Apollo 17 astronaut footprints in NASA moon pictures
A trio of razorsharp images relayed by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) show precise new detail of moon landing sites for the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 space missions of the late 1960s and early 70s.
The images even reveal the twists and turns in tyre tracks when astronauts who explored the moon using the dune buggylike lunar rover changed their direction while driving the vehicle.
"We can retrace the astronauts' steps with greater clarity to see where they took lunar samples," said Noah Petro, a lunar geologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Maryland.
The images also show distinct trails in the moon's thin soil when the astronauts exited the lunar modules and explored on foot.
And in one image from the Apollo 17 mission,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], it is possible to discern foot traces, including the last path made on the moon by humans.
NASA said the stunning new visuals are possible because of changes to the orbit of the lowaltitude narrow angle camera that took the photos, allowing them to be taken from a distance of about 21 kilometres.
"We made the orbit more elliptical, so the lowest part of the orbit is on the sunlit side of the moon,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," said John Keller,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], deputy LRO project scientist.
"This put LRO in a perfect position to take these new pictures of the surface."
The US space agency, which has seen its budget cut in lean economic times,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], said that the images provide a vivid example of why space exploration is so vital and and so worthy of advancing.
"These images remind us of our fantastic Apollo history and beckon us to continue to move forward in exploration of our solar system,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters in Washington.
The earth is round of Adelaide Posted at 6:45 PM September 07, 2011
Wallace and Grommit reckon the moon is made of cheese. I reckon the conspiracy theorists would agree with that line of thinking, given some of the stoopid comments that they come out with. And as for the Chinese? Why don't you ask them? Maybe they weren't interested at that stage to get into a race with a western capatalist nation. Probably too busy at the time dealing with their own exponential growth rate and couldn't spare the money.
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Fashionable sneakers for in and out of the gym Pho

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