Chandrayaan captures halo around Apollo-15 landing site

New Delhi, Sep 10 (PTI) India's maiden moon mission has
captured a halo around the site where US spacecraft Apollo-15
had landed on the lunar surface nearly four decades ago.

The Terrain Mapping Camera onboard Chandrayaan-I has
detected a halo around the Apollo-15 landing site on the moon
which scientists claim was because of the surface disturbance
caused by humans.

The halo has been reported earlier by the Japanese
Aerospace Agency using the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) on its
lunar mission Selene.

"However, our finding brings out surface disturbance
caused by Apollo-15 landing on a much improved resolution
using three different view angles and digital elevation data
derived using TMC stereoscopic observations," scientists at
ISRO's Space Applications Centre (SAC) said reporting their
findings in 'Current Science'.

"As a matter of fact, for the first time at the end of
Apollo programme, surface disturbance caused by humans have
been brought out on such a large scale," SAC scientists
Prakash Chauhan, Ajai and A S Krishnakumar said.

They studied the images taken by Chandrayaan-I on January
nine of the Rima Hadley Rille and surrounding regions of
Apennine Mountains where the Falcon lunar module of Apollo-15
had landed. PTI