The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circling our nearest neighbor since 2009, taking amazing high-resolution images of the Moon's surface. When it was first proposed, I remember wondering if it would get good shots of the Apollo sites... and boy howdy, did it. Then, in 2011, NASA decided to lower the mapping orbit from its usual 50 km (30 miles) down to an incredible 25 km (15 miles) -- an orbit they can't sustain, since variations in the density of the Moon would soon crash the spacecraft. But for those short periods, they got amazing images of the Apollo landing sites, including this stunner from Apollo 15:
[Click to onesmallstepenate.] LRO has looked at the Apollo 15 site before (see the links at the LRO page for more), but never this clearly! The lander descent stage is labeled (the ascent stage took Dave Scott and James Irwin back up to ...
