It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
A similar device was also included on the Soviet Union's Lunakhod 2 spacecraft.
If I shine a light at a mirror I expect all the light to be reflected.
en.wikipedia.org...
At the Moon's surface, the beam is about 6.5 kilometers wide
"It provides a measurement of the round trip distance between the Earth and the moon" And? Is that the only experiment?
How often would they have to check to see how far away the moon is? And why?
APOLLO (the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation) measures the round-trip travel time of laser pulses bounced off the lunar retroreflectors to a precision of a few picoseconds, corresponding to about one millimeter of precision in range to the moon. Using this information, we will be able to gauge the relative acceleration of the earth and moon toward the sun (like a modern-day Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment) in order to ascertain the free-fall properties of earth's gravitational self-energy.