Moon landling flags still there?

[Xyon]

Guys, we're straying off-topic here. Flags are not conspiracy theories.

[garyw]

Looks like someone read the on-topic part of this thread:

Quote:

London: Four decades after America's last landing on the Moon, new images from NASA's camera have shown that all flags except one planted during Apollo missions are still standing and waving despite the harsh lunar climate. All six flags except the one planted by Neil Armstrong during the first ever Moon landing are still standing, according to an analysis of the shadows they cast on the surface of the Moon, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

During each of the six American Moon landings, astronauts left American flags behind as symbols of their nation's scientific and engineering achievement.

The first was the monumental July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landing in which Armstrong declared on live television, "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".

source and more: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/na...he-moon-249105

[orb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by garyw

 Looks like someone read the on-topic part of this thread:

Either this thread, or the LRO updates thread.

[icedown]

I could see the poles in the LRO photos but not the flags. I figure they had better resolution ones to look at though

[Mattyv]

The flags should definitely still be there...

That is unless the aliens decided to take a souvenir from their visit to Earth.

[T.Neo]

I guess there's a difference between "flying" and being recognisable as a US flag. If the flags are bleached white, then it is clear that they must have surrendered to the solar UV flux.

It would be really interesting to visit an Apollo site after nearly 50 years and see how the remaining hardware and other exposed material has fared. Would the Apollo 11 flag fare any worse than the other flags, being in contact with the lunar regolith? One might imagine that a 'flying' flag, especially a bleached one, would have a high albedo and be relatively isolated from the surface temperature fluctuations- reducing degredation somewhat?

And some other possibilities for how the lunar environment could preserve or destroy items- what if I left a pot plant unprotected on the lunar surface? I mean, obviously, the poor thing would die, but what if I came back in a month's time? A year's time? Two years? Ten years? What would a plant exposed on the lunar surface look like after that amount of time?

[NukeET]

Quote:

Originally Posted by icedown

 I could see the poles in the LRO photos but not the flags. I figure they had better resolution ones to look at though

Doubtful you saw the flag poles:

Quote:

What is really being seen in these five images is the flag shadow itself and not the flag pole shadow. The flag pole is only about 7/8ths of an inch in diameter. LRO cameras can at best see down to 0.45 meters (1.5 feet) which is the equivalent to one pixel width in the images and .55 meters (1.8 feet) which is equivalent to one pixel of height. This resolution is just good enough to see the drooped flag shadow (estimated to be from 6 inches to 1.5 feet).

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a12/a12FlagStillAloft.html

[icedown]

I see what you mean.

[Unstung]

"...polymers need oxygen to be degraded by UV light, so this may be why the flags haven't disintegrated."
Source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba...re-still-there