Japanese SELENE confirms Apollo 15 landing spot on Moon

By William Atkins
Friday, 18 July 2008 22:23

Science - Space

According to a press release of the Japanese space agency, a “halo” has been photographed by the Terrain Camera onboard its SELENE (Kaguya) spacecraft, which shows the exact location of the NASA Apollo 15 Moon landing. Skeptics of the NASA Apollo missions to the Moon four decades ago may have to eat moondust!


According to the May 20, 2008 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) press release entitled “The 'halo' area around Apollo 15 landing site observed by Terrain Camera on SELENE(KAGUYA),” the spacecraft has taken an image of the approximate one-square-kilometer “halo” left when the engine of the NASA Apollo 15 lunar lander descended to the Moon.

The Japanese lunar mission Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE) was launched at 01:31:01 Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) on September 14, 2007, onboard a Model H2A2022 (H-IIA) rocket form the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan.

It arrived at the Moon and it entered a preliminary orbit on October 3, 2007. The spacecraft, a part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), reached its final orbit of an approximate 60-mile (100-kilometer) orbit above the Moon’s surface on October 19, 2007.

As of Friday, July 18, 2008, the SELENE spacecraft is continuing is mission to explore the Moon.

Apollo 15 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 13:34:00 UTC on July 26, 1971. They landed on the Moon at 22:16:29 UTC on July 30, 1971, with U.S. astronauts David Scott and James Irwin onboard their “Falcon” lunar lander. The two men landed in a region called Mare Imbrium.

Now, in 2008, the Terrain Camera (TC) camera onboard SELENE has snapped a three-dimensional high-resolution image, within a video, of the region showing the landing site of the Apollo 15 lunar lander.

Please continue with page two for more information on the “halo” noticed by the Apollo 15 crew and the “halo” seen by the SELENE spacecraft.