Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff, Christian Sager here, did you know that over a hundred items have been left behind on the surface of the Moon. We're talking about spacecraft, moon boots, cameras, flags, and even ninety six bags of urine, feces and vomit. That's right, everybody, astronauts dumped their porta potties on the Moon. Are you
thinking what I'm thinking? We could fly to the Moon and steal all that stuff, but we better hurry because several states have lobbied to make lunar landing sites into national monuments, and while we'd get arrested before we execute this great moonheist. Though, we'll need to locate where the astronauts left the loot. But wait a minute, can we
even see what they left there? It turns out no, not yet see The resolving power of even our best telescopes is too low give in our distance from the Moon. The best available today is the Hubble space telescope. From its location in Earth's lower orbit. The Hubble only has about a one and fifty meter resolution when pointed at
the Moon. So, for example, something really big like a football stadium would only occupy two pixels in an image that the hubble could generate, we definitely wouldn't be able to see lunar rovers or landing bases, much less those precious bags of Armstrong's poop. Probably the only thing we can currently see on the Moon is a laser beam reflector left there in nineteen sixty nine to measure the
distance back to Earth. However, there are several telescopes currently in production that, once finished, will enhance the visibility of the Moon's surface significantly. For instance, the Giant Magellan telescope in northern Chile should be working by the year and it's planned to have ten times the resolving power of the hubble, giving it close to a fifteen meter resolution. The lunar lander base is close to ten meters long,
so you could see it, but barely. But why settle for squinting when the superior James Web Space telescope is shooting for a launch date in the web will have eighteen hexagonal reflectors to collect light with, making it seven times the size of the hubble and a hundred times more powerful. That will give it a one point five meter resolution, more than enough to locate landers, rovers and hopefully bags and bags of extrement. How much do you think we can get for those? On eBay? And check
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