LRO Gives First Look At Apollo Sites in 40 Years
July 23rd, 2009
|
| Share |
This is a little bit old as far as news goes (damn near a week out in the press) but it still is worth mentioning. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has beamed back a series of photographs showing the areas visited by manned missions during the Apollo project. The resolution is sufficient to clearly see the scientific items left behind by astronauts as well as the lunar module descent stages, which were left behind when the astronauts took off from the moon.
Although there have been a handful of unmanned probes to orbit the moon since the Apollo project, this is the first time that the images returned have been sufficiently high resolution to make out the small man-made structures.
Although the Apollo-11 site can be seen, it is not necessarily the most interesting site photographed by LRO. Later missions included more equipment, such as the Lunar Rovers and ventured further from the landing site to explore the geology and topography of the moon. The Apollo-14 site is especially interesting, as the photographs were taken during favorable lighting conditions which permit the recognition of astronaut’s footprints between the LM and some of the scientific experiments.
The entire series of photographs can be found here.
Of course this just adds to the mountains of proof that we actually did go to the moon. (Yes, man walked on the moon, 40 years ago. It happened. Get over it.) That being said, those who continue to cling to conspiracy theories will not likely be swayed by these images. After all, it’s just proof that NASA is continuing to fake pictures, right?
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Culture, Good Science, History, Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:59 pm
It’s fascinating to see these images, but anyone who expects this to sway the moon landing deniers is lacking in an understanding of just how committed to their crazy ideas those ones are. These are the same idiots who claim PROOF when they see a flag swaying on the moon and no matter how much you can show it’s just swinging like a pendulum, even recreating it in a vacuum chamber, they just won’t let go.
The obvious response to this is to claim that NASA has faked these photos. They have so much of their lives invested in playing amateur detective that it would just all fall apart if they even considered that these may actually be of the moon.
Quote Comment
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I do not know very much about this subject to be 100% honest, but the one thing that I have never heard anyone dismiss is that flying to the moon means going past the radiation belts that the earth has and that doing so would lead to so much radiation for the crew, that they would not make it back alive. This is why space shuttle and space station are forced to avoid flying too high or they get too much radiation.
Also, even in closer space, they have to keep film and things in lead boxes, which apollo did not have.
I am just saying that this seems to be a good reason to fake it for me, if going there will result in dead astronauts, no?
Quote Comment
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Exposure to radiation is based in part on time. The astronauts spent very little time in the Van Allen belts. You consider the intensity of it and that they were just there for a short time and it works out to be well bellow limits of what you need to take concern over.
The space station avoids it because if it were in an orbit that put it in the Van Allen belts then it would not be a one time thing and it would be in them over and over with each orbit and over many orbits this could cause damages.
Quote Comment
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:20 pm
How long after the missions did the experimental equipment left on the moon continue to transmit to the earth?
Quote Comment
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Dave G said:
The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages were powered by Pu-238 RTG’s, so they would have a very long theoretical lifetime, eventhough after a few years the systems had begun to degrade. The transmitters were still working in 1977 when NASA shut them down by remote command due to budget cuts. It always annoys me when something like that happens: billions of dollars to get them put in place and the government can’t even scrap together the funds to pay someone to keep an antenna pointed at them. **SIGH**
Anyway, by that time they were not really returning much in the way of new scientific data. The seismometers determined that the moon didn’t have much activity, so by 1977 they were just sending back a flat line. The ion detectors were not sending back much data that was any different than they had for the first few years.
Still.. like I said, it annoys the hell out of me that it came down to budget cuts to shut down the ALSEP systems.
By the way: Not all the experiments are non-functional. The lunar laser rangefinder still works. Of course, it’s completely passive so it doesn’t need any power or control commands.
Quote Comment
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Thinking of the Moon missions always makes me sad. There was so much promise. Now I am wondering if this will be seen historically as Western civilizations climax.
Quote Comment
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Yeah, it saddens me, too.
