LRO and the Apollo 11 Landing Site
NASA has just released some higher-resolution photos of the Apollo 11 landing site taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Detail in these new photos is good enough not only to see the Lunar Module (LM) descent stage but several of the experiment packages left behind, the primary TV camera, and the tracks Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left as they explored the site:
The boulder strewn area around West Crater is where the LM had been designated to land, but Neil Armstrong recognized the danger and took control manually. He guided the craft to a safer area just to the west, landing with just a few seconds of fuel left.
I couldn’t help but wonder how much of what Apollo 11 left behind can be seen. I’ve taken that image and zoomed in on the landing area, annotating some of the features you can make out:
LRRR is the Laser Ranging RetroReflector, which reflects laser pulses sent from Earth and allows precise measurement of the distance to the Moon. PSEP is the Passive Seismic Experiment Package, designed to detect moonquakes and impacts. Little West Crater is about 50 meters from the LM, and the tracks leading to it were left by Neil Armstrong as he walked to its rim and took photographs of it and the landing site. It’s hard enough to make out in this image that I’ve drawn a line outlining its rim. (Interestingly this same crater is sometimes called East Crater because it was East of the LM.)
The USGS created a detailed map of the Apollo 11 site showing reference craters, equipment locations, tracks left by Armstrong and Aldrin, and fields of view from several key locations. It compares very favorably to the LRO image (though doesn’t cover all the way to Little West Crater).
The TV camera, LRRR, PSEP, Double Crater, as well as Armstrong & Aldrin erecting the US flag are all visible in this panoramic photomosaic made from images taken out the left window of the LM.
The map makes it easy to spot the items in the panorama, and also corresponds to where those items are in the LRO image at the beginning of this post.
Someday the Apollo 11 site will be a museum, meticulously protected to preserve everything left behind exactly as it was when Armstrong and Aldrin departed in the LM ascent stage on July 21, 1969. How I’d love to visit that museum and see in person what I watched so intently on TV as a space-crazed thirteen year old. For now, I’ll study NASA archives and LRO images and use my imagination. I’m told even more detailed LRO images will be available soon, so there’s more to come.
