Nasa’s new look at leftovers on lunar landscape

Photographs taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, captured unprecedented views of scenes that have been frozen in time for more than four decades, even down to astronauts’ tool-bags and life-support backpacks.

Tracks left in the dust by the intrepid lunar pioneers, their landing craft and rover vehicles can also be clearly seen, surpassing images that were captured by LROC two years ago from a higher vantage point and at a more fuzzy resolution.

Dr Mark Robinson, LROC’s principal investigator at Arizona State University, described them as “spectacular images”.

Jim Green, director of the Planetary Sciences Division at Nasa headquarters in Washington, said they were “fabulous observations” and the sharpest images ever taken of the sites.

“These images remind us of our fantastic Apollo history and beckon us to continue to move forward in exploration of our solar system,” Mr Green added.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched in June 2009 on a mission heralded by Nasa as the ‘first step” in the quest to one day return man to the Moon, a feat it first accomplished on June 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted the first human footprints in the lunar dust.

Equipped with instruments for capturing data such as fluctuating temperature patterns and radiation levels on the moon, and capabilities to scout for and identify resources that may be present there – including ice and water – LRO’s mission is to pinpoint potential new landing sites for the future.

Despite the changing fortunes of America’s space programme, whose exact plans for human space exploration are currently unclear pending new political direction, the Moon is considered an important stepping stone for future manned and unmanned missions into the wider solar system.

Photographing the Apollo sites has helped in several ways, including giving geologists a more precise record of the locations from which lunar rocks were gathered by the 12 men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972. Images of the tracks and artefacts they left behind have yielded a historic bonus.

LROC focused over the past two weeks on three of the six manned landing sites – those of Apollo 12, 15 and 17 – descending to an altitude of 21km for 28 days – long enough for the moon to rotate once below it. It’s usual orbiting altitude is 50km.

In the Taurus-Littrow Valley, the twisting path trodden in the dust by Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt – the last men to walk on the moon during the Apollo 17 mission of 1972 – are visible, along with the descent stage of their landing module, Challenger, standing to the east.

“You can see very clearly the astronauts’ tracks and beautifully sharp and crisp lines, which are the tracks of the lunar roving vehicle,” said Dr Robinson.

“It’s pretty neat. If you squint really hard, you can begin to resolve the seats and the wheels.”

Also discernible are the astronauts’ two Portable Life Support Systems, or PLSS. “They are straddling the ladder on the left side of the descent stage,” Dr Robinson added, explaining how the crew discarded all items that were unnecessary after they had boarded their ascent module ready to leave the Moon, in order to make the spacecraft as light as possible.

“They didn’t need the backpacks any more, so they were unceremoniously thrown out and they are still lying there,” he said.

Pallets of tools are also shown on some of the images, along with items of equipment referred to as ALSEPS – Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages. There are spots in the ground where the dust was trampled down to prepare it for the planting of the US flag at each landing site. While the dust disturbances remain visible, the nylon flags themselves are thought to have decayed or disappeared over time. “It’s not clear if they are still there…personally I’d be surprised. It’s been over 40 years,” said Dr Robinson.

Images of the Apollo 14 landing spot taken two years ago revealed for the first time how close Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell came to reaching a certain crater that they had been due to explore in 1971; the pair turned back to their spacecraft thinking they were lost, but images of their tracks captured in 2009 showed that they had been just 30 metres from their target.

The new images lend the sharpest clarity yet to their exploits, and to the vehicles they and others left on the moon. “Whereas before we wouldn’t know if it was a rock or a piece of hardware we were looking at… now we are beginning to resolve them,” said Dr Robinson.

Despite claims to the contrary made by new sci-fi movie Apollo 18, the Apollo programme was terminated after the Apollo 17 mission on cost grounds in 1972, on the orders of US president Richard Nixon. Nasa has distanced itself from the Apollo 18 film, a fiction that masquerades as fact with its claim that the US space agency secretly launched one more Apollo mission to the moon in 1973 and encountered hostile aliens. Nasa cooperated with the film’s production in its early stages but then backed away, fearing that its claim to be based on secret government footage would mislead viewers into thinking it really was.

Nasa is tomorrow due to launch a new £294 million mission to the moon, consisting of twin unmanned probes jointly known as GRAIL – the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory. Set to lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard a Delta II rocket, the two spacecraft will orbit 54km above the moon to measure its gravity field – data that will help scientists to understand its evolution over billions of years and determine the structure of its interior from crust to core.

“GRAIL will unlock lunar mysteries and help us understand how the Moon, Earth and other rocky planets evolved as well,” said the project’s principal investigator, Dr Maria Zuber, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

While the Apollo astronauts took only three days to fly the 240,000-odd miles to the moon, the GRAIL twins will not arrive in lunar orbit until New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, due to the more energy-efficient route they are taking. It is expected that the mission will provide the most precise map ever made of any celestial body’s gravity field, including Earth’s, and measure features such as mountains and craters with pinpoint accuracy.

“Nearly every human who’s ever lived has looked up at the moon and admired it,” said Dr Zuber.

“The moon has played a really central role in the human imagination and the human psyche.”