Could the Hubble Space Telescope Photograph Lunar Footprints?

The FYI experts take on that age-old question of moon and man

One Very Small Step: Hubble’s mirror would need to be about half a mile wide to spot footprints on the moon. Photo by NASA

Snug in Earth’s orbit, Hubble is free from the background glare that earthly telescopes must fight to see the stars. This allows its supersensitive camera to take better photos of galaxies farther away—and thus much dimmer—than any optical telescope on the ground can. But despite being closer to the moon than any other telescope, there’s no way the scope could snap a photo of that one small step man took 40 years ago.

Considering the distance to the moon and the resolving power of Hubble’s eight-foot-wide main mirror, one pixel in the highest-resolution image that the scope can take of the moon would be about the size of a football field, says Hubble astronomer Frank Summers of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

To get the resolution to the point where one pixel was the size of a footprint, he says, Hubble would need a primary mirror roughly 2,400 feet in diameter. And if you wanted to make out the tread marks from Armstrong’s boots, that mirror would need to be nine miles wide. “The mirror sizes required are absurd,” Summers acknowledges.

But he does offer a potential solution. Precisely positioning several spacecraft several miles apart and training them at the same target can approximate, in effect, a miles-wide telescope. Using a computer to combine observations from each scope might reveal footprints around the abandoned lunar rover, Summers says, but NASA’s time would be better spent exploring the universe, not looking at dusty landmarks.

Burning question? Send it forth to the experts at fyi@popsci.com

17 Comments

Comments

DiGMEH

from Montreal, Quebec

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I still think that there was no moon landing... Its just hard to believe it.
Lets say they did it. Why not send someone again now? Technology is better and they have more experience and money for it...

- DiGGY

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Rick R.

from Leechburg, PA

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The moonlanding was a PR stunt to send a message to the Soviets and the American public during the Cold War. Pretty much the only use we have for the moon is as a launch pad to the rest of the solar system. A launch from the moon would require much less fuel than one from here on Earth due to it's much weaker gravitational field, roughly 1/6 the strength of our. There's no real incentive to go back until we're ready to establish a Moonbase.

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emaciator

from Stockton, CA

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Remember that commercial that said that we discovered the moon wasn't cheese and we haven't been back since? Rick R. has it right. We have no use for the moon for now. We have similar rocks here.

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NASA does have plans to return, as do many other nations. NASA's Constellation program is meant to replace the shuttle program within the next 3-5 years. I believe they will be running test launches of the new Ares rocket next year. The new program uses a capsule similar but larger than the older models we are familiar with. The plan is ot return to the moon within the next decade and then move on to Mars before 2030.
Digmeh, as for funding, I may be wrong, but it seems like with such low interest in space travel/exploration (this is truly sad), funding is actually not as great as you think. Thus the aged shuttle program and systems such as Hubble are preferred to be repaired rather than replaced.

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There are many reasons why we haven't returned to the moon. The main one, however, is the lack in funding needed for such missions. During the height of the space race when the Apollo missions were lifting off, NASA was being allotted approximately 33 billion dollars in 2007 dollars. When compared with the 18 billion allotted for 2008 part of the answer to your question is quite clear. I hope that helps.

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The Moon's surface contains helium-3 at concentrations on the order of 0.01 ppm.[29][30] A number of people, starting with Gerald Kulcinski in 1986,[31] have proposed to explore the moon, mine lunar regolith and using the helium-3 for fusion. Because of the low concentrations of helium-3, any mining equipment would need to process large amounts of regolith,[32] and some proposals have suggested that helium-3 extraction be piggybacked onto a larger mining and development operation.

Cosmochemist and geochemist Ouyang Ziyuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences who is now in charge of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has already stated on many occasions that one of the main goals of the program would be the mining of helium-3, from which operation "each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world."[33]

In January 2006 the Russian space company RKK Energiya announced that it considers lunar helium-3 a potential economic resource to be mined by 2020,[34] if funding can be found.[35][36]

Mining gas giants for helium-3 has also been proposed.[37]

straight from wikipedia :)

Any other questions or comments?

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Well, with that being said, I guess that the cances of us seeing the golf balls hit are out of the question. Too bad. At least you can see it and the lunar rover here: http://www.ootwo.com/moon.asp . I always wondered if we made it to the moon, but I guess we may never know.

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what happened to the flag that was planted

you need proof , just take a picture of it , or video ...
i mean ...seems logical enough

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The recon satellites have enough resolution to read a license plate on a car.

So have the recon sats sent to the moon.

Give us a break please.

It is not the foot prints that are being covered-up.

We are not that stupid.
Very Soon, the story will break anyway, so what's the hold up?

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Agreed, it's easier to believe in Witches and Shadow Men and other peoples "opinions" than to think for yourself.

1. Reality check:
The Russians had the most to gain in disproving the Moon mission. The Russians tracked the moon mission to the moon and back. The Jodrell Bank Observatory in England did the same (do a quick google search if you don't believe).

2. Reality check:
Both Armstrong and Aldrin placed a mirror on the moon, which is still used today to measure the distance between the moon and earth (via laser from Earth). So we had satellites and robots sophisticated enough to precisely place mirrors but we could not send men to the moon?

3. What single person has come forward to say he has proof he was involved in the "hoax," out of hundreds that would have been required to create such an elaborate hoax?

4. There are lots of 3rd party proofs regarding our landing on the moon.
Really, it's not that hard to find scientific proof the USA did land on the moon, certainly a lot more than a bunch of "opinions" from people who have little or no personal experience in commenting the USA did not land on the moon.

5. Don't even get me going about the 382 kilograms of moon rocks returned to Earth much of which have been independently corroborated as being from the moon. The Soviet Luna 16, 20, and 24 robotic sample return missions only obtained 326 grams combined (that is, more than 1000 times less). I'll let this last bit work on your brain bit. We would have had to send a hell of a lot of successful "robots" to the moon to accomplish this don't' ya think...

I could keep going and going like the energizer bunny on this one. Look for the facts and let the "O"pinions remain what they are folks.

Enough said,
Jim

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