Scientific American 201907

(Rick Simeone) #1
July 2019, ScientificAmerican.com 57

When Apollo 11 happened in real time,
people back home could follow along with
grainy, though exhilarating, video footage.
Yet they had little sense of where on the
moon the action was happening and how
far the astronauts explored. Now three-
dimensional computer models based on
recent satellite imagery can re-create each
step of the mission and the terrain it
covered. Based on a 2012 photograph of
the landing site from nasa’s Lunar Recon-
naissance Orbiter (LRO), a height map of
the surface shows the contours of the

moon where Neil Arm strong and Buzz
Aldrin traveled, as well as the positions
of the lander, the experiments and even
the astronauts’ footpaths.
Satellite imagery helps to preserve
details of the mission that will ultimately
be lost to time: extreme temperatures,
solar radiation and the unrelenting
bombard ment of micrometeorites on the
lunar surface are eroding the footprints
and will eventually wipe out even the
machinery. Little by little, Tranquility Base
is disappearing.

G THE MISSION


MODERN SATELLITE IMAGERY AND


3-D MODELING GIVE US A NEW VIEW


OF HOW APOLLO 11 PLAYED OUT


1969

APOLLO 11

ANNIVERSARY

2019
50
years

Text and graphics by Edward Bell


Little West Crater

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