![]() ![]() The success in March by the Grasse station was not the first laser ranging effort targeting the “lost” Lunokhod 1 reflector. Lunokhod 1 came to its final stop on a site situated around 2.3 kilometers north of its point of landing. But thanks to images snapped by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, both the Luna 17 lander and Lunokhod 1 were spotted. The final end-of-mission location of Lunokhod 1 was uncertain until 2010. “Fortunately, we had immediate echoes … and if not, we might not have tried again for one or many years!” he said. In fact, Torre and a colleague were ranging successfully the Apollo 15 site when Torre suggested trying Lunokhod 1. Still, the results have buoyed the interest of Earth-based scientists to continue beaming their lasers at the long-dead rover.Ī retroreflector array was also left on the Moon by the landing crew of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission in 1969, while two more retroreflector arrays were set up by Apollo 14 and Apollo 15 Moonwalkers. Poor weather conditions prevented the scientists from getting a good determination of the Lunokhod 1 reflector’s efficiency. In the end, however, “it was more a problem of lack of confidence than to a technical difficulty,” Torre said. The reflector may have been dusty, its cover could have closed, or the rover may not have been parked in view of Earth, Torre said. The historical difficulty of ranging on Lunokhod 1 may have been due to a number of factors. The results were obtained over three nights, using a new instrumental configuration at the MéO station. In March, they received return signals from the Lunokhod 1 reflector. “And during 30 years, nobody tried to range on Lunokhod 1,” Jean-Marie Torre, research engineer at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in France, said via email.īut Torre and his colleagues tried anyway, using the Côte d’Azur Observatory’s Grasse (MéO) laser-ranging station in Calern, France. 4, 1971, after 11 lunar day-night cycles, or 322 Earth days.įor the most part, those working in the laser ranging field have cautioned over the years not to spend time on Lunokhod 1, calling the rover a nearly impossible target. Lunokhod 1’s days of roving the Moon formally ended on Oct. ![]() 17, 1970 in the Sea of Rains.Īmong its instruments, the rover carried a French-built laser retroreflector consisting of 14 corner cubes that can reflect laser light beamed from Earth.Īttempts to contact the rover after the lunar night that began in September 1971 were unsuccessful, apparently due to a component failure on the rover. The wheeled vehicle was carried to the lunar surface by a spacecraft called Luna 17, touching down Nov. Lunokhod 1 was the first remote-controlled rover ever to land on another celestial body. GOLDEN, Colo. - Scientists have successfully bounced a laser off the Soviet Union’s old Lunokhod 1 rover, which trekked across the Moon’s landscape more than four decades ago. ![]()
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