Solving A 37-Year Old Space Mystery

SPX via Space Travel ^ | 3/16/2010 | SPX via Space Travel

[fieldmarshaldj]

*ping of possible interest*

[mwilli20]

What mystery are they talking about? Was there somebody who did not know where the rover was?

I think what he did was to find the rover in among the newly released pictures. BD! What was the mystery?

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Nobody knew where the rover was until high resolution photos from the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter found it.On June 4, 1973 it was announced that the program was completed, leading to speculation that the vehicle probably failed in mid-May or could not be revived after the lunar night of May-June 1973.Controllers saw the internal temperature of the Lunokhod climb as it was unable to cool itself, eventually rendering the rover inoperable

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

With this kind of sluething, is it possible they might find actual evidence of our manned lunar landings so many years ago? It would be interesting if they could prove us doubters wrong.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

A researcher from The University of Western Ontario has helped solve a 37-year old space mystery using lunar images released yesterday by NASA and maps from his own atlas of the moon.

What "mystery" is this reporter talking about? According to this NASA paper from back in 2002, Lunokhod 2 was detected by lunar laser ranging experiments and its position was known to sub-meter accuracy.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

See post 23

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Richard Garriott has more recently confirmed that he is the owner of Lunokhod 2. He is the the world’s only private owner of an object on a foreign celestial body

[Ronaldus Magnus]

See the link in post 25 or "Lunokhod 2 continues to be detected by lunar laser ranging experiments and its position is known to sub-meter accuracy".

The "mystery" in the article appears to be a false premise. Researchers knew exactly where it was and have been bouncing lasers off of it since at least 2002.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Then why did they lose the signal in 1973?

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

I guess you proved them wrong. You should write in.

[messierhunter]

They did so already:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2294803/posts

Since then they've released additional photos from an even lower orbit with much better resolution:


Apollo 11, foot trails, footpads and all.
Wider field view

[mwilli20]

The "mystery" in the article appears to be a false premise.

Typical crappy journalism!

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

Thank you. How did they survive the Van Allen Belts? The Russians tried before we did it, and fried Cosmonauts. Why were we successful?

[Quix]

Thx thx.

Will check it out.

[bmwcyle]

[colinhester]

Thanks for the link. What a great read!!!!

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, nice!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks sonofstrangelove.

• Canadian astronomer spots Soviet rover on moon

[messierhunter]

The Russians didn’t fry any cosmonauts in the belts, they did let a pair of dogs pass through them continuously for the better part of a month however. There were no signs of radiation poisoning even at that point, though their risk for cancer probably went up (n=2 is too small to tell statistically one way or the other though).