The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
spectrum.ieee.org
The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
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Re: The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
#2I always liked the story of the Lunokhod 1 - the first of the two Soviet Lunar Rovers. Both had reflectors for laser ranging, but Lunokhod 1 was carelessly misplaced in the early 1970s. So no more ranging until 2010 when the NASA reconnaissance orbiter found it again. They didn't lose the other one. :)
I think one of the Lunokhods still holds the record for the furthest ever travelled by an extra terrestrial vehicle.
Re: The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
#3I always liked the story of the Lunokhod 1 - the first of the two Soviet Lunar Rovers. Both had reflectors for laser ranging, but Lunokhod 1 was carelessly misplaced in the early 1970s. So no more ranging until 2010 when the NASA reconnaissance orbiter found it again. They didn't lose the other one. :) I think one of the Lunokhods still holds the record for the furthest ever travelled by an extra terrestrial vehicle.
The Opportunity rover has driven further than Lunokhod [1]. I believe Curiosity has since driven further.
Re: The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
#4It also highlights how few impacts the moon gets these days as any impact near this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroreflector would kick up moon dust and have a detrimental effect upon such a reflector.
Which is encouraging for any solar installations upon the moon for the one day, eventual moon base.
Re: The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
#5It also highlights how few impacts the moon gets these days as any impact near this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroreflector would kick up moon dust and have a detrimental effect upon such a reflector. Which is encouraging for any solar installations upon the moon for the one day, eventual moon base.
isn't the lack of impacts near the retroreflector due to the fact that the moon surface around the reflector is always facing earth?
Re: The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
#6It also highlights how few impacts the moon gets these days as any impact near this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroreflector would kick up moon dust and have a detrimental effect upon such a reflector. Which is encouraging for any solar installations upon the moon for the one day, eventual moon base.
isn't the lack of impacts near the retroreflector due to the fact that the moon surface around the reflector is always facing earth?
The earth covers a pretty small part of the sky for the moon, so I'm not sure it would have that much effect?
Re: The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
#7You would think the reflectors being on the moon would shut up the “moon landings were faked” crowd.
Re: The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
#8You would think the reflectors being on the moon would shut up the “moon landings were faked” crowd.
Alas, that's not how it works. Any video you could show of the laser experiment would also be faked. Even if you were to set them in front of the equipment, that'd be faked too. I often wonder as a thought-experiment what would happen if you bundled them onto a Musk style space tourism rocket and flew them to the moon to see the flag (for a bonus they can look back to see the spherical Earth) and then back, would they even then believe the conspiracy or their lyin' eyes?
(Then I catch myself on and realise it wouldn't even theoretically be worth wasting all that effort and money on someone so determined to be willfully ignorant. We live in a world where schoolkids can send a camera high enough to see the curvature of the Earth, yet we are to believe people who have made the denial of this a core of their identity do not see fit to replicate the experiment?)
Re: The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
#9You would think the reflectors being on the moon would shut up the “moon landings were faked” crowd.
Alas, that's not how it works. Any video you could show of the laser experiment would also be faked. Even if you were to set them in front of the equipment, that'd be faked too. I often wonder as a thought-experiment what would happen if you bundled them onto a Musk style space tourism rocket and flew them to the moon to see the flag (for a bonus they can look back to see the spherical Earth) and then back, would the…
I tell them that it’s faked and that NASA hired Stanley Kubrick to film the whole thing. He did such a good job because he filmed it on location.
Re: The lunar laser ranging experiment is still going 50 years later
#10I have long wondered how easy it would be to perform this experiment as an amateur. Powerful lasers are quite cheap now. You could get a telescope (doubling as a beam expander and receiver), and some filters to only allow the laser wavelength to your detector.