It Was More Than Just a Space Race
NO one doubts that the biggest achievement of the July 20, 1969, lunar landing was simply getting there. It was a monumental triumph of will — and technology. 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.
They, and subsequent Apollo visits, delivered. Lunar science has been expanding ever since.
For 2 ½ 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. Those samples would be studied for decades.
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. How old is it? We now know it’s about 4.5 billion years old. How far away? Thanks to Apollo 11’s laser-ranging experiment, we know its distance down to the inch at any moment.
How’d the moon form? Perhaps it was an asteroid that got caught in Earth’s gravity. Maybe it formed alongside Earth from the primordial crud from which everything in
the solar system coalesced. Apollo suggested it most likely formed when the Earth collided with another planet-sized object.
Scientists still debate the specifics. The Earth might have been struck by a smaller, Mars-size object, or perhaps the two objects were of similar size; research is ongoing. So you see, Apollo’s science legacy is far from complete.
At MIT, I collaborate on a project that seeks to understand the formation of the moon, specifically, its internal structure. We study the chemical makeup of microscopic glass beads discovered in soil returned by Apollo.
These beads formed when volcanic eruptions on the moon blasted droplets of lava into space. The droplets cooled into glass and settled onto the lunar surface. Several billion years later, the beads were scooped up by a couple of guys in funny suits.
At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in March, thousands of scientists gathered to present their own research stemming from the Apollo missions. Speakers showed how they used new technologies or creative techniques to discover new things from the old lunar samples.
As 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.
When the Trump administration directed NASA to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, researchers were euphoric. Because of technological limitations of the Apollo era, NASA was extremely restricted in selecting a landing site. It had to be close to the moon’s equator (for Apollo 11, within 5 degrees latitude), on the nearside, and relatively flat and smooth. That’s like trying to understand all of Earth’s landscapes by visiting only a few flat spots in Africa.
Clearly, there’s a trove of information yet to be gained. And with today’s technology, NASA can pull out all the stops. We could land practically anywhere, even on the moon’s south pole, NASA’s current favored destination.
The pole is particularly exciting because of ice discovered there at the bottoms of craters never warmed by sunlight. 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 also the site of the South Pole-Aitken basin, where an asteroid struck, creating one of the largest known craters in the solar system. China’s recent lunar lander touched down in the basin and collected evidence that suggests the asteroid’s collision exposed rocks from the moon’s interior; a sample would be a gamechanger for lunar-science research (including my own).
Along with the new knowledge that could be gleaned, there’s another reason to explore the moon’s southern pole: The ice there could be used for drinking water, or broken into hydrogen to fuel rocket ships or oxygen for breathing — building blocks for a space colony.
No doubt, many Americans, particularly young ones, don’t truly appreciate the full significance of July 20, 1969. But for scientists, its impact remains palpable. That day isn’t a frozen moment in history but was the beginning of a journey we’re still on. And it’s one that will produce more giant leaps when we bring back new samples from new missions.