The spacecraft - the lunar explorer will photograph the entire surface of the moon several times in order to locate potential sites for the establishment of a human colony no later than 2020
23.7.2005
By: Avi Blizovsky
Inside the Challenger lunar lander, the radio screeched. Houston: "You are on TV now. We have a good picture."
Gene Kernan, commander of Apollo 17: "I'm glad to see that the vehicle is still working.
The "vehicle", that lunar scooter was parked outside without anyone sitting near its driver's cab. The television camera mounted on its side focused on the Challenger. In the control center in Houston and all over the world millions watched the broadcast. The date was December 19, 1972. History is about to happen.
Suddenly, without a sound, the Challenger split in two. The base of the spacecraft, the part with the landing pad on it, remains in place. The upper part - the lunar module with Kernan and Jack Schmitt inside it, took off scattering golden shards of the insulating material. The spaceship took off, changed direction and continued to climb towards the rendezvous with the Mekpaf America, the spaceship that would take them back home.
These were the last people on the moon. Once spotted, the camera moves forward and backward. There was no one there, nothing. Only the vehicle, lander and items of equipment are scattered in the dusty ground of the Taurus-Litro crater. Eventually, the vehicle's electric battery died and the transmission stopped. This was the last good look at the Apollo landing site.
Many find this surprising, and even frustrating. Conspiracy theorists have insisted for years that NASA did not reach the moon. "It was all a prank", they say, a way to win the space race through tricks. The fact that the Apollo landing sites have not been photographed in detail since the early XNUMXs bolsters their claims. And why didn't we take pictures of them? There are six landing sites scattered around the moon. They are always facing the earth, always in line of sight. It is almost certain that the Hubble Space Telescope can photograph the vehicles and what things the astronauts left behind. Right?
Not true. Not even grief can do that. The moon is 384,400 thousand km away. At this distance the smallest things Hubble can make out are 60 meters across. The largest piece of equipment left by the Apollo spacecraft is 9 meters across, smaller than even one pixel in the Hubble images.
However, better pictures are expected shortly. In 2008, NASA intends to launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. This spacecraft will carry a powerful modern camera and travel in a low orbit above the surface of the moon. Its primary mission is not to photograph the old Apollo landing sites, but it will photograph them as well, and even many times, and it will provide the first images in which details of the Apollo sites can be discerned since 1972.
"The spacecraft's high definition camera - LROC (abbreviation for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera) will have a resolution of half a meter. This means that every half square meter on the moon will count as a point in the digital images.
The lunar vehicles are 2 meters wide and 3 meters long, so in these images, the vehicle will occupy 4 by 6 pixels.
To understand what viewing with a resolution of half a meter per pixel means, you can look at the image of an airport on Earth with a resolution similar to that of LROC. Objects on a scale similar to that of the lunar vehicles can be discerned: cars and baggage carts are clearly visible.
"The bodies will look hard and be distinguishable," said Mark Robinson, assistant research professor at Northwestern University in Ableston, Illinois and LROC's principal investigator. "We will see differences in shadows created by the passenger seats, depending on the angle of the sun. The wheels may also be revealed in some ways.
Even more distinct will be the landing nets. Their main body size is 4 meters so they will occupy 8 by 8 pixels in LROC images. The four legs protruding from the four corners of the pedestal occupy a diameter of 9 meters, which means 18 pixels in the LROC image, more than enough to distinguish them.
And the shadows can also help, long, black shadows crossing the surface of the moon will reveal the shape of the body that created them, the vehicles and the landings. "During a year-long mission, LROC will photograph each landing site several times with the sun at different angles each time." According to Robinson comparing the different shadows will allow a more accurate analysis of the shape of the bone.
Beyond nostalgia and the need to stop conspiracy theories of all kinds once and for all, LROC's main mission according to NASA's space vision is to help prepare the return to the moon no later than 2020. The spacecraft will be used as an observer (SCOUT). It will sample the moon's radiation environment, search for frozen water deposits, perform laser mapping of the moon's surface and, as mentioned, photograph the entire surface of the moon. By the time the astronauts return they will know where the best places to land are and quite a lot of details about what is expected of them.
LROC's two highest priority targets will of course be the lunar poles. "We are very interested in the poles as potential sites for establishing a moon base," said Robinson. "There are several craters near the poles that are in the shade all year round. This place may be cold enough to harbor permanent deposits of ice-water. Not far from them there are also places where there is sunlight all year round, something that will provide energy for the colony, and together with the water potential in the vicinity, these high areas will be ideal for a base location." said. Data from the LROC will be able to indicate the best plane to build the house on the moon.
After establishing the base on the moon, what about the danger of it being hit by a large meteorite? LROC will provide an answer to this question as well.
"We will compare the images of the Apollo landing sites with images from the days of the Apollo mission," says Robinson, who adds that the presence or absence of fresh craters will provide researchers with a clue about the frequency of meteor strikes.
LROC will also attempt to locate hardened lava tunnels. These are cave-like sites, captured in some of the Apollo-era photos, where the astronauts could find shelter in the event of an unexpected solar storm. A global map of these natural storm shelters will help astronauts plan their journeys.
No one knows what LROC will find. The moon has never been explored in such detail. We're bound to discover new things, and abandoned spaceships are just the beginning
