Final Proof They're Still Trying To Convince Us NASA Landed On The Moon?

Back in December of 2015, the Daily Express published an article wondering if this recent discovery on the Moon could be the final proof needed to convince Apollo deniers we actually landed there back in the late '60's and early '70's. (That's 1960's and 1970's, in case anyone is reading this in the 22nd century.) The article explains how "NASA has released a photograph confirming the exact location of the crash site of part of the Apollo 16 spacecraft that landed on the Moon."

You see, back in 1972, the third booster, S-IVB (pronounced "ess four bee"), of the Saturn V rocket was intentionally crashed into the surface of the Moon after it had propelled the crew into lunar orbit. This was supposedly common practice for the Apollo flights, but on this particular mission, they kinda lost track of it, and NASA wasn't really sure where it finally ended up. Well, you can start breathing again, because NASA has found our missing booster.

​Final proof man walked on Moon? NASA finds Apollo crash site on lunar surface

The US space agency has released the exact coordinates of the site which is on an area called Mare Insularum, about 160 miles southwest of the Copernicus Crater.

It has been hunting for the ihe [sic] Apollo 16 S-IVB impact site - following decades of uncertainty over its final resting place since the 1972 mission.
​
The discovery is a major blow for conspiracy theorists who have long claimed no one has ever landed on the moon and all the six manned lunar missions and pictures and video from them from 1969 to 1972 were faked by NASA to ensure the US won the space race against Russia.

Daily Express | Archive

Pack it up, folks. It's time to go home. No bother arguing this anymore.

Okay, wait a minute. I have a question, maybe two. The article claims NASA has "released the exact coordinates" of the crash, which they didn't even care to publish--you know who's really gonna look this stuff up anyway? Even though they kinda gave us a roundabout location--south of here, so many miles from there--for an article that's meant to silence the conspiracy theorists, wouldn't it make sense if their evidence was bullet-proof?

I guess they thought the photographic evidence offered was proof enough.

Just in case you weren't sure what part of the picture you were supposed to look at, they drew this helpful little circle around it.

If your uncertain what problems I have with this image, please refer to my previous article about NASA's photo evidence of the lunar landing sites.

Of course the Daily Express covers their bases by pointing out that die hard deniers will never be convinced by this indisputable evidence.

An Express.co.uk poll has found 68% of readers believe the landings happened, 18% are convinced the pictures were faked, and 14% believe we will never know either way.

The new discovery is unlikely to silence die hard conspiracists it seems.

Even after news of the crash site emerged people continued to comment online that it was the world's biggest ever hoax.

​However, the discovery is unlikely tro [sic] silence die hard conspiracists.

Did you get that? Let me repeat it one more time just in case. The "discovery is unlikely to silence die hard conspiracists". Is it clear now? No? Maybe one more time. The "discovery is unlikely...", no, I'm just kidding.

So maybe this poorly edited article didn't give us die hard deniers the exact coordinates, but you can find them on the official LROC website. Not only do they give us the exact location, but they back it up with more of that LROC imaging goodness.

​Found! Apollo 16 S-IVB Impact Crater

​A decades old mystery is now solved! After many attempts searching through Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) images, the Apollo 16 S-IVB rocket booster impact site has been identified. The site is on Mare Insularum about 260 km southwest of Copernicus Crater.

During the Apollo exploration of the Moon, beginning with Apollo 13, the massive, upper stage (known as the S-IVB stage) that helped propel astronauts to the Moon, were directed to impact the Moon. The energy from these impacts was measured by seismometers left on the surface (by previous Apollo astronauts) to understand the internal structure of the Moon. The locations of the impact craters, a total of 5, were estimated from tracking data of the booster collected just before impact. The LROC team found the other four craters early in the mission, however the Apollo 16 crater remained elusive.

In the case of Apollo 16, radio contact with the booster was lost before the impact and thus the impact location was only poorly known. Now, with high-resolution LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) images the impact site of the Apollo 16 S-IVB stage was precisely located (1.921°N, 335.377°E, -1104 m elevation).  In fact, the location differs by about 30 km from the Apollo-era tracking estimate. For comparison the other four S-IVB craters were all within 7 km of their estimated locations.

