and a Dad who worked on the shuttle program-- I know that the technology required to fake a moon landing was utterly beyond NASA's ability, whereas the technology to get somebody up on the moon just requires a very large and expensive rocket, and some airtight compartments comparable to the technology we use all the time in submarines, which the hoaxers never (I hope) claim are fake.
In fact, I think even the CGI used by films like Avatar isn't quite up to faking a convincing moon landing. They would have made mistakes. Simple mistakes like the hoaxers make all the time.
Another common hoax claim is that there should be stars in the black sky, when that doesn't even make sense. Take a photo in daylight with a camera and observe how long the shutter has to stay open and how long an exposure you can take before the picture gets washed out by too much light. Then try taking a photo of stars at night using the same exposure you have to use to film in daylight. They're too dim; they don't show up. There's no atmosphere on the moon so no blue sky (and the sunlight is even brighter), but despite the black sky, the astronauts were working in daylight!
Yet in most of those documentaries, hoaxers point to the black sky in moon footage and say, "See, no stars! It was filmed on a back lot!" because apparently they've forgotten how things work right here on planet earth.
Every single one of the claims I've seen and heard rests on faulty logic like that.
It troubles me that hoaxers would disrespect the men and women who sacrificed so much to get there. It disrespects the 3 astronauts who died in Apollo I. (They never get mentioned do they? Gus Grissom, one of the Mercury astronaut veterans in "The Right Stuff", Ed White, and Roger Chafee). To me, it's like claiming that D-Day or Pearl Harbor never happened, because you weren't there to witness it... it's more than just being a skeptic, it's denying the people who lived through it any credit and spitting on the graves of those who died. I'm not patriotic by the standards of "real" Americans, but as a decent human being, I would not have the arrogance or confidence to deny the reality of D-Day, Pearl Harbor, or any other huge event witnessed, participated in, and experienced by thousands of people.
This is very interesting, particularly having seen a moon landing hoax documentary that presented a lot of evidence to the contrary. Naturally, all the evidence was stacked in favour of disproving the landings so they didn't show any of these images! :)
@anonymous: Andrew... http://www.google.com/moon/ ... ;)
Gosh, they're so tiny! Pretty cool though.
Thanks for the fantastic info on this unique topic :>
This lens blows the conspiracy theory out of the water. Very informative.
- AUTHOR
@girlfriendfactory: Aww. very hard that you lost that stuff-- amazing! And the VAB is one of the most incredible buildings. It's so BIG.
I've only been to the Cape once to watch an early launch of the shuttle, and that was one of the things that impressed me most, along with the giant crawler they set the rockets on top of to trundle them out to the launch pad.
- AUTHOR
@anonymous: Actually we do...it's been up for years!
But the imagery is from about the time of the Apollo missions. Hopefully soon it will be updated with the new data from the LRO mission.
We have Google Earth, why can't we have Google Moon?
Golly, I had no idea there were so many people doubting the landing on the moon. I mean - it's not exactly the toughest science to get there (was going to say not rocket science, but it obviously IS rocket science).
Terrific job on this! I was born right near Cape Canaveral in April of 1969 and my grandfather worked at the VAB building as an engineer dealing with rocket fuel. He also manned one of the consoles at Mission Control when several of the Apollo rockets were launched. At one time, he had special patches and other souvenirs that were only given to people working on the missions. Unfortunately my whackadoodle grandmother destroyed, trashed or gave away most of their possessions. The information he had from that him is my saddest material loss as he spent a considerable amount of time showing them to me when I asked as a kid. It is what it is though. However, I know that if these never took place, he would have told us before he passed, because that's the kind of person he was, so all the hoaxers and debunkers can bite me. :P
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