Recent photos taken by India’s Space Research Organization moon orbiter, known as Chandrayaan 2, clearly show the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 landing sites more than 50 years later.
The photos were taken by the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter in April 2021 and were reshared on Curiosity’s X page – which posts about space exploration – on Wednesday.
“Image of Apollo 11 and 12 taken by India’s Moon orbiter. Disapproving Moon landing deniers,” Curiosity wrote on X, along with the overhead photos that show the landing vehicles on the surface of the moon.
Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, making Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first men to walk on its surface.
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Astronaut Michael Collins, the third man on the Apollo 11 mission, remained in orbit while Aldrin and Armstrong walked on the moon.
The lunar module, known as Eagle, was left in lunar orbit after it rendezvoused with the command module Collins was in the next day and Eagle eventually landed back on the moon’s surface.
Apollo 12 was NASA’s second crewed mission to land on the moon on Nov. 19, 1969, in which Charles “Pete” Conrad and Alan Bean became the third and fourth men to walk on its surface.
The Apollo missions continued until December 1972, when the program was shut down and astronaut Eugene Cernan became the last man to walk on the moon.
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The Chandrayaan-2 mission launched on July 22, 2019, exactly 50 years after the Apollo 11 mission and two years before it captured images of the 1969 lunar landers.
India also launched Chandrayaan-3 last year, which became the first mission to successfully land neat the moon’s south pole.
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