"minus 6 million years. The test was done by a group of researchers headed by Alexander Nemchin at Curtin University of Technology in Bentley, Australia. The detection on Earth of reflections from laser ranging retro-reflectors (LRRRs, or mirrors used as targets for Earth-based tracking lasers) on Lunar Laser Ranging experiments left on the Moon is evidence of landings. Quoting from James Hansen's biography of Neil Armstrong, """": For those few misguided souls who still cling to the belief that the Moon landings never happened, examination of the results of five decades of LRRR experiments should evidence how delusional their rejection"
"are bounced off mirrors on the surface of the moon, emplaced during the Apollo missions of 1969 to 1972 and by Lunokhod 2 in 1973. Measuring the return time of the pulse yields a very accurate measure of the distance. These measurements are fitted to the equations of motion. This yields numerical values for the Moon's secular deceleration, i.e. negative acceleration, in longitude and the rate of change of the semimajor axis of the Earth–Moon ellipse. From the period 1970–2012, the results are: This is consistent with results from satellite laser ranging (SLR), a similar technique applied to artificial satellites"
"the Moon, except the two for the aborted Apollo 13 mission which did not land on the Moon. Lunar plaque The Lunar plaques are stainless steel commemorative plaques measuring attached to the ladders on the descent stages of the United States Apollo Lunar Modules flown on lunar landing missions Apollo 11 through Apollo 17, to be left permanently on the lunar surface. The plaques were originally suggested and designed by NASA's head of technical services Jack Kinzler, who oversaw their production. All of the plaques bear facsimiles of the participating astronauts' signatures. For this reason, an extra plaque had to"
"by the crew of Apollo 12, which landed near it in 1969. The camera from this craft is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. The program performed several other services beyond its primary goal of demonstrating soft landings. The ability of spacecraft to make midcourse corrections was demonstrated, and the landers carried instruments to help evaluate the suitability of their landing sites for manned Apollo landings. Several Surveyor spacecraft had robotic shovels designed to test lunar soil mechanics. Before the Soviet Luna 9 mission (landing four months before Surveyor 1) and the Surveyor project,"
"Moon. Additional reflectors were left by the Apollo 14 and Apollo 15 astronauts, and two French-built reflector arrays were placed on the Moon by the Soviet Luna 17 (Lunokhod 1) and Luna 21 (Lunokhod 2) lunar rover missions. Over the years since, many groups and experiments have used this technique to study the behavior of the Earth-Moon system, investigating gravitational and other effects. For the first few years, the distance between the observatory and the reflectors could be measured to about 25 cm accuracy. Improved techniques and equipment lead to accuracies of 12–16 cm until about 1984. Then McDonald Observatory"
"Lunar Laser Ranging experiment The ongoing Lunar Laser Ranging experiment measures the distance between Earth and the Moon using laser ranging. Lasers on Earth are aimed at retroreflectors planted on the Moon during the Apollo program (11, 14, and 15), the two Lunokhod missions, and the upcoming MoonLIGHT retroreflector to be deployed by the private MX-1E lander. The time for the reflected light to return is measured, and the distance is calculated. The first successful tests were carried out in 1962 when a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology succeeded in observing laser pulses reflected from the Moon's surface"
"November 19, 1969. Astronauts Conrad and Bean examined the spacecraft, and they brought back about 10 kg of parts of the Surveyor to the Earth, including its TV camera, which is now on permanent display in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The soil mechanics surface sampler was designed to dig, scrape, and trench the lunar surface and to transport lunar surface material while being photographed so that the properties of the lunar surface could be determined. The sampler was mounted below the television camera and consisted primarily of a scoop approximately 120 mm long and 50"
"to the lunar surface on 6 November and landed in the southernmost portion of Mare Crisium. Landing coordinates were 13° north latitude and 62° east longitude. During landing in ""unfavorable"" terrain, the lander's drilling device was evidently damaged, preventing fulfillment of the primary mission, the return of lunar soil to Earth. Scientists devised a makeshift plan to conduct a limited science exploration program with the stationary lander. Controllers maintained contact with the spacecraft until 9 November 1974. High resolution orbital photographs taken by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and released in March 2012 showed the ""Luna 23"" spacecraft lying on"
"the Apollo 12 mission landed next to the Surveyor 3 spacecraft, demonstrating precision landing capability. The use of a manned vehicle on the Moon's surface was demonstrated in 1971 with the Lunar Rover during Apollo 15. Apollo 16 made the first landing within the rugged lunar highlands. However, interest in further exploration of the Moon was beginning to wane among the American public. In 1972, Apollo 17 was the final Apollo lunar mission, and further planned missions were scrapped at the directive of President Nixon. Instead, focus was turned to the Space Shuttle and crewed missions in near Earth orbit."
