Lunar history: New space probe to photograph it

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter—to be launch in July 2009—is expected to take photos of the old Apollo lunar landing sites, and more.

Will old Soviet moon probes show up in new photos?

History in pictures

From orbit, even with powerful cameras, the images will be tiny and few details will be available. But, whatever it gets, the LRO will (if all goes well) get the first images of Tranquility Base since the first lunar landing 40 years ago.

In fact, the probe may get images of ALL of the six Apollo landing sites. In addition, we may get photos of the remains of unmanned probes—both Russian and American—from years gone by.

Of particular interest are the remains of the Russian Lunokhod rover which, after traversing 6.5 miles on the lunar surface, mysteriously stopped working. Nobody know why, but scientists and historians would love to find out.

And what about Surveyor 4, an American vehicle which seemed to be on it’s way to a successful soft landing in 1967—when it suddenly stopped transmitting and disappeared?

Private company with big—perhaps unrealistic—plans

This will be pretty impressive, if it all happens…but not nearly as impressive as it would be if a private company landed a lunar rover and transmitted live images of the Apollo 11 landing site. Seems pretty unlikely to me, but one company has plans to do exactly that.