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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera Sees Apollo Landing Sites
By NASA, July 17, 2009




- This graphic shows the approximate locations of the Apollo moon landing sites.


NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has returned its first imagery of the Apollo moon landing sites. The pictures show the Apollo missions' lunar module descent stages sitting on the moon's surface, as long shadows from a low sun angle make the modules' locations evident.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, was able to image five of the six Apollo sites, with the remaining Apollo 12 site expected to be photographed in the coming weeks. The satellite reached lunar orbit June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images came before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution. (more
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Related Articles and Photos:


› View all images of the Apollo moon landing sites


› NASA News: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA's first step back to the Moon › LRO: Videos › LRO's: Project Site

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon (20.07.1969)

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Space.com

New Photos Reveal Apollo 11 at First Moon Landing Site
By SPACE.com staff, 17 July 2009




Apollo 11's Eagle lunar lander photographed in July 2009 by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera - Photos / 2


For stubborn folks who still believe the Apollo astronauts never landed on the moon, NASA has new images - definitive proof - that clearly show the Apollo 11 lander that carried the first astronauts to the lunar surface 40 years ago.

The images, taken by NASA's first lunar scout in more than a decade, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), show the Eagle lunar lander at Tranquility Base, where Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on July 20, 1969. They were snapped between July 11 and 15 of this month and released by NASA today.

"The LROC team anxiously awaited each image," said LROC principal investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University. "We were very interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just for the thrill -- and to see how well the cameras had come into focus. Indeed, the images are fantastic and so is the focus." The image does not reveal whether the U.S. flag planted there is still standing or not. Whether or not the flag will be visible in later images isn't uncertain, Robinson said, adding that he thinks the Apollo 11 flag was knocked over by the thrusters when the astronauts left the moon's surface.

The Indian and Japanese missions have also snapped images of the Apollo 11 site, but they don't have the high resolution of LRO's images, Robinson said. The Apollo 11 landing site wasn't the only one that the LRO camera (dubbed LROC) photographed: It also snapped pictures of the landing sites of the other five Apollo landings. (The remaining site, for Apollo 12, is expected to be photographed in the coming weeks.) The lunar modules for all of these sites imaged are visible as small dots; their shadows can also be seen.


- U. T.: LRO Images Apollo Landing Sites

- The Apollo 14 landing site imaged by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Credit: NASA


A few more details can be seen in the image of the Apollo 14 landing site, taken only two days ago, including scientific instruments and astronaut footprints. "Of course it was fantastic to see the hardware lying on the surface, and it was exactly as we expected it to be," Robinson said. "Sitting on the surface waiting for us to come back." As LRO gradually descends to a lower orbit, the images will improve and provide closer looks at the lunar landing sites. "This is only a first glimpse," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., "From now on, they're only going to get better."

The images of these sites are expected to show scientists how the sites have changed since the astronauts trod across them, whether there are any new craters and how the leftover human artifacts have fared in the lunar environment. And the pictures won't just serve as a record of our past presence on the moon, as scientists will be able to use the information in them to make topographic maps of the lunar surface at those sites.

About the size of a Mini Cooper car, the $504 million LRO probe, an orbiting satellite, launched toward the moon on June 18. The probe is expected to spend at least one year mapping the moon for future manned missions, as well as several more years conducting science surveys. Some people have questioned whether NASA really went to the moon or if the whole thing was faked. No serious and level-headed historian, researcher or space industry analyst doubts the moon landings, however.

› New Video – The Big Event
› Top 10 Apollo Hoax Theories
› SPECIAL REPORT - The Moon: Then, Now, Next
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On the Net:
NASA - Apollo 40th Anniversary: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apoll ... index.html (more)

http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&n ... IM&topic=t
http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&n ... rM&topic=t
http://www.southbendtribune.com/article ... /1129/News

AP

Russia still blue over moon landing 40 years later
By Jim Heintz, AP, July 19, 2009


- Photos


Moscow - (AP) — When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, it was a first for the Soviet Union — the first time the U.S. had beaten the U.S.S.R in the space race. Forty years later, the memory of that loss of primacy still seems to sting the Russian soul. When state TV channel Rossiya reported last week on the restoration of video footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the account gave a lot of attention to dubious conspiracy theories that the landing was faked.