Our country no longer has the will to do such great things, and with what the public “education” system pumps out, we might not have the smarts anymore, either.
Quote Comment
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:09 pm
DV82XL said:
Understood. When I’ve visited places like Cape Canaveral, I am a bit taken a back by how the place shows off so much history and pays homage to the triumphs of the past.
Much as the past is worth recognizing for the sheer history of it all, it’s a bit odd in a place like that because it shouldn’t be all about the past and the has-beens.
Anyway, it’s certainly not doomed to be the last big achievement of Western Civilization. There is plenty of potential… We do need to get our act together, but it’s far from too late to do that.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 1:25 am
DV82XL said:
What was did the United States actually get out of Apollo, other than bragging rights? (“We beat the Soviets”…)
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 1:35 am
George Carty said:
“Man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for”
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
From Astronomycafe:
Here are some numbers for various missions:
Mission………….Dose
Gemini 3 23 millirads
Gemini 4 46 millirads
Gemini 5 176 millirads
Gemini 7 164 millirads
Skylab 2500 millirads
Apollo 11 173 millirads
Shuttle (Average Skin Dose) ~433 mrem/mission
Apollo 14 (Highest Skin Dose) 1,400 mrem / mission
Skylab 4 (Highest Skin Dose) 17,800 mrem/mission
Shuttle (Highest Skin Dose) 7,864 mrem/mission
For orbits at 250 – 300 km at 65 degree inclinations to the equator you get about 10 millirads/day. These numbers are from Volume II of the “Foundations of Space Biology and Medicine” NASA SP-374 published in 1975. Passes through the Van Allen radiation belts give you 10 – 20 rads/hour but most manned flights avoid them, and passages through them last about 10 – 20 minutes.
Here is a comparison to other common sources of radiation:
Airline Flight Crew 200 mrem/year
CT Scan (Chest) 700 mrem/event
Barium Enema 400 mrem/event
Houston Background 100 mrem/year
Gas Cooking Range 0.02 mrem/year
Dental Prosthesis 0.02 mrem/year
From leg: here on Earth, regulations allow a radiation worker to receive 5,000 mRem whole body radiation in a year and 50,000 mRem/yr to extremities (e.g. skin). Very few radiation workers get this kind of dose. There is zero evidence that radiation below these doses decreases a human’s lifespan. There is evidence that changes occur below these dose levels, but change does not necessarily equate to harm. Therefore you can see from the doses that the astronauts got on the various missions that they were not in any particular danger from radiation harm and in far, far, far less danger from it when compared to the other risks they faced. Because they have the potential to get more than 100 mRem in a year, they are classified as radiation workers and efforts are made to decrease their doses using shielding and making sure they do not spend a lot of time in the Van Allen Belt. These are two of the simple and basic methods of radiation protection – TIME, distance, SHIELDING, and contamination control. There is concern about increased eye cataract formation in astronauts. Heavy ions (iron molecules, alpha particles, etc) are rather prevalent in space. Heavy ions are easily stopped by our skin which is not particularly sensitive to radiation interaction. However, the eyes are not afforded the same protection, and the heavy ions can cause damage leading to cataracts. As my eye doctor told me two days ago, everyone gets cataracts as they age (I’m getting there). Nowadays cataracts are easily fixed.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
@LEG: Once again, excellent information on radiation. I’ve never seen much weight in the argument over space radiation precluding the Apollo project. As you stated, the time in the Van Allen belts is pretty short and the exposure is just not that bad. Also, because they’re heavy ions, I’d imagine the spacecraft’s structure provides at least some nominal shielding. Cruising through the belts for less than an hour in a reasonably well built spacecraft shouldn’t really be a huge deal.
If I were to travel in space, radiation would not be a huge concern to me. There are plenty of things in space that can be very deadly and are far more hazadous than cosmic radiation. I’d be far more concerned about a life support failure, rapid decompression due to a structural problem, micrometeorites, orbital debris, heat shield failures etc etc. Those are far more likely to cause problems than radiation.
