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58,553 viewsJun 25, 2019, 02:00am
Yes, The Apollo Moon Landings Really Did Happen
Starts With A Bang
Ethan Siegel Contributor
Starts With A Bang Contributor Group
Science
The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.
It has now been nearly 50 years since humanity first set foot on another
world: our Moon. The Apollo missions that brought about these six
successful landings are sometimes called into question by 'skeptics,'
but the evidence that they really occurred is overwhelming.
It has now been nearly 50 years since humanity first set foot on another
world: our Moon. The Apollo missions that brought about these six
successful landings are sometimes called into question by 'skeptics,'
but the evidence that they really occurred is overwhelming. NASA / APOLLO 15
50 years ago, on July 20, 1969, humanity took our first footsteps on the
surface of another world. With Neil Armstrong's small step for a single
man, humankind took a great leap forward into the space age,
demonstrating our potential for reaching other planets and extending the
reach of human civilization far beyond our Earthly bonds. Generations
later, in 2019, we're still dreaming of traveling to other planets and
other solar systems throughout the galaxy.
Yet there are many who proudly declare that they don't believe that
human beings have ever left Earth. That NASA and the entire space
program is nothing more than a ruse, a hoax, or a civilization-scale
fraud. Like most people alive today, all six of humanity's Moon landings
occurred before I was born. Still, I'm 100% positive they really did
occur, and we have overwhelming evidence to prove it right at our
fingertips.
This iconic image, taken by Neil Armstrong, shows Buzz Aldrin planting
the US flag on the Moon. Note the presence of footprints in the
foreground. These (and other) astronaut footprints, believe it or not,
are still visible today.
This iconic image, taken by Neil Armstrong, shows Buzz Aldrin planting
the US flag on the Moon. Note the presence of footprints in the
foreground. These (and other) astronaut footprints, believe it or not,
are still visible today. NASA / APOLLO 11
1.) We can still see the evidence of the Apollo program on the Moon,
even today. Here on Earth, marks that we make on our world are
temporary. Footsteps in the sand disappear after mere hours at most, as
the motions of Earth's winds will erase any coherent patterns that we
can make, and will rearrange any dunes on the same timescales. But on
the Moon, there are no oceans, no atmosphere, and no forces to shift the
particles that compose the lunar regiolith.
Whereas on Earth, we have an atmosphere, weather, liquid water, and
living species, the Moon only has the occasional weak moonquake and the
rare visit from an extraterrestrial impactor or, in the case of
humanity, lander or visitor. If we truly did walk or land on the Moon,
therefore, we'd expect that the evidence of our presence would still
remain today.
On Earth, footprints or other markings on the surface are only
temporary, and are easily erased by the winds, rains, and other surface
activity that comes about on a world with an atmosphere, oceans, and
life. On the Moon, however, those conditions are absent, and any
alterations to the surface, even those made by humans some ~50 years
ago, should persist. GREG PROHL (L); BYRON JORJORIAN (R)
The reason is straightforward: without terrestrial phenomena that move
and rearrange the particles on our surface — without winds, rains,
snows, glaciers, rockslides, etc. — the only way to rearrange solid
grains of particles are via impacts. Unless there's an event that kicks
up dust, which can then migrate and settle elsewhere across the lunar
surface, any changes we've made to the Moon should remain visible on the
scale of a human lifetime.
In other words, if we ever did truly land on the Moon, the telltale
evidence should still be there. All we'd have to do was return to the
sites where the documented landings occurred and photograph them today.
This is not simply a thought experiment, but data that was decisively
collected years ago, when NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mapped the
entire Moon's surface. The Apollo landing sites, in particular, are
extremely well-documented.
Apollo 12 was the first precision landing of humans on the Moon, and we
explored a much greater amount of the lunar surface than during the
first landing. The dark grey markings on the surface are astronaut
footprints, which have stood the test of time on the Moon, as the
processes that erase them on Earth are absent on the Moon. NASA / LRO /
GSFC / ASU
The orbiter has not only photographed every single one of the Apollo
landing sites, but three of them — Apollo 12, 14, and 17 — were imaged
with the orbiter's Narrow Angle Camera and annotated, clearly showcasing
a variety of human-created features. By making a close pass to the lunar
surface and photographing it with the best technology that the modern
instruments LRO was equipped with could provide, the team was able to
achieve resolutions as sharp as 35 cm (about 14") per pixel.
