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NASA / GSFC / ASU
An enhanced close-up of the Apollo 11 landing site from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the descent stage as a bright spot, with smaller bright spots representing the experimental packages left on the moon. The enhancement brings out the tracks that the astronauts made during their moonwalks.
Forty-three years ago today, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were on the moon for just 21 hours and 36 minutes, but thanks to a new NASA website, you can see how the lighting at their landing site changes over the course of the two-week-long lunar day.
This week, the team behind the camera on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter unveiled an online viewer that combines imagery at different sun angles for each of the Apollo landing sites, from sunrise to sunset. Such images have been released regularly for the past three years, but it's way cooler to see them presented with a slider that lets you see the shadows shorten and lengthen as the day wears on. You can also click buttons to add labels for the artifacts left at each site, to trace the paths of the astronauts' moonwalks, or just to get your bearings.
A murky view of the Apollo 11 site, captured by LRO just before lunar sunset, served as this week's "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. I thought it was interesting to see the last rays of the day reflected off the very top of the Eagle lunar module's descent stage, producing a bright spot at the very center of the image. You can also see how the lunar module's shadow hitting the rim of the crater to the east of the landing site.
NASA / GSFC / ASU
This view of the Apollo 11 landing site was captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter just before sunset on the moon.
It didn't take long for Facebook followers to recognize what this mostly black picture showed. The first ones to register the right guesses — Mike Hardin, Brian McGraw, Wyatt Bates and James Aker — are eligible to receive celebratory pairs of 3-D glasses, courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope team and yours truly. You can use your red-blue glasses to see 3-D views of the Apollo 11 site and lots of other space scenes.
The 43rd anniversary of any event is not usually that big of a deal, but today's "Dark Knight" shootings in Colorado left a lot of people looking for something positive to balance out all of the day's negativity. Apollo 11 provided that positivity, in 1969 and in 2012. I particularly liked the Twitter update from John Ryan: "News out of Colorado is grim, but today's also the anniversary of the first moon landing. Take heart, humanity can do amazing things, too."
No one knew that better than the late astronomer Carl Sagan. In Sagan's reflections on the Apollo missions, which endure in his book "Pale Blue Dot" as well as the Sagan Series of videos produced by Reid Gower, the sage marveled at the rare opportunity afforded by the Cold War space effort: "Once upon a time, we soared into the solar system. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was 'Apollo' really about?"
I can't watch the video without tears coming to my eyes. But at least they're not tears of grief.
"Gift of Apollo," featuring the words of Carl Sagan, is part of Reid Gower's Sagan Series of videos.
More reflections on Apollo 11:
- Transterrestrial Musings: Evoloterra
- Bad Astronomy: What Apollo means to me
- Neil Armstrong still chooses to go to the moon
- Universe Today: The journeys of Apollo, on video
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Charles Lindbergh, flew across the Atlantic in 1927 and 42 years later we landed on the moon. If we had just kept that pace of development we should of been walking on Mars by now. It has been 43 years and we haven't been outside of Low Earth Orbit since 1972.
The little kid in me is very sad. When I look at the state of NASA I only see congress people from the "space states" worried about securing billions to fund jobs in their states rather then making NASA mean something to inspire the kids of today. NASA is spending over $6 billion on the Kennedy space center and we don't even have a rocket to launch any astronauts.
The private American company SpaceX has spent about $1 billion and has 2 new rockets, 4 new rocket motors, a new space capsule and a launch site. They have also flown their Falcon 9 rocket 3 times. It isn't about money but spending money in the most wise and effective manner. This part of the problem really isn't rocket science, folks.
PJ as a former NASA Mission Control Specialists (there are a lot of us around now). your post puts a lot of things in perspective. JFK knew how to motivate and how to bring people together (yes there was that little thing called the Cold War) but the fact is we were a NATION then. Today we are like the old man in the rocking chair on the porch of his old and run down farm drinking his whisky at 9AM reminiscing about the good old days while his grandkids get tanked up or shot up. What a hell of a long way we have come - NOT! My generation started a good thing but we could not produce good leaders - very sad indeed.
