Human beings first walked on the moon 50 years ago, and the very last manned moon mission was only three years later. What's changed in that time? A lot of things here on earth, but what about on the moon?
Buzz Aldrin, seeing the moon from the surface for the first time, described it as “magnificent desolation.”
It was not so desolate when they departed. The Apollo 11 astronauts discarded gadgets, tools, and the clothesline contraption that moved boxes of lunar samples, one by one, from the surface into the module. They left behind commemorative objects—that resplendent American flag, mission patches and medals honoring fallen astronauts and cosmonauts, a coin-size silicon disk bearing goodwill messages from the world leaders of planet Earth. And they dumped things that weren’t really advertised to the public, for understandable reasons, such as defecation-collection devices. (Some scientists, curious to examine how gut microbes fare in low gravity, even proposed going back for these.)
But are those things still there? There have been photographs taken of the Apollo 11 landing site in the years since, from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. What those photos don't show us, scientists can extrapolate from other sources. Read about the historical Apollo 11 landing site at the Atlantic.
(Image credit: Ruby Aitken)