Posts: 253
From: UK
Registered: Dec 2010

Posts: 891
From: Vancouver, WA, USA
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 01-03-2017 12:18 PM               

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Had none of the Apollo missions been cancelled, the landing sites would have likely been (as of early 1970):

• Apollo 15 (H-4) - Censorinus Crater or, more likely, the Davy Chain.
  
• Apollo 16 (J-1) - Marius Hills or Descartes
  
• Apollo 17 (J-2) - Descartes or Marius Hills
  
• Apollo 18 (J-3) - Copernicus Peak
  
• Apollo 19 (J-4) - Hadley-Apennine
  
• Apollo 20 (J-5) - The interior North Wall of Copernicus, or Gassendi Crater.

This list, from the 6 March 1970 Apollo Site Selection Board, precludes any significant findings by bootstrap photography. Apollo 20's landing site is from a ASSB list dated Oct., 1969.

Yes, preliminary EVA routes were plotted for some of the sites. There were 9 different landings sites proposed at the Hadley-Apennine region. Refer to P. Stooke's International Atlas of Lunar Exploration.

Posts: 6002
From: Brussels, Belgium
Registered: Jan 2001

Posts: 253
From: UK
Registered: Dec 2010

posted 01-10-2017 10:10 AM               

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Using a 16" dobsonian with a relatively high frame rate color video camera. Some basic tracking functions possible with the telescope but this may be a limiting factor.

Have some initial Apollo 15 video that I need to run through registax (Windows 10 compatibility problems to wrestle with as well!

Lighting angles are a key consideration but becoming much easier to identify 15-17 sites under good lighting contrast.

Posts: 396
From: Houston, TX, USA
Registered: Jan 2012

posted 01-11-2017 08:51 PM               

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I'm reading "Where No Man Has Gone Before" which has a list of proposed sites recommended by the Apollo Site Selection Board on October 30, 1969. Here is that complete list:

• Fra Mauro
  
• Littrow
  
• Censorinus
  
• Descartes
  
• Marius Hills
  
• Copernicus
  
• Hadley
  
• Tyco

Tyco was dropped from the list by the Group for Lunar Exploration Planning in February, 1970 because of operational problems. They also flipped Marius Hills and Descartes. In addition, they moved the Hadley landing site from the west side of the rille to the east to allow the astronauts to explore the Apennine Front. Mission cuts resulted in the group changing Apollo 16 site to Copernicus and the Apollo 18 site to Marius Hills. Further cuts resulted in sending Apollo 15 to the Marius Hills and Apollo 16 to Descartes. The remaining sites were ruled out leaving only Littrow, Descartes, Hadley and Marius Hills as candidates for the last mission.

Basically, the list changed almost daily depending on the information (photographs) available and scientific objectives and priorities. The last sites were selected based on the amount of information scientists could expect to get from those sites along with the information gathered and questions raised by previous landing mission. I'm not sure you can create a definitive list of landing sites for Apollo 18-20.

Posts: 891
From: Vancouver, WA, USA
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 01-12-2017 09:06 AM               

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quote:

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Originally posted by schnappsicle:
I'm not sure you can create a definitive list of landing sites for Apollo 18-20.

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This is a very good point. We can only look at lists published before some critical event and the recollections of those who participated in the site selection process. The accounts given in Wilhelms' "To A Rocky Moon" read like a science version of Survivor.

The only sites that were etched in stone from the beginning were: an Eastern mare, a Western mare and Fra Mauro. All others were subject to continued evaluation. Around the time Apollo 13 flew, Censorinus Crater was loosing out to the Davy Crater Chain as the landing site for the H-4 Apollo 15 mission. Also, the various sight selection committees were starting to put more stock into recently acquired information gathered from imagery returned from the moon as well as observations made by the astronauts from lunar orbit.

Posts: 1044
From: New Windsor, Maryland USA
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 01-12-2017 03:19 PM               

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About 12 years ago I videoed manned landing sites using an AstroVid StellaCam EX astronomical video camera through a 12.5" f6 Newtonian on a clock-driven German Equatorial mounting. As I recall, the most interesting was the dramatic Apollo 17 area. Found a couple of good images online:

Here is one with local features labeled.

Here is a fantastic stereo image from the Lunar and Planetary Institute. An anaglyph version is also available on their web page.

Perhaps another worthwhile project might be imaging the landing sites (or any lunar feature) at different different angles caused naturally by the east-west component in the lunar librations. The angle can be increased through the parallax effect by imaging when the moon is lower in the sky (though not so low as to suffer from extreme distortion) shortly after moonrise or before moonset when nearer to the horizon -- depending on which way you're trying to maximize the angle. Then create stereo views using matching image pairs. Trick would be doing it taking both shots during the same lunar phase so that the lighting, shadows and sunlit peaks match and line up.