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Shooting the Moon with the APOLLO laser

Shooting the Moon with the APOLLO laser
Shooting the Moon with the APOLLO laser A green laser shoots from the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (APOLLO)'s facility toward the (overexposed) moon. The APOLLO project performs laser ranging to reflectors left by the Apollo astronauts and Lunokhod missions to measure the shape and rotation state of the Moon. APOLLO measures the round-trip travel time of laser pulses bounced off the lunar retroreflectors to a precision of a few picoseconds, corresponding to about one millimeter of precision in range to the moon. UCSD