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Our first outposts

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, and it seems only fitting to show what ‘Tranquility Base’ and the other sites look like today. NASA recently photographed the landing sites at high resolution.

Apollo landing sites
Apollo landing sites 40 years later.
Photo: NASA

If you look closely at the Apollo 14 landing area, you can see the very off-road tracks made by the Lunar Rover.

7 comments to Our first outposts

  • Nuke Gray!

    Dale, are you part of the Apollo conspiracy as well?!
    Oh, no, we’re doomed!
    Get it right- the Earth is flat, at the center of the Universe, and the Sun revolves around it! Don’t fall for the Copernican conspiracy!
    Glad to have got you straightened out.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    It still blows my mind to think that we went up there, came back safe and sound. You’d have to have something missing from your brain not to be buzzed by this great achievement.

    I’ll be toasting them all.

  • It still blows my mind to think that we went up there

    And then just packed up and came home again.

    Still, I continue to believe that the Greeks, Trojans and Jupiter orbit will be the real centres of human civilisation. All that luvverly mass just floating there all bunched up.

    O’Neill was right – the proper home for man is space, not sitting at the bottom of some gravity well.

  • manuel II paleologos

    Dale – minor correction – Apollo 14 didn’t have a lunar rover. They had a sort of shopping cart thing which is what has left the tracks. Indeed, the struggles they had with this were part of the reason to upgrade to the “j-missions” and the lunar lander.

    Having spent years being sneered at by retarded conspiracy theorists, these are quite satisfying to see, although obviously not surprising. Presume they will all hold up their hands and admit they were wrong, just like they did about Anastasia, socialism, etc.

  • Presume they will all hold up their hands and admit they were wrong,

    Photoshopped

  • Sam Duncan

    Yeah, Cats, the shadows are all wrong.

    (Seriously though, awesome photos.)

  • Thomas

    Manuel is right, the first lunar buggy was Apollo 15.