Sorry Folks...
I believe that the moon landing was staged.
Our Government wouldn't lie to us right?
And the Earth is flat, right?
"sorry folks...."
yes johnny, you are a sorry sorry sad sack.
@ JohnnnyApple, HECK NO!
Troll?
Oh, who cares if it was a hoax? It was an AWESOME hoax! Kudos to NASA!
Oh good grief, how can ANYONE still think the Moon landings were a hoax. Johnny, how have "they" kept thousands of people silent about the 'hoax'? Threats? It wouldn't work, not when the person blowing the lid off of a hoax of that magnitude would be incredibly wealthy for doing so.
It's like people who say the pyramids HAD to have been built by aliens because the Egyptians could not possibly have built them. Some people just like to think the human race is incapable of great leaps in technology on their own. Absurd.
Among other things, Johnny, think about this. If the moon landings were a staged fake, then why did we do it SEVEN times? Apollo 11,12,[13],14,15,16 and 17. If it were a cover up, they'd have stopped at Apollo 11 since additional stagings would increase the likelihood of exposure.
If you have ANY technological sense at all (which it's obvious you don't) it is very easy to verify that our technology of the day was capable of the landings. It was EXTREMELY dangerous, yes, but we pulled it off nonetheless.
So you think the pics of the landers are photoshopped? You think that 100's of millions was spent on each mission to stage it all? Did they use the same sound stage over and over, complete with changing moonscapes and cratering? They use models against a moon backdrop? All the astronauts were actually actors? Get out of your fairytale world will ya !
Johnny, you're not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but let's look at this anyway. First, the president in charge during the Apollo landings was a chap named Nixon, who did try doing some things secretly, such as bombing Cambodia and some domestic burglaries for political purposes. His conspiracies and cover-ups didn't go very well. Secondly, try walking up to Buzz Aldrin and telling him your brilliant theory. But first take a photo of how your face looks now, as the doctors will need it later. LOL.
"But first take a photo of how your face looks now, as the doctors will need it later."
lol
Many are the potential responses to that, I'll just give a couple:
1. Apollo 13. If we were faking all that, why in God's name would we also fake a near disaster on one of the missions? Exactly why would we make ourselves look bad? (And if the crew had not survived, I suppose the hoaxers would insist they're really alive, and hiding out on the same island with John Kennedy, Elvis Presley and Tupac Shakur...)
2. The Soviet Union. If we were faking it, and were to be exposed, at the height of the Cold War, it would have been the greatest propaganda coup of all time. Yet not even once, did the U.S.S.R. so much as hint that this was not what it appeared to be. Am I to believe that a bunch of conspiracy theorists were able to find that which the intelligence-gathering resources of the KGB could not? (But, given that there are people who will tell you with a straight face [I've seen it in one of their books], that the Soviets were in on it too. Right. Keeping in mind that they never reached the Moon, or have yet to even send someone beyond LEO [though in a slightly different world, they could have sent a man around the Moon and back, possibly as little as two weeks before Apollo 8), we are to believe they allowed an American hoax that made them appear to be the losers, go unchallenged. Anyone who gives you that, has zero knowledge of 1960's history. [I'm old enough that foe me it was once current events])
3. Still silent? It's been said that the only sure way for two people to keep a secret, is for one of them to be dead...
Yet you could not do this without hundreds of thousands of people knowing the truth, and yet not one has ever stepped up and said, 'Yes it was faked, and this was my part in it.' We couldn't keep the Glomar Explorer project to secretly recover a lost Soviet submarine secret, but we should believe this has stayed under wraps so fat? Someone just doesn't know human nature.
4. How far do you have to go to be convincing? Those Saturn 5s were launched in front of God and everybody. Non government sources (radio amateurs, the British Jodrell Bank radiotelescope [which routinely listened to Soviet orbital flights, but the low-inclination US orbital missions were below their horizon], and others) tracked the signals. Doing what we absolutely know happened, is maybe 90% of what the real thing would require...
