A curious object is about to fly past Earth only one-third the distance to the Moon.
Cataloged as a 10m-class asteroid, 2010 AL30 has an orbital period of almost exactly 1 year. This raises the possibility that it might not be a natural object, but rather a piece of some spacecraft from our own planet.
At closest approach on Jan. 13th, 2010 AL30 will streak through Orion, Taurus, and Pisces glowing like a 14th magnitude star. Experienced amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor the flyby. Orbital information is available here or you can generate your own ephemeris here: JPL Horizons
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Filed under: Asteroids & NEOs • Astronomy News
Google this for more info..LLR APACHE POINT T MURPHY APOLLO..this will tell you how the Laser arrays are used to measure the distance to the moon down to less than one millimeter
The old lunar lander that was recovered by an Apollo mission was Surveyor III. Apollo 12 landed next to it in the fall of 1969. They examined the lander, removed the camera, cut a few other samples and returned it to earth. Most of the lander is still on the moon.
You can now see the Surveyor III camera (minus some holes cut for analysis) in the Smithsonian Air And Space Museum in Washington DC.
As for mirrors on the moon, there are actually five — three left by Apollo astronauts (Apollos 11, 14 and 15) and two on Russian Lunokhod rovers. They are all still used by special observatories on earth with lasers that can accurately measure the distance to the moon over time. The latest of these observatories, Apache Point, has gotten the precision down to a millimeter! They are doing a remarkable number of things with that data, including verifications of Einstein's theories of relativity; showing that the moon is continually moving slowly away from earth as the tides transfer some of earth's angular momentum to it; that the value of the gravitational constant is really constant; and a whole bunch of other neat things.