NASA Releases Sharpest Images Yet of Apollo Landing Sites

Apollo 17 landing site hi-res photo taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and released on Sept. 6, 2011.
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NASA astronauts might not be going to the moon anytime in the near future, but that doesn’t mean we can’t relive the glory of America’s initial moon exploration missions.

The agency on Wednesday revealed a collection of new hi-res images of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 lunar landing sites snapped by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a satellite that’s been orbiting the moon for the past two years.

The collection of three new images and a video depict in startling detail features including a leftover lunar rover, its tracks, footprints of various NASA astronauts and even discarded equipment including cables from an experiment that glint in the sunlight on the lunar surface.

NASA said the new photos were possible because it slightly lowered and adjusted the orbit of the LRO.

“Without changing the average altitude, we made the orbit more elliptical, so the lowest part of the orbit is on the sunlit side of the moon,” said Goddard’s John Keller, deputy LRO project scientist, in a NASA press release. “This put LRO in a perfect position to take these new pictures of the surface.”

NASA has highlighted the features it found in a short video. Watch it below:

For a larger view of where all of these landing sites are actually located on the surface of the moon, check out this basic map from NASA.

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