WIRED Science has reported that the X Prize Foundation has offered its support to NASA’s guidelines for visiting historic sites on the moon (NASA press release). With 26 teams trying to visit the moon (and receiving bonuses for visiting historic sites), it’s a good sign that the landing sites of the various American missions that visited will remain relatively intact. The guidelines discuss safe distances for both landings and robotic visits. The guidelines cover not only the Apollo missions, but unmanned landings and impacts from other U.S. missions. While the guidelines note the existence of various Soviet landing sites and hardware, NASA has no authority (it certainly claims none) to extend its guidelines to non-U.S. sites and material.
The NASA guidelines have been updated since I posted about them earlier this year, mainly to include additional photos and information on equipment that would likely be at the various landing sites. Apparently I managed to stumble onto something way before it was publicly available. Good on me?