"In the United States, more than anywhere else, they are sure of the believability of the steps on the moon," the report said, adding that Armstrong keeps a very low profile. "This also seems strange to many people." For a dozen years before the July 20, 1969, moon landing, Moscow racked up an extraordinary array of superlatives. It was the first to send a craft into orbit, with the Sputnik satellite in 1957. The first human to go into outer space was Russian Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Moscow sent the woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963; and Alexei Leonov was the first person to venture outside a spacecraft into the endless cosmos, in 1965.

Russia even got to the moon first when the unmanned Luna 2 crashed in 1959. But the drama of the first human footprint on an extraterrestrial body eclipsed everything the Soviets had worked so hard to achieve. "Beginning with the first flight with a primitive capsule, and then getting to the moon, it was a great achievement for humanity," Russian astronaut Sergei Krikalev said. "Of course, we would have liked to see the first man on the moon be Soviet, Russian, but that's life ... Our own achievements were very many," he told Associated Press Television News.


- Pravda Forum: Laser reflectors and missing precise coordinates of the "moon landing" sites



In the 40 years since the Apollo 11 landing, the USSR and Russia, which inherited the Soviet legacy, shot ahead of the United States occasionally only to fall further behind. The Soviet Union put the first space station into orbit with the Salyut 1 in 1971. However, the first crew couldn't get aboard because of docking problems. Another three-man crew later got aboard, but died when a valve failed on the capsule bringing them back to Earth.

Then there was the Mir -- the first space station fit for long-term habitation. It achieved early glory. But that quickly faded after 1991, when the Soviet collapse choked off funding for the space program and the Mir suffered a series of accidents, including a collision and fires that tuned it into a symbol of danger and decay. Earthlings scanned the sky nervously on the day in 2001 when the 140-ton craft plunged to its fiery end. Luckily, it landed in the Pacific Ocean.

In recent years, Russia's space program has earned as a workhorse rather than a racehorse — reliable, cooperative, even stolid. Its cramped Soyuz manned capsules and unmanned Progress cargo ships had already served as the lifeline to the International Space Station for more than two years when the United States grounded its space shuttles in 2003, after the Columbia disintegrated on re-entry. The Russian space program will once again be the gatekeepers to the orbiting laboratory in 2010, when the shuttle fleet is grounded for good.

That doesn't mean Russia has lost its ambitions for primacy in space. The U.S. is busy planning to replace the shuttles. But last year, Russia awarded contracts for design of its own next-generation spaceship to replace the Soyuz. The competing efforts could trigger a new space race. Russian space officials meanwhile still seem to be dreaming about winning the next stage of the space race. They keep talk in tantalizing terms about mounting a manned mission to Mars, although they say that would take at least another 20 years to get off the ground. "I think this is fine. It's like sports — at one stage one person wins, at another it's somebody else," said Krikalev.

-- APTN producer Vika Buravchenko in Moscow contributed to this report.




The Earth rises on the Moon (20.07.1969) - Photos - Destination Moon: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/new ... index.html

Pandasthumb.net

Remembering Apollo 11
By Richard B. Hoppe, July 18, 2009

The 1960s were heady days in more senses than kids today might suppose. It wasn’t all Haight-Ashbury and pot and hippies with flowers in their hair. I spent a couple of years in the military in the early 1960s down at the Cape launching early versions of Polaris missiles into the Atlantic missile range, or sometimes into the Banana River if the range safety officer saw fit to push the destruct button. (As a side benefit I got to participate in the Cuban blockade in 1962 aboard a U.S. Navy ship.)


- Audio slideshow: Voyage of the Millennium


Those were the Project Mercury years of the manned space program, and one would occasionally see one or another of the original seven astronauts around the Cape or in Cocoa Beach (anyone remember the Cape Colony Inn?),and we’d marvel at how they’d stuff themselves into a tiny Mercury capsule atop an Atlas rocket and blast away into near-earth space. Watching those launches in 1962 and 1963 I never thought then that I’d work on their successor systems and watch the fruits of that work take men to the moon.


Video: Apollo 11 on the Moon - NASA 1969: Video


As most readers of science blogs already know, the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter has just returned photos of five of the six Apollo landing sites on the moon, including one (Apollo 14) where the foot trails made by astronauts are visible! And those are preliminary images. The LRO team promises 2x or 3x better resolution when the orbiter is in its final orbit.