Yes, I have heard of the cataract issue for astronauts. That is a concern, but it’s hard to quantify because we have such a small sample group to look at and their exposure conditions are all different.
I have relatives who have had cataract surgery. These days with eye surgery having become so refined and very noninvasive, it can be done without a whole lot of risk. It’s actually generally out-patient and fairly routine with excellent overall results.
If getting some early cataracts is the price of flying to the moon, I’ll be the first in line!
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
George Carty said:
A hell of a lot of science data and pushing the aerospace industry to the bleeding edge.
One thing that I think needs to be clear is that the US did not just walk away from space flight after Apollo and become a has-been. The Space Shuttle was a very good concept to start with. The whole idea of a roubst reusable vehicle to get to orbit without as much difficulty as ELV systems was entirely sound and the reasons for the shuttle’s shortcomings really come down to politics and too many compromises and cutbacks.
They wanted the shuttle to be a heavy lift vehicle and an inexpensive “Shuttle” to space. These missions are incompatible and the whole issue of the DOD imposing its own criteria really complicated things severely.
Part of the problem was that they wanted to retire the Saturn system and basically rely on the shuttle entirely. That was a bit mistake, IMHO. The Shuttle should have been designed for low-payload, human-rated LEO missions with a short turnaround time and more durable launch systems. Saturn could have been retained, in a lower duty launch schedule, to take care of the occasions when heavy lifting was needed.
Still, despite the shortcomings of the Shuttle, it is still one of the most capable space vehicles of all time. Yes, it is complex, expensive and has a dubious safety record, but it also is the only spacecraft capable of preforming in-orbit capture and maintenance of satellites. It has precision maneuvering capabilities and in-orbit work capabilities that blow away everything else out there. It can retrieve and return payloads and it’s large enough to be considered more of a temporary space station than a spacecraft.
Generally I think the Shuttle was a mistake – in the configuration it was finally designed in. A good concept, but forced to be too many things at once. However, it would be unfair to say that the Apollo program was the end of the US space program as a worthy and world class program.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Yes, the shuttle is a perfect example of “Design-By-Committee”. It tried to be all things to all customers, and wound up being very expensive, hard to maintain, and overly complex.
Every time I read about the Aries using a modified SRB, I get the shivers.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Buzz0:
Heavy ions are more penetrative because of their high energies (can be up in the GeV range). Astronauts on excursions get more radiation than being in the spacecraft. So yes the spacecraft affords direct protection (shielding) from the heavy ions. However, as the shielding thickness increases, so do the number of interactions from the heavy ions. The primary interaction causes secondary radiation which may or may not get to the astronauts. I don’t want to get too deep as the process gets complex very quickly. Nevertheless, suffice it to say that I agree with you – I would not hesitate to go to space. I’ve had two dreams in my life: to see World Cup soccer (accomplished), and to go to space. To accomplish the latter, they may be sending my ashes up there! Maybe I’ll work up a grant proposal for the study of the effects of space radiation on dead people which would pay to get my ashes up there. Gotta keep the dream alive somehow. : )
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
drjim said:
The Ares-V concept doesn’t bother me too much. It would use two SRB’s side mounted, and like the shuttle it would rely on them primarily for the initial boost and only use the thrust vectoring of the SRB’s for very course control of the attitude. The Ares-V would still have liquid engines that would provide for the fine control of the additude.
That does not really change the operating peramiters all that much and since there is redundancy in the boosters (the spacecraft never relies on one of the boosters to provide for all of the pitch and additude control) it seems like it shouldn’t be too bad.
The Ares-I however: it’s sitting on top of a single chambered SRB stick which needs to provide all the fine and course control from the one thrust vector control (which is absolutely nothing like the TVC does on the shuttle). Not to mention the fact that the Ares-I has an admittedly very high center of gravity. God, I just look at that thing and it scares me.
By the way: call me an armchair quarterback on this if you want, but I’m not alone in my concerns. There are aerospace engineers and others who know this stuff very well and they have expressed some big concerns about this whole setup.
