That ice could have trapped traces of material from the very beginning of the solar system, offering a chemical record difficult to come by. The pole is particularly exciting because of ice discovered there at the bottoms of craters never warmed by sunlight. NASA plans to use Trump funding to send woman to the moon by 2024 Speakers showed how they used new technologies or creative techniques to discover new things from the old lunar samples.Īs Stephen Elardo from the University of Florida put it: “Although Neil and Buzz’s first steps may have been small, getting samples from planetary bodies and understanding samples is how planetary science takes giant leaps.” Which is why we have to go back. Several billion years later, the beads were scooped up by a couple of guys in funny suits.Īt the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in March, thousands of scientists gathered to present their own research stemming from the Apollo missions. The droplets cooled into glass and settled onto the lunar surface.
These beads formed when volcanic eruptions on the moon blasted droplets of lava into space. We study the chemical makeup of microscopic glass beads discovered in soil returned by Apollo. So you see, Apollo’s science legacy is far from complete.Īt MIT, I collaborate on a project that seeks to understand the formation of the moon, specifically, its internal structure. The Earth might have been struck by a smaller, Mars-size object, or perhaps the two objects were of similar size research is ongoing. Apollo suggested it most likely formed when the Earth collided with another planet-sized object. Maybe it formed alongside Earth from the primordial crud from which everything in the solar system coalesced. How’d the moon form? Perhaps it was an asteroid that got caught in Earth’s gravity. How far away? Thanks to Apollo 11’s laser-ranging experiment, we know its distance down to the inch at any moment. How old is it? We now know it’s about 4.5 billion years old. What have we learned? Before Apollo 11 brought those rocks home, we knew few basic facts about the moon, facts Google could quickly answer today. Those samples would be studied for decades. Lunar science has been expanding ever since.įor two and a half hours during their extravehicular excursion, Aldrin and Armstrong romped around the Sea of Tranquility, installing equipment and collecting precious cargo: 50 pounds of lunar rocks. They, and subsequent Apollo visits, delivered. Yet once Neil Armstrong took that historic step, the point of the mission switched: Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin set out to further man’s understanding of the moon itself. It was a monumental triumph of will - and technology.
No one doubts that the biggest achievement of the July 20, 1969, lunar landing was simply getting there. You can now buy moon dust from NASA’s Apollo 11 mission for $400,000 but it hides a disgusting secretīuzz Aldrin moon walk photo sells for nearly $8K at auction Going once, going twice, auction halted? NASA seeks return of lunar dust and cockroach carcasses Buzz Aldrin's Apollo 11 space jacket could fetch $2M at auction
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