I don’t know how I missed this, but NASA released some more images of the Apollo moon landing sites earlier this year. Here’s a link to the latest images: Apollo Revisited. All of these images were taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), which is part of NASA’s mission to answer questions about lunar science. The image above is one of the images that came from the Apollo 11 mission and shows mankind’s first step onto Earth’s own satellite, the Moon. It’s amazing to revisit these first images of the Sea of Tranquility and still feel the same awe as we did when it happened back in 1969.
But now NASA has provided us with images from 2012 that shows the evidence that we had indeed set foot on the powdery lunar surface. See those lines radiating from the Lunar Module? Those are the footprint tracks that the astronauts left behind as they walked onto a surface that was the furthest point away from our planet ever traveled by mankind. Seeing that so little has changed since 1969 makes us think about the immense differences between a planetary body that actively restructures itself versus its satellite that is dormant (with the exception of the meteor impacts). On the Moon, history stays stagnant and can be easily located. On Earth, history changes with each new movement that shifts it away from our active plane of vision.
That’s only a small part of why space science is a critical part of understanding ourselves, and how we fit into this immense and changing universe.
– thanks for this pointer, Reddit
