New images of Apollo landing sites taken

GREENBELT, Md., Sept. 6 (UPI) -- NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 mission landing sites, the agency said.

Clearly visible in the images are the twists and turns of the paths taken by the astronauts of the three missions as they explored the lunar surface decades ago, a NASA release said Tuesday.

At the Apollo 17 site, tracks laid down by the lunar rover are clearly visible, as are the last foot trails left on the moon during the 1972 mission.

"We can retrace the astronauts' steps with greater clarity to see where they took lunar samples," Noah Petro, a lunar geologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said.

The higher resolution of these images was made possible by adjusting the orbiter's orbit, the scientists said.

"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," Goddard's John Keller, deputy LRO project scientist, said.

"This put LRO in a perfect position to take these new pictures of the surface."

"These images remind us of our fantastic Apollo history and beckon us to continue to move forward in exploration of our solar system," Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters in Washington, said.