Lunar Orbiter Captures Pictures of Apollo Landing Sites on the Surface of the Moon

Some of the sharpest images ever taken of the landing locations from the Apollo moon missions have been captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and beamed back to earth. The quality of the images is so good that even the tracks from the lunar rovers used by the astronauts are visible.

Without any atmosphere, the tracks and other items have remained undisturbed over the 40 years since we last set foot on the moon. “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, Md., who is a member of the LRO project science team.

The images show not only paths made by the lunar exploration vehicles but also the trails left in the moon’s thin soil when the astronauts exited the lunar modules and explored on foot. In the Apollo 17 image, the foot trails, including the last path made on the moon by humans, are easily distinguished from the dual tracks left by the lunar rover, which remains parked east of the lander.

“The new low-altitude Narrow Angle Camera images sharpen our view of the moon’s surface,” said Arizona State University researcher Mark Robinson, principal investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). “A great example is the sharpness of the rover tracks at the Apollo 17 site. In previous images the rover tracks were visible, but now they are sharp parallel lines on the surface.”

Many of the pictures from the LRO of the Apollo landing sites are included below. To see more images, including all of the pictures sent back from the LRO’s scan of the lunar surface visit the official site at: http://www.nasa.gov/lro