5. The Lunar rocks. Much of that material was made available to foreign scientists, including the Russians (some of it in exchange for some of their material returned from the unmanned 'Luna' series). Not one of their people has said; 'Hey, this stuff doesn't appear to be extraterrestrial...!' (He3 content and other things would give it away)
Need I really say more?
Well that didn't take long at all. When I saw this article the first thing that popped into my mind was thinking how many comments there would be about the stupid moon hoax. It gets really old very fast.
Johnny, my advice to you is to go to the book store and pick up several books about NASA and the Apollo project. Not picture books, but real words describing in minute detail how thousands of people worked endless hours to send men to the moon. Here's two suggestions: "A Man on the Moon" by Andrew Chaikin and Apollo: The Epic Journey To The Moon by David West Reynolds. There are dozens of other great books chronicling the work from the very beginning of rocketry, to how each component of the Apollo craft was built, to the thoughts and conversations all the key players had before, during and after the missions.
And you know what you're going to find in these books? Basically the same details and accounts of how we got to the moon, right down to checklists, the nuts and bolts, the close calls and the ingenious ways man solved all the problems to get us to the moon. The research in writing these books by all these different authors all tell the same story (from different perspectives) but the details are the same, right down to what happened at exactly 3 days, 8 hours and 55 minutes into any particular mission. You can't fake history that was this well documented. And the greatest writers in the world couldn't have come up with the details and occurrences that actually happened.
Stop believing the utterly stupid nonsense of these conspiracy nuts: "There were no stars in the background!" Do you honestly believe if they went to all that trouble to recreate the moon setting on a sound stage, NO ONE would realize that they forgot to put the stars in the background?!?!? Come on now.
But here's a little experiment you can try yourself. Go to a ski slope at night when it's all lit up with bright lights shining on the white snow. Take pictures of the skiers going down the snow. Guess what, I bet you won't see a single star in the sky when you look at those pictures. That's the way the camera lens works. Ask someone to explain it to you if you don't understand.
And every other stupid hoax theory can be explained just as easily if you open your mind and use logic and intelligence instead of giving into fear and paranoia.
Whenever someone says the moon landings were a hoax, you discredit and mock the thousands of people that worked so hard to accomplish one of the greatest scientific endeavors man has ever succeeded in.
As a former NASA Mission Control specialist DevAvo I thank you!
Your welcome and Thank YOU!
Excellent reply DevAvo. Though I was to young to actually be involved in the project (I was only 11 years old when Apollo 11 landed) I am an ardent student (and fan) of it. That was one heck of a project and anyone involved in it demands our respect! (Boomer!). Johnny needs to read Chaikin's book. Good stuff.
Your so right,if they would just crawl out from beneath their rocks and do some basic research,they would see how stupid the hoax theory is.NASA even has transcripts of the Apollo flights,where you can read everything that happened minute by minute.Russia would have loved to push our face in the mud had they spotted us faking it.The best part is,most of the hoaxer's are clueless,to the fact that we , faked the Moon landing's,not once, but 6 times .400,000 workers hired to build huge rockets and all kinds of hardware to fake moon flights.Dumb
In this day and age I'm no longer surprised by the skepticism of those who do not believe that government, in any form, is capable of doing anything laudable or worthwhile. Despite the hesitancy of some to believe it possible, there are some instances where government has managed to do things which would otherwise most likely never occurred. Even today's private space industry came about because the US and a number of other participatory governments from around the world spent billions of dollars creating and maintaining the International Space Station. While there may well one day be a robust collection of flights to Earth orbit for Joe or Jane Citizen, they will be possible largely because the companies providing those flights will have other, more substantive ferrying contracts for NASA, ESA and other space organizations from countries around the world.
I can easily recall laying on my stomach in the middle of our families' living room, my chin in my hands, as I watched on our 19' black and white TV the video being broadcast back from the surface of the Moon as Neil Armstrong made his famous "one small step." Even though I was not quite 5 years old at the time, I knew to my core that what I was seeing was something incredible and important. That it was an indication of the potential greatness of the human race.
