for more than 20 centuries the moon has
been studied and investigated by skilled
and ingenious men they have come to
realize that in comparing the moon with
you we can learn more about the history
of both and ultimately more about the
history of the solar system as a whole
in the process we would gain a new
perspective about our own place and role
on our small blue planet before a manned
Apollo flights to the moon we could only
study it remotely primarily by way of
instruments such as the telescope and
recently in history by way of automated
spacecraft
early in the 17th century galileo
galilei became the first of the great
scientists to use the telescope a quite
novel instrument at the time to study
the moon I feel sure that the surface of
the Moon is not perfectly smooth free
from inequalities and exactly spherical
as a large school of philosophers
considers on the contrary it is full of
inequalities uneven full of hollows and
protuberances just like the surface of
the earth itself his discoveries helped
overturn erroneous beliefs popularly
held and taught for 14 centuries and lay
the foundation for modern lunar science
Galileo would be followed by a scream of
other scientists and a mass of new
information and knowledge the centuries
of investigations produced a great deal
of information about the moon for
instance the moon orbiting once about
every four weeks always keeping the same
face toward Earth is far larger and more
distant compared with its planet then
are any of the other moons of our solar
system compared with their planets in
fact the moon is often considered a
planet in its own right
further some scientists believe that the
moon is gradually pulling away from the
earth which in turn is gradually
revolving slower and slower on its axis
there is at least some evidence that the
moon was much nearer Earth in the past
although no one knows just how near it
might have been
the surface of the Moon has aptly been
described as a cosmic battlefield a
place terribly hostile to life
it is alternately baked and frozen in
temperatures ranging from some 250
degrees Fahrenheit above zero to some
250 degrees below zero and it is seared
by radiation from the Sun as a whole the
surface of the Moon may be divided into
the heavily cratered Highlands which
Galileo called the brighter parts and
the Maurya which Galileo called the
darker parts the highlands are far more
rugged having 20 to 30 times more
craters than the Maurya this means that
the formation of craters had slowed
drastically by the time the Maurya
basins were filled in essence the
Highlands were formed when the moon was
a growing dynamic body the Maurya when
the moon was far less active in contrast
with the moon's face the far side is
almost totally covered with Highlands
there simply are none of the great Marya
telescopes and automated satellites
brought us close-up looks at many
individual features for instance in the
highlands craters which look much like
certain volcanoes on earth
other craters which look like impact
sites sometimes with streaks of debris
radiating hundreds of miles away from
their centers mountain ranges which
tower thousands of feet above the
surrounding Plains symmetrical Hills
known as domes apparent red glows first
seen in the 1950s where the Highlands
and Mario meet there are features which
look much like ocean waves approaching a
rugged shoreline the Maurya basins are
comparatively smooth and flat likened to
a frozen sea by the first meander orbit
the moon and they are marked by
so-called wrinkled ridges which had the
appearance of frozen waves phantom
craters evidently real craters virtually
inundated by Mario materials then there
are valleys which wander for hundreds of
miles across the surface great fractures
or faults which may slice across the
moon's face for a hundred miles there
are the newly discovered mass
concentrations or mass cones buried
beneath the circular Marya and their
gravitational attraction actually
distorts the flight paths of space
vehicles circling the moon
from surveyor spacecraft there was even
some knowledge of the nature of the soil
and a chemistry of materials yet for all
we had learned for all we had discovered
even with unmanned space vehicles which
landed on the surface and manned Apollo
vehicles which orbited above the surface
the moon still somehow seemed remote and
inaccessible until that day in July 1969
putting feet down to a nap any feet two
and a half down take that out for
forward forward drift into the right
little shiny second or weakest I kept
them that
at the battle out there contact light
okay engine stop we copy it down eagle
and Gordie babe here we go out landed in
a sense from this moment on the old moon
that had once been the stuff of
impossible dreams completely disappeared
and a new moon of mountains and valleys
and stone and dirt and possible dreams
took its place I will get to the details
of what's around here but it looked like
a collection of just about every variety
of shaped angularity granularity that
every variety of rock you could find
fairly large number of craters of the
five 250-foot variety and some reaches
for 2013 Iowa death and literally
thousands of little one and stupid
craters around the area there is a hill
and you just about on the ground track
ahead of it difficult to estimate but
might be a half a mile and throughout
the world there was renewed belief not
just in American technology but in human
abilities thus in the Moon Sea of
Tranquility a new chapter in the history
of science was begun simultaneously a
carefully developed and planned program
of scientific investigation was set in
motion there would be new information
about the internal structure of the moon
the chemical composition of the rocks
and soil the dynamic processes at work
and the ages of materials scientists
shared a great sense of excitement
in the highest-priority scientific
