RE: we landed on the moon 40 years ago
I remember watching the moon landings very well. It's so clear in my memory it could almost have been yesterday.
Of course it couldn't have been faked, as the Soviet Union were inevitably watching every move and would have known if the radio transmissions were not truly coming from the moon. They would hardly have kept quiet if they knew the US was perpetrating a hoax. What a propaganda coup that would have been in those grim days of the cold war!
NASA were also very generous with the considerable quantity of moon rock that was brought back from the moon, rock that is very different geologically to any rock found on Earth and also 600 million years older than any rock found on Earth. Almost every country in the world was given some moon rock and even the Soviet Union agreed that the rocks came from the moon (later confirmed when the Soviet Union collected their own rock samples from the moon).
A piece of equipment known as a laser reflector was left on the moon and has been used by many people around the world since then to verify that the moon landings took place. If you know the exact position of the laser refector and fire a laser beam at it, the beam is reflected back to you a few seconds later. This has also proven that the moon is moving away from us, something that was not previously realised, as the laser reflection over the years has gradually taken longer. The moon is moving away from us about an inch every year.
Remember also that many people around the world tracked the movements of the Apollo spacecraft, such as laboratories in Australia, Spain and Japan, not to mention the Soviet Union of course. It was easy to for anyone with radar or with the most powerful telescopes. NASA helpfully provided the Apollo space positions every day, so that people knew exactly where to look. Even amateur astronomers took pictures of Apollo 8 when it was close to the moon.
With telescopes getting ever more powerful, it will not be long before images can be obtained from Earth of the actual landing sites anyway. There is already a telescope in Europe that might be able to do it. This would show things like the lunar modules but not extreme detail such as footprints. Images of footprints on the moon do exist though and were taken a few months ago by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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