each year since 1970 bleeding space
scientists from throughout the world
have gathered in Houston at NASA's
Johnson Space Center and the lunar and
planetary institute to exchange ideas
and information the nineteen seventy
nine conference marks a special
observance it is the tenth anniversary
of the first Apollo landing on the moon
in the space sciences where it is common
to deal with eons and millennia ten
years is a mere blink of the eye get in
that brief span those here today have
witnessed almost total upheaval in their
respective scientific field to say that
we have undergone a revolution in lunar
and planetary science is more than just
rhetoric when you consider how far we've
come in a single decade
before the Apollo era scientists who
wanted to learn more about the formation
and evolution of the solar system didn't
have much to work with from the entire
solar system they had only two sources
of materials available for direct
analysis meteorites that had fallen to
Earth from outer space and of course the
rocks and soils of Earth
but the dynamic nature of the earth has
resulted in the processing and
reprocessing of its rocks and soils for
hundreds of millions of years totally
destroying its early geological record
as a result on earth Rock more than
three billion years old is a rare find
even today most earth materials are far
younger but meteorites that have fallen
to earth were found to be extremely old
the oldest about 4.6 billion years and
most scientists believe that was near
the time the solar system formed so
between the ages of earth rocks and
meteorites there was at the time a gap
of a billion and a half years a period
totally erased from the earth
blown before the Apollo era the idea
that perhaps knowing the moon would lead
to a better understanding of Earth and
the solar system had occurred to many
investigators and with the telescope
they studied it's every surface feature
they charted the dominant light shaded
areas the highlands pitted and scarred
from eons of meteoroid impacts and the
smooth dark basins the Galileo in the
early 17th century had called the maurya
for lunar seas they were able to
calculate the height of lunar mountains
some of which rise five kilometers above
the terrain they knew the length of
ancient scarps or faults which may slice
across the moon's face for a hundred of
more kilometers from pole to pole they
studied craters older ones without lions
barely visible newer ones with streaks
of displaced rubble radiating out from
their centres craters overlying craters
and craters within craters scientists
thus came to know the moon's surface
features in minut detail yet beyond what
they saw they could only speculate about
its origin its age its chemical
composition its structure and about what
processes had shaped it in the past
there was no shortage of theories but
there were very few facts by the late
1950s improved technology in the form of
automated spacecraft gave us a new
perspective of the moon these unmanned
probes from both the Soviet Union and
the United States sent back images never
before seen by the telescope including
the first views of the moon's backside
from surveyor spacecraft that soft
landed on the surface there were even
some basic data on the nature and
chemistry of lunar surface materials
here too was the first concrete proof
that landing craft and astronauts would
not sink from site in the Padre lunar
dust yet for all the centuries of
telescopic study and more recently the
flurry of automated moon probes the
detailed analysis of earth materials and
meteorites in spite of all that was
accomplished prior to the Apollo program
we knew next to nothing about the
history composition and structure of the
moon extremely different views were held
by eminent scientists the world over
theories and opinions snowball and in
the absence of facts they clashed
head-on unless we could obtain pieces of
the moon for study and analysis
understanding it would remain an
impossible dream
she know you're looking great coming up
now do I twentieth nineteen sixty-nine
the dream became reality 60-second
Python forward forward that's pretty
feet down to an ABS picking up some dust
City Pete's two and a half down make
shadows for forward four forward
drifting to the right little headache
and a hat shutting second over just hey
I'm back right okay engine stop we copy
you down eagle Griffin fan quality base
here the eagle has landed tranquility we
copy on a crafter years of planet the
detailed on-site exploration of the moon
had begun and briefly the world stopped
as people everywhere shared this
greatest of moments even scientists had
spent years preparing for this day were
awestruck by the sights and sounds from
the memory making the most of their
brief time on the surface the astronauts
set up a small science station to return
data back to earth it was the forerunner
of other stations erected on later
missions it was this network that would
allow scientists to keep track the
balloons geologic behavior for several
years tranquility base presented the
Apollo 11 crew with an assortment of
rocks and soils most of it appeared to
be the Celtic rock the most common form
of volcanic lava whether or not there's
ever been volcanic eruptions on the moon
had been one of the major pre Apollo
debates now within minutes after the
cruise stepped onto the lunar surface it
was no longer an issue but quick and
easy answers would be the exception most
discoveries about the moon would have to
be built piece by piece from tiny
fragments of information during the many
months of painstaking work bed lay ahead
when Apollo 11 returned to earth a
carefully developed program of lunar
samples investigation was set in motion
geologists physicists chemists
biologists several hundred scientists
from here and abroad had pooled their
talents for the task at hand
although investigators worked with the
same types of samples they look for
different things some groups measured
ages and chemical compositions others
worked on the chemistry of minerals and
their atomic structure while some
experimented defining the properties of
lunar rocks and soils but not all of the
investigators worked with samples some
