Orbiter’s photos offer trip down Apollo memory lane

Astronauts left behind more than an American flag when they left the moon.

NASA revealed this week photographs of a variety of space leftovers including moon rovers and footprints that remain visible almost 50 years later.

A NASA spacecraft, dubbed Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, zooming as low as 13 miles above the moon’s surface has captured some of the sharpest images ever taken of the moon landing sites.

NASA’s Apollo moon landing missions took place from 1969 to 1972.

“We can retrace the astronauts’ steps with greater clarity to see where they took lunar samples,” Noah Petro, a lunar geologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement.

The photos are available at https://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/.

The astronauts’ footprints, the flag they planted and the tracks laid down by their moon buggy are visible.

“The images also show where the astronauts placed some of the scientific instruments that provided the first insight into the moon’s environment and interior,” NASA said.

At each site are trails that run to the west of the landers, where the astronauts placed the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package to monitor the moon’s environment and interior.

“This equipment was a key part of every Apollo mission,” NASA said. “It provided the first insights into the moon’s internal structure, measurements of the lunar surface pressure and the composition of its atmosphere.”

The photos are taken from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s two narrow-angle cameras that have resolutions down to about 3 feet. A third, wide-angle camera is taking color and ultraviolet images over the complete lunar surface at an almost 330-foot resolution. The technology was developed at Arizona State University.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on June 18, 2009. NASA said the mission was intended to be the first step to extend human presence in the solar system.

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