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Post by Darren on Jul 18, 2009 10:14:51 GMT 10
There have been much debate over whether man truly visited the moon back in 1969 onwards. One of the arguments used by the conspiracy theorists was that no telescope or long range camera has shown the remnants of the visits to the moon. And the reasoning? "No, telescopes on the ground mostly can't see anything smaller than a mile across on the Moon. The flag is just a couple feet across. The Apollo landing stages are still there, but they're only a few yards across."
Fact is, not even the Hubble telescope or lunar orbiters have had optics good enough to see anything that humans left on the Moon.Well, with the launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on June 18th, all that is beginning to change. It worked its way down into low lunar orbit and has started taking pictures with both its wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras. The latter are designed to achieve a pixel resolution of 1 meter (3 feet) on the ground.
At this resolution larger objects become visible and we are receiving our first glimpses of the various landing sites: Here's some links to view more: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.htmllroc.sese.asu.edu/news/?archives/76-LROC%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2s-First-Look-at-the-Apollo-Landing-Sites.htmlwww.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/newsblog/51023977.html
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