Apollo 16 Lands in the Lunar Highlands

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    ID: 4918 Visualization

    Apollo 15 Stand-Up EVA

    July 30th, 2021
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    FULL VERSION with Music: Excerpts of Apollo 15 Commander Dave Scott's stand-up EVA audio are combined with visuals of the Hadley-Apennine region created from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data.Music provided by Universal Production Music: “Spread Our Wings” – Ben BeinyWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel. || Apollo 15 landed on the Moon at 5:16 p.m. Houston time (22:16 UTC) on July 30, 1971. Two hours later, Commander Dave Scott and Lunar Module Pilot Jim Irwin depressurized the cabin of the Lunar Module and opened the top hatch. Scott then stood on the ascent engine cover, poked his head through the hatch, and for the next 25 minutes described and photographed the terrain of their landing site in the Hadley-Apennine region. This was the stand-up extravehicular activity (SEVA), an opportunity to quickly survey and report on the lunar landscape they'd be exploring over the next three days.For the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 15 mission, the video presented here uses elevation maps and images from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to visualize the Hadley-Apennine terrain. The camera pans across the Apennine mountains and Hadley Rille that border the region, then flies low over the surface to features that were explored up-close by the astronauts. The visuals are matched to audio excerpts of Commander Scott's descriptions during the SEVA.Because of its unique timing, Apollo 15 was the only mission to include a stand-up EVA. It was also the first of three missions to bring a lunar rover, an electric Moon car that allowed the astronauts to travel a total of 17 miles (28 km) and collect 170 pounds (77 kg) of samples. ||

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  • 
    ID: 4883 Visualization

    Apollo 14 Hike To Cone Crater

    Feb. 8th, 2021
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    Full Video with Narration: This video describes the hike toward Cone crater by Apollo 14 astronauts Al Shepard and Ed Mitchell, using a visualization created from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data.Music provided by Universal Production Music: “Taking Flight” – Ben Beiny.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel. || Apollo 14 landed on the Moon a little after 3:00 a.m. Houston time on February 5, 1971. The landing site in the Fra Mauro highlands had originally been the destination of Apollo 13 ten months earlier. The site is on the edge of a debris field created by the impact that formed Cone crater, 330 meters in diameter and about 1.5 kilometers away.On their second moonwalk, astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell hiked toward the crater, collecting samples of crater ejecta along the way. In theory, rocks blasted from the impact that lay closer to the crater were from deeper beneath the surface, creating a sequence that sampled the lunar crust down to the depth of the crater. But navigating to the crater was difficult. It was on the far side of a fairly steep incline and was never visible to the astronauts as they walked toward it, and they struggled to match features on their map with what they saw on the ground.Images of the site from the Narrow Angle Camera on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter record the path of the astronauts as a clearly visible trail of darker, disturbed regolith. Although they didn't know it at the time, Shepard and Mitchell came within 40 meters (135 feet) of the rim of Cone crater, close enough to collect some of the deepest ejecta, but not close enough to actually see the crater itself.This visualization uses LRO images and elevation data to recreate EVA 2, the hike to Cone crater. The camera flies near the ground, along the outbound path taken by the astronauts. Stops along the way are labeled with distance and elevation information. The journey ends by showing how close the astronauts came to a spectacular view of the crater. ||

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  • 
    ID: 4791 Visualization

    Apollo 13 Moon View Using LRO Data

    Feb. 24th, 2020
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    Path 75:02:00 − 80:01:50. The path of the Apollo 13 spacecraft near the Moon. The one-minute animation covers five hours of real time, at 10 seconds per frame. The view is centered on the lunar north pole, with the center of the near side facing the top of the frame. Versions both with and without the annotations in the bottom right are available, as are the separate components (Moon and path with alpha, starry background). || Using color and elevation maps from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, these visualizations recreate with unprecedented fidelity what the crew of Apollo 13 could see as they flew around the far side of the Moon. Several Apollo 13 photographs are at the bottom of the page for comparison. These visualizations have been incorporated into the multimedia recreation of the entire Apollo 13 mission in real time at apolloinrealtime.org.Apollo 13 would have been the third lunar landing mission in the Apollo program. But 56 hours into the flight, an explosion in the Service Module changed the flight into a rescue mission. The crew was forced to use the Lunar Module as a lifeboat, and rather than landing on the Moon, they were limited to observing and photographing it from hundreds of kilometers above the surface.Recreating what they saw requires not only excellent maps but also knowledge of the spacecraft's flight path — all of the animations on this page are views from the position of the spacecraft at specific times during their flight behind the Moon, using the same focal lengths as the lenses on board.The trajectory used for these visualizations was derived from the position and speed at pericynthion (closest point to the Moon) listed in Table 4-III of the Apollo 13 Mission Report. The inclination and nodes were found using a second point on the path from Table 4-II — the center of the Moon and two points on the path are sufficient to define the orbit plane. The resulting orbital elements are:Perifocal Distance  1988.8 kmEccentricity  1.4462Inclination  173.7°Longitude of the Ascending Node  -150.74°Argument of Periapsis  28.7°Mean Anomaly at Epoch  0°Epoch  April 15, 1970 00:33:57 UTGravitational Parameter  4904.87 km3/s2See also a slightly different and more complete reconstruction by Daniel Adamo in the Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics (Adamo 2008).The time ranges shown in the captions refer to Ground Elapsed Time (GET), the number of hours and minutes since liftoff, which occurred on April 11, 1970 at 1:13 p.m. Houston time. The Path and Perilune animations cover five hours of flight in a single minute of running time, but the rest of the animations cover five or ten minutes of flight in one or two minutes, speeding up time by a factor of only 5. When played back at 6 fps, the animations run at real-time speed. ||

