{"id":4706,"date":"2012-07-31T07:46:50","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T11:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theness.com\/neurologicablog\/?p=4706"},"modified":"2012-07-31T13:21:44","modified_gmt":"2012-07-31T17:21:44","slug":"still-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theness.com\/neurologicablog\/still-flying\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Flying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Just a quick post today as I am busy covering the inpatient service. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has taken another stunning picture of an Apollo landing site, this one from Apollo 16. The photo shows a clear shadow from the American flag that was planting during that mission. The LRO has taken the highest resolution photos of the lunar surface from moon orbit, showing great detail of the Apollo missions. You can see the foot trails of the astronauts and all the equipment they left behind.<\/p>\n

Because there is only extremely slow erosion of the moon’s surface, from micrometeorites, the lunar surface is essentially frozen in time, recording the activities of the astronauts who visited.<\/p>\n

The flags have apparently lasted well. The only Apollo flag that is not visible is from Apollo 11, because that flag was knocked over by the exhaust when the lander blasted off the moon’s surface.<\/p>\n

Of course I have to point out that these LRO photos are the nail in the coffin of absurd moon landing conspiracy theories (as if that were needed). For years conspiracy theorists asked why telescopes have not pictured the Apollo landing sites. That is a common strategy of conspiracy theorists – throw out questions about evidence that appears to be missing in order to make it seem curious or sinister, and without putting it into proper context or truly searching for an answer to their question. In this case telescopes are not suited to close up images of the moon. We needed to get a probe close to the moon’s surface. Now that we have, the asked for pictures are coming back.<\/p>\n

Of course, no evidence will convince a die-hard conspiracy theorists. The evidence just becomes part of the conspiracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a quick post today as I am busy covering the inpatient service. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has taken another stunning picture of an Apollo landing site, this one from Apollo 16. The photo shows a clear shadow from the American flag that was planting during that mission. The LRO has taken the highest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,15],"tags":[576,575],"class_list":["post-4706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-astronomy","category-conspiracy-theories","tag-apollo","tag-lro"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t