1. Are there lunar images available on CD-ROM?
Lunar images from the Galileo spacecraft as Raw Experimenter Data Records (REDRs) are available for the first Earth flyby, which occurred in late 1990. This CD-ROM set will eventually include all of the Galileo cruise phase imaging (all images from the Solid-State Imager prior to Galileo's main mission at Jupiter), including those of Venus, the Earth, the Moon, and the asteroids Gaspra and Ida. The data for the Earth-2 flyby have recently arrived (Feb. 1995) and are now available.
There are also Earth-based radar images of the Moon on the Pre-Magellan CD-ROM.
More information on CD-ROMs available from the NSSDC can be found in the NSSDC CD-ROM Catalog.URL: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cd-rom/
2. Where can I get Lunar Digital Image/Terrain/Elevation Models/Maps?
NSSDC has a Lunar Digital Image Model (data set SL-21D) available on magnetic tape. The model is a global sinusoidal projection of an airbrush map of the Moon with a resolution of about 900 m/pixel. More information on DIMs of the Moon and other planets and satellites is available on the Digital Image Models Page.URL: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/dims.html
Topography data (and gravity data) can be found at:
http://pds-geophys.wustl.edu/pds/clementine/gravity_topo/
3. Did the Apollo astronauts really land on the Moon?
Of course they did! The Apollo Moon landings were among the most completely documented and observed events in history. The conspiracy "theories" that claim otherwise are a bunch of nonsense without even a single compelling piece of evidence. Most of the questions raised are based on ignorance of basic physics and optics. Video special effects were in their infancy in the late 60's so that faking a landing on the Moon would probably have been more difficult than actually going there, and it seems highly unlikely that the hundreds or even thousands of people who would have had to be involved in such a conspiracy would have kept it a secret for so long. Ultimately you'll have to decide for yourself if the marginal evidence offered to show this was all a hoax is compelling enough to overturn the overwhelming evidence that it actually occurred, but make sure you check the facts carefully, you need to be a little skeptical of the skeptics, too. For more detailed debunking of this ill-conceived notion, see:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/apollohoax.html
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/
http://homepage.mac.com/casewright/essays/moon_lowman.html
http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/
http://www.clavius.org/
Thursday, July 10, 2008
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