Long Lost Soviet Rover Found on the Moon

Long Lost Soviet Rover Found on the Moon

blogs.nationalgeographic.com

It might not be in the stars for humans to return to the moon anytime soon.

But NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched last year in part to scout locations for a moon base, is proving that there's still plenty it can do in the name of space exploration.

High-resolution LRO images have helped researchers track down the first successful robotic lunar rover, a U.S.S.R. craft known as Lunokhod 1.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1583a59f0108.jpg[/atsimg]

(visit the link for the full news article)

Using a New Mexico LANL designed telescope NASA, after years of looking as finally found the Russian Rover Lunokhod 1 lunched way back in November 17, 1970. The probe drove around for ten months, returning data on soil composition and lunar topography, before its signal was lost on September 14, 1971.

"Lunokhod 1, by virtue of its location, would provide the best leverage for ... producing an accurate estimate of the position of the center of the moon—which is of paramount importance in mapping out the orbit and putting Einstein's gravity to a test," UC San Diego physicist Tom Murphy said in a statement.

blogs.nationalgeographic.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 28-4-2010 by DaddyBare]

Heh. Cool find! Still not sure that that single point of light could be it (doesn't look too different from any other speck of dust in the pic) But still pretty cool if real.

reply to post by vyrox

Im with you on this its kind of small but if it is I wounder if they can do the same with the Apollo moon landing sites after all the remains are a bit larger than the rove

What I find interesting about the photo is that the white dot has a shadow up and left. The objects in the photo are craters and not bumps. The lighting is coming from the right. The shadows are the toward the light side of the craters and are dark. It's an interesting optical illusion for me.

I did a quick image search for a better photo and got nothing...
maybe now they know for sure where it is they can zoom in on the next pass?

Why did it not leave any tracks? The tracks should stay for thousands of years.

There is a better image on the Nat'l Geo page. It does suggest that the bright dot is above the surface.

reply to post by earthdude


The tracks are too small to pick up in the image. The tracks would be much smaller than the robot and the robot is barely visible.

Originally posted by earthdude
Why did it not leave any tracks? The tracks should stay for thousands of years.

I'm sure it did and those tracks are still there... however...
if the rover is just a tiny speck of light in the photo I'm pretty sure the resolution isn't enough to pick up its tracks in the dust... maybe we'll see them if we get better photos?

reply to post by DaddyBare


I did some rough measurements using the scale in the upper rt of your photo and came up with a rover size of a little less than 3 meters. Then I checked and found the actual length was 2.3 meters.

Lunokhod 1 photos included.

If they can see and identify the Lunokhod they should have the resolution to see all the alien moon bases!