NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: It's Moon-landing Monday
From: Peter Hakel
Date: 2009 Jul 21, 09:10 -0700
From: "frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.com" <frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.com>
To: NavList@fer3.com
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 12:54:43 AM
Subject: [NavList 9160] Re: It's Moon-landing Monday
Yes, that would work. The Moon would loom awfully large from 900 miles above the surface. Could you measure it through the small windows typical on spacecraft? You could do something similar with a couple of small, prominent craters. Presumably you have detailed lunar topography (it's 2029 after all), so you could ask your software to compute the exact angles between some craters beneath your trajectory for the correct altitude.
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From: Peter Hakel
Date: 2009 Jul 21, 09:10 -0700
The software for processing of observed crater sizes would have to account for the crater's "zenith distance" from the spacecraft's selenoghraphic position. That is, one has to worry about the tilt of the crater's rim and the resulting reduction of its apparent cross section and size. This would become more important the closer you are to the Moon. The good news there, I think, is that at that point it may be realistic to measure crater shadows, which would provide additional information. Unless, of course, it's full moon...
Peter Hakel
Peter Hakel
From: "frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.com" <frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.com>
To: NavList@fer3.com
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 12:54:43 AM
Subject: [NavList 9160] Re: It's Moon-landing Monday
Yes, that would work. The Moon would loom awfully large from 900 miles above the surface. Could you measure it through the small windows typical on spacecraft? You could do something similar with a couple of small, prominent craters. Presumably you have detailed lunar topography (it's 2029 after all), so you could ask your software to compute the exact angles between some craters beneath your trajectory for the correct altitude.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
NavList message boards: www.fer3.com/arc
Or post by email to: NavList@fer3.com
To , email NavList-@fer3.com
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