On the Moon - just some boulders or is this a Lunar Rover ?

I realise that nothing (or at least very few things) are new and undiscovered in the area of lunar investigations but I came across this one on the Alien Anomalies forum in this post by Dave.

The Thread is titled "an Interesting Boulder" and it does look at first sight to be a boulder that has rolled down the slope - but is it?

The LROC image here says this

Vallis Schröteri is geologically fascinating because not only is it the largest lunar sinuous rille, it is composed of the primary rille and a smaller, inner rille. Image width is 1.5 km.

Trying to describe where it is - a speck in the middle of a vast area.
overview
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/83b9b1d878bf.png[/atsimg]

closer
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/11869d2a8aa0.png[/atsimg]

closest
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e474f12c777b.png[/atsimg]

What it looks like to me is a rover of some kind but this is on the Moon and has a date against the official photo of 27th May 2010. Now, as far as I know, we are not visiting(landing on) the Moon at the moment and the only rovers out on Walkabout are the ones on Mars.

I know we have some of you guys who are interested in Moon artifacts and so see what you think.
However, I warn you it is a .tif file and at that link above it is nearly 90Mb.
Hopefully this has not been discussed before on ATS. If it has I'll go off and crawl back under my... boulder?

That looks alot like a lunar rover, especially with the tracks behind it, however the tracks themselves do look odd, we'll wait for more experts to come along, although my bet is yes.

Great find! S&F!

reply to post by qmantoo


Already a thread on this...

reply to post by qmantoo


Explanation: The site in question is 100's of Kilometers away from any landing site [luna 13 is one of the closest being aprox 300kms SW of this object]. S&F! Great Find!

But I have serious doubts as to whether it is a rover as the tracks are very short and stop near what appears to be the top of the rille [valley].

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0f22982bb87f.jpg[/atsimg]

Personal Disclosure: I think its some space junk that has crashed and then rolled down and into a crater.

Originally posted by backinblack
reply to post by qmantoo

 

Already a thread on this...

no link

Is it not one of the Russian moon rover's?

Its near the Apollo landing site...

Wiki

In fact I'm sure it is....

reply to post by roughycannon

In 2010, nearly forty years after the 1971 loss of signal from Lunokhod 1, the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed its tracks and final location, and researchers, using a telescopic pulsed-laser rangefinder, detected the robot's retroreflector.[2]

So that's what you think it is? Seems plausible. Interesting photograph either way. Any higher resolution versions?

No link because I can't remember the thread title..

But I believe it was on the far side of the moon so not Apollo..

Originally posted by roughycannon
In fact I'm sure it is....

This photo does not match up.
1) Path does not turn
2) Where is the debris item on the path
3) Note the two craters on each side of the trail near the object
4) No crater with light ejecta rays bottom left




What happened to you photo?!?

Wider view looking for the crater with light ejecta rays, not found.




OK it could be lighting angle as there appears to be a mound not lit in the new image. Yet the path does not turn, could it be angle of image? Yet those two craters near the object seem to be missing.

Thoughts?

reply to post by roughycannon


Explanation: Uhmmm?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1181f0c8bb82.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/16ee56dbfa42.jpg[/atsimg]

Personal Disclosure: That's quite a feat if either of them went 500+km. Are you absolutely sure?

reply to post by backinblack


Ive got a vague memory of that thread.... and I think it was decided it was boulders because of the repeating pattern of the 'track'

Pretty sure I posted in the thread but I cant find it either now

Awesome resoultion of a picture, what size of telescope did they use?

Believe it or not, sometimes using a SMALLER aperture is better than a large aperture to see moon anomolies.

Also heating in the telescope tube (the dome is the culpret here) can cause optical problems due to heat differentials along the tube.

Originally posted by JennaDarling

Awesome resoultion of a picture, what size of telescope did they use?

LROC about 50 km away from the site, (above).

reply to post by OmegaLogos

Lunokhod 2 operated for about 4 months, covered 37 km (23 miles) of terrain, including hilly upland areas and rilles, and sent back 86 panoramic images and over 80,000 TV pictures. The 37 km journey remains the longest any robotic rover has ever been driven on another celestial body. Many mechanical tests of the surface, laser ranging measurements, and other experiments were completed during this time.

WIKI

reply to post by Versa


Explanation: I fully agree! I have looked at what I thought it was [a crashed bit of space junk] and I can no longer support that as there is NO IMPACT crater and I started to think it might of crashed where it is and due to momentum some bits broke off and rolled up the rille. As I cannot discern any space junk at the bottom of the picture where the trail appears to start [ie top of the rille] I am forced to agree that its most likely boulders that have rolled from that point as there are many boulders visible at the top of the rille.

Personal Disclosure: I did a screen grab of the area from this website...

wms.lroc.asu.edu...

And it was 710 pixels wide to cover the 1.5km width of the area. This gave me a 2.1m per pixel size guestimate.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9cc3389e34ab.jpg[/atsimg]

The objects is over 30m long and 10m wide! Its HUGE whatever it is?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d5a3dd044f7e.jpg[/atsimg]

Please note that the above picture is a screen grab of a highly zoomed original and rotated 90degree.

1 apparent pixel is 5real pixels. 1 apparent pixel = 2.1m^2 in size.

I hope this helps.

P.S. I'm now very disappointed I didn't upload all these pictures to my ATS media ItsARock album.
:shk:

The L2 was 2m x 2m and was trundling around in Mare Serenatatis
details of route here.Also details of size, shape, virtual reality mockup etc.


Phil Stooke who is credited with discovering the near whereabouts (killing crater) of Lunokhod2 forum posts here, however he did not get it quite right as to the final resting place of the actual rover itself, which was determined by Sergei Gerasimenko, Kharkov University. This page shows where the L2 is and I dont think it is the one we are talking about.

Planetry org article
with final resting place image

The lunokhod 2 is owned by Richard Garriott of the USA (see the forum link above for details)

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/71907c47c59e.png[/atsimg]

taking the size of the object into account the tracks themselves (or boulder trail) must be fairly large and deep too - bigger than 2m wide which is the span of the L2 wheelbase. See the link above for dimensions of L2. Also the right track appears to be a little strange as it goes out and in, whereas the left track is pretty straight.

reply to post by OmegaLogos


Hmmm. This is getting interesting. It would appear to be larger than your average lunar rover. Perhaps a satellite? It definitely has shape and structure imo.

red lines appear to be the direction the 'thing' is travelling (or was travelling). There do not appear to be 4 wheels on each side as far as I can make out, there may only be 2 each side.

Red arrows show 2 white things, the bottom one is right in the middle of the track and is clearly raised as it is throwing a substansial shadow. The top larger white 'thing' is also throwing a large shadow but may be on the crest and to the left slightly of the left track.

If you look, you can see how the tracks come together between the larger areas (shown by the green arrows)and in those larger areas there is a raised mound shown by the orange arrows pointing to a larger shadow.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a5c6cdcf8289.png[/atsimg]

Ray Cunningham's flikr picture of full-sized lunokhod in museum
www.flickr.com...