Sorry if I'm asking a question I know's probably been answered before,but I'm trying to educate (knock some sense into) some young folks on another BB I frequent & the question was raised: "Why can't we use a satellite to take a pic of the landing site(s) & flag & prove that we landed?"

Thanks in advance for any info folks...

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"An armed man is a citizen
An unarmed man is a subject"

Robert A. Heinlein

I'm not sure what you're asking. Are you asking why we can't have existing satellites like the Hubble or a spy satellite take such a picture? Or are you asking why we can't launch a satellite to go orbit the moon and take those pictures?

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

That's what I need an answer to,thanks,sorry if I wasn't coherent enough This person is asking why we don't do that,I said that the Hubble couldn't take pics of the Moon,it's too bright,it'd be blinded (maybe not the right answer,but the best I could think of....)

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"An armed man is a citizen
An unarmed man is a subject"

Robert A. Heinlein

The moon is moving to fast for the Hubble to take a picture of that small a spot. Also, I am not sure if the hubble could resolve objects at the landing site.

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

The ESA spacecraft Smart-1, due to reach lunar orbit in about a year, carries a camera that has a resolution of one meter. This should be enough to see the landers, rovers and some of the epuipment. Unfortunatly, the hard core HBers will just say that the pictures are fake.

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I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

I know a young British chap that may be working on that,I'll have to ask him.


They're not hard-core HBers & I'd like to try to keep 'em that way!

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"An armed man is a citizen
An unarmed man is a subject"

Robert A. Heinlein

It can't. Hubble's resolution at the distance of the Moon is something like 150 meters.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Even if the moon weren't so bright, an object on the lunar surface would still have to be about the size of a football stadium in order to be seen with the Hubble.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Have a look at this thread. This has some discussion of Hubble and what would be needed to image Apollo artifacts on the Moon.

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"A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent." -- Elbert Hubbard

It occurred to me that the Hubble couldn't pick out a Saturn V on the Moon, let alone a lunar module.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I believe the HST would have trouble even picking out the craters of the S-IVB impacts.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Most people don't realize that even the finest details in those amazing Hubble images are really rather large, speaking in terms of angular size. They are well within the theoretical resolution of large earth-bound telescopes. Hubble gains by being above the turbulence of the earth's atmosphere, plus it has long integration (i.e. "exposure") times -- it doesn't have to be shut down during daytime. At heart, Hubble is still only a middling 2.5 m aperture telescope, but it has three things the others don't have: location, location, location.

Why is it taking so long to get there? It only took Apollo three days I believe.

Because SMART-1 is using an ion engine and an ever outwardly-spiralling orbit. It will take 18 months to get there, but it will only use about 30 gallons of fuel to do it.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Two things. It has been orbiting Earth for a while, as part of it's mission, and it is using an ion engine, so it takes a while to accelerate.

edit: Beat by one minute! But I had to look it up... if only I was 60 seconds quicker.

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

What, the evidence isn't overwhelming enough? If people are paranoid enough to think all the other photographs were faked, wouldn't they think the satellite photos were fakes too? After all, the satellite would be controlled by NASA / the Gummint / the Commies / the Pope / the Elders of Zion / the Illuminati...

Seriously, if a camera with enough resolving power was in lunar orbit for other purposes, I think a picture would be fascinating. But launching a mission just to prove that we landed, as though there were any doubt, would be a colossal waste of time and money.

Well, losing by a minute to Jay is no big deal.

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Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

I'm going to guess that they won't believe a photo from a satellite, whether in Earth or lunar orbit, because it could be "faked", but would believe one from a ground based telescope, because "anyone" could just walk up and take a look. I know that is nonsense in many ways, but just my thoughts. The exception to some extent seems to be the Hubble, maybe because it gets lots of press and lots of photos have been published (and its the only one they have heard of); somehow Hubble photos seem to be magically un-fake-able.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

Not having pictures is proof it didn't happen, because if it did we should just be able to point the telescope and snap some pictures.

Getting pictures is not proof because either they were faked in Photoshop or we simply sent up secret robotic landers to the proper locations.

[/conspiracist hat]

I'm wondering just how hard it would actually be to fake believable telescopic or satellite pictures of the Apollo landing sites.

Wouldn't any fakes (by who(m?) ever) have to at least take into account the entire Apollo photographic record already in the public domain?

Wouldn't that in itself make fakes extremely difficult?