What other countries have seen

If the landers are there, critics say, rival space powers should have published sharp photographs long ago. Many images shared online as “Chinese” or “Indian” proof are crops of NASA pictures or have no source at all.

In May 2008 Japan’s space agency reported a brighter area at the Apollo 15 site, which it read as soil disturbed by the descent engine. Its Kaguya spacecraft also rebuilt the mountains seen in the astronauts’ photographs. JAXA noted that its camera had about 10-meter resolution, too coarse to show the rover or the lander. [1]

India’s Chandrayaan-2 carries the Orbiter High Resolution Camera, with a resolution of 0.25 meters, and ISRO lists earlier human landing sites among its targets. [2][3] In 2023 South Korea’s space agency released Danuri images of Apollo landing sites. [4]

China’s Chang’e-2 mapped the Moon at about 7 meters per pixel, which is too coarse to resolve a lander a few meters across. Claims that it showed Apollo hardware in detail should be treated with caution.