undertaking the astronauts collected a
selection of samples of the lunar
surface the first extraterrestrial
materials ever to be brought to earth
from a known context in an experience so
new every fragment of information was of
intense scientific interest in the
centres of small craters the astronauts
discovered strange features which looked
much like splattered solder or glass the
astronauts discovered rocks which had
been hurled from neighboring craters yet
they saw no impact scars in the powdery
surface with a rock struck the scars had
apparently been eroded away by an
unknown process the astronauts set up an
array of instruments in effect a
miniature scientific station to return
data to earth long after the men
themselves had left one of the
instruments relatively simple in concept
was a reflecting device which would
intercept a laser beam from earth and
send it back on itself
measuring the time it took the beam to
travel from the earth to the moon and
back
scientists could calculate the distance
to the moon within a few inches they
will be able to use such precise
measurements in studying the earth for
instance the variations in its rotation
rate the wobble of its axis the drift of
its continents another of the devices
was a seismometer an instrument which
detects vibrations of the lunar surface
the vibrations reflect something of the
nature of the internal structure and
energy release of the moon a few months
later when Apollo 12 landed in the ocean
of storms the astronauts given more time
for scientific work on the surface were
able to enlarge on all that the Apollo
11 astronauts had accomplished they were
able to range farther collect more and
better documented samples and set up a
larger scientific station the scientific
exploration of the moon was now well
underway the lunar materials returned to
Earth were met with high excitement more
than 140 scientists from this country
and abroad understand two painstaking
and intensive investigations we're
broadening our horizon we were never
able to do that while the intense
activity that took place on the surface
of the earth when it was a young planet
had wiped out the record of the first
million years in his history the moon
has now restored that missing record in
so far as we can related to the earth I
think it's contact with the feelings of
every person not merely with the
specialists regarding what he's doing
here on the face of this planet typical
of the detailed efforts were studies
with electron microscopes which produced
magnifications up to 1 million times and
more
for some of these studies samples were
sectioned with a knife which has the
sharpest edge known it can split a hair
into ten thousand sections the
scientists often felt a sense of wonder
what they saw dot which looks like gray
material without interest has
exceedingly beautiful and varied forms
just from an aesthetic standpoint as
well of course from a scientific
standpoint when you put it under the
microscope the material is just
beautiful aesthetically and of course
it's beautiful
scientifically among the materials there
are crystalline rocks clearly marked as
igneous by bubble-like cavities and by
their chemistry they were crystallized
from molten silicon material in a lunar
inferno with temperatures well over
2,000 degrees Fahrenheit there are other
rocks which consist of fragments of the
igneous rocks embedded in lunar soil
call Breck Sia's they were formed when
meteorites impacted on the surface
producing such tremendous pressures that
rubble and soil were welded into solid
rock
both the igneous rocks and the breck
Sia's they are clear witness to
prolonged meteorite bombardment they
have been rounded as if they had been
severely sandblasted pitted where they
have been struck by micrometeorites
traveling at high velocity and some
coated with glass a material which had
been melted and splashed by a meteorite
impact
rocks from Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 are
in some ways similar but there were
important differences in chemistry
mineral composition and texture further
the minerals of the Apollo 11 marks took
on their present arrangement about 3.7
billion years ago the minerals of the
Apollo 12 rocks about 3.3 or 3.4 billion
years ago an indication of two different
events separated by several hundred
million years the ages were far greater
than many expected it was probably
during this time more than three billion
years ago that the Maurya basins were
filled while the opponent well rocks
were generally somewhat younger the
collection did yield one unique and
quite complicated Rock number 13 now
famous in lunar science portions of rock
13 proved to be some 4.6 billion years
old very merely the age of the solar
system itself this may be some
indication of what to expect from the
lunar Highlands another type of material
is the lunar soil created apparently as
rocks had been pulverized by bombardment
one core tube sample from the Apollo 12
landing site showed the soil was
stratified or layered with lighter
darker bands of material they even
seemed that one layer might have a
mixture of volcanic ash under the
microscope it can be seen that the soil
consists of tiny fragments of rocks
particles of glass and bits of
meteorites even the soil shows evidence
of bombardment some of the individual
brains have been so pitted in fact that
they look almost like tiny replicas of
the moon itself
in examining the lunar soils and Breck
sees scientists have found an abundance
of products of the solar wind the
streams of particles flung off the Sun
they have found in fact that if an ounce
of lunar soil is heated to about 1,800
degrees Fahrenheit at an atmospheric
pressure equal to that at sea level
about 12 cubic inches of gas will be
produced primarily hydrogen and helium
directly from the Sun it is possible
using the moon materials to go back and
trace the behavior of the Sun almost
