The Anomaly of Plaskett Crater on the Moon
As well as Project Apollo NASA has achieved many great things. As a child I was personally influenced and inspired by the achievements of NASA and I am lucky that in my career I have got to lecture and visit all of the main research laboratories. It has been one of the privileges of my life and I have enormous admiration for the professionals who work at NASA and the outstanding research they do in the pursuit of spaceflight.
Yet, I have sat on something perplexing for a few years and I didn’t know what to make of it. I do not offer any grand speculations, but merely offer the information into the public domain in the hope that others may be able to explain it since I cannot. So here we go:
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) was a NASA mission to orbit the Moon in an eccentric polar orbit to map its surface. It was launched on the 18th June 2009 and entered operational service on the 15th September 2009. It is still operational and will continue to do so until 2026. It has produced excellent maps of the Moon and one can explore its surface using the NASA web site from the link given below:
Before I continue, it is important to be reminded of the actual Project Apollo landing sites and where they were located. This is Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17. The map below shows the approximate locations of the landings sites on the side of the Moon facing towards Earth.
Next we turn to Plaskett Crater which is located on the Northern hemisphere and on the far side of the Moon, approximately several hundred miles South of the Lunar North Pole. Its centre located at 82.1 degrees North, 174.3 degrees East. It has several rims to the crater and at its full extent has a diameter of over 100 km. The crater is as big as a large city like London. Yet, due to its location, no humans have ever landed there and that was certainly the case for Project Apollo.
In an article by the European Space Agency published on 1st March 2007 titled ‘SMART-1 views the edge of Lunar Incognita: Mars on the Moon?’, they speculate that the location of Plaskett crater would be an ideal location “for lunar science studies, or even to prepare for human bases on the Moon and on Mars”. They say that “from Plaskett, on the far side of the Moon, the Earth can only be seen from the crater’s northern rim for just a few days during a few months every year”. Of course, if we did establish a base there, and build a tall tower in its low gravity environment, perhaps the Earth would be visible for much more of the year and it would in fact make for a good observation point.
In December 2018 I become aware of reports online that others had spotted what appeared to be artificial structures within the vicinity of Plaskett Crater. This made no sense of course, since no mission of Project Apollo, or from another country like Russia, had visited this location as far as we are aware. So I visited the LRO site myself and found the location in Plaskett crater to observe the same images. These images I am showing is a sequence of images zooming into the location which I personally took myself as screen grabs from the NASA LRO web site on the 21st December 2018.
As we zoom in even closer we begin to observe some interesting features.
Now according to the people that first reported this site online back in 2018, the tracks were evidence of rover activity - although I personally think that they are consistent with the boulder tracks seen at other locations on the Moon. But they also pointed towards what appeared to be artificial structures and a very tall object which creates a shadow similar in appearance to a rocket (or perhaps a tower). I personally do not have an opinion here, only to point out that they are interesting. The image below highlights some of these features.
At the time, I screen grabbed these images and filed them away and didn’t think much more of it. But in 2020 I looked and couldn’t find the original online discussions about the structures anymore. Further, I went back on to the NASA LRO web site and found that once you started zooming into Plaskett crater, the images became blurred and the features that I had seen in 2018 were no longer available. To illustrate, the image below was grabbed on 3rd August 2020 and note the significant degree of blurring compared to the images above.
None of the features seen in 2018 are now available. To double check, I recently went back to the NASA LRO web site and screen grabbed the same location. These were grabbed on 21st November 2024. Again, there is still significant blurring. It is no longer possible to zoom in and examine the features as I did in 2018. Something seems to have happened to the images that prevents any further zooming towards higher fidelity resolution so that smaller objects in this location can be examined.
To be clear let us compare all three images from 2018, 2020 and 2024 for the approximate same location on the Moon near the rim of Plakett crater. The image on the far left is the one from 2018:
What can possibly explain this? How is it that high resolution images of the lunar surface were originally high quality and showed lots of features, and then suddenly and thereafter show a limited resolution in detail. Could this be purely a result of the image filtering process? Has some software been applied, without care, that has resulted in poorer quality images?
I would love for people to give me their opinion and let me know if they have an answer. Why would the images get worse? Are we seeing any artificial structures on the Moon at this location or is this merely rocks and craters? I am not personally advocating that these are artificial structures although I will say that the objects are interesting. I am more perplexed by the subsequent image blurring and what could explain that.
Meanwhile, if this is not an attempt to hide information on the presence of artificial structures on the Moon (as has been claimed by some), then it must at least be seen as a form of incompetence in altering the images this way and it should be no surprise when even a professional space scientist like myself, let alone a popular enthusiast member of the public, is led towards broader speculations.
I would like to invite NASA to give a formal response to explain what has occurred here and why the image details around the rim of Plakett Crater are no longer visible to the public.
