50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing Blog Post

This week, PVL Undergraduate Researcher Ariella Sapers reflects on a significant anniversary for space exploration: the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings. Above, a photo of a plaque like the one left on the lunar surface by Apollo 11. And yes, folks, that is Richard Nixon's signature on the bottom (to my knowledge the only politician whose name is written on a monument off the Earth) - it took the efforts of three different administrations to pull off this event.

By Ariella Sapers

With the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing just passing, I thought it was only appropriate to dedicate a blog all about the event and the celebrations that occurred here at York University!

On July 20th 1969, three brave men, Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz’’ Aldrin, and Michael Collins took a leap of faith as part of NASA’s Apollo 11 lunar mission and headed to the moon. The Apollo Lunar Module, The Eagle, landed on the moon at 20:17 UTC in which Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the surface of the moon on July 21st at 02:56 UTC. With this walk, human beings had officially walked on the surface of a planetary body that wasn’t Earth. 

The Apollo 11 command module, which held the cabin for the three astronauts, was the third stage of the Saturn V rocket that originally launched from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. When the astronauts separated the spacecraft along with the lunar module, they traveled for three days until they were able to enter lunar orbit, which is just an orbit around the moon, also known as a selenocentric orbit. The astronauts actually landed with only 25 seconds of fuel to spare. The planning of this mission was long and well planned out, but when the astronauts went to the originally planned landing site, as they descended, they realized that the site was filled with boulders, making it too dangerous to land. At this point in time, Armstrong manually moved the probe which caused more fuel to be burned and almost fully burned out with 25 seconds to spare. If this hadn’t had happened 25 seconds prior, the automatic abort of the mission would be enforced and the astronauts would have travelled back to the Columbia, the command module, that was orbiting the Moon. I couldn’t imagine the frustration that would have been felt by everyone involved if the mission came to an end right as they got that close to the Moons surface, nevertheless, the safety of the humans is of upmost priority!

The first astronaut to walk on the Moon’s surface, Neil Armstrong, had his first steps televised on live TV so the world could witness this amazing event. We all have heard the very famous sentence “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” and this is very true. This historic event lead to so many amazing scientific experiments and discoveries. One being, the Apollo Moon rocks. The Apollo Moon rocks are mostly located in the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. It was found from their composition that the rocks are volcanic in origin, specifically basalts, similar to volcanic rocks found on Earth. These basalts from the Moon rocks are rich in iron and magnesium and show the effects of rapid cooling with glassy structures.

We now have more research and data thanks to the astronauts aboard the ISS (International Space Station) who return and complete physiological studies. But, with this being the first time humans had landed on the Moon, it was unknown what would happen to them when they returned. How would their body handle this travel? For starters, the astronauts had to be placed into quarantine when they arrived back to Earth. They had to stay there for 21 days because there was a chance they were carrying micro-organisms from the Moon back to Earth. We learned from later evaluations that the Moon is without any forms of life, but It was a mystery at the time.

There are so many fun facts about this moon landing that many people just don’t know, like the astronauts leaving pictures of humans and recordings of different languages on the Moon's surface. Even though America sent the astronauts to space, this was a global event, and it was signified by the different languages to represent the global significance of it. There were also Medallions which contained the names of the astronauts who died in Apollo 1 on the launch pad and cosmonauts who had met a similar fate as well.

Since it is 2019, it is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing! All over North America there were celebrations in honour of the historic event. Here at York University, the Allan I. Carswell Observatory hosted a big event to celebrate it. From July 16th- 18th from 9pm-12am the Allan I. Carswell Observatory team set up many telescopes (including the 40cm) and welcomed the public to a night filled with Moon observing! We were lucky that Jupiter was also very beautiful in the sky when people wanted a break from the Moon, but a great successful event overall.

It is an incredible thought when you sit back and think of human exploration. The fact that we were able to get humans to the Moon in 1969, a time without social media and iPhones, yet, it was broadcasted worldwide and everyone knows where they were at the time of this first Moon landing.

Information from:
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-amazing-facts-about-the-apollo-11-moon-landing.html

For even more reflections, once you've finished reading Ariella's article, check out: https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/apollo-11-moon-landing-anniversary/