The
Great Moon Hoax - NASA's Reply
Moon rocks and common
sense prove Apollo astronauts really did visit the Moon.
NASA
Science News
Author: Dr.
Tony Phillips
Source: The
Great Moon Hoax
Listen
to this story (requires RealPlayer)
February
23, 2001 -- Last week my phone rang. It was my mother
... and she was upset.
"Tony!" she
exclaimed, "I just came from the coffee shop and
there's an [adjective omitted] man down there who says
NASA never landed on the Moon. Everyone was talking
about it ... I just didn't know what to say!"
That last bit was hard to
swallow, I thought. Mom's never at a loss for words.
But even more incredible
was the controversy that swirled through her small-town
diner and places like it across the country. After a
long absence, the "Moon Hoax" was back.
Above: Astronaut
Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the Moon in 1969. [more
information]
All the buzz about the
Moon began on February 15th when Fox television aired a
program called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the
Moon? Guests on the show argued that NASA technology in
the 1960's wasn't up to the task of a real Moon landing.
Instead, anxious to win the Space Race any way it could,
NASA acted out the Apollo program in movie studios. Neil
Armstrong's historic first steps on another world, the
rollicking Moon Buggy rides, even Al Shepard's arcing
golf shot over Fra Mauro-- it was all a fake!
Fortunately the Soviets
didn't think of the gag first. They could have filmed
their own fake Moon landings and really embarrassed the
free world.
Shows like Conspiracy
Theory ought to be as tongue-in-cheek as they sound.
Unfortunately, there was an earnest feel to the Fox
broadcast, enough to make you wonder if the program's
makers might have fallen under their own spell.
According to the show
NASA was a blundering movie producer thirty years ago.
For example, Conspiracy Theory pundits pointed out a
seeming discrepancy in Apollo imagery: Pictures of
astronauts transmitted from the Moon don't include stars
in the dark lunar sky -- an obvious production error!
What happened? Did NASA film-makers forget to turn on
the constellations?
Most photographers
already know the answer: It's difficult to capture
something very bright and something else very dim on the
same piece of film -- typical emulsions don't have
enough "dynamic range." Astronauts striding
across the bright lunar soil in their sunlit spacesuits
were literally dazzling. Setting a camera with the
proper exposure for a glaring spacesuit would naturally
render background stars too faint to see.
Here's another one:
Pictures of Apollo astronauts erecting a US flag on the
Moon show the flag bending and rippling. How can that
be? After all, there's no breeze on the Moon....
Not
every waving flag needs a breeze -- at least not in
space. When astronauts were planting the flagpole they
rotated it back and forth to better penetrate the lunar
soil (anyone who's set a blunt tent-post will know how
this works). So of course the flag waved! Unfurling a
piece of rolled-up cloth with stored angular momentum
will naturally result in waves and ripples -- no breeze
required!
Left: Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin deploy a U.S. flag on the Moon in 1969. [more]
The Fox documentary went
on with plenty more specious points. You can find
detailed rebuttals to each of them at BadAstronomy.com
and the Moon
Hoax web page. (These are independent sites, not
sponsored by NASA.)
The best rebuttal to
allegations of a "Moon Hoax," however, is
common sense. Evidence that the Apollo program really
happened is compelling: A dozen astronauts (laden with
cameras) walked on the Moon between 1969 and 1973. Nine
of them are still alive and can testify to their
experience. They didn't return from the Moon
empty-handed, either. Just as Columbus carried a few
hundred natives back to Spain as evidence of his trip to
the New World, Apollo astronauts brought 841 pounds of
Moon rock home to Earth.
"Moon rocks are
absolutely unique," says Dr. David McKay, Chief
Scientist for Planetary Science and Exploration at
NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). McKay is a member of
the group that oversees the Lunar
Sample Laboratory Facility at JSC where most of the
Moon rocks are stored. "They differ from Earth
rocks in many respects," he added.
"For example,"
explains Dr. Marc Norman, a lunar geologist at the
University of Tasmania, "lunar samples have almost
no water trapped in their crystal structure, and common
substances such as clay minerals that are ubiquitous on
Earth are totally absent in Moon rocks."
"We've
found particles of fresh glass in Moon rocks that were
produced by explosive volcanic activity and by meteorite
impacts over 3 billion years ago," added Norman.
