A sad day for conspiracy theorists

Those who suspect the Apollo moon landings were faked may have trouble arguing with new photos of hardware and tracks left in the lunar dust by Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and ’70s.

The picture, taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the lower half of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module – the part that stayed behind on the Moon when Armstrong and Aldrin blasted back up off the surface. It was essentially dead weight, so the Lunar Module was designed to split in half, with the top half (the aptly-named Ascent Module) going back up into orbit to meet with Michael Collins in the Command Module. From there they returned to Earth.

The Descent Module is about 4 meters or so across, and the image above, taken when the Sun was low on the horizon, clearly shows the Descent Module and its shadow cast across the lunar surface. The region where they landed was fairly smooth, so the module is the only thing large enough in the image to cast an appreciable shadow.

But that’s not all. Check out the Apollo 14 landing site:

You can actually see where the lunar surface was disturbed by the astronauts bootprints! AMAZING! Read more here or here and head on over to the NASA page for more pictures.

And if those photos aren’t enough, eight Moon-landing hoax myths are busted here.

Lastly, NASA is playing the entire Apollo 11 mission audio in real time + 40 years. It started on July 16, two hours and 40 years before the mission launched and will end July 24 with the splashdown of the astronauts’ capsule. You can also see some restored high definition video footage here.

About these ads

Tags: Astronomy, Science