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  • 
    ID: 4767 Visualization

    The Apollo 12 Landing Site

    Nov. 19th, 2019
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    The Apollo 12 landing site visualized in three dimensions using photography and a stereo digital elevation model from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. The locations of the flag shadow, experiment package, astronaut paths, and the Surveyor 3 spacecraft are marked. Music provided by Universal Production Music: "The Return" - Axel Tenner, Michael Schluecker, Raphael Schalz. || Apollo 12 landed on the Moon a little before 1:00 a.m. Houston time on November 19, 1969, four months after Apollo 11. The Lunar Module, nicknamed Intrepid and flown by Charles "Pete" Conrad and Alan Bean, made a pinpoint landing just 160 meters (520 feet) from the Surveyor 3 probe that had landed two and a half years earlier. On their second EVA, the astronauts retrieved pieces of Surveyor so that engineers could study the effects of years spent on the lunar surface. The Surveyor camera is currently on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.In images of the landing site taken more than four decades later by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a number of artifacts are clearly visible. These includethe descent stage of the Lunar Modulethe PLSS backpacks, discarded at the foot of the LM ladderthe inverted-umbrella shape of the S-band antennathe shadow of the American flagthe components of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP)the Surveyor 3 spacecraftthe trails of astronaut bootprintsThis visualization uses LROC NAC image M175428601 (40 cm per pixel) and a digital terrain model derived from NAC stereo image pairs (2 meters per pixel) to fly over the Apollo 12 landing site. Because the LM in the NAC image looks oddly flat when viewed at an oblique angle, a 3D model of the descent stage was added. ||

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  • 
    ID: 4731 Visualization

    Apollo Landing Sites with Moon Phases

    March 29th, 2019
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    The six Apollo landing sites are revealed chronologically as the phase and libration of the Moon is shown throughout the Apollo era. Annotations describe the landing sites and the durations on the lunar surface. || The NASA Apollo missions landed at six sites on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. As seen in this visualization, all of the sites are near the equator on the near side (the side facing the Earth), and all of the landings took place fairly soon after local sunrise, when the lunar surface was cool and the shadows threw the terrain into high relief, making navigation easier.Between each landing, the Moon is shown going through its monthly cycle of phases. The time between landings is especially long between Apollo 12 and 14, since Apollo 13 suffered a major equipment failure and was unable to land. The text includes the total number of hours that the Lunar Module (LM, pronounced "lem") was on the surface along with the number of hours that the astronauts were actually outside — extravehicular activity or EVA in astronaut speak.The precise landing site coordinates are those recently determined from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) narrow angle camera images of the sites. The coordinates are listed here and in Coordinates of anthropogenic features on the Moon by Wagner et al. in the February, 2017 Icarus. The surface times are from Apollo by the Numbers by Orloff. Also see the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, a complete and thoroughly annotated transcript of astronaut activities on the Moon.The amount of time that the astronauts were able to stay on the surface increased with each mission. Distance traveled during EVAs on the last three missions were greatly extended by a lunar rover, a battery-powered dune buggy that allowed the astronauts to visit and sample places several kilometers away from the LM. ||

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  • 
    ID: 4185 Visualization

    A New Look at the Apollo 11 Landing Site

    July 18th, 2014
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    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 "Buzz" Aldrin, touched down near the southern rim of the Sea of Tranquility, one of the large, dark basins that contribute to the Man in the Moon visible from Earth. Armstrong and Aldrin spent about two hours outside the LM setting up experiments and collecting samples. At one point, Armstrong ventured east of the LM to examine a small crater, dubbed Little West, that he'd flown over just before landing.The trails of disturbed regolith created by the astronauts' 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 stage—the 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. ||

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