of them read electronic blips and
tracings the signals coming from the
geophysical instruments of the lunar
science station here a running account
of the moon's internal activity the
basis for determining its structure
would be recorded and deciphered for the
next several years the techniques and
procedures for investigating the moon
were working and working well
the goal now was continued exploration
to obtain a variety of lunar materials
from different geological terrain and to
establish a network of scientific
stations over the next three and a half
years Apollo 11 was followed by five
more lunar landings all of the landing
sites were near the lunar equator on the
earth-facing side first mission to last
the scientific game on grew steadily a
big factor was the lunar rover used on
the last three missions with this new
mobility crewmen ranged further from
home base and along with modifications
to the lunar module and the spacesuit
they were able to stay longer at the
exploration site on the final mission
astronauts could extend their total
exploration time to 75 hours quite a
contrast to the two and a half hours of
Apollo 11 more and better measurements
were also transmitted from the lunar
science stations which grew steadily in
size and sophistication sample
collecting to became more selective and
better documented on the later missions
and for the first time on Apollo 17 a
geologist was a member of the crew on
December 14 1972 the last Apollo crew
lifted from the lunar surface and with
them the exploratory phase of Apollo
came to an end but the scientific phase
which by then was well into its third
year had already answered many of the
major questions about the moon
the story that began to emerge told of a
moon far more interesting and complex
than ever anticipated for one thing moon
rocks were found to be very old falling
in a range from about three billion to
well over four billion years
significantly moon rock ages began about
where the ages of the oldest preserved
earth rocks left off so in learning
about the moons past scientists were
also filling in pieces of the missing
history of the earth no new chemical
elements were discovered but there were
minerals that scientists had not seen
before the moon was found to have no
free oxygen no water and no trace of
life present or past seismic activity
inside the moon was found to be
extremely weak only about 110 billions
of the activity inside the earth except
for the impact of small meteoroids and
the steady stream of atomic particles
from the Sun the moon explored by the
astronauts had been quiet and inactive
for the last three billion years but the
investigations show it was not always so
calm rocks from the lunar highlands
revealed an extremely violent beginning
almost four and a half billion years ago
shortly after the moon had formed its
entire outer shell was a seething ocean
of molten rock melting to adapt the from
100 to 300 kilometres
during the next 100 million years it
began to cool and the outer shell began
to solidify minerals began to
crystallize high-density minerals tended
to sink low density minerals floated to
the top when cooling and solidification
were complete these new distributions of
minerals had formed the separate layers
of crust mantle and core this process
caught a lot of scientists by surprise
melting and separation in the layers had
never been proposed for the moon what's
left of the early lunar crust after
being torn apart by meteoroids is the
light colored material we now call the
highlands
but even as it formed meteoroids were
pounding it to bits scientists are not
sure about the frequency or the
intensity of cratering during the next
billion years however they are certain
that about four billion years ago the
devastation reached a peak the clues
were found in a class of samples called
breccias which are made up of fragments
of different rocks all broken and welded
together by heat some containing tiny
spheres of glass with Bret she is
consistently showing a gym Prince
centered around four billion years the
evidence was compelling at that time the
lunar surface must have been bombarded
and broken up on a massive scale a
population of extremely large bodies
some as much as 50 kilometres across
smashed into the moon they blasted the
crust apart and gouged out the giant
Mari basins the largest of the lasons
Mari yttrium is big enough to
accommodate most of Western Europe the
barrage in the moon was so intense that
most likely the earth received a
simultaneous pounding probably the whole
inner solar system was teeming with the
leftovers of formation the loose debris
that had not been collected into planets
after this major Cataclysm the cratering
rate began to subside and the solar
system rapidly became a fairly clean
place by now the moon the earth and the
other planets had swept up most of the
loose debris the next stage of lunar
history was recorded in the basaltic
lavas recovered from the Mari basins
some 100 million years after the heavy
bombardment ended heat from decay of
radioactive elements began to build up
inside the moon eventually getting hot
enough to melt the rocky material in
time as the melting spread the
accumulated lavas were forced upward
through false and fissures to the
surface where they began to fill the
large basins filling the basins forming
the lunar Marya much as they now appear
was not however the result of a single
rampaging lava flow age dating show that
lava was extruded intermittently in one
place or another for almost a billion
years from three point nine to three
billion years ago after that the moon
settled down to a quieter existence and
has remained essentially the same to the
present day among the subtle changes
which have continued on the moon is
solar wind bombardment the steady flow
of atomic particles streaming outward
from the Sun particles striking the moon
many millions of years ago left their
evidence embedded in lunar materials and
these can be detected today this
scanning electron microscope for example
is studying the tracks left by solar
particles as they pass through a lunar
sample by making such precise
measurements scientists are able to
construct a long-term history of the