It comes down to politics though. In order to get the funding to develop the Ares-V NASA has had to propose a vehicle with “common components” as a means of leveraging funding and also providing some kind of tangible result earlier.
It bothers me to see this becoming political all over again
My view on space travel is that it costs what it costs to do it right. Either pay the full cost of doing the project correctly or don’t do it at all. It’s got to be all or nothing. Just don’t decide to compromise and pay 75% of what it costs to do it properly. That will result in the worst of both worlds: A system that is both expensive and lacks capability.
In general, my complaints are that the government spends too much money, but on occasion it spends too little and does so unwisely. It is worse to spend $75 billion dollars on a project and get a piece of crap than to spend $100 billion and get a descent new capability. If you’re not willing to spend the $100 billion then fine – spend zero dollars. But don’t spend a portion of it and end up with a total loss.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
leg said:
Ah yes, this has been a cause for concern from the get go, because some of the materials best for building durable and lightweight spacecraft are not the best for giving good shielding. Aluminum comes to mind. It’s the mainstay of spacecraft structures but it is not so good when it comes to particle interactions.
Weight is always the big concern. Stuff like polyethelene works very well for blocking particle radiation without producing secondary radiation, but you need a lot of it. Sometimes it is used for small areas, like the sleeping compartments of space stations, but there is always a tradeoff.
Some of the designs for deep space vehicles put a lot of things like fuel and water storage between the astronauts and the outside. It’s a descent compromise, since you need to carry lots of that stuff anyway.
Some of the plans I’ve seen for a mars craft or other deep space travel involve a small inner area that is surrounded by a large amount of shielding. It’s simply not feasible to have the entire living area protected to a very high degree, so the inner shelter would be used in case of a sun storm or some other event that caused temporary high radiation levels. The astronauts would just have to wait it out in the shelter and limit their time outside the shielded area until the event was over.
There was a plan for dealing with a big solar flare or sunstorm during the Apollo project, by the way. It was to cut short any EVA’s or lunar surface time and get the astronauts back to the command module. They would sit in the CM while the service module was pointed toward the sun, thus giving maximum shielding in the direction of most of the radiation. They would have returned to earth using a burn of the CSM engine to expedite the trip to something like a day and a half. It was felt that using this contingency, the radiation exposure to the astronauts would be somewhat higher than desirable, but not acutely dangerous.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Yes, the single-stick Aries is the one I was referring to. I work in the field (I’m a Range Engineer for Boeing), and *nobody* I’ve met who designs things like this think it’s a good idea. When it first was proposed, all the guys were scratching their heads, going “WTF?”, and “I wouldn’t ride on it!”.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
The “stick” rocket Ares does look a little bit shaky when I see pictures of it. I admit I don’t know the whole thing, but it strikes me as being the kind of thing that is so different from what is already in use that you should have a good reason to develop it before spending the money. (Reinventing the wheel).
I have not really heard a good argument for what this rocket will do that the Atlas and Delta rockets that we have won’t. If I understand right, the stick is not going to be for the big super heavy jobs, so if it is just a medium rocket for orbit then what do we need it for that our rockets can’t do as is?
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
I do not think this can change anyone’s mind. Some people have been even shown you can bounce a laser off of the moon and it will not come back unless you hit the target they left there and this is not good enough for them. (they say it’s put there by a robotic rover or something). Pictures won’t change minds that set.
I personally think we went. If you look at how huge the project was, it was just too hard to fake it all. Plus, if you look at the technology they had then it’s actually not impossible that it could have done it. It could have been done and it was probably done.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Tom said:
Oh, people really went. I don’t know if it was this site (I think it was) that has made some good points about the extent of the Cold War monitoring of space programs (US tracking and monitoring of Russian and vice-versa).
