Are There Images of the Lunar Landers from Orbit?

banditski asks: "We have pictures of Mars rovers from taken from orbit, like this photo of Opportunity, but I could not find any of the lunar landers from 60's and 70's? If they do exist, where are they?" More interesting photos from the MRO can be found in an October entry of the Bad Astronomer weblog, and interestingly enough this sentiment was repeated by a couple of posters, there. It won't be until 2008 until we get a fresh pair of 'eyes' on the Moon, but that doesn't mean that there aren't earlier, and just as interesting images buried somewhere on the net. Where can you find interesting orbital photos of the Moon, particularly ones that contain the LEMs, or other photogenic aspects of Tranquility Base?

No there arn't

[0racle]

We never landed on the Moon

Geez, I thought everyone knew that.

Re:No there arn't

[Anonymous Coward]

> 404 File Not Found
> The requested URL (askslashdot/07/01/26/0432232.shtml) was not found.

Not found indeed. I'd go so far as to say that the moon itself doesn't exist. Just try finding any moon literature from before the 1930s. And notice how "coincidentally" only one side faces us, and it almost perfectly eclipses the sun, viewed from the Earth's surface. Makes you think, what's on the other side? Things get more contradictory from here: apparently it doesn't exist, yet we landed on it, and it has 4 sides (bright,dark,Earth-side and far-side). Mathematically we define a sphere as the set of points within a radius of some origin. How, then, does a moon have 4 sides when spheres have either 1 "side" or infinite "sides" (depending on who you ask?)

The case for the moon is dwindling.

So you trust the Guvmint???

[OzPeter]

If the landings were faked in the first place with 1960's technology (and the idea of keeping all those involved completely isolated), what do you think could be done with current technology and digital photos?

(and I am sure there are people out there who would take the above seriously)

Re:No there arn't

[Anonymous Coward]

But the moon has 6 sides - you forgot "inside" and "outside". Doesn't that make the moon a cube?

Famous last excuses of NASA personnel..

[thrill12]

... hurrying to prevent the news that the moon landing in fact never happened from coming out:

* Quick, launch that space junk towards the moon before LROC [nasa.gov] comes along !
* Oh, it seems that we couldn't photograph the landing site due to a metric conversion error.
* Giant moon storms have suddenly wiped out all evidence of any landing on the moon, what a coincidence eh ?
* OMG this is not the moon we landed on in 1969, we have been tricked !
* There is life there, but not as we know it - they made our moon landers disappear.
* OK, the moon landing was faked - see this little bunny, this funny little bunny ? Look how cute this little bunny is ! So cute !
* The russians did it !
* The chinese did it !
* The martians did it !
* The democrats did it !
* In a blatant act of time-terrorism, our moon landing was sabotaged and in fact never ever took place !
* Due to global warming, our moon landers have shrunk to microscopic size.
* Because we plan to go to the moon in a decade time again, we decided to clean the place up and remove all evidence of any moon landers. Neat eh ?
* Our moon landing was an advanced project, so advanced that we calculated the environmental damage the moon equipment would have on the moon would be enormous. Therefore we decided, back then in 1969, to make all equipment on the moon from bio-degradable plastics - and look : they have all degraded !
* The chance of a meteor hitting the moon is very large - by a mere coincidence meteors have struck the exact same places our moon equipment were at and removed all evidence of us ever being there.

But are there images of...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Whalers on the moon?

"We're whalers on the moon, We carry a harpoon. But there ain't no whales So we tell tall tales And sing our whaling tune."

Re:No there arn't

[dschuetz]

They have a mirror set up on the moon so that anyone who knows where to look can fire a laser at it and get a reflection back;

How do you know that's not just a shiny rock? :)

Re:No there arn't

[ReverendLoki]

Which, in reply, I wish to direct you here [dyson.com], here [hoover.com], or even here [shopvac.com]. Or if unmanned robotic efforts are more your cup of tea, here [irobot.com] (one of which just happens to be the subject for today here [woot.com]).

What, was somene not expecting a smart-ass reply to that?

Re:exactly what you asked for

[haystor]

Sad to say, but I'm afraid to click on any link on /. that says "These are the best photos available".

Re:No

[russ1337]

FTA you referenced:

The spacecraft's high-resolution camera, called "LROC," short for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, has a resolution of about half a meter. That means that a half-meter square on the Moon's surface would fill a single pixel in its digital images.

Apollo moon buggies are about 2 meters wide and 3 meters long.
So in the LROC images, those abandoned vehicles will fill about 4 by 6 pixels.

WTF? Four to Six Pixels!!???? That is about the size of ---} ' {---- that black thing there!! I want an up close shot with the front of the Chicago times from launch day!

.... And footprints. I wanna see footprints.

Re:exactly what you asked for

[Eccles]

Is that because there's "ass-survey" in the URL?

Re:Tin foil hat...

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's very convenient for the conspiracy theorists as it means they can on thinking that everything is a lie.

Oh, that's just what they want you to think.