Hyperwall: Scouting the Apollo 11 Landing Site
The earliest close-ups were taken by Ranger 8 in 1965. The Ranger spacecraft were equipped with multiple video cameras that sent back still images every few seconds. The Rangers didn't orbit the Moon. They were instead designed to impact the surface. This allowed the cameras to take extreme close-ups in the final few seconds before impact.
The Lunar Orbiter program comprised five spacecraft, all of which took pictures from orbit. To achieve the highest possible resolution with the technology of the time, the cameras recorded images onto 70 mm film that was automatically developed onboard. The developed film was then scanned in strips by a video camera that transmitted the image, one strip at a time, back to Earth.
Lunar Orbiter used Kodak Bimat Transfer Film, similar to Polaroid instant film. The splotchy streaks visible in some Orbiter images are the result of the Bimat webbing sticking to the emulsion as it was peeled away, which tended to happen when the Bimat material was left in contact with the film for too long.
The images here can be found at the following locations.
- Apollo 10 Image Library of the Apollo Flight Journal
- Ranger 8 Camera B at the Lunar and Planetary Institute
- Lunar Orbiter Photo Gallery at LPI
- Apollo photographs at the National Archives
- Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera
This overhead image from Lunar Orbiter V is possibly the best pre-landing image of the Apollo 11 landing site, circled in green. The small crater at 3 o'clock within the circle is Little West, which Neil Armstrong walked to during his time on the surface. The well-defined crater about three circle-widths to the right is West. Ejecta from West comprised the boulder field the astronauts avoided during the landing. Image 76 H3.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Image processing
- Ernie Wright (USRA) [Lead]
Scientist
- Noah Petro (NASA/GSFC)
Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET)
Datasets used in this visualization
LRO NAC (A.K.A. Narrow Angle Camera) (Collected with the LROC sensor)
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related pages
A New Look at the Apollo 11 Landing Site
July 18, 2014, 5 a.m.
Read moreThe Apollo 11 landing site visualized in three dimensions using photography and a stereo digital elevation model from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Transcript.This video is also available on our YouTube channel. Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20th, 1969, a little after 4:00 in the afternoon Eastern Daylight Time. The Lunar Module, nicknamed Eagle and flown by Neil Armstrong and Edwin boots are still clearly visible in photographs of the landing site taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) narrow-angle camera (LROC) more than four decades later.LROC imagery makes it possible to visit the landing site in a whole new way by flying around a three-dimensional model of the site. LROC scientists created the digital elevation model using a stereo pair of images. Each image in the pair shows the site from a slightly different angle, allowing sophisticated software to infer the shape of the terrain, similar to the way that left and right eye views are combined in the brain to produce the perception of depth.The animator draped an LROC photograph over the terrain model. He also added a 3D model of the LM descent stagethe real LM in the photograph looks oddly flat when viewed at an oblique angle.Although the area around the site is relatively flat by lunar standards, West Crater (the big brother of the crater visited by Armstrong) appears in dramatic relief near the eastern edge of the terrain model. Ejecta from West comprises the boulders that Armstrong had to avoid as he searched for a safe landing site.Apollo 11 was the first of six increasingly ambitious crewed lunar landings. The exploration of the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts, when combined with the wealth of remote sensing data now being returned by LRO, continues to inform our understanding of our nearest neighbor in space. The unedited visualization used in the feature. The camera zooms up to the Apollo 11 Lunar Module as seen in LROC NAC image M175124932R, then the view tilts and rotates to reveal the topography of the landing site. The animation loops seamlessly. Three photographs taken on the surface of the Moon by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong. Fellow moonwalker Buzz Aldrin is setting up the retroreflector and seismometer experiments that are also visible in LROC images of the site. The flag and TV camera are in the background to the left of the LM. The waxing crescent Moon as it appeared from Earth on July 20, 1969. The blue dot marks the site of the Apollo 11 landing in Mare Tranquillitatis, where it was early morning.