Anyone Leave Anything on the Moon?

[Red Dog]

Took a few pics of the moon this evening as an experiment with my new wireless remote. I noticed that theres something shining on the surface to the left of centre. Did the USA leave their moon buggy by any chance all those years ago?

[Glliw]

Nice shots, but wouldn't that bright spot in reality be a bit bigger than a rover?

[Red Dog]

Nice shots, but wouldn't that bright spot in reality be a bit bigger than a rover?

More than likely, and if there was anything there its bound to have been covered in dust by now. It definately isn't water........or is it?:shock:

[sandpiper]

More than likely, and if there was anything there its bound to have been covered in dust by now. It definately isn't water........or is it?:shock:

It won't be water, all the water on the moon is locked up in the polar ice.

I'm not sure about everything being covered in dust either, there is no wind on the moon as it doesn't have an atmosphere. The reflector arrays that were left there for use in laser ranging are still in use today.

Yes the lunar rovers (there will be at least three of them, from Apollo's 15, 16 and 17 I think) are still up there, it would use up too much fuel trying to bring them back again. There are also dozens of old satellites, whose orbits decayed until they crashed, many ascent and descent stages from the LEMs, and various other bits of hardware.

All in all there is around 170 tons of assorted scrap littering the moon surface along with such ephemera as the 'fallen astronaut' statuette and Alan Shepard's balls.

I can't help wondering if Shepard ever wishes he had brought them back with him, they would fetch a good price on ebay.

I believe the lunar rovers were offered for sale a while back, not sure how you would go about a test drive or what you would do once you had bought it. I suppose it lets you stick 'my other car is a lunar rover' bumper stickers on your daily ride and has to be a talking point at parties, but it's a lot to pay for a car you will never drive (or even see). I don't know if they actually got any offers.

[Red Dog]

Interesting info Sandpiper. So its not just a piece of barren rock floating about in space doing nothing, its an Interstellar Re-cycling Depot. Perhaps we could sell it on E-Bay as a going concern.

[PacWestShooter]

Very cool pics

[bjordan]

Thanks for posting this! I did a little research and learned something new:

Aristarchus Crater (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_(crater))
"Aristarchus is a prominent lunar impact crater that lies in the northwest part of the Moon's near side. It is considered the brightest of the large formations on the lunar surface, with an albedo nearly double that of most lunar features. The feature is bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, and is dazzling in a large telescope."

As for the mentions of moon dust, there seems to be a slight dust "atmosphere" on the moon due to static electricity "dust fountains." I suppose things could get covered in dust then?

[TMCCaptured]

holy cow...wow awsome

[TMCCaptured]

maybe the cow dropped the spoon...

[TMCCaptured]

maybe the Cow dropped the Spoon on the way to see the dish:confused:

[Red Dog]

Thanks for posting this! I did a little research and learned something new:

Aristarchus Crater (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_(crater))
"Aristarchus is a prominent lunar impact crater that lies in the northwest part of the Moon's near side. It is considered the brightest of the large formations on the lunar surface, with an albedo nearly double that of most lunar features. The feature is bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, and is dazzling in a large telescope."

As for the mentions of moon dust, there seems to be a slight dust "atmosphere" on the moon due to static electricity "dust fountains." I suppose things could get covered in dust then?

Many thanks for your response bj. That would appear to be it 100% spot on. Thought I'd discovered something new, but it seems someone got there before me about 400 years ago. Wonder were they using a Canon? :D