Ringed by footprints sitting in the moondust lies a 2 foot wide panel studded with 100 mirrors pointing at earth.
Lunar laser reflector.
It consists of a series of corner cube reflectors which are a special type of mirror with the property of always reflecting an incoming light beam back in the direction it came from.
Retroreflectors are devices which reflect light back to its source.
The close up here shows the apollo 15 landing site.
The idea was to determine the round trip travel time of a laser pulse from the earth to the moon and back again thereby calculating the distance between the two bodies to unprecedented accuracy.
Science experiments laser ranging retroreflector the laser ranging retroreflector experiment was deployed on apollo 11 14 and 15.
Each reflector is 11 cm on a side for a total package 44 cm long and 19 cm across.
The experiment consists of an instrument called the lunar laser ranging reflector designed to reflect pulses of laser light fired from the earth.
Ilrs observatories carrying out lunar laser ranging llr to retro reflector arrays on the surface of the moon.
Lunar reflectors have enabled precise measurement of the earth moon distance since 1969.
Lasers at observatories on earth are aimed at retroreflectors planted on the moon during the apollo program 11 14 and 15 and the two lunokhod missions.
The moonwalking crew of apollo 11 which landed on the moon 50 years ago.
An epic lunar laser experiment is still going strong five decades after the apollo astronauts set it up on the surface.
Laser light pulses are transmitted and reflected back to earth and the round trip.
The latter has.
The apollo 15 lunar laser ranging retroreflector lrrr array is one of four such working arrays on the surface of the moon.
The mcdonald observatory in texas usa the apache point observatory new mexico usa and the observatoire de la côte d azur france are the only currently operational llr sites.
Lunokhod 1 was successfully ranged during its maneuvering phase but then was not seen for almost 40 years until our project with the help of the lunar reconnaissance.
The lunar laser ranging retroreflector array apollo 11 astronauts buzz aldrin and neil armstrong put it there on july 21 1969 about an hour before the end of their final moonwalk.