sun's activity the surprising result is
that the Sun has been a fairly well
behaved star for many millions of years
there were no noticeable Sun deviations
even during the Ice Ages of Earth a
finding attends to weaken theories the
link Earth's climate with luminosity
the samples did not completely satisfy a
major pre Apollo enigma how the moon
originated processing of a lunar
materials by melting of the outer shell
meteoroid bombardment and the long
volcanic phase destroyed all traces of
the moon's primitive starting material
however investigators have recently
discovered certain earth-moon chemical
similarities that can be explained only
if they originated in the same
neighborhood but the mechanism of origin
could have happened any of three ways
the moon could have been torn from the
primitive earth and captured in its
present orbit
the moon at earth could have accreted
from particles in the same vicinity at
the same time or the moon could have
condensed out of an early primitive
atmosphere surrounding earth lunar
origin remains an open question that
will not be easily solved before the
Apollo program scientists were struck by
the differences in the earth and whom
many believe the moon was a solid
homogeneous sphere related more to
primitive meteorites than it was to the
planets but after analyzing lunar
materials seeing the patterns of
chemical elements the minerals that had
formed from these elements on the
arrangements of these men rules in rocks
they came to realize that the moon had
all the earmarks of an evolved planet
with a history all its own the
difference they found was in the
separate paths of evolution the Earth
and Moon have taken primarily the result
of their different sizes and starting
conditions if the earth and moon formed
near each other they probably started
out with a similar mixture of elements
such as aluminum silicon and oxygen like
the moon the earth probably experienced
an early melting phase that resulted in
its separation in two layers the heavy
bombardment phase discovered on the moon
must have been sustained equally by the
earth
but during the phase of internal melting
and volcanism their common ancestry
began to diverge in a way that would set
them apart forever for one thing the
moon being smaller had a lesser share of
radioactive elements than the earth and
these are the elements that in decaying
generate heat also the heat that was
produced was lost more rapidly simply
because the smaller the body the faster
it loses heat the larger earth with a
larger store of heat making elements and
the potential to hold heat longer
developed a massive molten iron core
that would help keep our planet running
as it does now for billions of years the
intense heat powers volcanoes recycling
rocky materials to continually produce
new crust of the surface heat from
radioactive decay also created a narrow
zone of molten rock just below the crust
it acts as a sort of lubricant allowing
the crust to shift about as thin plates
it is these lateral plate movements that
have given the earth that's wide variety
of changing surface features
the moon with a crust so thick and rigid
never experienced lateral playful but
its mountains which tend to lie in rings
on the periphery of the large basins
were built from materials displaced from
the basins when they were formed by
impact nor were lunar rills formed by
crustal shifting or by the cutting
action of water as they often are on
earth scientists believe they are old
lava tubes that have collapsed over the
last 3 billion years at the time the
moon was losing heat it was also losing
its volcanic gases and it is from such
gases that atmospheres form but with a
weak gravitational field again the
result of size the moon was unable to
retain even the heaviest gases Earth's
gravity held most of its gases gases
that eventually formed a primitive
atmosphere
and from that atmosphere came torrents
of rain for millions of years
the patient's were filled and the earth
had oceans and seas lakes and rivers and
from the water life itself would
eventually arise
the moon with no chance of forming an
atmosphere could not develop even the
lowest forms of life it was just too
small to make it after about a billion
and a half years it reached the terminal
phase of its relatively short evolution
the story of the moon is still not
complete although its historical outline
once it formed has been firmly
established its basic structure and
chemistry have been determined many
questions remain only about ten percent
of the samples returned by Apollo
astronauts have been investigated in
detail thus far so a lot of work lies
ahead deciphering the complex stretches
and core samples is slow and tedious
work but it is here that extremely
complicated measurements are now being
made measurements aimed at uncovering
facts about the moon's origin its first
100 million years its volcanic history
and more about the history of the Sun
when will we return to the moon no one
can say for sure but certainly it has a
role to play in the future for a science
colony its location the lack of a
distorting atmosphere make it a natural
choice as a staging base the moon may
someday launch exploratory missions to
the planets and beyond the moon is also
a potential mining site for extraction
of its abundant storehouse of metals
aluminum titanium calcium iron raw
materials that could be used for
building large-scale structures in space
today after 10 years of lunar and
planetary investigations interest and
momentum continued to grow the lessons
learned from the moon are being applied
to the earth and to the other planets
especially nearby Venus mercury and Mars
the process is observed on these planets
are as strange as ever but no longer are
they mysterious scientists see them as
extensions of patterns which are now
familiar and in time they will
understand their structure their
evolution how they relate to earth and
eventually how this solar system of ours
came to be Apollo was much more than a
triumph of Technology
like Columbus voyage to the New World
the Wright brothers flights at Kitty
Hawk the Apollo missions to the moon
mark a major turning point in human
history Apollo was the first step in a
journey that will never end