"analyzed in glovebox vacuum chambers. The quarantine requirement was dropped beginning with Apollo 15 and the LRL was used for study, distribution and safe storage of the lunar samples. Between 1969 and 1972, six Apollo space flight missions brought back 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface. The six space flights returned 2200 separate samples from six different exploration sites on the lunar surface. (Other lunar samples were returned to Earth by three automated Soviet spacecraft, named Luna 16, Luna 20, and Luna 24, which returned samples totaling 300 grams"
"precise ongoing measurements of the distance to the Moon from Earth. A solar-powered seismometer was also left to measure moonquakes, but this stopped functioning after 21 days. Various gear that was no longer needed for the return phase of the mission—including Aldrin's boots—was left behind to lighten the craft for return to lunar orbit. As the site of the first human landing on an extraterrestrial body, Tranquility Base has cultural and historic significance. The U.S. states of California and New Mexico have listed it on their heritage registers, since their laws require only that listed sites have some association with"
"on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) images of the lunar surface. Subsequent discussions with their American counterparts ended with an agreed-upon final distance of , which has stuck since. The Soviet Mars 2 and Mars 3 landers each had a small 4.5 kg Mars rover on board, which would have moved across the surface on skis while connected to the lander with a 15-meter umbilical. Two small metal rods were used for autonomous obstacle avoidance, as radio signals from Earth would have taken too long to drive the rovers using remote control. The rover was planned to be placed on the"
"and a Soviet team at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory. During the Apollo missions in 1969, astronauts placed retroreflectors on the surface of the Moon for the purpose of refining the accuracy of this technique. The measurements are ongoing and involve multiple laser facilities. The instantaneous accuracy of the Lunar Laser Ranging experiments can exceed sub-millimeter resolution, and is the most reliable method of determining the lunar distance, to date. Due to the modern accessibility of accurate timing devices, high resolution digital cameras, GPS receivers, powerful computers and near-instantaneous communication, it has become possible for amateur astronomers to make high accuracy"
"this time. ""Lunokhod 2"" was thought to have covered based on wheel rotations but Russian scientists at the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography (MIIGAiK) revised that to an estimated distance of about based on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) images of the lunar surface. Subsequent discussions with their American counterparts ended with an agreed-upon final distance of ; an international team has confirmed that the methods used to calculate the two rovers' odometry is consistent and comparable from the moon to Mars. The Lunokhod rover held the record for off-Earth roving distance until July 27, 2014, when NASA's Mars"
"a small bar magnet attached to one footpad, and an alpha-scattering instrument as well as the necessary engineering equipment. It landed on November 10, 1967, in Sinus Medii, 0.49 deg in latitude and 1.40 deg w longitude (selenographic coordinates)–the center of the moon's visible hemisphere. The spacecraft accomplished all planned objectives. The successful completion of this mission satisfied the Surveyor program's obligation to the Apollo project. On November 24, 1967, the spacecraft was shut down for the two-week lunar night. Contact was made on December 14, 1967, but no useful data was obtained. Lunar soil surveys were completed using photographic"
"had performed hundreds of mechanical and chemical surveys of the soil. The Soviets later revealed that during a conference on planetary exploration in Moscow, 29 January to 2 February 1973 (that is, after the landing of ""Luna 21""), an American scientist had given photos of the lunar surface around the ""Luna 21"" landing site to a Soviet engineer in charge of the ""Lunokhod 2"" mission. These photos, taken prior to the Apollo 17 landing, were later used by the ""driver team"" to navigate the new rover on its mission on the Moon. ""Luna 21"" and ""Lunokhod 2"", still on the"
"kilometers at 19°35' inclination. In addition to its primary mission of surface photography, ""Luna 22"" also performed investigations to determine the chemical composition of the lunar surface, recorded meteoroid activity, searched for a lunar magnetic field, measured solar and cosmic radiation flux, and continued studies of the irregular magnetic field. Through various orbital changes, Luna 22 performed without any problems and continued to return photos fifteen months into the mission, although its primary mission had ended by 2 April 1975. The spacecraft's maneuvering propellant was finally depleted on 2 September, and the highly successful mission was formally terminated in early"
