Russian Moon-landing skeptics raise 1 million rubles to send a lunar probe for proof of Apollo missions
In just four days of crowdfunding, Russian skeptics of the NASA Moon landing have managed to raise more than 1 million rubles (about $16,000) to build and launch a "micro-probe" that would orbit the Moon and photograph at high-resolution the sites the US Apollo missions visited.
The men behind the effort, led by blogger and space enthusiast Vitaly Egorov, say they need another half-million rubles, in order to custom-build the probe's onboard computer. Several of team's members reportedly work at Dauria Aerospace, a private company that specializes in space exploration.
After the initial planning is complete, Egorov says he hopes for support from major investors or corporations. If the device is ever built, he says he hopes it could be launched on one of the rockets being sent to the Moon by Russia, India, or China planned over the next ten years.
Project to send a satelite to orbit the Moon
Open Space (Vitaly Egorov)
If successful, the probe would also photograph the remnants of two unmanned Soviet programs to the Moon: the Luna spacecraft soft landings and the Lunokhod rovers.
There is, in fact, already a spacecraft orbiting the Moon. Launched on June 18, 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is a NASA robotic spacecraft currently photographing and building a 3-D map of the lunar surface. On July 2, 2009, NASA published the first images of Apollo equipment left on the Moon. Skeptical of this evidence, Egorov and his team want to send a higher-definition camera.