Opening any of the missions to view the photographs will commit Google Earth to downloading a substantial number of images - be patient.
Photographs taken from a vertical or near vertical viewpoint are plotted on the surface, while oblique views are shown using markers positioned in the centre of the left hand edge of the photograph unless otherwise stated. There is no particular logic to the choice of icon.
The photographs demonstrate that the lunar surface was photographed in great detail by Apollo, often covering areas not imaged by pre-Apollo probes, or areas where the coverage was from a much higher altitude and/or at low resolution.
The location of some photographs was not known prior to this work, but despite not knowing where photographs were taken NASA still managed to get them correct down to the smallest crater!
The fact that these Apollo orbital images, as well as the 16mm and TV footage, match high resolution images provided by the modern probes such as theLunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), India’s Chandrayaan, Japan’s Kaguya and China’s Chang’e-2 is further proof that Apollo happened.
