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Apollo mission spotted on Moon

By Daniel Smith on Nov 2, 09 06:46 PM

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All those crazy moon conspiracists are living on borrowed time.

One of their complaints has ways been a lack of pictures of the lunar landing sights from any of our telescopes or lunar probes.

Well this photo shows we're pretty close to finally ending this ridiculous argument once and for all.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has moved its orbit to just 30 miles (50km) over the Moon's surface as it happily goes about its job of mapping the surface.

And it just so happened to take a photo of the Apollo 17 landing site.

It shows the module, US flag and even the tracks made by the lunar rover used by the last men on the moon all of 37 years ago.

Experiments and antennae placed by spacemen Jack Schmitt (the only proper scientist to make it on Apollo) and Gene Cernan (tough as nails test pilot who makes Russell Crowe look like Julian Clary) can also be seen.

Click on the photo for a closer view.

Weird Science Factoid: The aforementioned Gene Cernan holds the moon surface speed record of 17kph, downhill, in a Rover. His buddy Schmitt thought that was a little too fast!

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Authors

Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.

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