Are there man made objects on the moon

Included on Apollo 15, 16, and 17, its tracks on the surface are distinctly different from human footprints, and allowed the astronauts on those missions to achieve distances far greater than those reached on the earlier missions. The tracks from Apollo 17's LRV don't even come close to fitting in this image; they extend for a total distance of over 22 miles, reaching a maximum range of nearly five miles away from the landing site! Why, what's this? It's an image taken by Bill Anders of Apollo 8: the first crewed mission to go to This photo was taken as the capsule orbited the Moon and Earth appeared to rise over the horizon.

The spacecraft window can be seen in the foreground. Over 8, photos documenting our trips. Perhaps we all need a reminder of what the sacrifices were that went into our journey to the Moon.

We accomplished the unthinkable by banding together to achieve a common goal, and could do it all once again.

NASA has released all the photos of the twelve Apollo missions that made it to space on a publicly available Flickr photostream , sorted into a series of incredible albums by mission. Apollo 10, known as the 'dress rehearsal' for the Moon landing, was actually equipped with all the They came closer to the Moon than any previous crewed mission, and paved the way for the actual moon landing which took place with Apollo 11 in July of Some of the greatest, most eye-opening photos, stories and quotes came back from those trips, including some from Apollo 8's Bill Anders, who took the famous "Earthrise" photos illustrated above.

Anders described the journey to the Moon as follows:. You could see the flames and the outer skin of the spacecraft glowing; and burning, baseball-size chunks flying off behind us. It was an eerie feeling, like being a gnat inside a blowtorch flame. Some of the deployed scientific equipment taken to the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission, where the Scientific equipment we've installed on the Moon.

Did you know that we brought up a large amount of scientific equipment and installed it on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions? And many others. That we have the data from these experiments, and that the lunar retroreflectors are still in use today, represent some pretty strong evidence that we did, in fact, land on the Moon. This image, from January 31, , shows sunrise from Alan Shepard's 12 o'clock pan taken near the Without the Sun glare, we can see some detail on the Cone-Crater ridge.

We brought back samples, and learned a ton about lunar geology from them. The final two astronauts to ever walk on the Moon, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, ran into quite a surprise when they did.

Schmitt, the lone civilian-astronaut and only scientist to travel to the Moon, was often described as the most business-like of all the astronauts. Which is why it must have been such a shock to hear him exclaim the following:. The orange soil, at the lower right of the image, really stands out when compared to the colorations Apollo 17, perhaps because they had a geoscientist as one of their moonwalkers, was able to spot this geological oddity that taught us so much about the Moon's origin and composition.

Like any good scientist, or any good explorer, for that matter, Cernan and Schmitt took pictures, collected data, and brought samples back to Earth for further analysis. What could cause orange soil on the Moon, perhaps the most featureless of all the large, airless rocks in our Solar System? What the analysis back on Earth revealed was fantastic: this was volcanic glass. What occurred was that molten lava from the interior of the Moon erupted, some 3 to 4 billion years ago, up above the airless surface and into the vacuum of space.

As the lava became exposed to the vacuum, it separated out into tiny fragments and froze, forming tiny beads of volcanic glass in orange and black colors. The tin in some of the fragments is what gives the orange color. The purpose was to determine the chemical composition of solar wind.

Scientists from Switzerland created and provided the experiment for the Apollo program. After deployment on the Moon, it was returned to Earth by the crew for analysis. After the mission, scientists in Switzerland analyzed the exposed foil, showing world-wide participation in the Apollo program.

The SNAP radioisotope thermoelectric generator is one of several atomic-powered electric generators developed jointly by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Atomic Energy Commission. It is fueled by plutonium The fuel capsule, containing 3.

The fuel cask provided thermal insulation and added structural support to the fuel capsule. These stations transmitted information about moonquakes and meteor impacts, lunar magnetic and gravitational fields, the Moon's internal temperature, and the Moon's atmosphere for several years after the missions. Isotopes are forms of an element that are chemically the same but have different atomic masses.

Some isotopes are unstable. Unstable isotopes can be radioactive-they radiate energy and eject particles from their nuclei until they reach a stable form. For instance, an atom of plutonium radiates a helium nucleus 2 protons and 2 neutrons -- to become uranium This heat is converted to electrical energy by the thermoelectric element.

When two different conductors are placed in contact, electrons flow from one to the other if the energy levels of the electrons are different in the two materials. The higher energy electrons cross the junction until the energy levels are the same on both sides. The principle is the same as charging a battery. If the conducting materials are connected in a loop, equal numbers of electrons will cross both junctions from the higher to the lower side, creating equal but opposed voltages.

Since there is no net voltage, no current flows around the loop. A thermoelectric element is such a loop made from two conductors whose energy levels change at different rates when the temperature changes. If the junctions are not at the same temperature, there are unequal differences in energy levels across the junctions. Thus, unequal numbers of electrons have to cross the junctions and unequal voltages are established.

Since there is a net voltage around the loop, a current will flow. The SNAP has thermoelectric elements. Three golf balls. A family photo. Large pieces of scientific equipment.

A tiny statue. Bags and bags of human waste of one flavor or another. And of course, American flags. It's all among the stuff that the dozen astronauts who walked on the moon between and left behind. Nearly half a century later, the motley collections are still there, although it's unlikely time has been kind to the objects scattered across the six landing sites.

Some of the objects were deeply meaningful, sent to the moon expressly to be left there. But pragmatism in part guided the decision to leave terrestrial material behind: The more stuff the astronauts discarded, the logic went, the more weight they freed up for bringing moon rocks back to Earth. And there are some mysteries, too. O'Leary should know: she is one of a team who worked to compile all the objects left behind by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 landing.

All told, the group identified an eclectic list of objects , plus the footprints marking Armstrong and Aldrin's steps. The largest items, at the Apollo 11 site and its successors, were at the scientific and engineering heart of the program. Each site boasts the descent stage of its lunar module, for example, which served as a launch pad for the astronauts heading home. Scientific experiments are also scattered across each landing site: seismometers to hunt moonquakes and retroreflector mirrors to pinpoint the distance from Earth to moon, plus smaller apparatuses as well.

Some of the abandoned items were carefully chosen, ceremonial objects.