Third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings of the Moon landing really is. The NASA-independent "Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur", McDonald, Apache Point, and Haleakalā observatories regularly use the Apollo LRRR. Lick Observatory attempted to detect from Apollo 11's retroreflector while Armstrong and Aldrin were still on the Moon but did not succeed until August 1, 1969. The Apollo 14 astronauts deployed a retroreflector on February 5, 1971, and McDonald Observatory detected it the same day. The Apollo 15 retroreflector was deployed on July 31, 1971, and was detected by McDonald Observatory within a few days. The image on the left shows what is considered some of
Third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings party observers could expect to see the various craft at specific times according to scheduled launch times and planned trajectories. The Soviet Union monitored the missions at their Space Transmissions Corps, which was "fully equipped with the latest intelligence-gathering and surveillance equipment." Vasily Mishin, in an interview for the article "The Moon Programme That Faltered," describes how the Soviet Moon programme dwindled after the Apollo landing. The missions were tracked by radar from several countries on the way to the Moon and back. A group at Kettering Grammar School, using simple radio equipment, monitored Soviet and U.S. spacecraft and calculated