Footprints on the Moon

05/29/203 | patriotUSA

[Fudd]

Thank you. I was wondering if this post was only attracting the tin-foil crowd.

[RightWhale]

We also have 842 pounds of lunar rocks

Interesting. That is exactly 842 pounds more actual samples than we have of space-alien spacecraft.

[So Cal Rocket]

They are still there... The moon has no atmosphere therefore no wind to blow the footprints away...

[RightWhale]

Probably the Hubble

There is a maybe image of a landing site, probably not Apollo but one of the robot cameras that plowed into the moon at speed, but if it shows something it is the crater, and even that is a little too small to be sure. Any actual hardware would be many times smaller.

[RightWhale]

no wind

They will erode eventually. Slow process with micrometeoroids and solar wind, a million years is the blink of an eye on that scale.

[So Cal Rocket]

Agreed... erosion will occur... but nothing of note over the past 30+ years since we were last there.

Geez, has it been that long? I bet something like 40% of the US population was born AFTER the last moon landing. Man, I'm getting old! But then again "a million years is the blink of an eye", isn't it?

[RightWhale]

Yeah, it was 1969, almost 34 years now. But we have been eating properly and pumping iron and we're ready to do it again at any time. Probably do it even better this time. :)

[Slyfox]

Is there any telescope available that can discern the footprints left on the moon?

If they can land a man on the moon...you'd think they could come up with a telescope
that could pick up human footprints.

[Prince Charles]

Is there any telescope available that can discern the footprints left on the moon? (Parental homework assist in progress!)

Yes, any Wal-Mart has a cheap telescope that can see them. Only problem is, you have to be within several hundred feet of the prints for them to be seen. ;-)

[RightWhale]

Here's another thing: commercial earth image satellites can give you images with 2-foot resolution on earth's surface. Something similar in lunar orbit should be able to just about resolve footprints on the lunar surface.

[humblegunner]

Nice try. We can tell that's actually your cat's litterbox.

Dang it, I can't put anything over on you people, can I?

[Drango]

Only problem is, you have to be within several hundred feet of the prints for them to be seen.

OK on my next trip to Hollywood I'll try it...which studio are they in?

[alnitak]

Not true; adaptive/active optics are solving that. Ground based telescopes such as Keck and VLT can now rival (and sometimes surpass) Hubble for resolution.

[alnitak]

According to your calculations, if ESO ever build OWL with its 100m aperture, it would be able to resolve the lander, though the footprints would still remain out of reach.

[RightWhale]

Keck and VLT can now rival (and sometimes surpass) Hubble for resolution.

Yes, they do. VLT means Very Large Telescope. MGT [Massively Gargantuan]and UHT [Unimaginably Huge} are coming and then who knows.

[Joe Hadenuf]

UHT? I like it.

[AdamSelene235]

Not true; adaptive/active optics are solving that. Ground based telescopes such as Keck and VLT can now rival (and sometimes surpass) Hubble for resolution.

Yes, I've worked on the Guidestar lasers.

[RightWhale]

Well, that probably isn't exactly the name, but something like that. The biggest still on the drafting board is so large it's hard to imagine it would support it's own weight let alone produce any kind of image.

[alnitak]

Well, I've not heard of those projects :-)

But OWL in my previous post is "Overwhelmingly Large". There are several 30-50M class telescopes under serious consideration, and the last US decadal astronomy review DID commit to building such a device. That means CELT or GSMT.

Go to here and follow the links to California Extremely Large Telescope and Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope. There's an awful lot of interesting info on these pages. The OWL website has some PDFs which describe what such a beast can do - does imaging earth-like planets out to 10 parsecs sound tempting?

[Pro-Bush]

The moon has no atmosphere therefore no wind to blow the footprints away...



See the flag flappin? Either you are wrong, or the moon landing was a fake, and there are no footprints on the Moon.