Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Photos

diogenesNY

Hey y'all--

Many/most of you may already be aware of and have seen these, but worth checking out are the new photos from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter... particularly of the Apollo landing sites. Amazing detail and really beautiful photos. You can make out details of left behind equipment, lunar module landing stages and even the Apollo 14 astronaut's footpath. I remember watching much of the coverage of these events as a very young child, and in a strange sort of way, seeing these photos is sort of like a letter from an old friend. :)

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LR...ollosites.html

These are just the preliminary batch. More photos with considerably ( ~3x ) greater resolution are expected to be posted in the coming days. I really look forward having a look at them.

diogenesNY

qraal

Amazing photos aren't they? Equally astounding are the shots of the different Mars landers from one of the Mars orbiters. A poignant reminder of past achievements we're too fatigued to repeat seemingly.

vibjwb

Amazing pictures. Is the bolder field that Armstrong (on Apollo 11) spoke of just before landing be in that picture? What direction did they come from to land?

qraal

I wondered the same thing. Would have to look through the landing data to figure it out. I think a lot of that sort of detailed material is available from NASA though not necessarily in a readily searchable form.

Ich

Better look at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ap...ted/index.html
You'll also find additional information, e.g. concerning that boulder field.