And now, more than 40 years after that incredible day, I am even more proud of our nation's accomplishments in space. And I look forward to, and long for, the day when we once again put ourselves at the forefront of exploring the heavens.
To those who doubt such moments or the possibility of such feats of human greatness, I feel only pity. There's no need for me to think ill of such a person. Their limited, sad existence is punishment enough.
The story of why we wanted to get to the moon in 60's is just as interesting as how we got to the moon. The cold war and Kennedy's desire to win it gave the space program almost limitless money and resources to achieve something we were barely able to do technologically. Today we have the technology but there's no political motivation or necessity to utilize it (for leaving Earth's orbit)
And we still have not found that darn obelisk yet! ;-)
Deniers are generally gullible morons. Nothing to see here.
I usually get odd looks from co-workers when I say I'm celebrating Neil Armstrong Day
Unless you are celebrating Neil Armstrong day on Aug. 5, his birthday, I'd say you should get odd looks! (He'll be 82 this year, BTW.) Neil took the "small step... giant leap" but was not alone. Besides Buzz Aldrin nearby, Mike Collins played a crucial role orbiting above them, and thousands on Earth provided essential support in countless ways. It was a great team effort, not a solo run.
What a Great Great moment! I agree with PhillyJimi,we should be on Mars now! And a "House" on the Moon!
That press conference with Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin was pretty frikkin' odd, I gotta say.
From Houston TX... THE RIGHT STUFF!!!
I remember my father driving me a couple of hundred miles in northern Canada so I could watch the live broadcast from the moon on a small black and white T.V. at the age of 14. What an accomplishment What promise it held.....What's more amazing is that this was accomplished by a schizophrenic society called the United States of America which was enslaving its young men and forcing them to partake in the imperialistic slaughter of freedom figthers in Viet Nam.....fortunately the Americans lost that battle...but they still keep on trying...they haven't sent another man further than 300 nautical mile from the earths surface since the early 70's....but continue to use military force where and when they choose to suit their political policy of the day......
The US didn't invent geopolitics. Do you really think that if the US didn't exist, that there would be no nations jockeying for influence?
As for the concept of "freedom fighters" in Viet Nam, I think that their behavior and enslavement of the people of South Vietnam after their "victory" shows their true colors.
I know that a lot of victimized South Vietnamese would disagree with Glenn so I apologize to them for that rather ignorant statement about "Freedom Fighters" from North Vietnam. For those still dealing with the racial oppression of the communist regime remember that socialism and communism, to date, have never managed to survive over the long term.
The US may not be perfect and its politicians may frequently show their base humanity; but at least its failures become public knowledge even when attempts to disguise or cover-up are engendered.
Space exploration is not something to be undertaken by a single country, it is something to be undertaken by humanity if it is to truly have any meaning.
"Space exploration is not something to be undertaken by a single country, it is something to be undertaken by humanity if it is to truly have any meaning."
Must disagree there. We need a greater variety of approaches, not fewer. There's no 'One Right Way'(tm) to build a spaceship (this is why there are four different Commercial Crew partners...at least one of them should work), and nothing will slow space exploration and development more than an additional international layer of bureaucracy, on top of that which we already have...
Neat slideshows!
Glory days indeed ! The worldwide military budget compared with the world space budget is beyond obscene. We still have thousands of nukes primed and ready, and rogue nations wanting them. We have diseased global climates and ecosystems that threaten our existence. AND we have 3 billion more people since then and growing. What did all that glory treach us?
Looking at the online viewer you get to know just how talented Neil Armstrong was at landing and with little fuel left. There are significant craters in that area and probably large rocks.
My mother worked for a company that sub-contracted building some of the computers on the LEM for Apollo 11. Each of the six inspectors were allowed to sign their name to the back of the board. Sitting on Tranquility Base is an electrical component with my mum's name on it! I still get shivers down my spine when I look at the moon and think on that.