When you examine the Apollo 12 landing site, visible features include:
the physical landing site (annotated with "Intrepid Descent Stage"),
the bright "L"-shaped feature near the ALSEP label (which is due to
highly reflective power cables),
the Surveyor 3 probe that landed on the Moon years earlier (in 1967),
and a set of grey paths that look like dried-up canals, which are
actually astronaut footpaths!
The Apollo 14 landing site is still intact, and our images of it in
modern times still carry the legacy of this nearly-50-years-old event.
The lunar surface changes very slowly over time, and the changes we made
in 1971 are still perceptible, virtually unchanged, today.
Apollo 14's landing site might be less visually spectacular, but is
arguably far more famous. The module that landed on the Moon (the
Antares Descent Stage) is clearly visible, as well as the ALSEP
equipment, which has a different configuration but still contains the
highly reflective central power station. However, the footpaths are
perhaps even more spectacular and varied, belonging to none other than
Edgar Mitchell and famed lunar golfer Alan Shepard.
Although the golf balls that he hit were never recovered, and even the
most distant golf shot probably didn't quite travel for "miles and
miles" as Shepard originally claimed, we can absolutely see the evidence
of the astronauts' presence. It may be nearly 50 years later, but
because the Moon is an airless world with few disturbances, humanity's
footprints have not yet been erased.
A photograph from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the landing site of
Apollo 17. The tracks of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) can be clearly
seen, as can the vehicle itself.
But compared to these earlier missions, the evidence that's still
visible from Apollo 17 is nothing short of spectacular. At this
incredibly high resolution, expansive traveling paths and equipment
remnants left on the lunar surface are unmistakable, courtesy of the
last humans to walk on the Moon: Eugene "Gene" Cernan and Harrison
"Jack" Schmitt.
You can still see the descent module and the ALSEP equipment, but the
footpaths appear far, far greater in scale and consist of two parallel
tracks, plus there's a bright spot labeled "LRV" in addition. Why?
Because the final three Apollo missions contained an Apollo Lunar Roving
vehicle! Its tracks are distinctly different from footprints, and it
enabled astronauts to explore much greater distances on the lunar
surface. The tracks from the LRV extend for over 22 miles in total,
reaching five miles away from the landing site and extending far beyond
this image.
2.) We have extensive photographic and video evidence from the Apollo
missions themselves. How could the lunar module have ascended back off
of the surface and returned the astronauts back to the orbiting module
which would take them back to Earth? Exactly like the video above shows,
from direct Apollo 17 footage. The hypergolic propellant system isn't
based off of a single explosion, but rather a constant thrust of ~16,000
Newtons that was steadily delivered over a timespan of about 5 minutes.
There's no exhaust trail because there's no lunar atmosphere, but you
can track the spacecraft's accelerated motion for yourself with even
basic modern software.
This is enough force to launch the ascent stage upwards, increasing its
speed by about 2,000-3,000 meters-per-second. This is enough to enter
lunar orbit and dock with the command and service module, but not enough
to escape lunar orbit. This is why every lunar module, after returning
the astronauts, crash-landed on the lunar surface. The locations of the
lunar modules of Apollo 12, 14, 15, and 17 are all known, and the impact
sites (along with the ejecta) are again visible in the LRO data.
Here, the dark marks that fan out and appear to spray across the lunar
surface all originate from a single darker point or smudge. This is the
telltale sign of a recent impact, and the four identified locations
where features such as this occur are consistent with the four sites
that correspond to the crash-landing of the lunar ascent stages of
Apollo 12, 14, 15, and 17. Apollo 11's and 16's locations have still
never been determined.
But there's even more evidence than that: there are thousands of photos
taken by Apollo astronauts documenting the entire program. Years ago,
NASA released all the photos of the twelve Apollo missions that made it
to space on a publicly available Flickr photostream, sorted into a
series of incredible albums by mission. Some of the greatest, most
eye-opening photos, stories and quotes originated from the astronauts
who journeyed on those trips.
Apollo 10, known as the 'dress rehearsal' for the Moon landing, was
actually equipped with all the apparatuses that would have allowed them
to land on the lunar surface themselves. They came closer to the Moon
than any previous crewed mission, and paved the way for the actual moon
landing which took place with Apollo 11 in July of 1969.
Traveling through the atmosphere, both exiting the Earth and
re-entering, sound horrifying and harrowing according to Apollo 8's Bill
Anders, who descriped it as follows:
You could see the flames and the outer skin of the spacecraft glowing;
and burning, baseball-size chunks flying off behind us. It was an eerie
feeling, like being a gnat inside a blowtorch flame.
Although there is no way to prove that these photos and videos weren't
faked, the technology and data to do so didn't exist at the time.
