Friday, September 4, 2009

LRO zooms in on Apollo 12, Surveyor 3

Left out of July's initial looks at the Apollo lunar landing sites, Lunar Reconnaissance Rover (LRO) Narrow Angle Camera's (LROC NAC) easily swept up this outstanding close-up of Apollo 12's perch on the northwestern rim of "Surveyor Crater" in the Sea of Storms last month.

In November 1969, Conrad and Bean accomplished the second manned landing on the Moon and surprised themselves, proving Apollo could land precisely on a pre-selected patch of ground, this one just 150 meters, easily with "walking distance" from Surveyor 3. The American unmanned lander was situated just where mission planners believed it to be, inside the small crater where it's 65 hour mission on the surface had ended two years earlier. [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University] FULL SCAN - ASU News - LROC News System

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