The ONLY definitive PROOF that we walked on the moon

reply to post by WatchNLearn



Maybe, I'm sure the reflectors would have to be placed pretty precisely though, not just lobbed out of some unmanned craft.

Hopefully this will be enough proof. Unless the Japanese are in on it too...right?

Source

**Edit** Posted link twice.

[edit on 18-1-2009 by BRQuick]

Originally posted by Chadwickus
Maybe, I'm sure the reflectors would have to be placed pretty precisely though, not just lobbed out of some unmanned craft.

You are right:

Lunar Ranging Retro-Reflector (Apollo 11, 14, 15)

This passive experiment consisted of an array of 100 fused silica cubes on Apollo 11, arranged to reflect a beam of light back on a parallel path to its origin. The LRRR placed on the Moon was aligned precisely so that it faced the Earth. Scientists from around the world directed laser beams at the instrument which reflected them back to Earth; the elapsed time for the round trip allowed precise measurements of distances, down to an accuracy of 8 centimeters, between the Earth and the Moon. This instrument continued operating until June 1981.

Apart from accurately determining the Moon's distance from the Earth, results have shown there is considerable warping of the lunar surface as it journeys around the Earth.

These reflectors were also deployed on the Apollo 14 and 15 missions. The Apollo 15 reflector had 300 silica cubes.

Enhanced detail of the Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector (LRRR) from Apollo 11 mission.

www.hq.nasa.gov...

reply to post by ziggystar60


So just out of curiosity do we know the location of these things so Joe Sixpack can locate them? After all, you can buy laser pointers now that are powerful enough to reach the moon. If NASA released the exact co-ordinates we could test this for ourselves...

reply to post by WatchNLearn




From the first page I linked to in this thread:

reply to post by WatchNLearn


It would be incredible difficult to hit those reflectors left by Apollo 11, 14 and 15 with amateur equipment. It seems there are two observatories here on Earth that still send laser beems towards them, and it is not an easy task to hit the mark:

The McDonald Observatory in Western Texas and a second observatory near the city of Grasse in southern France regularly send a laser beam through an optical telescope to hit one of the reflectors. The reflectors are too small to be seen from Earth, so even when the beam is correctly aligned in the telescope, actually hitting a lunar reflector is quite challenging. At the Moon's surface, the beam is a few kilometers or miles wide and scientists liken the task of properly aiming the beam to using a rifle to hit a moving dime 3.2 kilometers (two miles) away.

www.jpl.nasa.gov...


I also have found out that the unmanned Soviet Lunokhod i and 2 left reflectors on the moon, so apparantly it IS possible to place them there using an unmanned craft!

The unmanned Soviet Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2 rovers carried smaller arrays. Reflected signals were initially received from Lunokhod 1, but no return signals have been detected since 1971, at least in part due to some uncertainty in its location on the Moon. Lunokhod 2's array continues to return signals to Earth

en.wikipedia.org...

Lunokhod 1 (transported by Luna 17, which landed on the Moon at 38.28 degrees north, 35 degrees west in the Mare Imbrium):

The lidded box at the front is a French-built laser reflector. It was used to reflect back to Earth a laser beam, making it possible to measure the distance between the Earth and Moon to an accuracy of twenty to thirty centimetres.
www.zarya.info...

Information about Lunokhod 2:
www.zarya.info...