Somehow, it all lines up with the full suite of improved data we've
collected in the half-century since we last visited the Moon.
Some of the deployed scientific equipment taken to the Moon during the
Apollo 12 mission, where the installation and operation of this
equipment was well-documented both remotely and in situ by the
astronauts who installed it.
3.) The scientific instruments left there returned years of valuable
data, and some are still in use today. The Apollo missions weren't
simply publicity stunts; they were the pinnacle of human exploration of
another world. From the very first crewed mission to land on the lunar
surface, we sent up a large suite of scientific instruments to install
on the lunar surface and measure its properties.
Some of the more famous ones are listed below.
Lunar seismometers, which were installed by Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, and
16, which transmitted data about the Moon's seismic activity and
moonquakes until the final station failed in 1977.
The lunar laser ranging retroreflector arrays, which remain operational
even today, enable us to reflect lasers off of the reflective surfaces
installed by the Apollo 11, 14, and 15 crews, as well as the Soviet
Lunokhod 2 rover, to measure the Earth-Moon distance to precisions of
approximately 1 centimeter.
The lunar laser ranging facility at Goddard, as shown here, enables us
to track the lunar distance from Earth to ~centimeter accuracy. The
earliest laser reflectors were installed on the Moon's surface as part
of the Apollo program, and they remain in service today. The alignment
between the predicted and observed distances of the Moon over time is
one of science's great accomplishments in our understanding of gravity.
The SWC (solar wind composition) experiment taught us what the flux, and
composition of solar wind particles that reach the Moon's surface are,
since there's neither atmosphere nor a magnetic field nor Van Allen
belts to interfere with the received particles on the Moon.
The SWS (solar wind spectrum) experiment did exactly the same thing,
except for the energy spectrum of the solar wind particles, rather than
the composition measured by the SWC experiment.
The LSM (lunar surface magnetometer) experiment was designed to measure
the lunar magnetic field, determining that the Moon does in fact have
magnetized features on the surface, but that the magnetism is not
uniform across the Moon. Unlike Earth, we now know there is no coherent
magnetic field powered by an active core on the Moon.
The LDD (lunar dust detector) experiment was initially installed to
measure how solar panels degraded due to lunar dust deposited from the
ascent stage and other, subsequent sources. The experiments performed by
the Apollo program showed that we vastly overestimated dust deposits,
and instead enabled us to accurately measure the effects of deposited
lunar dust.
An Apollo 14 astronaut deploys the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments
Package's power source (foreground) and "Central Station" (background),
where the Lunar Dust Detector was mounted. In 2012, the data from Apollo
14's and 15's LDD experiment was restored and digitized, enabling
scientists to perform the first long-term analysis of lunar dust deposition.
Each Apollo mission was outfitted with an array of experiments to
install and perform on the lunar surface. This is what the ALSEP
package, which stands for Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, was
designed to do. The results from these experiments agree with one
another and with the data collected from both previous and subsequent
experiments designed to measure a variety of properties of the Sun,
Earth, Moon, and their interplay.
The fact that we have the data from these experiments, and that many of
them (and their successors on later Apollo missions and lunar lander
missions) are still operational or otherwise in use today, provide us
with extremely strong evidence that we did, in fact, land on the Moon.
This image, from January 31, 1971, shows sunrise from Alan Shepard's 12
o'clock pan taken near the Lunar Module at the start of EVA-1
(moonwalk). Without the Sun glare, we can see some detail on the
Cone-Crater ridge. The flag, S-Band antenna, ladder, and the LRRR (Laser
Ranging Retroreflector) are all located in the west footpad. The MET
(Modular Equipment Transporter) has not been deployed and is still
folded up on the MESA (Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly).
4.) We have returned and analyzed samples from the Moon, learning
unprecedented amounts about lunar geology and the Moon's history in the
process. One of the primary goals of the Apollo mission was to collect
rocks from the lunar surface and return them to Earth for laboratory
analysis.
Through this endeavor, we learned that the Moon and Earth, based on the
isotope ratios of the elements present, likely share a common origin,
which was likely caused by a cataclysmic impact approximately 50 million
years after the formation of the Solar System. Originally formulated as
the Giant Impact Hypothesis, this has now evolved to describe a new type
of structure called a synestia, which generalized the Giant Impact
scenario to better describe the full suite of observables. Without the
Apollo missions, we might never have uncovered the critical evidence
supporting this scenario.
A synestia will consist of a mixture of vaporized material from both
proto-Earth and the impactor, which forms a large moon inside of it from
the coalescence of moonlets. This is a general scenario capable of
creating one single, large moon with the physical and chemical
properties we observe ours to have.
