Not convincing at all:

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Svetoslav Alexandrov, B.Sc. in Molecular Biology
A human return to the Moon is always 15 years in the future. A human mission to Mars is always 30 years in the future. This is the sad truth.

The flag was nylon and has undoubtedly evaporated under the influence of UV radiation over the last 40 years.

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Releasing an image of a Surveyor on the ground would have been rather an anticlimax after all the Apollo images, I should think. And I wonder how long it took to confirm that they had captured the Surveyor - they might have had other priorities in the meantime and only recently verified that they had a Surveyor image.

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Actually, I feel just the opposite of Zvezdichko...I'm suprised at how quickly the landing site images were released.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

This is probably because you're not striving to see it as fast as possible.

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Svetoslav Alexandrov, B.Sc. in Molecular Biology
A human return to the Moon is always 15 years in the future. A human mission to Mars is always 30 years in the future. This is the sad truth.

Don't forget that those times are from the HiRISE FAQ, an instrument that has been in use several years now, with lots of experienced operators knowing every little quirck and all the unexpected external factors that influence image quality.

LROC had only been in orbit a few weeks, and LRO was still in it's commissioning phase. I imagine the team had other activities to worry about, including the Apollo imaging. So I'm really not suprised that this data was shelved for a while, maybe even until the commissioning phase was over and the science phase would begin. Who knows how much data they took during commissioning, and how large an eventual backlog in processing there is at any given time?

Anyway, an email to someone in the LROC team might clear things up, but whatever the reason was for the delay, it seems quite unfair to me to blame a PI for not being as insisting as Squyers was (and could be, considering the difference in instrument types).

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Alright, that's pretty much what I assumed would happen.
Thanks =)

Apollo 17 flag:

LROC: Exploring the Apollo 17 Site

From the 50-km mapping orbit.

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I see no star and stripes.

Get up close. Bang your head on your monitor.

At least you'll see stars.

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Can anyone summarise where to look on the original long strip images to zoom in to find the closeup views of the landing sites thus far imaged?

Also, have they found any of the LM ascent stage impact sites yet?

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

I've long subscribed to this idea as well but going by the latest LRO images, the flag seems to be at least somewhat intact based on the shadow it appears to be casting. Now, I'm imagining a fragile, wispy thing just barely holding itself together, waiting to be blown away by a breeze that will never come.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska
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Pretty cool images!

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My Astronomy Site
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BA Blog: One Giant Leap seen again

NASA Image Feature: LRO Gets Additional View of Apollo 11 Landing Site

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Good time of day to take the shot it seems. All the equipment is reflecting a lot of light.

What was the little traverse that they did to the East?

You mean the tracks leading off at the 3 o'clock position? That was Armstrong's unscheduled jaunt over to Little West Crater, which he thought looked interesting as he flew over it during the descent and happened to notice was within walking distance.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

On that photo, in the enlarged version I noticed that a circular area around the landing stage with a diameter about the width of the caption "Apollo 11 site" is slightly brighter than the surroundings.

I'm guessing this is caused by either:

1. a little photochop to lighten up the landing site, or

2. extra sunlight being reflected off the shiny bits of the landing stage, or

3. a cover of dust that was stirred up during the landing and the take off, which now lies slightly looser on the surface than the surrounding dust and thus reflects more sunlight, or

4. pure coincidence.

Am I close?

The area around the "West Crater" on the right of the image also shows brighter areas, much brighter, which seem to follow impact sediment lines.

So maybe the only slightly bright and more symmetrical circle around the landing stage really is from stirred up (and now loose) dust.

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It really helps you realize how they didn't go very far at all on the lunar surface on that first mission.

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I'm guessing #3, dust stirred up by the landing stage rocket. In other words, the "missing crater" commonly referred to by hoax believers. It's there, it just isn't much of a crater.

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He'll see stars if he wiggles his head back and forth, violently.

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LRO video of Apollo 11 LS...

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/11...-base-via-lro/

enjoy

Just a quick bump because The Big Picture has a set of LRO images, including Apollo landing sites, interspersed with some Apollo photos of the same locations.

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Great. Thanks!

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Some amazing photos. I especially like the one of Mare Humbaldtianum.

Shame those pesky astronauts had to make a mess of the dust.