People still argue about it. Honestly, it’s wild that in 2026, with the sheer amount of data we have, the "faked" narrative still breathes. But let’s get real for a second. If you’re looking for photos of moon landing sites, you aren’t going to find a crisp, iPhone-quality selfie of Neil Armstrong sitting on a dusty shelf. Space is big. The Moon is huge. And our cameras, while amazing, have to deal with the brutal reality of physics and distance.
Most people expect to grab a pair of backyard binoculars and see the descent stage of the Eagle. You can't. It's physically impossible. Even the Hubble Space Telescope, which can see galaxies billions of light-years away, struggles with the Moon. Why? Because Hubble is designed for scale, not tiny details on a nearby rock. To Hubble, the Lunar Module is smaller than a single pixel. It’s like trying to see a speck of dust on a window from three miles away. It just blurs into the background.
But things changed in 2009. That’s when NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) dipped into a low orbit. It got close. Really close.
The LRO breakthrough and those grainy little dots
The LRO is basically a high-powered scanner orbiting the Moon. When it passed over the Apollo 11 site at Tranquility Base, it captured something that changed the conversation for anyone actually paying attention. You can see the shadow. You can see the descent stage. But the coolest part? The tracks.
Because there’s no wind on the Moon, the paths the astronauts walked remain perfectly preserved. In the LRO photos, these look like dark, thin squiggles against the lighter lunar soil. It’s the disturbed regolith. When humans walk on the Moon, they flip over the top layer of soil, revealing darker material underneath. That "darkness" creates a trail that’s visible from fifty kilometers up.
It isn't just Apollo 11, either. The LRO caught Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17. At the Apollo 17 site, you can clearly see the Lunar Roving Vehicle—the moon buggy—parked off to the side. It’s still there. Just waiting.
Why Earth-based telescopes fail the test
Physics is a jerk. Specifically, the Rayleigh criterion. This is a formula that determines the resolving power of any telescope. To see the Apollo 11 descent stage (which is about 4 meters wide) from an Earth-based telescope, you’d need a mirror over 75 meters in diameter. For context, the James Webb Space Telescope’s mirror is 6.5 meters. The upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in Chile will have a 39-meter mirror. Even that won't be enough to give you a "clear" photo of the hardware.
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So, when someone says, "Why can't we just point a telescope at it?" the answer is basically: the lens isn't big enough.
The international proof: India, China, and Japan
NASA isn’t the only one with eyes on the lunar surface. This is where the "conspiracy" usually falls apart. If the US faked it, would China help them keep the secret? Probably not.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) sent Chandrayaan-2 to the Moon in 2019. Their Orbiter High-Resolution Camera (OHRC) has a resolution of about 25 centimeters. That is sharp. In 2021, ISRO released images of the Apollo 11 site. They didn't do it to prove NASA right; they did it to test their own cameras. They saw the same thing: the descent stage, the long shadows, the history.
China’s Chang'e missions and Japan’s SELENE (Kaguya) probe have also mapped these areas. While Kaguya’s resolution wasn't high enough to see the flag, it created 3D terrain maps that perfectly matched the photos taken by the Apollo 15 crew from the ground. The hills, the craters, the ridges—they all line up perfectly.
The "missing" flags mystery
One thing people always ask about the photos of moon landing sites is: "Where are the flags?"
Short answer: they might be white now. Or gone.
Longer answer: Apollo 11’s flag actually blew over. Buzz Aldrin reported seeing it fall during the ascent stage ignition. The LRO confirmed this because it couldn't find a standing shadow for the Apollo 11 flag. However, for Apollo 12, 16, and 17, the LRO images show distinct shadows cast by the flags.
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Think about the environment there. No atmosphere. Intense UV radiation. Wild temperature swings from 127°C in the sun to -173°C in the dark. That nylon flag you bought at a hardware store wouldn't last a week in those conditions without bleaching. Most scientists believe the flags are now bleached bone-white by the sun. Some might have even disintegrated into dust after decades of solar bombardment.
What it looks like on the ground today
If you could stand at the Apollo 14 site today, it would look eerily similar to the photos from 1971. There’s no weather to erode the footprints. The ALSEP (Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package) is still sitting there. These were sets of scientific instruments used to measure moonquakes and solar wind.
One of the most important pieces of "evidence" is something you can actually interact with: the Retroreflector.
The astronauts left behind small arrays of mirrors. Scientists at the McDonald Observatory in Texas and the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in France still fire lasers at these mirrors today. The light bounces off the Apollo hardware and returns to Earth. This allows us to measure the distance to the Moon with millimeter precision. If the hardware wasn't there, the laser wouldn't bounce back. It’s a literal physical receipt of a human visit.
Why the shadows look "weird" in photos
A common critique of moon landing photos involves the shadows. People say they aren't parallel, suggesting multiple studio lights. But go outside during a sunset on a hilly street. Shadows on uneven terrain look wonky. On the Moon, you have one light source (the Sun), but you also have a very reflective ground (the lunar regolith) and the Earth itself, which reflects "Earthlight" back onto the Moon. This fills in shadows and creates the complex lighting seen in the original mission photography.
When we look at the modern photos of moon landing sites from orbit, the shadows are our best friends. They provide the contrast needed to identify the height of the objects. A small white square might just be a rock, but a small white square casting a long, geometric shadow that matches the dimensions of a Lunar Module? That's engineering.
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The 2026 perspective: New missions, new photos
We are currently in a new era of lunar exploration. With the Artemis program and various private missions like those from Intuitive Machines, we are going back to these neighborhoods.
We aren't just looking at the old sites for nostalgia. We’re looking at them to see how human-made materials survive over 50 years in the lunar environment. This "forensic archaeology" will help us build better habitats for the future.
- Apollo 11: The descent stage remains at 0.67° N, 23.47° E.
- Apollo 17: The rover is parked at 20.19° N, 30.77° E.
- Luna 24: Even the Soviet robotic probes are visible in high-res LRO scans.
It's kinda funny. We spent decades wondering if we'd ever go back, and now we have so many satellites orbiting the Moon that the "secrets" of the landing sites are basically public record.
What you can do right now to see them
You don't have to take NASA's word for it. You can actually explore these sites yourself.
- LROC Quickmap: This is a free web tool provided by Arizona State University. You can zoom in on the exact coordinates of the Apollo sites and see the raw LRO data. It's not a "polished" PR photo; it’s scientific data.
- Google Moon: It’s a bit older, but it provides a decent overlay of where everything landed.
- Check ISRO’s Archives: The Chandrayaan-2 data is public. Seeing the Apollo 11 site from an Indian satellite’s perspective is often the "ah-ha" moment for skeptics.
The reality is that photos of moon landing sites aren't just historical artifacts. They are active data points for a new generation of explorers. The footprints are still there. The machines are still there. And soon, there will be new footprints right next to them.
The best way to verify this is to look at the raw, unedited imagery from the LRO. Start with the Apollo 17 site, as it has the most "clutter"—the rover, the tracks, and the equipment are all clustered together, making them easier to spot against the lunar plains. Once you see the geometry of a man-made object against the chaotic fractures of the Moon’s surface, it becomes impossible to unsee.