Abstract
Abstract. Since the dawn of time the Moon has held fascination for the earliest humans who saw it as a natural navigational beacon, a heavenly body to be revered and a poetic inspiration. Ancient art features the Moon as a prominent subject from all epochs and genres. The name “lunatic” infers that it drives men insane. Giant tides and rapid recessions of water are all attributed to its gravitational influence. As a young boy I was thrilled by stories of Moon travel like Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon” plus TV shows and movies such as “Lost in Space”, “Star Trek” and “Dr. Who.”The Russian-American “Space Race” focussed on the exciting possibility of man landing on the Moon. I cannot forget the live telecast of the Apollo 11 astronauts on the Moon’s surface in 1969 when I was 13 years old. Four years later I decided to be a land boundary surveyor trained in precise measurement for land title creation. My curiosity was alerted to the Apollo 11 laser ranging aspect of the project when the US team set up a bank of retro-reflectors for measurements from powerful devices on the Earth in the same way we Earthly surveyors make our daily measurements using such EDM equipment.In this paper I will describe the techniques and equipment utilised during this accurate Moon positioning project. You will also see the Earth observatories still measuring to five sites on the Moon and some ancient admirable attempts to determine this distance.
Highlights
I am fairly sure that everyone old enough to remember the telecast of the Moon landing by the Apollo 11 crew on 21st July, 1969 will know exactly where they watched the greatest event of the twentieth century
Realising that the bank of lunar laser reflectors placed in the Sea of Tranquility by Buzz Aldrin were for high powered lunar laser rangers to make measurements to the Moon, my interest has always been strong to discover just how accurate these distances have been along with finding out about the types of super powered instruments used for this exercise
As the surface of the Moon which permanently faces the Earth while in its orbit does not change, the aspect that the Moon presents to observers on the Earth always has the Sea of Tranquility fractionally to the upper right of the middle, the Laser Ranging Retroreflectors (LRRR) set up by the Apollo 11 crew will continually face the Lunar Laser Rangers positioned at the various sites which come into the frame for shooting the laser light rays which travel there and back in approximately 2.5 seconds covering the 769,000 kms return distance at its average length
Summary
I am fairly sure that everyone old enough to remember the telecast of the Moon landing by the Apollo 11 crew on 21st July, 1969 will know exactly where they watched the greatest event of the twentieth century. As a most curious star gazer I have always found the wonders of space to be truly amazing so while at University between 197477 studying to be a land surveyor I did Astronomy 1, 2 and 3 which included daylight stars, navigating by the Moon and advanced three dimensional and spherical mathematics. Experiment Package (ALSEP) which included wind and heat monitors, earthquake seismographs and the Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) Experiment which is the only component of the package still operational due to the fact that the LRRR unit, consisting of 100 reflectors is passive while all of the other elements required batteries which have long since run dead
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