The image above is something I meant to comment on Friday, when it was first released, but obviously I didn’t get around to it. What you’re looking at there, if you haven’t already seen and heard about it, is a photo recently taken by a spacecraft called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently circling the moon. Similar to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that took that awesome photo of the Martian rover a couple years ago, the LRO is a mapping probe equipped with a powerful camera. When the probe’s system check-out is complete and it has entered the proper mapping orbit, it’s going to start photographing the entire surface of the moon at a high resolution, theoretically as preparation for the return of humans to our nearest neighbor. Regardless of whether that actually happens in our lifetimes, though, the LRO promises to send back some astoundingly detailed images of the lunar landscape… and naturally some of the first pictures it’s taken during this check-out phase are of places we’ve already been, namely five of the six Apollo landing sites.
They all show exactly what you’d expect to see, the squarish, reflective, obviously artificial shapes of the descent stages that were left behind when the astronauts returned to their Command Modules. And yet these fuzzy low-rez photos — the LRO’s camera isn’t operating at its full capabilities yet; better-quality photos of the Apollo sites are promised for later on, after the calibrations are complete — raise the hair on my arms and fill me with pride. Those shiny little objects were made by human hands and sent across a void of a quarter-million miles — think about that, a quarter-million miles — and they’re still there, untouched in the vacuum of space, silent testimony to the inventiveness and determination of the silly hairless apes swarming across the face of the blue planet next door. They’re still waiting for us to come back, you know, those abandoned artifacts.
You can see the rest of the LRO Apollo photos here. The image of the Apollo 14 site is especially fascinating; on that one, the lighting conditions were such that you can see the foot trail left by the astronauts who carried a scientific package out away from their Lunar Module. I can’t wait to see the full-rez shots.
In the meantime, if you haven’t been listening to that time-capsule audio stream of the Apollo 11 transmissions, now is the time to tune in. The Eagle has just cast off from Columbia, and Armstrong and Aldrin are getting ready for their descent… exciting stuff, even if I already know how the story turns out!
