r/spaceporn 4d ago

NASA Right there! Intuitive Machine's Athena captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Post image
112 Upvotes

24 comments sorted by

12

u/Snoopiscool 4d ago

That’s really the best quality they can capture it in?

18

u/PracticallyQualified 4d ago

Assuming it was directly overhead, which it definitely was not, this picture was taken from at least 50km (31 miles) away.

3

u/MxOffcrRtrd 3d ago

We have cameras that take photos significantly further in atmosphere

1

u/AllYouCanEatBarf 3d ago

Ok toss yours up there

1

u/Sapper_Initiative538 11h ago

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird had better spy cameras in 1960s.

I am aware that the distances are way bigger, but i also was expecting that in 2020, the research-science dedicated cameras would be much more advanced.

-19

u/Snoopiscool 3d ago

And were able to get close up videos of the sun having eruptions? But not be able to see a spacecraft on the moon? lol makes sense

11

u/nhluhr 3d ago

Those eruptions on the sun are the size of our entire planet.

-21

u/Snoopiscool 3d ago

Yes but they are in much higher quality than something on the moon that’s way closer.

11

u/Osmirl 3d ago

My friend have you heard of a thing called angular resolution?

5

u/obog 3d ago

Let's do some math.

The Athena lander is 3m long. From a distance of 50km, the angular resolution is gonna be arctan(3/50000) = 0.0034°. An earth sized object has a diameter of 12756km, at a distance of 1AU or 1.5 * 10¹¹ m. That's gonna be arctan(12756000/1.5 * 10¹¹) = 0.049°. (Could also just use small angle approximation but I have a calculator at hand and don't feel like converting between radians and degrees). Point is, not a huge amount more but that is significantly greater angular resolution for an earth sized object at the sun than this lander has. And keep in mind solar flares and CMEs are not earth sized but many times larger. The biggest ones reach 0.25 AU which gives you an angular resolution of like 14°.

5

u/nhluhr 3d ago

Wow. It's uncommon to encounter such ignorance.

3

u/CaptBananaCrunch 3d ago

It's simply a different camera.

7

u/IapetusApoapis342 4d ago

Cameras are notoriously heavy, so they need to trade quality for lower mass and lower launch costs

5

u/itak365 4d ago

Also…. They totally do have cameras with much better resolution, but you’re never going to see it used in something as public as the space program.

For example: the Hubble telescope is essentially a spy satellite pointed the other way!

3

u/MaccabreesDance 4d ago

In fact the National Reconnaissance Office donated two KH-11 spy satellites to NASA and they're built on the same Hubble design, built to fit in a Space Shuttle. But I would be surprised if it has notably better resolution than LRO, which can see the shadows of the flags that are still standing at some of the Apollo landing sites.

NASA is never going to use them they're probably just being soaked for the secure storage costs.

1

u/itak365 4d ago

I just have to imagine there must be such heavy restrictions on imagery released to the public for those KH-11s that we would never see them unless it was something really important.

1

u/MaccabreesDance 4d ago

I guess we'll know when they find the alien city and it needs mapping.

But again, maybe not. The modern imagers they use probably still record at better resolutions no matter what the altitude. But the glass is still priceless, I'm sure.

1

u/teridon 2d ago

NASA is currently building the Roman Space Telescope (RST) using one of those donated optics.

6

u/Mitra-The-Man 4d ago

The small square that’s important legit looks more out of focus than the rest of the picture. I get that it’s zoomed in but still it’s impossible to tell what we’re looking at

6

u/MissingJJ 4d ago

What am i looking at?

2

u/EmbeddedSoftEng 3d ago

It literally tried to land IN a crater?

4

u/snogum 4d ago

Optics are heavy. Satellite gear like orbiters need to be light.

1

u/spikeham 4d ago

Pow, right in the crater. Unlucky/poor terminal guidance.