- Remembering Apollo 11


One of those sites is special to me. In the mid and late 1960s I was a member of a group in Honeywell’s Development and Evaluation Laboratory (later in the Systems & Research Center) that was charged with stress testing components of the Apollo Command Module control system. We tortured reaction jet controllers, abused thrust vector servo assemblies, and kicked around translation and rotation hand controls for months. We soaked them in vacuum chambers, cycling the temperature up and down on a 12-hours on, 12 hours off schedule, subjected them to over-voltages and under-voltages, shook them on vibration tables, and generally tried to see how bad we could treat them before they failed. Out of all that testing came the final versions that were installed in Apollo Command Modules and flew in them, including the version that flew in Apollo 11.


Full coverage of space history


On the day that the Eagle – the Lunar Excursion Module associated with the Apollo 11 flight – landed at Tranquility Base, my wife and I had gone to the Minneapolis Humane Society to adopt our first dog, Beau. We got home in time to watch the television broadcast and see the blurry video of Neil Armstrong stepping off the LEM ladder. (R.I.P. Walter Cronkite, who broadcast the landing that day in 1969 and who died yesterday.) It was an amazing feeling – a combination of elation and relief – to know that the landing had been successful. All the people who worked on the manned space flight projects over the years after John F. Kennedy committed us to going to the moon within a decade were proud to have contributed to the mission. I sure was that day, and I still am. I left the Apollo program after our part of Apollo 11’s development was finished to work on other prototype spacecraft and aircraft systems, but knowing stuff I worked on took humans to the moon is something I’ll be proud of until I die.


- Timeline: NASA’s glory days


http://www.universetoday.com/category/moon/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8157368.stm
http://www.physorg.com/news165764893.html?FORM=ZZNR8
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=lro ... &FORM=IGRE#
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en-US&ne ... +2+shun+it
http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&n ... 5M&topic=t
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/ ... -...-where

Photo from the Moon made by astronauts with: The camera Hasselblad 500 EL



- Apollo 11: Where were you when the Eagle landed?

- Many New Yorkers watch Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon. (High.res)


- Time Photo Gallery: Watching the Apollo 11 lift off


First moon landing in 1969 marked an entire generation
- I followed Apollo 11, beginning with liftoff on the morning of July 16 when the mighty Saturn V rocket, the most powerful machine yet constructed by human beings, propelled the three astronauts on their way into history. I watched the coverage of the trip to the moon until finally, in the afternoon of July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin landed their lunar module, the Eagle, on the lunar surface. Being children, my sister and I had gone to bed earlier on that momentous evening of July 20, 1969. We were roused from our slumbers by our parents who excitedly exhorted us to wake up to see the first moon walk. Their enthusiasm woke me better than a cup of coffee does now. We quickly made our way to the den to watch the historic event unfold on our television. (more)


- Guardian: Top 10 Apollo hoax claims (10 pictures)

Apollo Photos: http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html - http://binrock.net/cms/entries/74

- Photo of the Earth and the Moon

Multi Universe theory related aticle: http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/20 ... radox.html - http://www.voidstar.com/ukpoliblog/index.php?fid=428

Nextbigfuture.com

$257 billion spent each year on Space Industry by Governments and Businesses
June 18, 2009





Most of the money ($257 billion) is spent on
- satellite TV ($70 billion)
- maintaining ground stations ($74 billion)
- $17 billion fixed satellite services
- $26 billion Department of Defence (military satellites and the spending around it)
- $17 billion NASA
- $10 billion national reconnaissance office (spy satellites and spending around it)
- $8.9 billion missile defense agency

The foreign government spending looks undercounted. It does not look like the foreign military or spy spending has been taken into account.

$5.6 billion on commercial satellite building
$2 billion on commercial launch systems

IEEE Spectrum has more information on the business of space.
IEEE Spectrum has the latest update of a Mars plan from Robert Zubrin.

Neil Armstrong on the Moon

The Apollo 11 Saturn V on Launch Pad - Photos

- Lunar Compositions: www.geokem.com/lunar.html

- Launch of the Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket

Apollo 11 Image Gallery: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lu ... llo11.html - www.panoramas.dk/moon/mission-apollo.html