ForTehNguyen
06-09-10, 13:04
http://onthespaceship.com/post/680459226/lost-russian-lunar-rover-located-40-years-later
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Lost Russian Lunar Rover Located 40 Years Later
Wednesday | June 9, 2010
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l3pxjkn4Za1qz9hj4.jpg
While the good ol’ US of A was on a patriotism-high after successfully putting two humans on the surface of the Moon, those ingenious Russians were busy engineering and sending a remote controlled lunar robo-rover (Lunokhod 1). The U.S.S.R. already knew they had been beat in the race to put actual humans on the lunar surface, so they decided to send a robot instead. By the looks of the thing, you’d think there’d be an astro-dog in there somewhere, but nope, just old fashioned Soviet robotics. So, it was a shame that after 11 months of roaming around, sampling lunar soil, and sending back thousands of images and video data to Earth, it was lost… until now.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spied the lost Russian rover with its’ camera and was able to determine the rovers coordinates. And because the rover was equipped with a laser retroreflector, scientists were able to establish contact again after four decades of silence.
On April 22, (Tom) Murphy and his team sent pulses of laser light from the 3.5 meter telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, zeroing in on the target coordinates provided by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. A laser retroreflector on Lunokhod 1 intercepted the pulses and sent a clear signal back to Earth. “We got about 2,000 photons from Lunokhod 1 on our first try. After almost 40 years of silence, this rover a lot to say,” notes Murphy. “We shined a laser on Lunokhod 1’s position, and we were stunned by the power of the reflection.”
NASA placed laser retroreflectors on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions and used them to measure the lunar orbit, but those reflectors are no match for the power of the reflector on Lunokhod 1. The team at NASA plans to use the newly rediscovered rovers’ laser retroreflector to aid in the last ongoing Apollo-era experiment; measuring the lunar orbit with such precision that the data can lend more evidence for Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
Einstein’s theory of gravity (the Theory of General Relativity) holds that the mass and energy in massive objects like the sun make space curve, and this curving tells objects around the massive body how to move. The curvature actually makes the Earth and Moon fall toward the sun.
By measuring the Moon’s fall through curved spacetime, the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation—APOLLO for short—may yet find a crack in Einstein’s great edifice of General Relativity. That’s how science moves forward.
So far, lunar ranging results support Einstein.
Source: NASA
"Lunokhod
The Soviets landed two rovers on the moon, called Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2, on the Luna 17 and Luna 21 missions in 1970 and 1973, respectively. These rovers were equipped with small retroreflector arrays each consisting of 14 corner cubes of triangular configuration (not cut into a circle—imagine slicing off the corner of a cube with a knife). Each reflector is 11 cm on a side for a total package 44 cm long and 19 cm across. The picture at right of the Lunokhod rover shows the reflector jutting out in front (left). Lunokhod 1 was successfully ranged during its maneuvering phase, but has not been seen since—likely due to a poor parking job. Lunokhod 2 is still used, though the large size of the cubes makes them more susceptible to thermal distortions, so that the return is about 30 times weaker in lunar daylight than in lunar night. On the other hand, the larger size makes for a tighter diffraction pattern during lunar night, so the effective cross-section becomes larger than the Apollo 11 and Apollo 14 arrays during these periods."
"During its 322 Earth days of operations, Lunokhod traveled 10,540 metres and returned more than 20,000 TV images and 206 high-resolution panoramas. In addition, Lunokhod 1 performed twenty-five lunar soil analyses with its RIFMA x-ray fluorescence spectrometer and used its penetrometer at 500 different locations."
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5d/Lunokhod1Spot.jpg/600px-Lunokhod1Spot.jpg
#
Lost Russian Lunar Rover Located 40 Years Later
Wednesday | June 9, 2010
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l3pxjkn4Za1qz9hj4.jpg
While the good ol’ US of A was on a patriotism-high after successfully putting two humans on the surface of the Moon, those ingenious Russians were busy engineering and sending a remote controlled lunar robo-rover (Lunokhod 1). The U.S.S.R. already knew they had been beat in the race to put actual humans on the lunar surface, so they decided to send a robot instead. By the looks of the thing, you’d think there’d be an astro-dog in there somewhere, but nope, just old fashioned Soviet robotics. So, it was a shame that after 11 months of roaming around, sampling lunar soil, and sending back thousands of images and video data to Earth, it was lost… until now.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spied the lost Russian rover with its’ camera and was able to determine the rovers coordinates. And because the rover was equipped with a laser retroreflector, scientists were able to establish contact again after four decades of silence.
On April 22, (Tom) Murphy and his team sent pulses of laser light from the 3.5 meter telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, zeroing in on the target coordinates provided by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. A laser retroreflector on Lunokhod 1 intercepted the pulses and sent a clear signal back to Earth. “We got about 2,000 photons from Lunokhod 1 on our first try. After almost 40 years of silence, this rover a lot to say,” notes Murphy. “We shined a laser on Lunokhod 1’s position, and we were stunned by the power of the reflection.”
NASA placed laser retroreflectors on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions and used them to measure the lunar orbit, but those reflectors are no match for the power of the reflector on Lunokhod 1. The team at NASA plans to use the newly rediscovered rovers’ laser retroreflector to aid in the last ongoing Apollo-era experiment; measuring the lunar orbit with such precision that the data can lend more evidence for Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
Einstein’s theory of gravity (the Theory of General Relativity) holds that the mass and energy in massive objects like the sun make space curve, and this curving tells objects around the massive body how to move. The curvature actually makes the Earth and Moon fall toward the sun.
By measuring the Moon’s fall through curved spacetime, the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation—APOLLO for short—may yet find a crack in Einstein’s great edifice of General Relativity. That’s how science moves forward.
So far, lunar ranging results support Einstein.
Source: NASA
"Lunokhod
The Soviets landed two rovers on the moon, called Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2, on the Luna 17 and Luna 21 missions in 1970 and 1973, respectively. These rovers were equipped with small retroreflector arrays each consisting of 14 corner cubes of triangular configuration (not cut into a circle—imagine slicing off the corner of a cube with a knife). Each reflector is 11 cm on a side for a total package 44 cm long and 19 cm across. The picture at right of the Lunokhod rover shows the reflector jutting out in front (left). Lunokhod 1 was successfully ranged during its maneuvering phase, but has not been seen since—likely due to a poor parking job. Lunokhod 2 is still used, though the large size of the cubes makes them more susceptible to thermal distortions, so that the return is about 30 times weaker in lunar daylight than in lunar night. On the other hand, the larger size makes for a tighter diffraction pattern during lunar night, so the effective cross-section becomes larger than the Apollo 11 and Apollo 14 arrays during these periods."
"During its 322 Earth days of operations, Lunokhod traveled 10,540 metres and returned more than 20,000 TV images and 206 high-resolution panoramas. In addition, Lunokhod 1 performed twenty-five lunar soil analyses with its RIFMA x-ray fluorescence spectrometer and used its penetrometer at 500 different locations."
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5d/Lunokhod1Spot.jpg/600px-Lunokhod1Spot.jpg