For nearly forty years, scientists aimed lasers at the Moon and got nothing back from the Soviet rover Lunokhod 1 — then in 2010, a pulse bounced straight back from a reflector that had been sitting i

For nearly forty years, one of the Moon’s most useful mirrors sat in silence. It was not broken. It had not been buried by design. It was simply too hard to find. The mirror belonged to Lunokhod 1, the Soviet rover delivered to the Moon by Luna 17 in... [9335 chars]