If they wanted to couldn't they pinpoint all of the Apollo landing points with the Hubble telescope or some satellite?






The Hubble detected methane on a planet 63 light years away on HD189733b.

They could end all of this controversy once and for all. Pinpoint all of the landing sites precisely by detecting their methane signatures from discarded diapers.

G'day Classic

I suspect a planet produces a tad more methane than a dozen astronaut nappies.

Anyway, did they discard urine on the Moon?

Hubble does not have the resolution to detect something so small as the lander at a distance of a quarter of a million miles. It would need to be an order of magnitude bigger just to show the lander was there, never mind identify it as such.

The methane was detected in a planetary atmosphere by its absorption of starlight as the planet moved in front of its star. That won't work on the Moon. For one thing any methane would be long gone after 40 years. For another there isn't enough atmosphere on the Moon.

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Hubble can't see that well on the moon. It's too close up.

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From this NASA site
But the Clementine lunar orbiter did find evidence of the Apollo 15 site

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Yes, for example. Apollo 11 left 4 urine collection bags on the moon.

During the Apollo program they detected methane along with other elements composing the Lunar atmosphere.

Is it too close or too far away? They did use Hubble to watch the 1999 crash impact of the Lunar Prospector into the moon to study the ultraviolet emissions.

I just looked into this briefly. They crashed Lunar prospector into a crater in and unseccessful attempt to detect water. They hoped the impact would produce a large plume which could conceivably have been seen by whatever they looking at it with. I haven't determine what they were using to observe the plume.

The Apollo artifacts on the moon are to small/far away to be seen by Hubble.

Even if they were visible through Hubble, I have a feeling that moon hoax believers would say they were planted by unmanned probes.

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Something makes me doubt that, but I'll wait for the comment of people who know more than I.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Perhaps such as Compounds of the organogenic elements in Apollo 11 and 12 lunar samples: A review (abstract):

That would make it more of a just-passing-by substance.

(Nowadays, with more sensitive instruments, they might find traces of pharmaceuticals -- as in topic Pharmaceutical pollution in drinking water.)

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I just glanced into it. Methane was detected - in very minute amounts, like all other components of the lunar "atmosphere" - and in this paper (warning! 8MB PDF) it is speculated that it is formed from surface reactions of carbon and hydrogen from the solar wind.

And, yes, HST can image the Moon. But no telescope operational or planned can resolve Apollo landing artifacts from Earth or Earth orbit. (Yes, I know the Moon is in Earth orbit. You know what I mean.)

ETA: ToSeeked by 69₁₀. Also, I'm pretty sure, as already indicated by others, the tenuous lunar atmosphere can't be detected by HST spectrometry. It took sensitive in situ measurements by the ALSEP devices to do a census of the Moon's gases.

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It's really the fact that you have to put "atmosphere" in quotation marks.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The Earth is closer. Better to turn it around and point it at Texas. Then slowly move toward Florida. If you find a diaper trail it's Evidence Admissible.

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Quote:

We just don't know much.

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The methane in the lunar "atmosphere" is probably due to the attitude corrections performed by all the cows who have jumped over it.

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How expensive would it be to send a rover (or fifty) to the moon? Surely they could drive right up to the landing sites by now. It's gotta cost a bit less than traversing to mars and aero-braking, etc. Or maybe Mars having an atmosphere actually makes that part easier... With the moon, it's all propellant or nothing when it comes to slowing down. Of course, with footage coming in from a rover under JPL control, doubters would cry foul anyway.

But seriously, it's only 250,000 damn miles away - many automobiles have that amount on their odometers? Are we so sure the moon has been adequately explored that we couldn't shoot over some rovers? Why aren't we doing this?

Could radio (or other bandwidth) waves be aimed at the moon, and using multiple dishes from multiple locations, obtain an "image" better than one could expect optically? Clearly I am talking out of my a$$, but the "problem" of proving that the Apollo missions actually happened just CANNOT be insurmountable. And the solution could have other scientific applications as well. Anybody else have some good ideas?

How big of a scope would you have to have to be able to see the landing sites from earth? Does image stacking (super resolution) and geographically separate cooperative observatories help in any way? C'mon, guys. Figure it out, and you'll be FAMOUS!

It's just a matter of time before someone puts a webcam there. It's just a matter of time before someone figuring out how to do it cheap enough so that they can recoup their losses by "pay-per-click" advertising.

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The views expressed are the febrile product of an overactive imagination of a person who in shadows sees the gyrating Elvis-like ghost of Leonid Brezhnev.

It depends on what you mean by "prove." There is already a huge amount of evidence that supports the Apollo missions, but some people choose to ignore it. I expect we will see LRO images before too long, but the people that don't want to believe it will just say these are faked.

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Quick Question: How come Google Earth can show my broken down Mazda MX-3 in my back yard, but Clementine can't resolve the landing sites? This seems at odds with the available technology, which must surely be more advanced than Google's. You know, they can tell you what brand of cigarettes you smoke and all that...

Somebody learn me that one, please....