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Apollo program

Wikipedia • The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which successfully landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo followed Project Mercury that put the first Americans in space.

Is Apollo 11's Lunar Module Still In Orbit Around The Moon 52 Years Later?

Scott Manley
1.78M subscribers
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4.2M views 3 years ago
In 1969 Neil Armstrong announced a safe touchdown on the moon with the words 'The Eagle has Landed'. "Eagle" was the name of the Lunar Module, the spacecraft which carried Neil and Buzz to the surface of the moon. After they walked on the surface of the moon they flew the Eagle back into orbit, docked with the Columbia command module and undocked the Eagle, leaving it in orbit while Columbia returned to Earth. Most spacecraft in lunar orbit suffer from instability in their orbits due to the 'lumpy' nature of the lunar gravity which tends to cause the orbits to eventually get so elliptical that they hit the moon. However, an amateur space fan wanted to narrow down the possible impact location and used orbit modelling software to propagate the orbit forwards in time until it hit the moon. He was surprised to find that it didn't hit the moon, and remained in a stable orbit for decades, this suggests that the Eagle may still be orbiting the moon ove …...more
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Is Apollo 11's Lunar Module Still In Orbit Around The Moon 52 Years Later?
77KLikes
4,251,488Views
2021Jul 17
In 1969 Neil Armstrong announced a safe touchdown on the moon with the words 'The Eagle has Landed'. "Eagle" was the name of the Lunar Module, the spacecraft which carried Neil and Buzz to the surface of the moon. After they walked on the surface of the moon they flew the Eagle back into orbit, docked with the Columbia command module and undocked the Eagle, leaving it in orbit while Columbia returned to Earth. Most spacecraft in lunar orbit suffer from instability in their orbits due to the 'lumpy' nature of the lunar gravity which tends to cause the orbits to eventually get so elliptical that they hit the moon. However, an amateur space fan wanted to narrow down the possible impact location and used orbit modelling software to propagate the orbit forwards in time until it hit the moon. He was surprised to find that it didn't hit the moon, and remained in a stable orbit for decades, this suggests that the Eagle may still be orbiting the moon over 5 decades after being left there. Here's the paper: Long-term Orbit Stability of the Apollo 11 Eagle Lunar Module Ascent Stage James Meador https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... And his github with the scripts for GMAT https://github.com/RogerTwank/Eagle And more information in the blog https://snoopy.rogertwank.net/2020/09... NASA's GMAT software: https://sourceforge.net/projects/gmat/ The thread in Unmannedspaceflight.com showing processing of ingenuity images. http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/in... Seán Doran's youtube    / channel  

Scott Manley

1.78M subscribers