Structural disturbances of the lunar surface near the Lunokhod-1 spacecraft landing site

The American Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft acquired high-resolution images of the landing sites of the Apollo manned spaceships and the Luna automatic space probes. In the images taken with the LROC Narrow-Angle Camera, the traces of anthropogenic influence on the lunar surface are seen in these places. However, such traces are not always noticeable sufficiently well, since they are masked by inhomogeneities in the brightness of the examined surface region caused by its topographic features and albedo variations. To increase the potential of identifying the disturbances of the initial structure of the lunar surface, the data should be analyzed with so-called phase-ratio imaging. Its essence is that the ratio of two coinciding images of the same surface region obtained at different phase angles is calculated. This method was applied to the analysis of the landing site of the Soviet Luna-17 space probe that transported the Lunokhod-1 rover to the lunar surface. The structural disturbance caused by the impact of jet flows from the probe’s engines and the tracks of the Lunokhod-1 wheels, which are faintly discernible in the usual images, has been detected.