School of Earth & Space Exploration | Archive

So all you have to do, I'm sure, is plug those coordinates into Google Moon, and see the crash site.

Wait, what?

​Why didn't that work?

Well anyway, I won't belabor the point. I'm not a scientist, and I don't pretend to be one, but apparently the people sharing this information are. Do they really think this evidence is sufficient?

Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong, but when they show me this image, and tell me it's from Apollo 16, why should I believe them?

What in this image is "proof" that it's from Apollo 16?

Now, I'll go on the record and say I don't believe this is a photoshopped image. If someone had photoshopped this image they would have done a better job.

It seems to be obvious that this is indeed a crash of some sort, but lots of things have crashed into to Moon, even intentionally.

​NASA set to crash on the moon -- twice

​NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite is scheduled to drop its Centaur upper-stage rocket on the lunar surface at 7:31 a.m. ET.

NASA hopes the impact will kick up enough dust to help the LCROSS probe find the presence of water in the moon's soil. Four minutes later, the LCROSS will follow through the debris plume, collecting and relaying data back to Earth before crashing into the Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole.

CNN | Archive

RIP LADEE: NASA Moon Probe Crashes Into Lunar Surface

NASA's newest moon probe met its end during a vaporizing crash into the lunar surface last night.

The space agency's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft (LADEE for short) made its planned crash into the lunar surface between 12:30 a.m. EDT (0430 GMT) and 1:22 a.m. EDT (0522 GMT) on April 18, after orbiting the moon since October 2013. Scientists expected the impact, predicting that LADEE would hit the far side of the moon on or before April 21 because the probe was running out of fuel — as intended.

Space.com | Archive

So here we have two probes that were intentionally crashed into lunar surface, one in 2009 and the other in 2014, and even though NASA assumed the probes would probably crash behind some craters or on the far side of the moon, I'm sure they still would have left a debris-filled scar on the Moon's surface. But I know what you're thinking, "those didn't crash in the same spot NASA said they found the Apollo 16 booster." Well, who's to say this image isn't one of those crashes? Who actually saw these crashes, and exactly where they crashed? NASA?

​NASA "Moon Bombing" a Hit, But LCROSS Impact Invisible?

"We Saw the Impact," NASA Says

Whether or not sky-watchers could see the LCROSS crashes, NASA insists they happened.

"I can certainly report that there was an impact," LCROSS principal investigator Anthony Colaprete said at a NASA press conference this morning. "We saw the impact and we saw the crater."

When the rocket crashed into the moon, though, cameras on LCROSS registered no discernable change in the crater—at least to the untrained eye.

"It was hard to tell what we saw there," said Michael Bicay, science director at NASA Ames Research Center in California, during live coverage on NASA TV.

​LCROSS Enthusiast: "Nothing Was Seen"

​For many amateur astronomers who got up early to watch the crashes through telescopes or on NASA TV, the crashes were a bit anticlimactic.

"We had telescopes [as wide as] 32 inches [81 centimeters], and nothing was seen," said Siegfried Jachmann, vice president of the Salt Lake Astronomical Society in Utah.

Weather conditions at Utah's Stansbury Park Observatory Complex were everything an astronomer could ask for this morning, Jachmann said.

"The moon is very high in the sky, right on the meridian," he said. "It's perfectly placed right above Orion ... If anyone would've had a shot of seeing it, it was us."

Despite the disappointment, he said just after impacts, "the mood is good."

National Geographic | Archive

Here we have more of NASA saying, "It happened. You can believe us, because we said so."

The LCROSS crash was an unprecedented event! High schools and Astronomy clubs from across the country had their eyes trained on the Lunar surface, and what happened, nobody saw it, except for NASA. We know, because they said so.

So, take another look at this crash site. 

Final proof?

Apollo 16?

​Oh yeah, it's obvious.