The Apollo 11 landing site from lunar orbit
The Apollo 11 landing site from lunar orbit
While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were on the Moon, Michael Collins travelled around Earth’s natural satellite 18 times in an equatorial orbit. Every time he flew over the western Mare Tranquillitatis, he tried to observe the Eagle on the lunar surface from his orbit, which was at an altitude of approximately 100 kilometres, but he did not see it. Much later, the extremely high-resolution camera of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the Moon since 2009, succeeded in acquiring images of all six Apollo landing sites as well as the landing sites of the Soviet robotic Moon missions. To the right of the centre of the image is the descent stage of the Lunar Module, Neil Armstrong's footprints to the prominent Little West Crater, and south of the Lunar Module the seismometer experiment that was left behind.
