Questions answered: Can telescopes on Earth see the lunar landing site(s)?

QUESTION: Can telescopes on Earth see the lunar landing site(s)? There is a lot of misinformation about government cover-ups and Hollywood simulations, but can anyone with a powerful enough telescope prove that it is there?

ANSWER: Various pieces of equipment, such as the lander platforms and moon buggies, were left behind at six landing sites on the moon. The largest of these objects, the landers, are just 9 meters (30 feet) across. None of our current telescopes is powerful enough to detect them. Even in an image from the Hubble telescope, they are smaller than a single pixel. Hubble can only distinguish things on the moon that are more than 60 meters wide.

Suitcase-sized reflectors placed on the moon during the Apollo missions can be detected (albeit not seen) from Earth. Scientists bounce lasers off the reflectors to measure the distance between the Earth and the moon. However, those who maintain that humans never set foot on the moon argue that a secret robotic mission delivered the reflectors.

In 2008, we should get our first look at the landing sites since the last Apollo mission in 1972. NASA is sending a spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, with a powerful camera to photograph the moon's entire surface with a resolution of about half a meter. The goal is to scout out potential locations for a moon base, not search for relics, but with such good resolution, those relics should be visible.

The images may not satisfy moon-hoax proponents. After all, the original lunar photographs supplied much of the purported evidence that NASA faked the moon landings. For example, the lack of stars and the tricks of light and shadows are said to be evidence of a hoax. On the contrary, these oddities are consistent with the photos being real.

All of the missions took place in the morning of the lunar day, which lasts 29.5 Earth days. The sun is shining, but the sky not directly illuminated appears black because there is no atmosphere to scatter incoming sunlight. With a camera set for daytime exposure, the stars are too faint to be seen.

Likewise, the fact that shadows are not completely black on the moon is not evidence of air in a Hollywood studio scattering light from a spotlight. The lunar surface itself reflects light. Backscatter – reflection of light back in the direction from which it came – is particularly strong. Strong backscatter is also the main reason the full moon appears about 10 times as bright as a half moon.

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I wonder if Japan will find the lunar Lander stuff left behind....or any alien buildings...I do believe though that we've been to the moon as in manned missions.....

I think if any single individual with millions or billions of dollars at there disposal should be able to willingly find the lunar landing site with a telescope.

Can’t wait to see what they find.

Originally posted by andre18
I wonder if Japan will find the lunar Lander stuff left behind....or any alien buildings...I do believe though that we've been to the moon as in manned missions.....

I think if any single individual with millions or billions of dollars at there disposal should be able to willingly find the lunar landing site with a telescope.

Can’t wait to see what they find.

It would take a telescope 100 meters in diameter to see the lunar landers. The largest optical telescope in the world is only 10 meters wide. Such a telescope would have be constructed of segmented mirrors and have an amazingly complex support structure. No one person in the world is rich enough to afford such a thing, and there are studies being done just to see if it's even feasible right now. The segments would have to be kept dynamically and accurately aligned to each other to compensate for atmospheric distortions with an accuracy of a few nanometers. That's a very small margin for error, it's debateable whether it's even possible right now. At the very least, we're one generation of telescope technology behind in creating such a monstrosity. It'd be cheaper to actually fly to the moon.

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