In this section is evidence, by independent researchers, that NASA's account is correct. However, at least somewhere in the investigation, there was some NASA involvement, or use of US government resources.
Existence and age of Moon rocks A total of of
Moon rocks and dust were collected during the Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 missions. Some of the Moon rocks have been used in hundreds of experiments performed by both NASA researchers and planetary scientists at research institutions unaffiliated with NASA. These experiments have confirmed the age and origin of the rocks as lunar, and were used to identify lunar meteorites collected later from
Antarctica. The oldest Moon rocks are up to 4.5 billion years old, A rock brought back by Apollo 17 was dated to be 4.417 billion years old, with a
margin of error of plus or minus 6 million years. The test was done by a group of researchers headed by Alexander Nemchin at
Curtin University of Technology in
Bentley, Australia.
Retroreflectors pulses sent to the Moon (X axis). This data, along with similar data from the other landing sites, shows there are man-made objects on the Moon in the locations of the Apollo landings. Credit: The
APOLLO (Lunar Laser Ranging) Collaboration The detection on Earth of reflections from
laser ranging retro-reflectors (LRRRs, or arrays of corner-cube prisms used as targets for Earth-based tracking
lasers) on
Lunar Laser Ranging experiments left on the Moon is evidence of landings. Quoting from James Hansen's 2005 biography of
Neil Armstrong,
First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong: For those few misguided souls who still cling to the belief that the Moon landings never happened, examination of the results of five decades of
LRRR experiments should evidence how delusional their rejection of the Moon landing really is. The NASA-independent
''Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur'',
McDonald,
Apache Point, and
Haleakalā observatories regularly use the Apollo LRRR. Lick Observatory attempted to detect from Apollo 11's retroreflector while Armstrong and Aldrin were still on the Moon but did not succeed until August 1, 1969. The Apollo 14 astronauts deployed a retroreflector on February 5, 1971, and McDonald Observatory detected it the same day. The Apollo 15 retroreflector was deployed on July 31, 1971, and was detected by McDonald Observatory within a few days. The image on the left shows what is considered some of the most unambiguous evidence. This experiment repeatedly fires a laser at the Moon, at the spots where the Apollo landings were reported. The dots show when
photons are received from the Moon. The dark line shows that a large number come back at a specific time, and hence were reflected by something quite small (well under a metre in size). Photons reflected from the surface come back over a much broader range of times (the whole vertical range of the plot corresponds to only 18 metres or so in range). The concentration of photons at a specific time appears when the laser is aimed at the Apollos 11, 14 or 15 landing sites; otherwise the expected featureless distribution is observed. The Apollo reflectors are still in use. Strictly speaking, although retroreflectors left by Apollo astronauts are strong evidence that human-manufactured artifacts currently exist on the Moon and that human visitors left them there, they are not, on their own,
conclusive evidence. Uncrewed missions are known to have placed such objects on the Moon, albeit not before 1970. Smaller retroreflectors were carried by the uncrewed landers
Lunokhod 1 and
Lunokhod 2 in 1970 and 1973, respectively.
Photographs Ground-based telescopes In 2002, astronomers tested the optics of the
Very Large Telescope by imaging the Apollo landing sites. The telescope was used to image the Moon and provided a resolution of , which was not good enough to resolve the wide lunar landers or their long shadows.