S. J. LOCK ET AL., J. GEOPHYS RESEARCH, 123, 4 (2018), P. 910-951
But there wasn't just a single mission, and the various Apollo missions
landed at different sites, enabling us to sample the properties of the
lunar soil at a variety of locations. The final two astronauts to ever
walk on the Moon, Cernan and Schmitt, ran into quite a surprise when
they did. Schmitt, the lone civilian-astronaut (and only scientist) to
travel to the Moon, was often described as the most business-like of all
the astronauts. Which is why it must have been such a shock to hear him
exclaim the following:
Oh, hey! Wait a minute… THERE IS ORANGE SOIL! It’s all over! I stirred
it up with my feet!
The dull, grey lunar soil you’re used to seeing — that we’re all used to
seeing — in one particular spot was only a very thin veneer, covering a
rich, orange landscape beneath.
The orange soil, at the lower right of the image, really stands out when
compared to the colorations visible on the rest of the Moon. Apollo 17,
perhaps because they had a geoscientist as one of their moonwalkers, was
able to spot this geological oddity that taught us so much about the
Moon's origin and composition.
Like any good scientist, or any good explorer, for that matter, Cernan
and Schmitt took pictures, collected data, and brought samples back to
Earth for further analysis. What could cause orange soil on the Moon,
perhaps the most featureless of all the large, airless rocks in our
Solar System?
What the analysis back on Earth revealed was fantastic: this was
volcanic glass. What occurred was that molten lava from the interior of
the Moon erupted, some 3 to 4 billion years ago, up above the airless
surface and into the vacuum of space. As the lava became exposed to the
vacuum, it separated out into tiny fragments and froze, forming tiny
beads of volcanic glass in orange and black colors. (The tin in some of
the fragments is what gives the orange color.)
Olivine inclusions found in lunar samples have a spectacularly high
water concentration of 1,200 ppm. This is remarkable, because it's the
same exact concentration as the water found in terrestrial (Earth-based)
olivine inclusions, pointing to a common origin for the Earth and the Moon.
E.H. HAURI ET AL., SCIENCE. 2011 JUL 8;333(6039):213–5
In 2011, reanalysis of those samples found evidence that water was
included in the volcanic eruption: with concentrations of water in the
glass beads that were formed 50 times as great as the expected dryness
of the Moon.
Olivine inclusions showed water present in concentrations up to 1,200
parts-per-million. Most remarkably, the lunar samples we've found have
indicated that Earth and the Moon have a common origin, consistent with
a giant impact that occurred only a few tens of millions of years into
the birth of our Solar System. Without direct samples, obtained by the
Apollo missions and brought back to Earth, we never would have been able
to draw such a startling, but spectacular, conclusion.
A NASA picture taken on May 5, 1972 shows a close-up view or 'mug shot'
of Apollo 16 lunar sample no. 68815, a dislodged fragment from a parent
boulder. A fillet-soil sample was taken close to the boulder, allowing
for study of the type and rate of erosion acting on lunar rocks.
A NASA picture taken on May 5, 1972 shows a close-up view or 'mug shot'
of Apollo 16 lunar sample no. 68815, a dislodged fragment from a parent
boulder. A fillet-soil sample was taken close to the boulder, allowing
for study of the type and rate of erosion acting on lunar rocks. AFP /
GETTY IMAGES
There are many different lines of evidence that point to humanity's
presence on the Moon. We landed there and can see the evidence,
directly, when we look with the appropriate resolution. We have
extraordinary amounts of evidence, ranging from eyewitness testimony to
the data record tracking the missions to photographs documenting the
trips, all supporting the fact that we landed and walked on the lunar
surface. We have a slew of scientific instruments that were installed,
took data, and a few of which can still be seen and used today. And
finally, we've brought back lunar samples and learned about the Moon's
history, composition, and likely origin from it.
If you choose to be a doubter, that's your call: no one can take your
own freedom of choice away from you. But if you follow the evidence, and
that's what science compels us to do, the only doubts that remain are
completely unreasonable. We really did land on the Moon, and this is the
science to back it up!
Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here.
Ethan Siegel
Ethan Siegel Contributor
I am a Ph.D. astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, who
professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. I have won numerous
awards for science writing si... Read More
Starts With A Bang
Starts With A Bang Contributor Group
Starts With A Bang is dedicated to exploring the story of what we know
about the Universe as well as how we know it, with a focus on physics,
astronomy, and the scientif... Read More
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/06/25/yes-the-apollo-moon-landings-really-did-happen/#209129b56a8f
58,553 viewsJun 25, 2019, 02:00am
Yes, The Apollo Moon Landings Really Did Happen
Starts With A Bang
Ethan Siegel Contributor
Starts With A Bang Contributor Group
Science
The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.