OK how about this for a conspiracy theory? The real reason the Space program has been knee-capped is that the government fully realizes that if we do find someplace else habitable in the galaxy the rush will be on to get the hell off this planet. The best and the brightest of all nations will flock to a world of new opportunities and chances to grow without the interference of over-protective "mother governments". The exodus off-planet will make the "flood" through Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century look like a trickle.
Congrats, you've just given birth to a bouncing baby conspiracy theory! I hope it learns to get along with all the others..
Well technically it's not a conspiracy theory yet because it hasn't happened, it's more a supposition theory that suggests what MIGHT happen. And knowing how greedy and corrupt most governments are, this kind of thinking is logical and possible. However by the same line of thinking, many government leaders would see this as a new opportunity to control a whole new world and be in favor of it. Plus there's a lot of money to be made (especially in contract/support work for a massive mission like this) giving politicians the opportunity to stuff their pockets further by granting certain companies contracts. So it kind of works both ways.
As you can tell from my last post, I'm definitely know conspiracy nut. I believe Apollo really happened, I think 9/11 happened the way it has been explained (no hidden bombs inside the buildings), but when it comes to trusting our government or politicians....I wouldn't put anything passed them!
"...if we do find someplace else habitable in the galaxy the rush will be on to get the hell off this planet."
And if someone somehow develops the propulsion required to make interstellar travel not just possible, but relatively cheap (and it must be that, in order for your scenario to work), that would be fine with me....
Otherwise, we might one day find a clearly habitable planet, say, 20 light-years away...but nevertheless be absolutely unable to do anything but look at it, for a long time.
Indeed, right now, we don't have the technology for serious emigration as far as Mars (though at least it's much more thinkable), much less interstellar.
Besides, though you might be as much of a space geek as I am, it's very important to remember that not everyone shares our passion. Not everyone is itching to emigrate off-Earth. Hell, even I don't want to move away from it forever. My fantasy is to pilot the spacecraft that takes others where they want to go...but still come home at the end of every run.
No matter how easy it gets to leave, no matter how bad it might be here (not everyone left Ireland at the height of the potato famine, for example) , most people are going to stay on Earth, or at least within the solar system.
And that's okay. Enough will leave, and the human diaspora will seriously begin. But not all will be 'the best and brightest.' And expect a stream, not a flood...
Frank, you never know, we just might discover (and be able to reach) a planet that's even more beautiful and exotic than Earth. We only have our imaginations and our own solar system to compare planets (and reality). Just like God and the rest of the Universe, our minds cannot yet comprehend what might be out there and how truly different and diverse other planets and reality can be.
The soundstages from Star Trek that created "other worlds" and the makeup artists that created aliens were probably extremely short-sighted and unimaginative compared to what is truly out there.
But it's not the 'what might be out there' that I'm contesting, it's the 'everybody would suddenly leave for it if we found it' that I have a problem with.
Only a relative sliver of humanity is going to be interested in emigrating, and...
There's no means of practical interstellar flight to enable anyone to go, any time soon. Just knowing of a habitable extrasolar world won't change the physics and the engineering challenges, in and of themselves.
There's no need for a conspiracy theory to keep us here. At this time, it's simply damn hard to go anywhere else.
But hey, ask me again in a hundred years...
"...were probably extremely short-sighted and unimaginative compared to what is truly out there."
The very first extrasolar planet discovered (orbiting 51 Pegasi, in 1995) was a gas giant planet, orbiting very close to its star. A massive planet in a tight, fast orbit around its star is the easiest combination to detect...but completely unexpected. It had been assumed that, like here, gas giants would have to be very distant from their stars. No one saw that coming. The scientist J.B.S. Haldane said long ago (and was often quoted by Arthur Clarke):
"The Universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine."
* Back when that word simply meant 'strange,' of course...
www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=A6MvcIs4OcQ&feature=related
I've never heard such garbage narration ... those Dems will demean any and all.
Just for the record, it was a 'dem' president that started this ('I believe that this nation should commit itself...') , and another that kept it going, after him.
