Apollo: The History and The Hoax - The Return - The New Lunar Probe Missions.

Conspiracy Claims: I'll believe that Apollo was real when I see photos taken by a probe of the hardware on the moon

History Claims: Until the arrival of the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) in lunar orbit, no lunar probe had the resolution to photograph the Apollo hardware. Even the LRO has limited capably to do this and images of the hardware will be poor with the equipment taking up only a small area of the photo.

The History of Lunar Mapping

Prior to Apollo the surface of the moon was mapped out by the American Lunar Orbiter Probes as well as many of the Soviet Luna Probes. After the Apollo Programme there was a 20 year gap before another probe was sent to the moon. On this page we look at the recent probes that have been sent and their results as it applies to evidence towards the Apollo missions.

In the past fifteen years the number of robotic missions returning to the moon has steadily increased. The first major return probe was Clementine which was launched in 1994. Its mission was to map the surface of the moon and determine what the mineral content of the lunar surface was. Unfortunately the cameras onboard Clementine were far from able to see the Apollo hardware, but they did leave us with some interesting data that points towards the authenticity of the Apollo programme.

The image above is taken of the Apollo 15 landing site using one of the Clementine probe's non-visible light camera. It shows three areas of interest, disturbed lunar soil, one of which is in the exact spot of the Apollo 15 landing site (A). The other two disturbances are believed to be meteor impacts, one of which may have been the comet fragment that was detected impacting near by the Apollo 15 site several months after the mission.

The next probe to orbit the moon was the Lunar Prospector. Again this probe's cameras were not of high enough resolution to capture images of the Apollo hardware, however again it returned data that added to the authenticity of the Apollo programme. This time it was the discovery of the Procellarum KREEP Terrane, a small province on the near side of the Moon that has high abundances of KREEP (Potassium, Rare Earth Elements and Phosphorus) minerals. Purely by coincidence, half of the Apollo Missions landed in this area, and so the rocks those crews collected are of the KREEP type. Previous to the 1998, it was believed that KREEP rocks were found over a large portion of the moon, but Lunar Prospector showed that this was not so. In 1969 and 1970, NASA had no way of knowing this, and so had no way to determine which sites would produce the KREEP based rocks and which sites should not. Lunar Prospector thus backed up the finding in the rocks collected by Apollo 12, 14 and 15.

The next probe to orbit the moon was Smart-1 in 2003. Initially there was a lot of hope for this mission when it was rumoured that the camera onboard would be able to resolve the Apollo Hardware. Unfortunately this was not to be, and with a resolution of around 90m per pixel, while it did image the landing sites, the images it returned were of about the same resolution as the Hubble Telescope could produce.

The next probe to arrive, and the next to add authenticity to Apollo was the Japanese Probe Kaguya, or Selene in 2007. Again the initial rumours were that Kaguya would have a camera capable of resolving the Apollo hardware. Unfortunately again this was to be untrue. However the spacecraft was equipped with special stereo cameras, the images from which were used to create computer modelled 3D images of the lunar surface. They imaged and modelled areas of the Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 landing sites, and achieved the following results, showing that the NASA Apollo imagery is most certainly consistent with the topography the Japanese probe discovered for the areas.

Apollo 15 Landing Site

Apollo 17 Landing Site

Also arriving in 2007 was the Chinese satellite, Chang'e 1, which was to map the moon for their coming manned lunar landing. Like the previous probes there was some speculation about Chang'e's ability to resolve the Apollo artefacts, however once again, the mission of the spacecraft meant that the resolution required (1m per pixel) was well beyond the range of the probe's cameras.

In 2008 the next probe was to reach the moon and this too imaged the Apollo sites. The Indian probe was called Chandrayaan and with a 5m per pixel resolution there was some speculation as to if this would finally produce images of the hardware that was left behind by Apollo. Unfortunately once again the lack of resolution left both sides of the argument without a result.

This has meant that the latest probe to arrive (July 2009) is the best chance for a resolution to the situation. NASA's LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) does have a camera capable of seeing the lunar hardware. Once again spectacular claims are being made about the cameras onboard, however the best resolution that will be able to be gained is about 1m per pixel meaning that even with the best images, the lunar bases will only show up as about 100 pixels (an area 10x10). It will not be able to image the hardware well enough to see the decals or make out the details, it certainly would not be able to see something the size of a number plate. Even if it could, there would be no sign of the flags since they would be being viewed directly from above and besides that, they have been exposed to 20 years of unfiltered sunlight (50% of the 40 years since they were left there.)

The first images of the Apollo sites were taken as the LRO approached its final orbit, and already they have proven to bolster the case for the missions being real. NASA has so far released images taken for the Apollo 11, 14, 15, 16 and 17 landing sites, each clearly showing a bright object on the surface, casting a long shadow due to the low angle of the sun. The image for Apollo 14 shows a area disturbed by footprints and also the deployed ALSEP. The Apollo 17 image shows faint signs of rover tracks.

NASA admits that these are not the best images they will be able to gain from the LRO, and expect new images two to three times better once the LRO has settled into its final orbit.

Poster rodionh on the ApolloHoax Forum posted this computer simulation of the LM Descent Stage shadow should look like allowing us to compare it to those shown by NASA.

So far the only response from those that claim Apollo was hoaxed has been denial and claims of photo manipulation, something that is neither unexpected nor likely to change with further images from the LRO.

There are more missions planned by Japan, India and China. Perhaps one of these missions will have a camera with a similar resolution to the LRO and more evidence will be added to the claim that men did indeed walk on the moon 40 years ago.