It has now been nearly 50 years since humanity first set foot on another
world: our Moon. The Apollo missions that brought about these six
successful landings are sometimes called into question by 'skeptics,'
but the evidence that they really occurred is overwhelming.
It has now been nearly 50 years since humanity first set foot on another
world: our Moon. The Apollo missions that brought about these six
successful landings are sometimes called into question by 'skeptics,'
but the evidence that they really occurred is overwhelming. NASA / APOLLO 15
50 years ago, on July 20, 1969, humanity took our first footsteps on the
surface of another world. With Neil Armstrong's small step for a single
man, humankind took a great leap forward into the space age,
demonstrating our potential for reaching other planets and extending the
reach of human civilization far beyond our Earthly bonds. Generations
later, in 2019, we're still dreaming of traveling to other planets and
other solar systems throughout the galaxy.
Yet there are many who proudly declare that they don't believe that
human beings have ever left Earth. That NASA and the entire space
program is nothing more than a ruse, a hoax, or a civilization-scale
fraud. Like most people alive today, all six of humanity's Moon landings
occurred before I was born. Still, I'm 100% positive they really did
occur, and we have overwhelming evidence to prove it right at our
fingertips.
This iconic image, taken by Neil Armstrong, shows Buzz Aldrin planting
the US flag on the Moon. Note the presence of footprints in the
foreground. These (and other) astronaut footprints, believe it or not,
are still visible today.
This iconic image, taken by Neil Armstrong, shows Buzz Aldrin planting
the US flag on the Moon. Note the presence of footprints in the
foreground. These (and other) astronaut footprints, believe it or not,
are still visible today. NASA / APOLLO 11
1.) We can still see the evidence of the Apollo program on the Moon,
even today. Here on Earth, marks that we make on our world are
temporary. Footsteps in the sand disappear after mere hours at most, as
the motions of Earth's winds will erase any coherent patterns that we
can make, and will rearrange any dunes on the same timescales. But on
the Moon, there are no oceans, no atmosphere, and no forces to shift the
particles that compose the lunar regiolith.
Whereas on Earth, we have an atmosphere, weather, liquid water, and
living species, the Moon only has the occasional weak moonquake and the
rare visit from an extraterrestrial impactor or, in the case of
humanity, lander or visitor. If we truly did walk or land on the Moon,
therefore, we'd expect that the evidence of our presence would still
remain today.
On Earth, footprints or other markings on the surface are only
temporary, and are easily erased by the winds, rains, and other surface
activity that comes about on a world with an atmosphere, oceans, and
life. On the Moon, however, those conditions are absent, and any
alterations to the surface, even those made by humans some ~50 years
ago, should persist. GREG PROHL (L); BYRON JORJORIAN (R)
The reason is straightforward: without terrestrial phenomena that move
and rearrange the particles on our surface — without winds, rains,
snows, glaciers, rockslides, etc. — the only way to rearrange solid
grains of particles are via impacts. Unless there's an event that kicks
up dust, which can then migrate and settle elsewhere across the lunar
surface, any changes we've made to the Moon should remain visible on the
scale of a human lifetime.
In other words, if we ever did truly land on the Moon, the telltale
evidence should still be there. All we'd have to do was return to the
sites where the documented landings occurred and photograph them today.
This is not simply a thought experiment, but data that was decisively
collected years ago, when NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mapped the
entire Moon's surface. The Apollo landing sites, in particular, are
extremely well-documented.
Apollo 12 was the first precision landing of humans on the Moon, and we
explored a much greater amount of the lunar surface than during the
first landing. The dark grey markings on the surface are astronaut
footprints, which have stood the test of time on the Moon, as the
processes that erase them on Earth are absent on the Moon. NASA / LRO /
GSFC / ASU
The orbiter has not only photographed every single one of the Apollo
landing sites, but three of them — Apollo 12, 14, and 17 — were imaged
with the orbiter's Narrow Angle Camera and annotated, clearly showcasing
a variety of human-created features. By making a close pass to the lunar
surface and photographing it with the best technology that the modern
instruments LRO was equipped with could provide, the team was able to
achieve resolutions as sharp as 35 cm (about 14") per pixel.