It’s possible that NASA could have fooled the public and maybe much of the world. But fooled the other great space faring nation of the time? The sworn enemy of capitalism? Not a chance! If anyone was poised to see through any fakery at all, it would have been the USSR and they would have jumped at the chance to show the US for a liar.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
No doubt the USSR was all over and up into the US space program, because you can’t forget that is the same technology that makes for nuclear missiles and even if Apollo was peaceful, just knowing how the US could control a spacecraft and the precision etc – this is all very relevant stratigic technical info. After the cold war it was discovered how badly many US programs were compromised. It turns out that they had moles all over the place.
I can’t imagine any trickery could have gotten past the intensive technical scrutiny and general espionage of the Soviets. They knew space better than anyone and don’t doubt they were just as sharp as anyone else.
Then there’s the other side which is the sheer scale of things. Who was involved in one way or another with Apollo? It turns out it was beyond the US. The UK, Spain, Australia all had tracking stations that were important. All kinds of support for tracking and also for various technology were coming from everywhere. The UK, Japan, Germany, Canada, France. There were contractors and subcontractors and suppliers. Things like that, you end up with a huge supply chain that’s international and so many providing vital services. It’s just too many parties to cover it all up.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
drbuzz0 said:
The real plan for a solar flare during Apollo was actually to play the odds. Actually it was to not launch during anticipated solar flares.
They did their best to forcast solar activity prior to launch. The missions were of short enough duration (<2 weeks or so) that the odds were pretty good that you wouldn’t have one during a mission.
A solar flare did occur during one mission (I believe it was Apollo 17) but it was pretty minor.
Quote Comment
July 24th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Chuck P. said:
I know they did do their best to forcase the solar flares and I think if they did have one, they should have still had a few hours warning before it got there. The missions were short but if they did enough of them (and hadn’t candled after just a few) then they would have had a good chance of eventually having it happen just by luck.
You can only play the odds so long so I am sure they had some kind of contingency plan.
I think the bigger issue will come if we have a manned base on the moon where astronauts are there for weeks at a time or more. Then if that happens, there will surely be a circumstance to deal with a solar flare and possibly not a minor one. Also, on a mission to mars, there’s a descent chance.
I don’t think this needs to be a deal breaker. I mean if you can have descent sheidling then yes, there will be some radiation dose, but it will not be severe and I think in general we’re way more cautious about radiation then need be. Even if astronauts get a little radiation sick from a bad incident, I don’t think that needs to be a death sentence, when everyone seems to think these days. It seems common wisdom is that getting a big dose of radiation will limit you to a lifetime of disability and an early death from cancer. I don’t think that’s true, based on the data we have. Certainly there are doses of radiation that can have negative impact on your health, but if you look at it historically where people have received such doses, many are able to recover and be perfectly healthy afterward.
Quote Comment
July 25th, 2009 at 11:59 am
I agree that radiation sickness does not need to end a mission or be a disiaster. Sure we should do what we can to protect astronauts, but if they get a high dose on an occasion or two just due to bad luck, then they can recover and the mission can continue. People these days have such fear of radiation but the truth is that there are plenty of people who received very high doses either from events like chernobyl or from therapy and most of them went on to recover and lead perfectly healthy lives.
Quote Comment
July 26th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Radiation is the kind of thing that always gets a disproportionate amount of attention. Is getting a high dose from a sunstorm at a bad time a risk? of course it is, but in terms of both probability and in terms of the end result to the safety of the crew, it’s not that big a risk, comparatively speaking. Getting a few more REMS than is recommended is not nearly as bad as the what would happen if you ended up with a broken down life support system or impact with an asteroid fragment or something. One nightmare situation is a fire onboard a spacecraft that gets out of control.
If you look at the history of spaceflight, you see the big risk comes from the basic failures you can have. Things like oxygen tanks bursting or engines failing or heat sheilds or somehow having a leak in the spacecraft. These things can kill you right away or lead to being unable to get home.
