Quote:
Originally Posted by Philadelphia
With so much debate about whether there has been a Man on he moon let's agree it'll be a real achievement to get a Gran on the moon !!
But before that small step for Gran how about doing something really easy - focusing on the lunar surface with the most powerful telescopes. Surely that can settle it. Right ? I mean, those lunar rovers etc ? Didn't Hubble take pictures of objects hundreds of millions of miles away ? So what's the deal here ? How about some nice pictures of Apollo stuff on the lunar surface ?
Not much to ask is it ?
|
Hubble's got good resolution, but not that good. When photographing the moon, the highest resolution that Hubble can achieve is about 60 meters. The largest piece of Apollo equipment left is about 9 meters wide, making it smaller than a single pixel in a Hubble image of the Moon.
However, this year NASA is scheduled to launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which will orbit the Moon and be able to take about 0.5m resolution pictures. At this resolution, buildings and automobiles are easily visible on the surface of the Earth:
This picture has a resolution the same as the LROC, or the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera.
The Apollo site should be easily visible once images of it are taken by this craft.