Posted on 03/17/2010 1:31:32 PM PDT by smokingfrog
An astronomer at the University of Western Ontario has found a Soviet moon rover in recently released images from a NASA satellite.
Phil Stooke combed through data and images of the moon's surface from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that NASA released Monday.
Stooke compared the images to his own recently published reference book on moon geography, The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration, and pinpointed the location of the Soviet rover Lunokhod 2.
"The tracks were visible at once," said Stooke, in a statement.
The location of the rover was already known through laser ranging experiments, but there's no telescope on Earth or in Earth orbit powerful enough to actually see it.
"We knew within a few kilometres where it was. The laser beam spreads out a bit. It's not a pinpoint on the moon," Stooke said in an email.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is taking pictures of the moon from its orbit about 50 kilometres above the surface. Its one-year mission is to produce a comprehensive moon map.
The Soviet Union landed Lunokhod 2 on the moon in January 1973, a month after the last American moonwalk. As the name suggests, it was the second of two solar-powered robotic rovers the Soviets sent to the moon. Record-setting trip on lunar surface
The Lunokhod rovers were the first remote-controlled vehicles to travel on an extraterrestrial body and still hold the record for longest rover trip at 35 kilometres. (The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have travelled 7.7 kilometres and 19.5 kilometres, respectively.)
Lunokhod 2's mission was to collect images from the moon, observe X-rays from the sun, study the moon's soil and measure its magnetic fields.
"The value here is partly the visual identification, but also the tracks, which will allow a detailed route map to be drawn >snip
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
Glenn was the first AMERICAN to orbit the earth, after two earlier sub-orbital flights IIRC.
The first manned mission in space, by Russian Yuri Gagarin, (sp?)was an orbital flight.
I searched for Komarov’s final words but could not find them in the accounts of the crash. Do you have access to his final words?
We can’t “race” anyone now. The climate and Islam is a much more important endeavor for NASA now.
His last words picked up on the ground were: “This is Rubin calling. Separation beginning...” The reference was to the separation of the compartments. Then the cosmonaut’s voice got lost in background noise. Next, disaster struck: the main parachute failed to open, and the descent capsule hit the ground at tremendous speed, crumpling up and catching fire.
I’d be interested, too.
/space fan
Yup, stealth technology came from a Soviet mathematician’s overlooked journal article.
You must be a youngster.
I remember watching Yuri Gagarin’s and Alan Shepard’s flights in the 4rth grade. Gagarin’s was orbital, the first, and Shepard’s was suborbital. Gagarin was the first man in space (that we know of).
This was concurrent with practicing hiding under our desks when the hydrogen bomb warnings came.
John Glenn was a hero turned traitor who starred in the goobermint docudrama “Elderly Traitor ‘Rats In Space”, his first orbital flight as an American all but forgotten and heavily overshadowed by his treason.
Let Lunokhod 2 know that the Cold War is long over; we can work together now. (Yes I know it’s a machine, still...)
Duck and cover
Then kiss your ass goodbye!
Been there done that.
That’s the Munster’s Moonmobile!
Do they have drag races on the Moon?
If the stories are true a German was the first to orbit in 1945, using an A-10 Rocket he went into sub orbital flight landing in the sea of Japan where he was picked up by the Japanese and flown home over the pole in a modified Condor plane. He was interviewed at age 90 in Der Stern magazine.
Move over sonny! I think I was in the 8th grade when Glenn went up.
drool!
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