It’s funny, but you see this in lots of places. Something like radiation gets people very scared and therefore gets a lot of attention. For example, consider installing antennas and servicing wireless communications. If you ask someone what the danger is going to be from that they’ll probably say RF radiation. It gets the most attention. It is not. The biggest danger in the field of work (by far) is simple falling. Just normal, mundane, straight forward examples of someone losing their grip and not having a good harness or of a ladder not being properly stable. A worker falls and ends up dead or injured. This is sadly not all that uncommon. On the other hand, an RF injury is almost unheard of. So why so much more attention on one issue than the other?
Quote Comment
July 26th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Gordon,
In the case of ionizing radiation, I subscribe to Rod Adams’ hypothesis that the public has very carefully been tought to be scared of radiation and radioactive materials but people who have a vested interest in keeping an overwhelmingly powerfull competitor out of the market for as long as possible.
With RF, I think it’s just a sort of general low-grade luddism.
Quote Comment
July 27th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Could it also be related to the whole culture of the past 50 years and the cold war? A lot of people were taught by the government or by movies that radiation was something that would be a big fear if the Ruskies dropped the bomb. Also radiation was frequently the big plot line in movies like Godzilla or whatever. Maybe it was drawing from cold war fears, but for a long time, Radiation was the big villain of movies and comics and such. Nuclear radiation was associated with the bomb and it was a big fear
Quote Comment
July 28th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
I know some amateurs who were fooling around at the time of the apollo program with tracking the missions. They used telescopes and radio receiver equipment and they could actually track the orbit on the way to the moon of the rocket. They couldn’t track it all the way because of the telescope but they were able to view the spacecraft move out of earth orbit toward the moon.
I know people also received the signals from the spacecraft. They couldn’t actually decode the tv or anything, but they detected the signal was there.
I imagine that a lot of people with better telescopes and radio receivers probably did better. It was there for all to see, so if it were the Russians or just some college astronomy professor with access to a descent observatory telescope, then surely they could do some rudimentary tracking.
It just seems to me that between optical tracking and radio reception, plus the laser reflectors and even tracking the rocket by radar or whatever means may have been used, there is too much to it to fake. It would be too difficult to simulate all that with decoys.
That is just one reason I find this moon landing hoax thing so tired. I don’t know the motivation if it is anti-Americanism or anti-West or just looking for attention or whatever the case is. It is factually supported that the missions went there and that is the long and short of it.
Quote Comment
July 28th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
This was recently a hot topic on the AMSAT email reflector. Several of the Hams out here in California who did this posted that they tracked the radio transmissions from the CSM as it went to, and orbited, the Moon. The Doppler shift was as expected, as was the time delay to be expected from a spacecraft at that distance.
Of course the loonies will say that it was a tape recorder onboard the CSM, and the messages were scripted such that they sounded “real”.
I just find it hard to believe that NASA, a civilian agency, with tens of thousands of employees, could have kept it a “secret” all these years.
Geez….even “Deep Throat” finally came out and admitted who he was.
Quote Comment
July 28th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
drjim said:
If you consider the effort to fake the landing – send up an unmanned CSM with a tape player playing out and all perfectly times (even using the clunky recording equipment of the late 1960’s). Then you need a robotic mission to the moon to plant the laser reflector. You need to do this all somehow in a way reliable enough not to give it away and you need to do it all automatically, because transmissions to the spacecraft might be detected. (either that or you hide your control transmissions with encryption and somehow put them on odd frequencies or something so nobody notices).
So this massive project with automated, unmanned spacecraft and tape recorders and players and staged video and fake transmissions to and from mission control must be done.
At some point, does it become easier to actually go to the moon then to go to all this extreme technical effort with spacecraft to fake it?
If you have to send up all kinds of robotic, automated tape-playing, transmitting space craft, then why not make it easier and just put three guys in them instead?
Quote Comment
July 29th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Interesting side to this: given the amount of observation and confirmation, faking the moon landing would likely be more difficult than actually going to the moon!
Of course, the moon faking theories are so tired and refuted so many times at this point, one wonders what the point of even continuing the debate is.
Regardless, the LRO pictures are awesome.
Quote Comment