The tracks from Apollo 17’s LRV don’t even come close to fitting in this image they extend for a total distance of over 22 miles, reaching a maximum range of nearly five miles away from the landing site!Īnd yet, all of that copious, substantial evidence that we can still see on the Moon represents only one part of the four major lines that demonstrate the veracity of our trips to our nearest neighbor. The Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle! Included on Apollo 15, 16, and 17, its tracks on the surface are distinctly different from human footprints, and allowed the astronauts on those missions to achieve distances far greater than those reached on the earlier missions. The tracks of these vehicles are still present today, and can be seen in data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The Lunar Roving Vehicle was included on the last three Apollo missions and enabled the astronauts to travel greater distances and explore more diverse regions of the Moon than they were able to on foot alone.

The Apollo 12 image shows not only the physical landing site (marked “Intrepid Descent Stage” on the image), but also the Surveyor 3 probe that had been on the Moon since 1967, visited by the Apollo 12 astronauts two-and-a-half years later! There’s the bright, white “L” shape near the ALSEP equipment label the “L” is due to highly reflective power cables that run from the central station to two of its instruments.

By going close to the lunar surface and photographing it with modern instruments from that low altitude, they were able to achieve resolutions as low as 35 centimeters (about 14 inches) per pixel. The orbiter’s Narrow Angle Camera has photographed three of the landing sites - of Apollo 12, 14, and 17 - to unprecedented precision and accuracy. The dark grey markings on the surface are astronaut footprints, which have stood the test of time on the Moon, as the processes that erase them on Earth are absent on the Moon. Apollo 12 was the first precision landing of humans on the Moon, and we explored a much greater amount of the lunar surface than during the first landing.

Man on the moon history