LOIRP and LRO Confirm That Humans Walked on the Moon
Yesterday the LRO team released a new image of the Apollo 14 landing site. You can clearly make out the paths that the crew walked as well as the location of the Apollo 14 Antares Lunar Module Descent Stage.
Uncalibrated LROC NAC image of the Apollo 14 landing site and nearby Cone crater. The trail followed by the astronauts can clearly be discerned. Image width is 1.6 km [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
Annotated figure showing the positions of various landmarks surrounding the Apollo 14 landing site. The small white arrows highlight locations where the astronauts' path can be clearly seen [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
The figure above highlights the locations of some of the landmarks explored by the astronauts. As correctly deduced during postflight analysis by the Apollo science teams, it is evident from the astronaut tracks and features seen in surface pictures matched to the LROC image, that the astronauts just barely missed (30 meters) the rim of Cone crater. Saddle Rock, a large boulder visited by the astronauts at Station C1 (below), can be discerned in the LROC image.
Apollo Hasselblad photograph showing Saddle Rock at Apollo 14 geology station C1 near the rim of Cone crater [NASA].
Uncalibrated NAC data; North is up, image width is approximately 1.6 km. View the Youtube video, download the high-resolution video, or browse the whole NAC image!
clipped from www.moonviews.com
clipped from lroc.sese.asu.edu
