William Atkins
Friday, 18 July 2008 23:23
Science -
Space
Page 2 of 3
At the time of their departure from the Moon, the two astronauts noted a “halo” that had formed as they were earlier descending to the lunar surface.
They took pictures of the halo both while ascending back to their “Endeavour” command module and after reaching the command module, with command module pilot Alfred Worden onboard.
The halo, as observed by the SELENE spacecraft, is thought by the SELENE mission team to be the soil that was disturbed when the lunar lander’s rocket descended onto the Moon’s surface.
The image shows a bright patch at the exact location where the Apollo 15 lunar module landed—near the Hadley Rille, which is at the foothills of the Apennine Mountains near the Mare Imbrium.
The JAXA press release states,
“Through the produced three-dimensional image of the same landscape as that of the picture taken by the Apollo 15 crew, the spatial accuracy of the TC observation was verified. The three dimensional view of the TC clearly shows the layers of lava flows that erupted approximately about 3.2 billion years ago in the upper part of the Hadley Rille.”
Smithsonian’s Air and Space Magazine reports in its article “
Back to Hadley Rille” that,
“Kaguya’s Terrain Camera has a resolution of 10 meters, which means each picture element, or pixel, corresponds to a surface area about the size of a schoolbus. That’s not quite good enough to clearly make out the squat, 30-foot-wide base of the lunar lander—the descent stage Scott and Irwin left behind when they blasted off the moon. But the Kaguya scientists see a dark spot in the white patch, and think it likely is the lander’s long shadow. They hope more observations from other instruments on the spacecraft will confirm their suspicions."
What about the skeptics who don’t believe that NASA landed men on the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s? Please read on.
