Forty years on the Moon
Forty years ago today the astronauts of Apollo 11 passed the halfway point on
their journey to the Moon. They woke up, made some coffee, and fired the engine for
their final trajectory correction before lunar orbit insertion. They looked back
at their home, commenting on its hues and weather patterns as they witnessed a
giant anti-cyclone moving south-east of Brazil. They were 200,000 kilometers
from Earth. Three days later, on July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
piloted their Lunar Module to touchdown amidst the magnificent desolation of the
Sea of Tranquility.
The irregular white dot in the middle of the image above, the speck with the
long shadow, is what remains of Tranquility Base today. The Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter (LRO), the NASA spacecraft currently in orbit around the moon, has been
imaging the Apollo landing sites and NASA today released their results to
celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html
Although seeing Tranquility Base as it looks today is perhaps the most poignant
of the images, the detail visible at the Apollo 14 site is phenomenal. If you
look carefully you can see the tracks made by Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell in
their explorations as well as what I suspect is the ALSEP (the highly reflective
Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package).
If you're having a tough time seeing the tracks you can use the Apollo 14
traverse map as a guide.
Today, as NASA is re-examining its plans for human spaceflight and all manner of
media is abuzz with alternate plans, commentary and criticism, I find these
simple images focus the mind on what we are commemorating this July 20th -
there, on the surface of another world, stand the monuments to a moment in time
when two individuals embodied the work of hundreds of thousands and united
hundreds of millions in celebration and hopes for a safe return. They have stood
as silent testament to human will for some 480 lunar sunrises and are set to do
so for many more. What you make of all that is up to you. For myself, I find it
hard to put it any better than Hermann Oberth did in his 'Man into Space' in 1957:
"And what would be the purpose of all this?
For those who have never known the relentless urge to explore and discover,
there is no answer.
For those who have felt this urge, the answer is self-evident."
-Alex MacDonald







