The laser reflector has been used for years. I believe we have an astronomer on site. perhaps he could shed further light on this. But, I believe we went. Just am curious as to ehy we did not pursue to moon further and jumped to Mars exploration when there are so many mineral potentials on the moon.


Laser Ranging Retro-reflector Experiment

"The reflected laser beam is observed with the telescope, providing a measurement of the round-trip distance between Earth and the Moon. Laser beams are used because they remain tightly focused for large distances " -excerpt

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It works similarly to sonar. We shoot a laser beam at a nearby object (by which I mean inside the solar system) with a frequency that's not commonly generated by natural processes to help cut down interference, and measure how long it takes for it to bounce back. Since all lasers are light and move at the speed of light in a vacuum which is an exact value (299,792,458 meters per second), we multiply this value by the number of seconds it took for the beam to return, and then divide by two since this time would be roundtrip. This is extremely accurate.

Interesting factoid: the reason the speed of light in a vacuum is an exact value is because the meter and, consequently, the foot, yard, and mile are defined by it. One meter is 1/299,792,458 the distance a light beam goes in one second. If the speed of light were measured more accurately and the outcome different from 299,792,458, the length of the meter would actually adjust to compensate and keep the value exactly at this number, as opposed to the number changing.

We stopped working on it in the 70's and NASA's funding got severely cut. The Cold War spawned the Space Race, but it killed it, too.

Exactly. Light beams normally fan out, but lasers stay focused. Also, light is normally heterogeneous, meaning it's composed of many different wavelengths of radiation. In lasers, all the photons are identical--the whole beam is one wavelength, so it's far more coherent.

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Because Richard Nixon and the NASA big shots decided that it was more important to get "cheap" Earth to orbit capability, so they concentrated on the Shuttle. They even tried to burn the Saturn V's blueprints, so the Shuttle wouldn't have any competition. The Shuttle is perhaps one of the worst things that could have happened to the space program without it getting shut down.

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An' it harm none, do as ye' will.


Never argue with an idiot. He'll just drag you down to his level of intelligence and beat you with experience.

The laser reflector is similar to RADAR, or SONAR, or whatever. Lasers are in the visible spectrum and, as has been said, remain focused for long distances.

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~Dove, De La Soul, Itsoweezee

Thirty-three sayin nothin, second thirty-three just frontin', third thirty-three straight bluffin, Ice Tea sayin do somethin! Tupac sayin do somethin! NWA says do somethin! Zulu Nation sayin' c'mon, do somethin! Visionaries sayin do somethin!

Meaning up to millions of miles with astronomy grade ones. The photons are traveling nearly parallel - close enough to parallel for government work, at least, which ain't sayin' much.

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An' it harm none, do as ye' will.


Never argue with an idiot. He'll just drag you down to his level of intelligence and beat you with experience.

They're parallel enough for anything involving parallel photons!

__________________
When's the last time you had happy days?
Blazin' up your herb to escape the maze.

~Dove, De La Soul, Itsoweezee

Thirty-three sayin nothin, second thirty-three just frontin', third thirty-three straight bluffin, Ice Tea sayin do somethin! Tupac sayin do somethin! NWA says do somethin! Zulu Nation sayin' c'mon, do somethin! Visionaries sayin do somethin!

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.

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Are you able to see the flag on the moon with a simple telescope?

The Moon's diameter is approximately 3500 km. The Moon is about 400,000 km from Earth on average, giving it an angular size of about 30 arcminutes in the sky as seen from Earth. There are 60 arcseconds per arcminute, so the Moon is about 1800 arcseconds across. 1800 arcseconds = 3500 km, 1 km = .51 arcseconds. An average flag is about a meter wide, let's say. So the flag will make up about 0.00015 arcseconds in angular size.

My personal telescope, with a 3.5"/88.9 mm aperture (0.0889 m), has a resolution of about 6.19e-6 radians, or 1.28 arcseconds. That means the smallest point of light distinguishable in my telescope (which is an average astronomical telescope) is around 8,500 times larger in angular size than the flag at the landing site. The lander, being maybe nine times larger in angular size, would still be about 950 times too small to make out with an average telescope.

To be able to make out the flag at all, you'd need a telescope with an aperture of 272 meters, or 894 feet. To make out the lander, you'd need a telescope with an aperture of around 99 feet. However, keep in mind that this is just to technically be able to make it out as a single pixel. To make them sizeable enough to know what you're looking at, you'd need probably 250 square pixels, so the aperture size would need to be another 50 times larger, making for a minimum of about a one-mile aperture. So the opening on your optical telescope would need to be one mile in diameter.

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