When you examine the Apollo 12 landing site, visible features include:
the physical landing site (annotated with "Intrepid Descent Stage"),
the bright "L"-shaped feature near the ALSEP label (which is due to
highly reflective power cables),
the Surveyor 3 probe that landed on the Moon years earlier (in 1967),
and a set of grey paths that look like dried-up canals, which are
actually astronaut footpaths!
The Apollo 14 landing site is still intact, and our images of it in
modern times still carry the legacy of this nearly-50-years-old event.
The lunar surface changes very slowly over time, and the changes we made
in 1971 are still perceptible, virtually unchanged, today.
Apollo 14's landing site might be less visually spectacular, but is
arguably far more famous. The module that landed on the Moon (the
Antares Descent Stage) is clearly visible, as well as the ALSEP
equipment, which has a different configuration but still contains the
highly reflective central power station. However, the footpaths are
perhaps even more spectacular and varied, belonging to none other than
Edgar Mitchell and famed lunar golfer Alan Shepard.
Although the golf balls that he hit were never recovered, and even the
most distant golf shot probably didn't quite travel for "miles and
miles" as Shepard originally claimed, we can absolutely see the evidence
of the astronauts' presence. It may be nearly 50 years later, but
because the Moon is an airless world with few disturbances, humanity's
footprints have not yet been erased.
A photograph from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the landing site of
Apollo 17. The tracks of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) can be clearly
seen, as can the vehicle itself.
But compared to these earlier missions, the evidence that's still
visible from Apollo 17 is nothing short of spectacular. At this
incredibly high resolution, expansive traveling paths and equipment
remnants left on the lunar surface are unmistakable, courtesy of the
last humans to walk on the Moon: Eugene "Gene" Cernan and Harrison
"Jack" Schmitt.
You can still see the descent module and the ALSEP equipment, but the
footpaths appear far, far greater in scale and consist of two parallel
tracks, plus there's a bright spot labeled "LRV" in addition. Why?
Because the final three Apollo missions contained an Apollo Lunar Roving
vehicle! Its tracks are distinctly different from footprints, and it
enabled astronauts to explore much greater distances on the lunar
surface. The tracks from the LRV extend for over 22 miles in total,
reaching five miles away from the landing site and extending far beyond
this image.
2.) We have extensive photographic and video evidence from the Apollo
missions themselves. How could the lunar module have ascended back off
of the surface and returned the astronauts back to the orbiting module
which would take them back to Earth? Exactly like the video above shows,
from direct Apollo 17 footage. The hypergolic propellant system isn't
based off of a single explosion, but rather a constant thrust of ~16,000
Newtons that was steadily delivered over a timespan of about 5 minutes.
There's no exhaust trail because there's no lunar atmosphere, but you
can track the spacecraft's accelerated motion for yourself with even
basic modern software.
This is enough force to launch the ascent stage upwards, increasing its
speed by about 2,000-3,000 meters-per-second. This is enough to enter
lunar orbit and dock with the command and service module, but not enough
to escape lunar orbit. This is why every lunar module, after returning
the astronauts, crash-landed on the lunar surface. The locations of the
lunar modules of Apollo 12, 14, 15, and 17 are all known, and the impact
sites (along with the ejecta) are again visible in the LRO data.
Here, the dark marks that fan out and appear to spray across the lunar
surface all originate from a single darker point or smudge. This is the
telltale sign of a recent impact, and the four identified locations
where features such as this occur are consistent with the four sites
that correspond to the crash-landing of the lunar ascent stages of
Apollo 12, 14, 15, and 17. Apollo 11's and 16's locations have still
never been determined.
But there's even more evidence than that: there are thousands of photos
taken by Apollo astronauts documenting the entire program. Years ago,
NASA released all the photos of the twelve Apollo missions that made it
to space on a publicly available Flickr photostream, sorted into a
series of incredible albums by mission. Some of the greatest, most
eye-opening photos, stories and quotes originated from the astronauts
who journeyed on those trips.
Apollo 10, known as the 'dress rehearsal' for the Moon landing, was
actually equipped with all the apparatuses that would have allowed them
to land on the lunar surface themselves. They came closer to the Moon
than any previous crewed mission, and paved the way for the actual moon
landing which took place with Apollo 11 in July of 1969.
Traveling through the atmosphere, both exiting the Earth and
re-entering, sound horrifying and harrowing according to Apollo 8's Bill
Anders, who descriped it as follows:
You could see the flames and the outer skin of the spacecraft glowing;
and burning, baseball-size chunks flying off behind us. It was an eerie
feeling, like being a gnat inside a blowtorch flame.
Although there is no way to prove that these photos and videos weren't
faked, the technology and data to do so didn't exist at the time.
