The Soviet Lunokhod 2 rover located on the moon after 37 years

[Ichingcarpenter]

h







An astronomer at the University of Western Ontario has found a Soviet moon rover in recently released images from a NASA satellite.

Phil Stooke combed through data and images of the moon's surface from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that NASA released Monday.

Stooke compared the images to his own recently published reference book on moon geography, The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration, and pinpointed the location of the Soviet rover Lunokhod 2.

"The tracks were visible at once," said Stooke, in a statement.

The location of the rover was already known through laser ranging experiments, but there's no telescope on Earth or in Earth orbit powerful enough to actually see it.

"We knew within a few kilometres where it was. The laser beam spreads out a bit. It's not a pinpoint on the moon," Stooke said in an email.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is taking pictures of the moon from its orbit about 50 kilometres above the surface. Its one-year mission is to produce a comprehensive moon map.

The Soviet Union landed Lunokhod 2 on the moon in January 1973, a month after the last American moonwalk. As the name suggests, it was the second of two solar-powered robotic rovers the Soviets sent to the moon.

Record-setting trip on lunar surface

The Lunokhod rovers were the first remote-controlled vehicles to travel on an extraterrestrial body and still hold the record for longest rover trip at 35 kilometres. (The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have travelled 7.7 kilometres and 19.5 kilometres, respectively.)

Lunokhod 2's mission was to collect images from the moon, observe X-rays from the sun, study the moon's soil and measure its magnetic fields.

"The value here is partly the visual identification, but also the tracks, which will allow a detailed route map to be drawn for the first time," Stooke said.



http://blogs.discovery.com/.a/6a00d8341bf67c53ef01310fb158e5970c-800wi


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/03/17/tech-moon-rover-picture.html#ixzz0iX9eBLo2

[Ian David]

1. The first picture makes it look like a SteamPunk creation. n/t

[Fumesucker]

2. I for one am relieved that our alien overlords have not yet chosen to remove this device..

Interesting article, thanks for posting..

And yeah, it does look a bit steampunkish in the first picture..

[Orrex]

3. And the asshole who bought it is claiming ownership of the lunar terrain that it has "staked out"

It's cool that they found it, but leave it to some rich jackass to turn the Moon into "his" property.

[Phoonzang]

4. In his defense, Lord British...I mean Richard Garriott is not an asshole.

He bought the thing back in 1993 as a whim and doesn't seriously lay claim to the moon.

[Orrex]

5. On NPR this weekend, he sure sounded like he was serious.

He may not be an asshole, but he made a big deal about being the first/only private individual to own an object on another celestial body, and he seemed totally sincere in his claim to the lunar property.

He even said that his fantasy is to get a closer look at it, either via a lunar orbital pass or by actually setting foot on the Moon. He acknowledged that this is a remote possibility but, he said, not as remote as it was even just a few years ago.

[Phoonzang]

6. I've actually met him and he seemed like a big kid to me, but I'll

check out the NPR interview.

[Orrex]

7. If you do, and if you come away from it with a different vibe than I got, let me know

I'll give it another listen in that case, and I'll happily recant if I was mistaken on my first pass-through.

[Phoonzang]

8. Ok....you're right. He does sound serious about it.

Maybe I was just willing to give him a break because his games provided me with much joy during my childhood. Hopefully he doesn't actually think he can claim territory on the Moon. Hopefully this doesn't lead to other private individuals thinking they can claim territory on other planets by simply purchasing foreign objects already on the planet. Ech...

But really when I think of it...he did build himself an actual castle to live in and call himself "Lord."

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. More on the asshole and his bogus property legal claim

Can a person own the moon?
American millionaire Richard Garriott owns a Soviet space rover parked on the moon, and he claims this could give him rights to lunar property.

Garriott, the son of scientist-astronaut Owen Garriott, has personal aspirations of space travel. He flew a self-financed, $35 million trek to the International Space Station in October 2008. Garriott is providing funds for the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon. He hopes to travel to the moon in the future and calls the private space race the quickest way for people to return to the lunar surface.

Garriott admits to Space.com that his assertions are a bit tongue in cheek, but nonetheless he is pursuing property rights on the moon. Garriott believes an international framework already exists to support his territorial claim. Joanne Irene Gabrynowic is director of the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law and research professor of Law at the University of Mississippi.

She thinks Garriott may have a point. As she told Space.com, "The soundness of a property right depends in large part on the integrity of the documents that memorialize the right … This why property buyers conduct title searches before buying property. They want to be sure that the title is good."

However, according to the Outer Space Treaty of 1966, simply landing on the moon does not guarantee ownership. When Russia and the United States both landed on the moon, they agreed to not lay claims to owning it. Nonetheless, Garriott hopes that his Lunokhod 2 rover deed of ownership will guarantee him to some lunar property rights. And he plans on being gracious about his lunar land. He told Space.com that he’s willing to allow future space travelers to pay a parking fee on his property.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/can-a-person-own-the-moon#

Enter space lawyer, Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz. She is Director of the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law and Research Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi.

"The soundness of a property right depends in large part on the integrity of the documents that memorialize the right," Gabrynowicz told SPACE.com via email. "This is why property buyers conduct title searches before buying property. They want to be sure that the title is good."

Gabrynowicz said that without reading the papers or knowing how they were processed and by whom, she can't speak to the validity of the ownership of a space object purchased at auction.

"However, a contention that buying a space object that landed on the lunar surface from a sovereign nation gives rise to a property right to the territory under it is wrong," Gabrynowicz said.

Gabrynowicz said that States-Parties to the Outer Space Treaty of 1966 cannot acquire lunar territory by landing an object on the moon.

"The USSR was and Russia is a party to the Outer Space Treaty," she added. "It did not acquire the territory under the object when it landed. One cannot sell what one does not own. Since USSR/Russia did not have a property right to the territory under the landed object, there was nothing to sell."