Shortly after Apollo 16 blasted off from Florida in 1972, the Saturn V Booster was used as an experiment in and of itself, to measure seismic activity within the moon. Now, the crash site has been found.
Over 200 New Moonquakes Discovered In Apollo 16 Data
Shortly after it was used to bring the mission into Lunar orbit, the S-IVB was to be used to measure seismic activity on the moon’s surface. Unfortunately, the rocket dropped its tracking data early, and it was lost.
The crater was discovered by Jeff Plescia, who’s become an expert in locating lost hardware, using high-resolution images from the LROC system on the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
“I did finally find the Apollo 16 SIVB crater,” reports Jeff Plescia of The Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
It looks like the others, but its position was much more poorly defined since the tracking was lost prior to impact,” Plescia told Inside Outer Space.
Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University