LROC NAC imagery of the Apollo 11 landing site
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Source document: 2011-lroc-nac-apollo-11-landing-site-m175124932r.tif (binary image in
inputs/assets/; see its searchable companion note…m175124932r.md) -
Original: NASA / GSFC / Arizona State University — Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera frame M175124932R, acquired during LRO’s 2011 low-altitude campaign (~24 km altitude) at ~25 cm/pixel. The uploaded file is a derived display product (resampled to 25 cm/pixel, 4000×2400 px, contrast-enhanced).
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Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University. LROC imagery is publicly released and free to reproduce with this credit.
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Available online: LROC / Arizona State University — Apollo 11 featured site and the featured release A Stark Beauty All Its Own (NAC frame M175124932R).
Summary
Section titled “Summary”A post-mission orbital photograph of Tranquility Base — the only source in this library that is not a 1969 mission document. Taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter more than four decades after the landing, the LROC Narrow Angle Camera resolved the Apollo 11 hardware still sitting on the surface at about 25 cm per pixel: the Lunar Module descent stage, the trails of disturbed (darkened) regolith left by the astronauts, the deployed EASEP experiment packages, and the nearby craters that shaped the final approach. It is the independent, remote-sensing confirmation of where Eagle came down and what the EVA left behind — ground truth for the mission record, and the visual counterpart to the Mission Report’s “location of the landed lunar module” objective.
Key takeaways
Section titled “Key takeaways”- The hardware is visible. The bright central object is the LM descent stage (left on the Moon), casting a short shadow under the low (~eastern) Sun. One or two smaller bright features just south of it are the Passive Seismic and Laser Ranging Retroreflector packages.
- The astronauts left tracks. Lower-albedo trails of churned regolith radiate from the descent stage; a distinct trail runs east to Little West crater (the ~30 m crater Armstrong jogged to late in the EVA), matching the traverse described in the mission record.
- The approach geology is in frame. The large, blocky, sharp-rimmed crater at right (east-southeast) is West crater (~180 m), the “football-field”-sized crater Armstrong manually flew past; Eagle set down west of it — ≈490 m from the rim, ≈575 m from the center by pixel measurement on this frame, refining the 1969 reports’ “~400 m” (see the concept and discrepancy ledger).
- It closes a 1969 gap. During the mission neither the crew nor Mission Control could locate the LM from lunar orbit — Collins searched repeatedly and “never saw any” glint (CSM debrief). LROC finally pinpointed it directly.
- Provenance caveat. The acquisition is the 2011 NAC observation; the supplied
.tifis a later contrast-enhanced, resampled display product (embedded metadata shows 2013–2014 image-editing). Treated here as a faithful rendering of frame M175124932R, not a calibrated radiometric product.