Posted on 03/16/2010 9:10:38 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
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. Phil Stooke, a professor cross appointed to Western's Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Geography, published a major reference book on lunar exploration in 2007 entitled, "The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration."
Yesterday, images and data from Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) were posted. The LRO, scheduled for a one year exploration mission about 31 miles above the lunar surface, will produce a comprehensive map, search for resources and potential safe landing sites and measure lunar temperatures and radiation levels.
Using his atlas and the NASA images, Stooke pinpointed the exact location of the Russian rover Lunokhod 2, discovering tracks left by the lunar sampler 37 years ago after it made a 35-kilometre trek. The journey was the longest any robotic rover has ever been driven on another celestial body.
As soon as the NASA photos were released, scientists around the world, including Stooke, began work to locate the rover. Stooke set up a searchable image database and located the photograph he needed, among thousands of others
(Excerpt) Read more at space-travel.com ...
*ping of possible interest*
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?
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
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.
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.
See post 23
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
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.
Then why did they lose the signal in 1973?
I guess you proved them wrong. You should write in.
Typical crappy journalism!
Thank you. How did they survive the Van Allen Belts? The Russians tried before we did it, and fried Cosmonauts. Why were we successful?
Thx thx.
Will check it out.
Thanks for the link. What a great read!!!!
Hey, nice!
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).
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