14 DAY TRIAL // The NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) managed to snap the most detailed image to date of the Apollo 15 landing site. Using its Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) instrument, the spacecraft managed to make out individual pieces of hardware left behind by the moonwalkers.
NASA astronauts David Scott and James Irwin spent three days on the Moon in 1971, during the first mission of the Apollo program to use a Lunar Rover (LRV). They spent their times on a landscape feature called the Hadley plains.
“We like to look at the Apollo landing site images because it’s fun,” explained Mark Robinson, the principal investigator of the LRO mission. Apollo 15 (July 26 – August 7, 1971) was described by NASA after completion as the most successful manned flight ever conducted.
The LRO was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's SLC-41 pad aboard an Atlas V delivery system on June 18, 2009, and achieved orbital insertion around the Moon on June 23, Universe Today reports.