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 Phil Stooke with his 2007 book The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration. (QMI Agency file photo) |
LONDON, Ont. - A University of Western Ontario professor has solved a 37-year-old lunar mystery.
But Phil Stooke is staying out of the politics of preserving heritage sites on the moon.
The astronomy professor and author of a lunar atlas has found the final resting spot of the Russian rover Lunokhod 2, which stopped in parts unknown after making the longest trek of any robotic traveller on a celestial body.
The discovery was hardly like winning the 1960s race to the moon, Stooke said with a laugh Tuesday.
Still, "there is always a desire to do something first," he said.
The rover was the second sent to the moon by the former Soviet Union, landing in January 1973.
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It fell short of expectations, stopping four months later after going into a crater and getting its radiator jammed with soil.
"We knew roughly where it was," Stooke said.
There's no telescope powerful enough to show exactly where the rover ended up.
The clue to solving the mystery came Monday, when NASA posted more than 100,000 images and other data from its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The orbiter is on a one-year mission about 50 km above the lunar surface.
Scientists around the world began looking for the rover, using the just-released photos.
Stooke was well positioned to find the rover first, having published a reference book on lunar exploration in 2007, The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration.
With his intimate knowledge of the moon's surface, he quickly picked one image out of the thousands, which showed the tracks of the rover.
"There, at the end of the tracks, is the rover," he said.
The discovery will help those who believe human explorations on the moon are leaving behind heritage sites that must be protected from other missions.
"They do have some historical value," Stooke said of the sites, but he wouldn't take a side in the debate.
There's a chance his discovery will be used by someone else, with a much bigger prize in mind.
Google is offering $20 million to the first private company that puts a robot on the moon.
There's an extra $5 million for the rover that travels more than about five km and takes images of man-made objects on the moon, such as the rover.
Knowing exactly where the Lunokhod 2 sits could help someone sending their rover into the lunar wild get that photograph.
"Unfortunately, you don't get $20 million for saying that's where the rover is," Stooke said.
randy.richmond@sunmedia.ca