Beautiful pictures of Apollo 11 landing site

The moment I saw these pictures, only one question came to my mind - "What more do the moon landing hoax believers need, to stop making ridiculous claims?" These are beautiful pictures of the moon taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). I am sure that the moon landing hoax believers would call these pictures fake too but now, there are too many facts that are stacked against them for them to keep supporting their theories. For readers who are not familiar with the moon handing hoax, here is the wonderful article by Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, in which he busts every myth associated with moon landing. As he admits in his blog post, this article literally launched his career.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2009, is a polar orbiter that surveys the moon from a distance of 50km above Moon's surface. Like most robotic spacecrafts, it carries a number of instruments. One of the instruments is the LRO Camera (LROC) which has taken beautiful pictures of Apollo landing sites and rovers. The following the image of the Apollo 11 landing site at an incredible resolution.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

As one can see, the image clearly shows the Lunar Module (LM) and the cool scientific experiments - Passive Seismic Experiment Package (PSEP) and Laser Ranging RetroReflector (LRRR). I particularly love the RetroReflector as it has helped scientists measure the distance between the earth and the moon with unprecedented precision. It is the same reflector that the guys in The Big Bang Theory use to reflect their LASER beam off the moon, in the episode "The Lunar Excitation". The most awesome thing in this image, that actually took my breath away, is the number of interconnected dark tracks that connect the Lunar Module to the scientific experiments. These are actual bootprints of Apollo 11 astronauts that has stayed intact for more than 40 years now!

For more more pictures of the lunar surface, check out NASA's page with pictures clicked by LROC.

Since I mentioned moon landing hoax in this post, I would recommend the MythBusters episode on Moon landing hoax which wonderfully complements Phil Plait's article.