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The locations of lunar retroreflectors left by Apollo (A) and Luna (L) missions. Retroreflectors are devices which reflect light back to its source. Six were left at six sites on the Moon by three crews of the Apollo program, two by remote landers of the Lunokhod program, and one by the Chandrayaan program. [1]
Annotated image of the near side of the Moon showing the location of retroreflectors left on the surface by Apollo and Lunokhod missions [19]. The distance to the Moon is calculated approximately using the equation: distance = (speed of light × duration of delay due to reflection) / 2.
APOLLO shooting a laser at the Moon. The laser pulse is reflected from the retroreflectors on the Moon (see below) and returned to the telescope. The round-trip time tells the distance to the Moon to great accuracy. In this picture the Moon is very over-exposed, needed to make the laser beam visible. Apollo 15 Lunar Ranging Retro-Reflector (LRRR).
The Moon's surface can scatter a laser beam and produce a sufficiently strong enough signal to be detected on Earth, resulting in ranging measurements that were accurate to within 120 meters (390 ft). Beyond this though the effects of terrain became problematic, and when combined with a returned signal strength that is both weak and temporally ...
Map of the Moon from the Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas (1881) by Richard Andree. The following historically notable lunar maps and atlases are arranged in chronological order by publication date. Michael van Langren, engraved map, 1645. Johannes Hevelius, Selenographia, 1647. Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Almagestum ...
The Apollo 12 Lunar Module Intrepid prepares to descend towards the surface of the Moon. 1969 NASA photo by Richard F. Gordon Jr. The physical exploration of the Moon began when Luna 2, a space probe launched by the Soviet Union, made a deliberate impact on the surface of the Moon on September 14, 1959. Prior to that the only available means of ...
Ben Bussey and Paul Spudis, The Clementine Atlas of the Moon, Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-521-81528-2. Antonín Rükl, Atlas of the Moon, Kalmbach Books, 1990, ISBN 0-913135-17-8. Ewen A. Whitaker, Mapping and Naming the Moon, Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-62248-4.
Aristarchus is a lunar impact crater that lies in the northwest part of the Moon's near side. It is considered the brightest of the large formations on the lunar surface, with an albedo nearly double that of most lunar features.