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Remarkable new images of the Apollo landing sites on
the Moon have been released by Nasa.
The pictures clearly show the hardware left on the lunar surface by
American astronauts in the 1960s and 70s, including Apollo 17's "Moon
buggy".
The images were acquired by the robotic Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO),
which has been circling Earth's satellite since 2009.
Such shots have been returned before, but these are the best yet.
LRO has recently lowered its orbit from 50km above the Moon's surface to
just 25km.
This makes it easier to see equipment, such as the descent stages that
put the astronauts on the surface. Some of the science experiments are
visible, also - as are the trails of bootmarks left in the dirt as the
crews positioned these science packages.
The Apollo 17, 14 and 12 sites are the focus of the latest release.
They were viewed by the narrow-angle imaging system on LRO's Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) instrument.
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At the lower altitude, this instrument sees objects at a resolution of
25cm by 25cm per pixel.
In an extreme blow-up of the Apollo 17 Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), it is
just possible to discern the condition in which the astronauts Eugene
Cernan and Harrison Schmitt parked the buggy - with its wheels turned to
the left.
LRO has been a highly productive mission. It has now returned several
hundred thousands pictures of the lunar surface.
The probe was originally conceived as a robotic precursor to future
manned missions. However, when Nasa might return to the lunar body with
astronauts is not clear. Last year, US politicians cancelled the
project, known as Constellation, that was intended to achieve this feat.
"We all like to obsess and look at the Apollo landing site images
because it's fun," said Mark Robinson, the LROC principal investigator
from Arizona State University, Tempe.
"People actually used to be able to go to the Moon; people used to
explore the Moon - and hopefully sometime in the future that will
continue again. But LROC is looking at the whole Moon and we've taken
about 1,500 of these high-resolution images distributed all around the
Moon… and this is just a huge resource for anybody studying the Moon,
doing science; and engineers planning to go back to the Moon in general
and to specific sites."
Erosion processes on the Moon work much slower than on an active planet
like Earth. Eventually, though, all traces of the Moon landings will be
erased.
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The lunar body is constantly bombarded by micrometeorites that will, in
time, mix up the boottracks and break down the equipment. It has been
estimated that rock at the surface erodes at a rate of about 1mm per
million years.
"In human years, it may seem like forever, but in geologic terms
probably there will be no traces of the Apollo exploration in let's say
10 to 100 million years," said Dr Robinson.
On Thursday, Nasa will launch its latest Moon mission - the Gravity
Recovery and Interior Laboratory (Grail).
This is a pair of satellites that will survey the Moon's gravity in
unprecedented detail. The data will reveal its internal structure,
helping to explain how the lunar body formed and why its nearside now
looks so different from its farside.
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