back to the beginning of the solar
system
the interesting part about the solar
wind is that it represents the actual
stuff of the Sun if you had in Turkey
Hamzah maybe the dippy end of the Sun
and reach out and take this material and
bring it back to your laboratory the
lunar materials have also been closely
searched for any trace of life or even
for any materials with organic contents
it has been a search which the
scientists have so far found to be
fruitless
you
scientists have found the results more
interesting however when earth organisms
have been exposed to lunar materials of
the variety of biological systems that
we tested with the lunar material the
plants were most unique in their
response for example the five jars of
liverworts you see illustrated on the
top gave much increased growth in the
presence of lunar material this effect
was noted for ferns a number of tissue
cultures such as tobacco and corn and
certain higher plant species such as
lettuce now the exact reasons for this
beneficial response are unknown at the
present however it is likely that some
trace mineral or perhaps even a physical
property of the lunar material is
interacting with the minerals we furnish
to give a more desirable medium for
plant growth this is a very exciting
discovery and one that was totally
unexpected in the tests conducted in the
lunar receiving laboratory the flooded
information derived lunar materials
alone
will require decades to interpret fully
in the mean time however still more
information is flowing in from the
scientific instruments set up by the
astronauts scientists received one of
their biggest surprises when the Apollo
12 seismometer told the story of how the
moon vibrated when it was struck by the
astronauts abandoned lunar module it is
as though one had struck a belt in the
belfry of the church a single blow and
found that the reverberation from it
continued for 30 minutes the signal
seemed to indicate that the energy the
impact
scattered greatly on one hand but had a
prolonged duration on the other such a
combination of characteristics simply
does not occur on earth subsequently
signals of a similar nature will receive
from other impacts both natural and
man-made
after analyzing signals recorded over
several months scientists also
discovered evidence of moon quakes these
occurred each time the moon passed
through the point of its orbit closest
to Earth when there was maximum
gravitational attraction between the two
bodies apparently the attraction
triggered the quakes and they were
possibly a volcanic origin so far
however the seismometer detected those
signals that would indicate events
originating deep within the moon such
events occur frequently under the upshot
is that the meaning of the signals is
far from understood from other
instruments scientists are harvesting
rich new information on the magnetic
fields of the moon and of the earth the
extremely thin atmosphere of the moon
the rate at which particles stream away
from the Sun for a long time to come
scientists will be putting bits and
pieces together searching out the
answers to a long list of questions but
already certain parts of the whole
picture are beginning to take shape and
the moon is by far our more interesting
and complex body than ever anticipated
although every current theory about the
moon's origin has major flaws it does
seem probable that the major events in
the formation and evolution of the moon
occurred early in its history and that
relatively little has happened since
then one indication of this is the far
greater frequency of craters in the
highlands than in the Maurya which are
themselves very old and it means that
the moon may hold records of events
which have long since been obliterated
from Earth by erosion structurally the
moon compared with the earth is an
extremely strong and rigid body as it
would have to be to support the great
mass concentrations mass comes so near
the surface
scientists have seen that great heating
has played a major role in shaping the
moon's face in fact the Maurya basins
were filled with lava flows
they have also seen that impact has
played a major role both on a gigantic
scale and on a microscopic scale
contrary to what many expected there has
been no evidence of water and as most
expected there has been no trace of life
and there seems little chance of finding
any but as often happens in science the
investigation so far have raised more
questions than they have provided
answers for instance what is the
interior of the Moon like what is the
source of the heat that produced the
lava was it produced in some way and the
interior of the Moon or was it generated
by meteoroid impacts what lies behind
the fact that it is the side of the moon
with a Marya basis that faces us on
earth what in the tail are the relative
differences between the Highlands and
the Maurya and the question one always
returns to how was the moon related in
essence the scientific investigation of
the Moon is one of the great
intellectual adventures of our time and
a major chapter was written at the first
conference for lunar science early in
the year 1970 well we've come an awful
long way and I think we've learned some
very interesting things but there's
still an enormous amount for us to learn
about the moon before we fully
understand it when we go to the
highlands and we'll go to the patterns
that they're going to be even more
interesting from this point of view of
the fundamental history of the solar
system and then the parts that we have
already visited it is only through the
understanding of the interior of this
planet that we begin to start to
understand some of the processes that we
see on the surface of the earth
in fact we are taking a step in our
understanding of the solar system and
the earth that is comparable to the one
taken by Galileo when he first pointed
the telescope at the moon
you