Somehow, it all lines up with the full suite of improved data we've
collected in the half-century since we last visited the Moon.
Some of the deployed scientific equipment taken to the Moon during the
Apollo 12 mission, where the installation and operation of this
equipment was well-documented both remotely and in situ by the
astronauts who installed it.
3.) The scientific instruments left there returned years of valuable
data, and some are still in use today. The Apollo missions weren't
simply publicity stunts; they were the pinnacle of human exploration of
another world. From the very first crewed mission to land on the lunar
surface, we sent up a large suite of scientific instruments to install
on the lunar surface and measure its properties.
Some of the more famous ones are listed below.
Lunar seismometers, which were installed by Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, and
16, which transmitted data about the Moon's seismic activity and
moonquakes until the final station failed in 1977.
The lunar laser ranging retroreflector arrays, which remain operational
even today, enable us to reflect lasers off of the reflective surfaces
installed by the Apollo 11, 14, and 15 crews, as well as the Soviet
Lunokhod 2 rover, to measure the Earth-Moon distance to precisions of
approximately 1 centimeter.
The lunar laser ranging facility at Goddard, as shown here, enables us
to track the lunar distance from Earth to ~centimeter accuracy. The
earliest laser reflectors were installed on the Moon's surface as part
of the Apollo program, and they remain in service today. The alignment
between the predicted and observed distances of the Moon over time is
one of science's great accomplishments in our understanding of gravity.
The SWC (solar wind composition) experiment taught us what the flux, and
composition of solar wind particles that reach the Moon's surface are,
since there's neither atmosphere nor a magnetic field nor Van Allen
belts to interfere with the received particles on the Moon.
The SWS (solar wind spectrum) experiment did exactly the same thing,
except for the energy spectrum of the solar wind particles, rather than
the composition measured by the SWC experiment.
The LSM (lunar surface magnetometer) experiment was designed to measure
the lunar magnetic field, determining that the Moon does in fact have
magnetized features on the surface, but that the magnetism is not
uniform across the Moon. Unlike Earth, we now know there is no coherent
magnetic field powered by an active core on the Moon.
The LDD (lunar dust detector) experiment was initially installed to
measure how solar panels degraded due to lunar dust deposited from the
ascent stage and other, subsequent sources. The experiments performed by
the Apollo program showed that we vastly overestimated dust deposits,
and instead enabled us to accurately measure the effects of deposited
lunar dust.
An Apollo 14 astronaut deploys the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments
Package's power source (foreground) and "Central Station" (background),
where the Lunar Dust Detector was mounted. In 2012, the data from Apollo
14's and 15's LDD experiment was restored and digitized, enabling
scientists to perform the first long-term analysis of lunar dust deposition.
Each Apollo mission was outfitted with an array of experiments to
install and perform on the lunar surface. This is what the ALSEP
package, which stands for Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, was
designed to do. The results from these experiments agree with one
another and with the data collected from both previous and subsequent
experiments designed to measure a variety of properties of the Sun,
Earth, Moon, and their interplay.
The fact that we have the data from these experiments, and that many of
them (and their successors on later Apollo missions and lunar lander
missions) are still operational or otherwise in use today, provide us
with extremely strong evidence that we did, in fact, land on the Moon.
This image, from January 31, 1971, shows sunrise from Alan Shepard's 12
o'clock pan taken near the Lunar Module at the start of EVA-1
(moonwalk). Without the Sun glare, we can see some detail on the
Cone-Crater ridge. The flag, S-Band antenna, ladder, and the LRRR (Laser
Ranging Retroreflector) are all located in the west footpad. The MET
(Modular Equipment Transporter) has not been deployed and is still
folded up on the MESA (Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly).
4.) We have returned and analyzed samples from the Moon, learning
unprecedented amounts about lunar geology and the Moon's history in the
process. One of the primary goals of the Apollo mission was to collect
rocks from the lunar surface and return them to Earth for laboratory
analysis.
Through this endeavor, we learned that the Moon and Earth, based on the
isotope ratios of the elements present, likely share a common origin,
which was likely caused by a cataclysmic impact approximately 50 million
years after the formation of the Solar System. Originally formulated as
the Giant Impact Hypothesis, this has now evolved to describe a new type
of structure called a synestia, which generalized the Giant Impact
scenario to better describe the full suite of observables. Without the
Apollo missions, we might never have uncovered the critical evidence
supporting this scenario.
A synestia will consist of a mixture of vaporized material from both
proto-Earth and the impactor, which forms a large moon inside of it from
the coalescence of moonlets. This is a general scenario capable of
creating one single, large moon with the physical and chemical
properties we observe ours to have.
