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Space Topics: Moon

The Year in Pictures: 2009

Relics of Human Exploration of the Moon Spotted from orbit

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Apollo 17 lander and flag!
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Apollo 17 lander and flag!
An image of the Apollo 17 lander, Challenger, captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera on October 1, 2009, includes not only the lander and astronaut tracks but also a fuzzy dark pixel at the location of the American flag erected there by astronauts Jack Schmitt and Gene Cernan. Credit: NASA / GSFC / ASU

The Planetary Society declared the opening of the International Lunar Decade in 2007 with the launches of Japan’s Kaguya and China’s Chang’E spacecraft; they were followed by India’s Chandrayaan-1 in 2008. Although all these spacecraft performed new and unique science, none carried a camera with the resolution necessary to spot the spacecraft that have landed (or crashed) on the Moon since 1959. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter changed that; it launched in June of this year and quickly used its camera to capture images of every one of the Apollo landing sites. At many of the landing sites, astronaut or rover tracks still show up as dark paths in the dusty regolith. The following links will take you to all of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images of Apollo and Surveyor landing sites taken by late December 2009. Most of the pictures were taken while Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was still in its commissioning phase, in a high orbit. It began its science phase on September 15 by lowering its orbit to one that passes only 50 kilometers (30 miles) above the lunar surface. Images taken after the orbit shift have more than twice as much detail as those taken before. As exciting as it is to see these relics of past exploration activity sitting on the surface, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s real purpose is to gather the data needed to plan future landings.