"reflectors continues to degrade with age. The upcoming MoonLIGHT reflector, that will be landed in 2019, is designed to increase measurement accuracy 100 times over existing systems. Lunar laser ranging measurement data is available from the Paris Observatory Lunar Analysis Center, and the active stations. Some of the findings of this long-term experiment are: Lunar Laser Ranging experiment The ongoing Lunar Laser Ranging experiment measures the distance between Earth and the Moon using laser ranging. Lasers on Earth are aimed at retroreflectors planted on the Moon during the Apollo program (11, 14, and 15), the two Lunokhod missions, and the"
"the laser is aimed at the Apollos 11, 14 or 15 landing sites; otherwise the expected featureless distribution is observed. The Apollo reflectors are still in use. Strictly speaking, although retroreflectors left by Apollo astronauts are strong evidence that human-manufactured artifacts currently exist on the Moon and that human visitors left them there, they are not, on their own, ""conclusive"" evidence. Unmanned missions are known to have placed such objects on the Moon as early as 1970. Smaller retroreflectors were carried by the unmanned landers Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2 in 1970 and 1973, respectively. The location of Lunokhod 1"
"a Moon landing took place in 1962 during the Rangers 3, 4 and 5 missions flown by the United States. All three Block II missions basic vehicles were 3.1 m high and consisted of a lunar capsule covered with a balsa wood impact-limiter, 650 mm in diameter, a mono-propellant mid-course motor, a retrorocket with a thrust of , and a gold- and chrome-plated hexagonal base 1.5 m in diameter. This lander (code-named ""Tonto"") was designed to provide impact cushioning using an exterior blanket of crushable balsa wood and an interior filled with incompressible liquid freon. A 42 kg (56 pounds)"
"of the Moon landing really is. The NASA-independent ""Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur"", McDonald, Apache Point, and Haleakalā observatories regularly use the Apollo LRRR. Lick Observatory attempted to detect from Apollo 11's retroreflector while Armstrong and Aldrin were still on the Moon but did not succeed until August 1, 1969. The Apollo 14 astronauts deployed a retroreflector on February 5, 1971, and McDonald Observatory detected it the same day. The Apollo 15 retroreflector was deployed on July 31, 1971, and was detected by McDonald Observatory within a few days. The image on the left shows what is considered some of"
"Moon for seismic studies. The most likely explanation appears to be the S-IVB third stage for Apollo 12. NASA had originally planned to direct the S-IVB into a solar orbit, but an extra long burn of the ullage motors meant that venting the remaining propellant in the tank of the S-IVB did not give the rocket stage enough energy to escape the Earth–Moon system, and instead the stage ended up in a semi-stable orbit around the Earth after passing by the Moon on November 18, 1969. It is thought that J002E3 left Earth orbit in June 2003, and that it"
"The last NASA lunar mission was Apollo 17, launched in 1972. The next Apollo mission, not counting the Skylab missions, was the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, coordinated by the United States and the former Soviet Union in 1975. However, its mission was to remain in low-Earth orbit and to dock with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft, something it accomplished successfully. Some mistakenly refer to that mission as Apollo 18. Some of the stages for the Saturn V rockets intended for NASA’s three cancelled lunar missions had already been constructed before their cancellation. According to the hoaxer's story, these were all used for"
"Lunar plaque The Lunar plaques are stainless steel commemorative plaques measuring attached to the ladders on the descent stages of the United States Apollo Lunar Modules flown on lunar landing missions Apollo 11 through Apollo 17, to be left permanently on the lunar surface. The plaques were originally suggested and designed by NASA's head of technical services Jack Kinzler, who oversaw their production. All of the plaques bear facsimiles of the participating astronauts' signatures. For this reason, an extra plaque had to be made for Apollo 13 due to the late replacement of one crew member. The first (Apollo 11)"
"Ranging measurements, obtained using Earth-bound lasers and special retro-reflectors placed on the surface of the Moon. The time-of-flight of a pulse of laser light to one of the reflectors and back gives a measure of the Moon's distance at that time. The first of five reflectors that are operational today was taken to the Moon in the ""Apollo 11"" spacecraft in July 1969 and placed in a suitable position on the Moon's surface by Neil Armstrong. Its precision is still being extended further by the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation, established in 2005. The lunar theory, as developed numerically"
