Why is there no discernible crater beneath the lunar lander?
“Although the descent engine of the LM is powerful, most of its operation takes place thousands of feet above the moon during the early stages of the landing,” says a NASA information sheet. “At the moment of touchdown, a small amount of surface dust is blown away, but the relatively cohesive lunar surface seems to deflect the blast sideways.” Q: Why is there an artificial-looking line between a sharp foreground and a blurry background in some of the pictures of the lunar surface? A: “What you see is simply the curvature of the moon,” explains Paul Lowman, a NASA geophysicist. “Because the moon is such a small body, the curvature horizon is only two or three miles away from eye level. That sharp line you see in some pictures is the visible horizon. The blurry part you see is caused by mountains sticking up from beyond the horizon.” Q: Why are there no stars in many of the photos taken on the moon? A: “That’s one of Kaysing’s sillier arguments,” says James Oberg, a space-flight operatio
