NASA asks future explorers to respect historic landing sites
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Apollo 14's S-IVB booster's impact site as seen from lunar orbit (Image: NASA)
Apollo 17 exclusion zone under NASA's guidelines (Image: NASA)
Apollo 11's Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment is still operating today (Image: NASA)
The NASA guidelines are intended to protect historic US landing sites, such as Apollo 11's (Image: NASA)
Mission Commander Conrad Bean examines the Surveyor 3 lander during the Apollo 12 mission (Image: NASA)
The Ranger impact sites are included in the gudielines (Image: NASA)
Ranger 9's impact area on the Moon (Image: NASA)
Surveyor 3 (Image: NASA)
When the last American astronauts blasted off from the Moon in 1972, it seemed as if they were leaving behind monuments that would stand for all time. On a lifeless, airless satellite there would never be any scavengers or souvenir hunters, no wind to bury or wear down the abandoned spacecraft and artifacts, and no air to corrode metal. Even the footprints would still be there millions of years from now. Or so everyone thought. Now, with more and more nations and private organizations planning manned and unmanned missions to the Moon, NASA is worried that the Apollo landing sites and others could be endangered by the next wave of lunar explorers. To prevent this, the space agency issued a set of guidelines that politely asks everybody to keep their distance.
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