Table Of ContentSCIENCE PROGRAM SCIENCE SERVICE
Digitized by the Internet Archive
2009
in
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MOON
SCIENCE PROGRAM
Prepared with the co-operation of
Science Service
Copyright © 1971 by Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
Published by Nelson Doubleday, Inc. and Odhams Books Ltd.
printed in the united states of america
A New Look at an Old Neighbor
When
man reac—hed out and touched the moon for the first time on
20 July, 1969 —with the landing of two American astronauts in a
spacecraft called Eagle a dream of many centuries was fulfilled.
Since antiquity, earth's only natural satellite has been an object of
awe, veneration and curiosity. The moon has been a source of mystery,
an inspiration for legends, songs and poems. From earliest days, it has
been man's aim to "conquer" his old neighbor.
Now we are well on the way. —
Although the moon is not larg—e as celestial bodies go with a diameter
only one-quarter that —of earth it is nevertheless fairly imp—ressive in
appearance. It is bright only the sun appears more brilliant and near
w
APPARENT SIZE APPARENT SIZE
AT PERIGEE AT APOGEE
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—The moonreallydoeslooklarger onsomenights
and for good reason; it is nearer. At perigee
the moon is 221,593 miles away; at apogee it is
252,948 miles away. Its mean distanceis 238,857
miles measured from the center of each.
MOON'S ORBIT
MOON
The first flag of the United States
'V. on the moon's surface, in a photo-
graph taken from inside Apollo 11.
In the foreground the astronauts'
footprints stand out clearly.
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enough to seem large in comparison to other objects in the sky. In fact,
the moon is the only heavenly body whose distance from the earth can
be measured in mere thousands of miles. The moon, in short, has always
been handy for viewing and for scientific investigation.
But it wasn't until this past decade that the moon was brought within
the range of man's full ability to study it. It was the development of the
rocket for space exploration that made this possible. Before rockets
carried probes to the moon, and finally carried man himself, examination
of the moon was limited to the unaided eye or to telescopes. The 200-inch
telescope at Mount Palomar in California was able to bring craters to
within an apparent distance of 200 miles. By contrast, American and
Russian spacecraft were able to send back to earth thousands of photo-
graphic closeups of the moon, some from the surface itself.
Man in the 1960s probed the moon with almost fifty spacecraft,
photographing it, poking and scratching its surface, measuring its tempera-
tures, analyzing its chemistry.
Findings of Apollo
Then came the epic voyage of Apollo 11. By descending to the
moon's Sea of Tranquility for twenty-one and one-half hours, and
actually exploring the lunar surface for two hours, astronauts Neil A.
Armstrong and Col. Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., were able to check firsthand,
although in a limited way, at least some of the theories about the moon
that had developed over the ages.
The two men gathered precious samples —of lunar soil and took photo-
graphs of the environment. This material as well as similar samples
brought back fro—m the Ocean of Storms by the crew of Apollo 12 in
November, 1969 became the object of intensive laboratory analysis
around the world. Scientists at last had precious firsthand rocks and
dust with which to work.
Out of those two flights came several tentative findings:
— —
•There was no water and no life even of the most basic type in the
moon soil collected by the Apollo astronauts. (There was, however, a
remote possibility that lunar probing in different areas could turn up
organisms.)
•It still may be that the earth and moon were formed at the same time,
The huge, 363-foot-tall Apollo 11
space vehicle is launched from the
Kennedy Space Center on 16 July,
1969, for the United States' first
lunar landing mission.
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In this magnificent photo, the
moon is in the foreground, with
.a mtihlelicolnoumdi-lceosveirnedtheeardtihstaancqeu.arTtehre-
view of the rising earth greeted the
Apollo 8 astronauts as they came
from behind the moon during an
orbit at Christmastime, 1968.
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but notable dif—ferences in lunar and earth chemistry seemed to weaken
one old theory that the moon is a fragment that ripped off the earth
when the earth was young. The Apollo crews' lunar rocks were like
nothing ever found on earth. Surprisingly large amounts of such rare
elements as titanium, chromium, yttrium and zirconium were found in
the lunar matter.
•Most of the rocks bro—ught back were between 3.3 to—3.7 billion years
old. But at least one from the Apollo 12 mission was 4.6 billion
years old, roughly the time when the earth and all the other planets in
the solar system were first being formed.
•No traces of precious metals such —as gold, silver or platinum were
found. Many of the rocks were igneous meaning they were once molten,
either from volcanic eruptions or from heat caused by meteors plunging
into the moon.
•It still was anyone's guess whether the moon is an inert, dead body,
or a live one. No one is sure whether there still are active volcanoes in
some areas of the moon. The evidence simply is that the moon once was
a fiery body indeed, shaped by a spectacular series of violent events.
•Similarly—unsettled was whether the moon and earth are closely akin in
structure with a surface crust, an intermediate layer of basaltic mantle
rock, and a heavy core of nickel and iron.
•The lunar soil in the Sea of Tranquility is pulverized lava, p—ounded very
fine, almost like dust. This dust is fully fifty per cent glass shiny little
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