"The presence of water on Earth rapidly breaks down
such volcanic glass in only a few million years. These
rocks must have come from the Moon!"
Right: A glass
spherule (about 0.6 mm in diameter) produced by a
meteorite impact into lunar soil. Features on the
surface are glass splashes, welded mineral fragments,
and microcraters produced by space weathering processes
at the surface of the moon. SEM image by D. S. McKay
(NASA Photo S71-48109).
Fortunately not all of
the evidence needs a degree in chemistry or geology to
appreciate. An average person holding a Moon rock in his
or her hand can plainly see that the specimen came from
another world.
"Apollo moon rocks
are peppered with tiny craters from meteoroid
impacts," explains McKay. This could only happen to
rocks from a planet with little or no atmosphere... like
the Moon.
Meteoroids
are nearly-microscopic specks of comet dust that fly
through space at speeds often exceeding 50,000 mph --
ten times faster than a speeding bullet. They pack a
considerable punch, but they're also extremely fragile.
Meteoroids that strike Earth's atmosphere disintegrate
in the rarefied air above our stratosphere. (Every now
and then on a dark night you can see one -- they're
called meteors.) But the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere
to protect it. The tiny space bullets can plow directly
into Moon rocks, forming miniature and unmistakable
craters.
"There are plenty of
museums, including the Smithsonian and others, where
members of the public can touch and examine rocks from
the Moon," says McKay. "You can see the little
meteoroid craters for yourself."
Right:
Nick-named "Big Muley," this 11.7 kg Moon rock
was the largest returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts.
One side of Big Muley was peppered with meteoroid
"zap pits." Below right: A close-up view of 1
mm diameter zap pits shows tiny craters lined with black
glass surrounded by a white halo of shocked rock. [more]
Just as meteoroids
constantly bombard the Moon so do cosmic
rays, and they leave their fingerprints on Moon
rocks, too. "There are isotopes in Moon rocks,
isotopes we don't normally find on Earth, that were
created by nuclear reactions with the highest-energy
cosmic rays," says McKay. Earth is spared from such
radiation by our protective atmosphere and
magnetosphere.
Even if scientists wanted
to make something like a Moon rock by, say, bombarding
an Earth rock with high energy atomic nuclei, they
couldn't. Earth's most powerful particle accelerators
can't energize particles to match the most potent cosmic
rays, which are themselves accelerated in supernova
blastwaves and in the violent cores of galaxies.
Indeed, says McKay,
faking a Moon rock well enough to hoodwink an
international army of scientists might be more difficult
than the Manhattan Project. "It would be easier to
just go to the Moon and get one," he quipped.
And therein lies an
original idea: Did NASA go to the Moon to collect props
for a staged Moon landing? It's an interesting twist on
the conspiracy theory that TV producers might consider
for their next episode of the Moon Hoax.
"I have here in my
office a 10-foot high stack of scientific books full of
papers about the Apollo Moon rocks," added McKay.
"Researchers in thousands of labs have examined
Apollo Moon samples -- not a single paper challenges
their origin! And these aren't all NASA employees,
either. We've loaned samples to scientists in dozens of
countries [who have no reason to cooperate in any
hoax]."
Even Dr. Robert Park,
Director of the Washington office of the American
Physical Society and a noted critic of NASA's human
space flight program, agrees with the space agency on
this issue. "The body of physical evidence that
humans did walk on the Moon is simply
overwhelming."
"Fox should stick to
making cartoons," agreed Marc Norman. "I'm a
big fan of The Simpsons!"
Related Links
The
Great Moon Hoax of 1835
Every History of American journalistic hoaxing properly
begins with the celebrated moon hoax
Moon
View
BadAstronomy.com
- A point-by-point rebuttal of claims in Fox's
Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? (external
site)
NASA's
Moon Hoax -- This thorough site addresses recent
and older claims that the Moon landings were faked
(external site)
Comments
on the FOX Moonlanding Hoax special -- from the
University of Arizona's Jim Scotti.(external site)
JSC's
Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility Tour -- see
more pictures of Moon rocks in the Pristine Sample
Laboratory Display Cabinet
Moon
Rocks -- lots of Moon Rock links from NASA
Spacelink
Author: Dr.
Tony Phillips
Production Editor: Dr.
Tony Phillips
Curator: Bryan
Walls
Media Relations: Steve
Roy
Responsible NASA official: Ron
Koczor
