Moon Hoax Conspiracist Nuts

[Mike DiCenso]

The LRO's mission isn't simply to snap pretty pictures, however. The resolution on the camera (which is essentially a telescope) is dependent on it's aperture size and how much light it can let in for exposure on the CCDS as well as the camera's ability to compensate for the relative angular velocity between the spacecraft and the target on the lunar surface. A bigger telescopic camera would mean that there is now less room onboard the spacecraft and more power devoted to that instrument than would otherwise be available for additional instruments.

Another thing to bear in mind, the Google map images are not all taken by satellite, but aircraft with cameras mounted in them and flying over only a few kilometers over the Earth's surface, thus netting a higher resolution.

In addition to that, some of your issue is that the images by LRO have little context for your mind to grasp at what it is seeing. There is little that is recognizable to it. No buildings, for example, just an octagonal shaped LEM descent stage only roughly about the size of your average large truck as well as it's (barely) visible spidery legs, and some scattered small equipment. Also remember some of the images were not taken at the 50 km operational altitude, nor at the optimal angle or time of lunar day. As it is, it is amazing that we finally have a spacecraft in lunar orbit that has a large enough camera to make out not only the LEM descent stages, but the tracks left by the astronauts and the smaller equipment, like the ALSEP experimnent packages and the rovers. So far as I know, however, only one of the images, this one here, has seen a flag. This one is also of an even higher resolution than the ones that Robert posted a link to.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Indeed, it has a slightly better resolution. I still wish they'd been better. :(
I didn't know Google polished its shots with plane surveys. I also took the opportunity to pay a visit to the Eurosense website page on data acquisition.
KOMPSAT-2 can "only" acquire at a res of 1 meter in B&W. The LROC has a high res of 0.5 m.
I guess I'll have to wait for Google Moon.

[2046]

The satellite data provided by Google Maps or Google Earth isn't much better, and is sometimes worse, than what you see there. For instance, while you might be able to see some chick's spank-worthy cleavage in some satellite shots of a major city, the vast majority of the US has been imaged at far less resolution. An old haunt of mine, a city of 50,000 or so, is limited to resolution equal to that from LRO, if even.

Considering they were launching such a satellite to the moon, I figure that ain't bad.