New lunar missions Post-Apollo lunar exploration missions have located and imaged artifacts of the Apollo program remaining on the Moon's surface. Images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission beginning in July 2009 show the six Apollo
Lunar Module descent stages,
Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) science experiments, astronaut footpaths, and the
Lunar Roving Vehicle's tire tracks. These images are the most effective proof to date to rebut the "landing hoax" theories. Although this probe was indeed launched by NASA, the camera and the interpretation of the images are under the control of an academic group — the
LROC Science Operations Center at
Arizona State University, along with many other academic groups. At least some of these groups, such as
German Aerospace Center, Berlin, are not located in the US, and are not funded by the US government. After the images shown here were taken, the LRO mission moved into a lower orbit for higher resolution camera work. All of the sites have since been re-imaged at higher resolution. Comparison of the original 16 mm Apollo 17 LM camera footage during ascent to the 2011 LRO photos of the landing site show an almost exact match of the rover tracks. Further imaging in 2012 shows the shadows cast by the flags planted by the astronauts on all Apollo landing sites. The exception is that of Apollo 11, which matches Buzz Aldrin's account of the flag being blown over by the lander's rocket exhaust on leaving the Moon. File:Challenger 4x.png|Higher resolution image of the
Apollo 17 landing site showing the Lunar Module
Challenger descent stage as photographed by the LRO File:LRO Apollo14 landing site 369228main ap14labeled 540.jpg|Apollo 14 landing site, photograph by LRO File:Apollo 12 LRO.jpg|Apollo 12 landing site File:Apollo15 ascentphoto.jpg|Apollo 15 landing site (by LRO) File:View from Apollo 15 LM shortly after liftoff.jpg|Apollo 15 landing site (from Lunar Module film) File:Apollo 17 Landing Site Comparison.png|Comparison of the Apollo 17 landing site between the original 16 mm footage shot from the LM window during ascent in 1972, and the 2011 lunar reconnaissance orbiter image of the Apollo 17 landing site. From the EEVdiscover video.
Ultraviolet photographs . It shows the Earth with the correct background of stars (some labeled)
Long-exposure photos were taken with the
Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph by
Apollo 16 on April 21, 1972, from the surface of the Moon. Some of these photos show the Earth with stars from the
Capricornus and
Aquarius constellations in the background. The
European Space Research Organisation's
TD-1A satellite later scanned the sky for stars that are bright in
ultraviolet light. The TD-1A data obtained with the shortest
passband is a close match for the Apollo 16 photographs.
Apollo missions tracked by non-NASA personnel This section contains reports of the lunar missions from facilities that had significant numbers of non-NASA employees. This includes facilities such as the
Deep Space Network, which employed (and still employs) many local citizens in
Spain and Australia, and facilities such as the
Parkes Observatory, which were hired by NASA for specific tasks, but staffed by non-NASA personnel.
Observers of all missions The NASA
Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) was a worldwide network of stations that tracked the
Mercury,
Gemini, Apollo and
Skylab missions. Most MSFN stations were only needed during the launch, Earth orbit and landing phases of the lunar missions, but three "deep space" sites with larger antennas provided continuous coverage during the trans-lunar, trans-Earth and lunar mission phases. Today, these three sites form the NASA
Deep Space Network: the
Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Goldstone, California; the
Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex near
Madrid, Spain; and the
Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, adjacent to the
Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, near
Canberra, Australia. Although most MSFN stations were NASA-owned, they employed many local citizens. NASA also contracted the
Parkes Observatory in
New South Wales, Australia, to supplement the three deep space sites, most famously during the Apollo 11 moonwalk as documented by radio astronomer John Sarkissian and portrayed (humorously and not quite accurately) in the 2000 film
The Dish. The Parkes Observatory is not NASA-owned; it is, and always has been, owned and operated by the
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), a research agency of the
Australian government. It would have been relatively easy for NASA to avoid using the Parkes Observatory to receive the Apollo 11 lunar surface television signals by scheduling the moonwalk at an earlier time when the Goldstone station could provide complete coverage.
Apollo 11 • The Madrid Apollo Station, now part of the Deep Space Network, built in
Fresnedillas, near Madrid, Spain, tracked Apollo 11. A large majority of the people working at this station were not employees of NASA, but of Spain's
Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial.
Apollo 12 Parts of
Surveyor 3, which landed on the Moon in April 1967, were brought back to Earth by Apollo 12 in November 1969. These samples were shown to have been exposed to lunar conditions. ==See also==