The largest two NASA centers are named after them...
"Dems"? You're obviously a conservative/Repugnicant moron!
If we had not stopped after the 6 th and final landing,NASA would be turning a profit by now, ferrying people back and forth.We would have optical and radio telescopes,science lab's,water,helium 3 and many other materials being processed.What we learn from the Moon could be applied to Mars.My dream is to see the nations of the world,jointly contribute to building giant telescope's on the Moon and Mars,so we can finally put some of the mysteries of the universe to rest.and to examine some of the Earth like planets within a couple hundred light years, for signs of life,even intelligent life,by looking at what chemical's are present in the atmosphere.Just my 2 cents
thomas lewis- "NASA would be turning a profit by now..."
google-> civilian applications of NASA research
-> http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/benefits.html
google-> profitable civilian products from NASA developments
-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies
Do your research before you post stupid comments.
If you believe in the Moon landings you also believe is Satan Claws coming down the chimney.
@ thomas: "If we had not stopped after the 6 th and final landing,NASA would be turning a profit by now, ferrying people back and forth..."
'Turning a profit' is not NASA's job.
There were many post-Apollo plans, I'm familiar with them. But the political support was no longer there. The fact that we didn't use up all the hardware we already had, supports that. (Two of the Saturns intended for Apollo 18, 19 and 20 are now lawn ornaments at the Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers. The third one was used to launch Skylab.)
"...helium 3 and many other materials being processed"
What are we going to do with He3? There are still no commercial fusion reactors that can use it. There's no need or market for Lunar He3 until then. Terrestrial sources are sufficient for research.
Processing of other materials would be the job of one or more private companies, not N ASA.
@ Wulfrano: More people have seen Saturn 5s fly, than have seen 'Santa Claws' fly.
I am so tired of pro-gun individuals and organizations like the NRA touting their constitutional right to own guns; any kind of guns. When spouting their right to bare arms, they carefully leave out the words “within a well regulated militia:. That means the National Guard, the police, the Army, Air Force and Navy have the right to bare arms. That does not give any Joe Blow from out back the constitutional right to own any number of, or type, guns they want. guns. This country has been so blinded by the pro-gun lobby for too long.
There are parts of this country where gun ownership is necessary. The vulnerability of isolated homes to, animal attacks, criminals, and difficulty the police face reaching some of those families, makes a hunting rifle a necessity. There are also still a large number of families who rely on hunting to fill their freezers every Autumn. However, the majority of people do not have any need to own even one gun.
Right now, a well designed, and sign into law a good, sensible gun regulation would be a fitting memorial for all the senseless deaths that have happened due to poor gun laws. But remember, we the people are the only ones who can make that happen. The government will not do it with out our push.
And that is related to Apollo 11...how?
"Right now, a well designed, and sign into law a good, sensible gun regulation...."
I wish you luck getting everyone to agree on what that is....on top of those that already exist. And that's all I will say about it here.
I will cry when the People's Republic lands on the moon in 2020 (when they are scheduled to anyway.) And it will be with our federal deficit money.
How sad for us, what the hell happened to the USA ? USA number one...not for a long time and probably never again. Political answers and reasons (read as excuses) from both sides, but we have lost something and NO ONE will give it to us again....I hope there will be a change this November but it will only delay the inevitable.
The killing of the shuttle program was just another sad symptom of a nation that that now asks "what can the country do for me, not what i can do for my country."
Sometimes I think it was better for JFK not to see what happened to his dream.
Space exploration (and all the tech spin offs) rest in peace.
The Apollo 11 misssion was one of the most inspirational, exciting experiences of my youth.... I was 13 when it landed. I was fortunate enough to stand under Apollo 8 when it was nearly complete, and my world changed when I looked up some 320 feet to the top of that beast. What an amazing machine, increadible drive and sucess of the program, and the amazing nerve of the men who risked it all in their drive to make it back to the moon and back alive. My hat's off to Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins for their epic voyage, and all the others who had a hand in that astounding adventure, before and after. They made me even more proud to be an American.