S. J. LOCK ET AL., J. GEOPHYS RESEARCH, 123, 4 (2018), P. 910-951
But there wasn't just a single mission, and the various Apollo missions
landed at different sites, enabling us to sample the properties of the
lunar soil at a variety of locations. The final two astronauts to ever
walk on the Moon, Cernan and Schmitt, ran into quite a surprise when
they did. Schmitt, the lone civilian-astronaut (and only scientist) to
travel to the Moon, was often described as the most business-like of all
the astronauts. Which is why it must have been such a shock to hear him
exclaim the following:
Oh, hey! Wait a minute… THERE IS ORANGE SOIL! It’s all over! I stirred
it up with my feet!
The dull, grey lunar soil you’re used to seeing — that we’re all used to
seeing — in one particular spot was only a very thin veneer, covering a
rich, orange landscape beneath.
The orange soil, at the lower right of the image, really stands out when
compared to the colorations visible on the rest of the Moon. Apollo 17,
perhaps because they had a geoscientist as one of their moonwalkers, was
able to spot this geological oddity that taught us so much about the
Moon's origin and composition.
Like any good scientist, or any good explorer, for that matter, Cernan
and Schmitt took pictures, collected data, and brought samples back to
Earth for further analysis. What could cause orange soil on the Moon,
perhaps the most featureless of all the large, airless rocks in our
Solar System?
What the analysis back on Earth revealed was fantastic: this was
volcanic glass. What occurred was that molten lava from the interior of
the Moon erupted, some 3 to 4 billion years ago, up above the airless
surface and into the vacuum of space. As the lava became exposed to the
vacuum, it separated out into tiny fragments and froze, forming tiny
beads of volcanic glass in orange and black colors. (The tin in some of
the fragments is what gives the orange color.)
Olivine inclusions found in lunar samples have a spectacularly high
water concentration of 1,200 ppm. This is remarkable, because it's the
same exact concentration as the water found in terrestrial (Earth-based)
olivine inclusions, pointing to a common origin for the Earth and the Moon.
E.H. HAURI ET AL., SCIENCE. 2011 JUL 8;333(6039):213–5
In 2011, reanalysis of those samples found evidence that water was
included in the volcanic eruption: with concentrations of water in the
glass beads that were formed 50 times as great as the expected dryness
of the Moon.
Olivine inclusions showed water present in concentrations up to 1,200
parts-per-million. Most remarkably, the lunar samples we've found have
indicated that Earth and the Moon have a common origin, consistent with
a giant impact that occurred only a few tens of millions of years into
the birth of our Solar System. Without direct samples, obtained by the
Apollo missions and brought back to Earth, we never would have been able
to draw such a startling, but spectacular, conclusion.
A NASA picture taken on May 5, 1972 shows a close-up view or 'mug shot'
of Apollo 16 lunar sample no. 68815, a dislodged fragment from a parent
boulder. A fillet-soil sample was taken close to the boulder, allowing
for study of the type and rate of erosion acting on lunar rocks.
A NASA picture taken on May 5, 1972 shows a close-up view or 'mug shot'
of Apollo 16 lunar sample no. 68815, a dislodged fragment from a parent
boulder. A fillet-soil sample was taken close to the boulder, allowing
for study of the type and rate of erosion acting on lunar rocks. AFP /
GETTY IMAGES
There are many different lines of evidence that point to humanity's
presence on the Moon. We landed there and can see the evidence,
directly, when we look with the appropriate resolution. We have
extraordinary amounts of evidence, ranging from eyewitness testimony to
the data record tracking the missions to photographs documenting the
trips, all supporting the fact that we landed and walked on the lunar
surface. We have a slew of scientific instruments that were installed,
took data, and a few of which can still be seen and used today. And
finally, we've brought back lunar samples and learned about the Moon's
history, composition, and likely origin from it.
If you choose to be a doubter, that's your call: no one can take your
own freedom of choice away from you. But if you follow the evidence, and
that's what science compels us to do, the only doubts that remain are
completely unreasonable. We really did land on the Moon, and this is the
science to back it up!
Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here.
Ethan Siegel
Ethan Siegel Contributor
I am a Ph.D. astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, who
professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. I have won numerous
awards for science writing si... Read More
Starts With A Bang
Starts With A Bang Contributor Group
Starts With A Bang is dedicated to exploring the story of what we know
about the Universe as well as how we know it, with a focus on physics,
astronomy, and the scientif... Read More