"became the first probe to achieve a soft landing on another planetary body. It returned five black and white stereoscopic circular panoramas, which were the first close-up shots of the Lunar surface. ""Luna 10"" (March 1966) became the first artificial satellite of the Moon. ""Luna 17"" (November 1970) and ""Luna 21"" (January 1973) carried the Lunokhod vehicles, which roamed around on the Moon's terrain. Another major achievement of the Luna programme, with ""Luna 16"" (September 1970), ""Luna 20"" (February 1972) and ""Luna 24"" (August 1976), was the ability to collect samples of lunar soil and return them to Earth. The"
"time this had happened, the alignment of Earth and Mars necessary to launch spacecraft had ended, and the Soviets were unable to launch any further Mars probes until 1971. It also resulted in delays to a number of Luna spacecraft scheduled for launch in 1969.The accident left a deep impression on Soviet military personnel attending the launch and helped spur the development of next-generation ballistic missiles with safer solid propellants. Mars 2M No.522 Mars 2M No.522, also known as Mars M-69 No.522 and sometimes identified by NASA as Mars 1969B, was a Soviet spacecraft which was lost in a launch"
"of the Moon are based on a combination of Earth-based telescope observations, measurements from orbiting spacecraft, lunar samples, and geophysical data. Six locations were sampled directly during the crewed Apollo program landings from 1969 to 1972, which returned of lunar rock and lunar soil to Earth. In addition, three robotic Soviet Luna spacecraft returned another from 1970 to 1976. The Moon is the only extraterrestrial body for which we have samples with a known geologic context. A handful of lunar meteorites have been recognized on Earth, though their source craters on the Moon are unknown. A substantial portion of the"
"in order to optimize the operation of various experiments, lowering the perilune to as little as 25 km. Maneuvering fuel was exhausted on 2 September and the mission was ended in early November. ""Luna 22"" was the second of two ""advanced"" lunar orbiters (the first being Luna 19) designed to conduct extensive scientific surveys from orbit. Launched about a year after the termination of ""Lunokhod 2"" operations on the lunar surface, ""Luna 20"" performed a single mid-course correction en route the Moon on 30 May before entering lunar orbit on 2 June 1974. Initial orbital parameters were 219 × 222"
"reality with his ""google n' gloves"" system. 1968 Turtle Excluder Device 1968 Zipper (ride) 1969 Lunar Module The Lunar Module was the lander portion of spacecraft built for the ""Apollo program"" by Grumman in order to achieve the transit from cislunar orbit to the surface and back. The module was also known as the LM from the manufacturer designation. NASA achieved the first test flight on January 22, 1968 using a Saturn V rocket. Six successful missions carried twelve astronauts, the first being Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969, to the moon surface and safely back home"
"Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation The Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation, or APOLLO, is a project at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. It is an extension and advancement of previous Lunar Laser Ranging experiments, which use retroreflectors on the Moon to track changes in lunar orbital distance and motion. Using telescopes on Earth, the reflectors on the Moon, and accurate timing of laser pulses, by the early 2000s scientists could measure and predict the orbit of the Moon to an accuracy of a few centimeters. This already impressive accuracy (the Moon is typically about 385,000 km"
"the radio chatter of Earth. The lunar soil, although it poses a problem for any moving parts of telescopes, can be mixed with carbon nanotubes and epoxies and employed in the construction of mirrors up to 50 meters in diameter. A lunar zenith telescope can be made cheaply with an ionic liquid. In April 1972, the Apollo 16 mission recorded various astronomical photos and spectra in ultraviolet with the Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph. Although ""Luna"" landers scattered pennants of the Soviet Union on the Moon, and U.S. flags were symbolically planted at their landing sites by the Apollo astronauts, no nation"
"soft landings and took the first pictures from the lunar surface during the Luna 9 and Luna 13 missions. The U.S. followed with five unmanned Surveyor soft landings. The Soviet Union achieved the first unmanned lunar soil sample return with the Luna 16 probe on 24 September 1970. This was followed by Luna 20 and Luna 24 in 1972 and 1976, respectively. Following the failure at launch in 1969 of the first Lunokhod, Luna E-8 No.201, the Luna 17 and Luna 21 were successful unmanned lunar rover missions in 1970 and 1973. Many missions were failures at launch. In addition,"