Moon Coordinates

[nobby.nobbs]

yeah so there's a mirror up there. and that proves a man landed there how exactly?

 

sent stuff to mars and further with no humans involved.

 

[+Cryptid]

There are already a couple caches on the moon.  One is the descent stage of the Lunar Module "Eagle" with its rocket thruster and its pod feet.  The other is an American flag.

 

And, in true geocache fashion, there is also a golf ball in space, probably orbiting some distant star or planet, as if a precursor of geocaching to come.  This was "launched" by one of the astronauts in a more whimsical moment of the Apollo moon landings.

 

Finding these items?  Well, that will be more of a compass and map thing than a GPS thing...at this time.

 

Alan Shepard (the first American in space) hit a golfball on the moon. It went 6X as far as it would have here (the gravity is 1/6) but it would have to go ~2800 mph to get into orbit around the moon.

Great, I'll go to the Moon, and my first find will be a Golf ball, again

[+Sagefox]

Shouldn't this be in the Off-Topic forum? Or maybe I'm not clear where the limits of on-topic blur into off-topic.

[+TeamRJJO]

If the moon was in a geosynchronous orbit with the same side always facing earth with no wobble (there is a slight wobble of the face presented) you could use WGS84 to mark locations on the moon.

 

Since none of that is true though you can't.  The moons coordinate system would be specific to the moon.  I'm not sure if the way the coordinates are presented is unique I suspect it's not though.  For example you can have The WGS84 datum presented in both UTM and Latitude and Longitude.

Believe it or not, when I was working in the 2 SOPS (the AF unit that operates the GPS constellation), we actually had to field this question. It was a long time ago, but as I recall, someone actually did a study on this.

 

The idea was that on the moon, GPS signals would come from the satellite antenna sidelobes and possibly even from RF emmissions from the back of the satellites. I think the conclusion was that while the signal strength from these sources might be strong enough, one would need some method of transforming Earth-centered coordinates into something that would be useful on the moon.

 

And obviously, if you were on the side of the moon facing away from the Earth, you'd be comepletely unable to receive the GPS signal.

 

Peace,

TeamRJJO

Edited July 21, 2005 by TeamRJJO

[+Capt.Picard]

you guys have quite a lot of time on your hands, word has it that there is one on mars and the rovers found it

[+reveritt]

...

 

sent stuff to mars and further with no humans involved.

 

Actually, I think quite a few humans were involved.

 

Nobby, am I correct in assuming that in response, the Martians sent you here as their ambassador?

[nobby.nobbs]

me from mars? no they're far too sane. i'm a spy from the third band north anti clockwise rotation clan from jupiter.

 

far side of the moon. great night clubs there. had to move there a while back after you dadgum humans started to make better telescopes.

 

oh well atleast all my expenses are tax deductable.

[twjolson & Kay]

Well if you are trying to find where a cache is on the moon, if GPS isn't available yet, you can use Google: Moon and navigate your way around using satalitte photos. Then you just have to figure out if it's by this crater or the other one.

 

And don't forget to zoom to the closest view possible. Google has discovered something that NASA missed somehow.

Edited July 22, 2005 by twjolson & Kay